Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup makemicromusic For a new list, two stories.

Prologue
--------

Hi.

A list must start somehow, mustn't it? So here are two stories that are really just one...

Story #1
--------

Many years ago I started writing, performing, and recording music for dance. I had the good fortune to work with some talented dancers/choreographers while with the Harry Partch Ensemble, and it seemed like an interesting way to do music. And, most of the time, it was.

I worked most frequently with Patricia Sandback, and one of the works she commissioned was a dance entitled "Stain". Best I can track, this would be around 1983 or so. Before software-based sequencers, heck, before the PC (for me, at least). And microtonality? For me, it was what I could make, the microtones in my percussion arsenal, and my trusty Sequential Circuits Prophet 5. I am not shy to say that I *didn't* do a lot of non-12-tET, but simply focused on making music.

"Stain" was a three-part work; some day I'll share a section of the first part, where I tuned chords on the Pro5 to match harmonics in three gongs, and recorded on separate tracks. But the end section is one of my rare dabbles off the piano-scale, and involves truly era-specific lo-tech: all done with a TEAC 4-track; the 'dumbek' sound is a water jug recorded at half-speed, and when the drum machine part (an old Emu Drumulator) and jug were run through a ring modulator it was tuned in the scale I used; the Pro5 was slightly altered from 12, but the main micro stuff was a 'vocal' line that used two patches and all micro-intervals were 'done' in realtime with the pitch wheel.

The dance ended in a similar manner to Salome's famous dance of ripping-off-the-veils, with a real whirling dervish finish. IOW, accelerando and crazy.

Story #2
--------

When I first went online in 1995 to do Partch work, I quickly found a few individuals of inspiration. One was a young woman who was a wonderful raconteur/story-teller, who occasionally wrote little, odd fables. One night I was taken by a quirky post:

No one knows
how the knives
were introduced
into the dance

That led to a story, and while reading it I was reminded of the music I had written over a decade earlier. At the time I was also honing my web design skills, and so I combined her story with both an allegorical myth and the fragment of my music. It went in a little, personal corner of my site, where it still sits today:

http://www.corporeal.com/bandi/knife.html

At the top of the story "The Knife Dancers" you will find a link to the original fable (a good, twisted read) and at the bottom you will find a link to a RealAudio file. If more than one or two people aren't RA enabled, I'll upload an .mp3 to the files section here...

Epilogue
--------

Yes, I do still write music (but mostly I'm a performer). Microtonal? Not always, not often, but that will be changing, and this list is, to be honest, partly selfish! But to prove that I have bent a pitch in my time, that I actually have *made* music, I am finally overcoming fear of juvenilia and offer those of you who have wondered just one sliver of my output - don't hold it against me, and certainly not against the new baby on the block, Creating Microtonal Music.

I sure am glad to be here. I hope you will be, too.

Creatively,
Jon (the List-Mom)

🔗Jim Cole <jimcole@...>

Hello Jon and All,

Thank you very much for creating this list Jon (and Margo and Jacky
too!!!) and for all the wise patient constructive efforts along the
way towards its genesis. The atmosphere seems ripe here for some
high quality communication and exchange of ideas. I mostly have
lurked on the other lists, wanting to keep in touch with these tuning
communities because I'm fascinated by these areas of music, "lurking
mostly" because so far I've not understood very much within the posts
(theory AND actual sounds of various scales/music created from them)
to comment intelligently. I hope to learn much more...

My passion is harmonic singing, and while I am very interested in
microtonal music made by whatever means, right now I am keen to
experience alternate tunings through vocal production - to train my
voice to sing different scales and intervals accurately. I've worked
with guitar and tamboura using open strings and harmonics to tune to
lower limit JI's, but now I'm eager to experience and practice a wide
range of tunings, first to experiment and feel them, then -
hopefully - to make music through some of them.

The question is:

What are some ways that I can train my voice to sing (with the
fundamentals) these tunings/scales? I'm thinking something like a
tunable keyboard or some software with home computer to generate/tune
them up so I can "follow along" with voice. I basically would like
to have a ready source of reference tones in the moment to compare my
voice with that can be retuned to another set fairly quickly/easily.
I'm not even sure which tunings I want to start with. There were
posts recently on one of the lists about various feeling-states
evoked with different EDO's that caught my fancy - so did miracle
scales, higher limit JI's etc. The lower cost/tech the solution, the
better in my case - I don't have a lot of $$$ to use and I'm fairly
limited (so far!) technical-wise.

Thanks to any and all help,

~jim cole

http://www.spectralvoices.com

🔗Paul Erlich <paul@...>

🔗nanom3@...

--
> What are some ways that I can train my voice to sing (with the
> fundamentals) these tunings/scales? I'm thinking something like a
> tunable keyboard or some software with home computer to
generate/tune
> them up so I can "follow along" with voice.

Hi Jim

My passion is also singing and here's what I do. I use Robert
Walkers Fractal Tune Smithy on a laptop (PC only) open my list of
scales from scala, and simply play the tuning I pick on the laptop
keyboard. Its great for singing cause you don't need any other
equipment and its highly portable. Then you can just explore and
hear what you like - and what's relatively easy to sing. I use it
for singing even when I'm using midi programs written in LISP on the
Mac and record it all into ProTools because its foolproof - it
always works without a whole lot of diddling with midi channels and
ids and studio setups and such.

When I'm traveling I use these little harman/kardon speakers that
are really light , the built in midid in my dell and I'm a happy
camper. You could easily duplicate this setup for under a grand.

There are midi relay programs on the Mac side if that is your
preference, and I own most of them but use primarily FTS. Its like a
Swiss Army Knife of microtuning :-)

I also sing to your CD's quite regularly hoping that someday my false
vocal chords strengthen.

Also John Starret recently posted the mp3 site of a great Indian
female vocalist. I bought her CD and am getting a lot out of it.

Hope this is helpful.

Mary
http://www.elucida.com

🔗Jim Cole <jimcole@...>

Thank you Mary and Paul for your help - I will get in touch with
Robert about his Fractal Tune Smithy program.

(Mary:)
> My passion is also singing and here's what I do. I use Robert
> Walkers Fractal Tune Smithy on a laptop (PC only) open my list of
> scales from scala, and simply play the tuning I pick on the laptop
> keyboard. Its great for singing cause you don't need any other
> equipment and its highly portable. Then you can just explore and
> hear what you like - and what's relatively easy to sing

This sounds good - please excuse my ignorance - though I've heard the
term used before - what is 'scala' and where can I get it/how much
etc?
>
> When I'm traveling I use these little harman/kardon speakers that
> are really light , the built in midid in my dell and I'm a happy
> camper. You could easily duplicate this setup for under a grand.
>
> There are midi relay programs on the Mac side if that is your
> preference, and I own most of them but use primarily FTS. Its like
a
> Swiss Army Knife of microtuning :-)
>
I'm PC based (350 mhz, 128 megs ram, with a sound blaster AWE 64 gold
sound card) - the speakers seem good enough for now. What'll the
software cost me to get this method of training the voice up and
running - I'm not sure still what I need to make this all work (shall
I contact you off list for this specific info? - my address is
jimcole@...)

I appreciate your time and assistance to a total newbie as me Mary!

> I also sing to your CD's quite regularly hoping that someday my
false
> vocal chords strengthen.

Hope you find a way to engage them - I don't think they need more
strength - I assume you are going for that growly subfundamental kind
of throat singing since you mention the false folds - they probably
flap easier relaxed, albeit with the throat constricted enough to
bring them into the airflow (I'm not really sure exactly how it works
but that is what it feels like to me)
>
> Also John Starret recently posted the mp3 site of a great Indian
> female vocalist. I bought her CD and am getting a lot out of it.

Yeah - her singing is out of this world!!! :)

Thanks again,

~jim Cole

http://www.spectralvoices.com

🔗Paul Erlich <paul@...>

🔗Jonathan M. Szanto <JSZANTO@...>

List,

Had an idea, prompted most recently by the following:

{PE wrote...}
>--- In MakeMicroMusic@y..., "Jim Cole" <jimcole@s...> wrote:
> > This sounds good - please excuse my ignorance - though I've heard the
> > term used before - what is 'scala' and where can I get it/how much
> > etc?
>
>Scala is free software by Manuel Op de Coul but for this purpose you
>will only need the associated .scl files. See
>
>http://www.xs4all.nl/~huygensf/scala/

What I'd like to do is use the "Bookmarks" page for links to tools for making microtonal music, and - of course - Scala and FTS will be right up there. I'll try and do that later tonight, but I'll get info from Robert about FTS first.

Also, if this goes into place, I want to keep it "MakeMicroMusic"-centric: really stuff that is very related to what we are all going to be doing here. The best lists are the *focused* lists, and focusing can be done with veeeery little effort! <g>

Jon

🔗Jacob <jbarton@...>

[yes, this is a reply to message #1!]

>
> Story #2
> --------
>
> No one knows
> how the knives
> were introduced
> into the dance
>
> That led to a story, and while reading it I was reminded of the music I had
> written over a decade earlier. At the time I was also honing my web design
> skills, and so I combined her story with both an allegorical myth and the
> fragment of my music. It went in a little, personal corner of my site,
> where it still sits today:
>
> http://www.corporeal.com/bandi/knife.html
>
> At the top of the story "The Knife Dancers" you will find a link to the
> original fable (a good, twisted read) and at the bottom you will find a
> link to a RealAudio file. If more than one or two people aren't RA enabled,
> I'll upload an .mp3 to the files section here...
>

Chilling story, chilling music! I hadn't read a good fable in a long time, and the solo
line of the music was really striking. So cool that I had to mention something now,
three years later.

🔗Jonathan M. Szanto <JSZANTO@...>

Jacob,

{you wrote...}
>[yes, this is a reply to message #1!]

If that isn't a testament to how long things can live on the web, well... And the music is *so* old (I think I did that back in the 80's), but what are you gonna do?

>Chilling story, chilling music! I hadn't read a good fable in a long time, >and the solo line of the music was really striking. So cool that I had to >mention something now, three years later.

Man, thanks. Glad it still has some juice in it. I'm about 2 weeks away from a lot of time off work, and I'm going to try and get a good amount of writing done!

Cheers,
Jon