Keyboard improvisation files at microtonal.org (mp3)

Hello, everyone, and I'm pleased to announce that two keyboard
improvisations are available for the moment at www.microtonal.org, a
resource for the MMM community through which Jon has done a great
service:

<http://www.microtonal.org/mp3/Zephyr24Improv01.mp3>
<http://www.microtonal.org/mp3/PythEnharImprov01.mp3>

The first is a sketch in Zephyr 24, a tuning which consists of the
1-3-7-9-11-13 eikosany plus four added notes representing some of the
simple factors used to generate the 20-note eikosany: 1, 3, 7, and 9.

The second is an improvisation in a tuning which might approximate one
interpretation of the style of vocal intonation advocated by
Marchettus of Padua in his _Lucidarium_ of 1318, as suggested for
example by Jay Rahn and Joe Monzo. Regular Pythagorean intervals,
including the basic ratios of 2:1, 3:2, 4:3, and 9:8, generally
prevail, but with directed progressions involving sharps featuring
extra-wide major thirds and sixths expanding to fifths and octaves,
with very narrow dieses or semitones around 48 cents.

Most appreciatively,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@...

>Hello, everyone, and I'm pleased to announce that two keyboard
>improvisations are available for the moment at www.microtonal.org, a
>resource for the MMM community through which Jon has done a great
>service:
>
> <http://www.microtonal.org/mp3/Zephyr24Improv01.mp3>
> <http://www.microtonal.org/mp3/PythEnharImprov01.mp3>
>
>The first is a sketch in Zephyr 24, a tuning which consists of the
>1-3-7-9-11-13 eikosany plus four added notes representing some of the
>simple factors used to generate the 20-note eikosany: 1, 3, 7, and 9.
>
>The second is an improvisation in a tuning which might approximate one
>interpretation of the style of vocal intonation advocated by
>Marchettus of Padua in his _Lucidarium_ of 1318, as suggested for
>example by Jay Rahn and Joe Monzo. Regular Pythagorean intervals,
>including the basic ratios of 2:1, 3:2, 4:3, and 9:8, generally
>prevail, but with directed progressions involving sharps featuring
>extra-wide major thirds and sixths expanding to fifths and octaves,
>with very narrow dieses or semitones around 48 cents.

Margo, these are fantastic!! Especially the second one, but
I like the way the starting and ending points of the repeated
melody in the first one are a little ambiguous, and the
sustained chord at the end I think is particularly tasteful.

Listening to these, it just occurs to me that the music of the
group Other Music had significant similarities to medieval/
renaissance music. Many folks on this list have probably never
heard the two albums of these JI Network founders, which were
only available, last I checked, on LP. But I highly recommend
them.

-Carl

>> <http://www.microtonal.org/mp3/Zephyr24Improv01.mp3>
>> <http://www.microtonal.org/mp3/PythEnharImprov01.mp3>
>>
>>The first is a sketch in Zephyr 24, a tuning which consists of the
>>1-3-7-9-11-13 eikosany plus four added notes representing some of
>>the simple factors used to generate the 20-note eikosany: 1, 3, 7,
>>and 9.
//
>Listening to these, it just occurs to me that the music of the
>group Other Music had significant similarities to medieval/
>renaissance music.
//

I think it was your use of a metallophone patch on the first
piece that did it.

-Carl

Margo-

Thanks for these, they were very enjoyable. I like the use of "anachronistic"
dissonance in particular (like at 0'11" and 0'20") in the second track. These
cadential thirds are of what size?

Best,
Aaron.

On Monday 31 January 2005 03:27 pm, Margo Schulter wrote:
> Hello, everyone, and I'm pleased to announce that two keyboard
> improvisations are available for the moment at www.microtonal.org, a
> resource for the MMM community through which Jon has done a great
> service:
>
> <http://www.microtonal.org/mp3/Zephyr24Improv01.mp3>
> <http://www.microtonal.org/mp3/PythEnharImprov01.mp3>
>
> The first is a sketch in Zephyr 24, a tuning which consists of the
> 1-3-7-9-11-13 eikosany plus four added notes representing some of the
> simple factors used to generate the 20-note eikosany: 1, 3, 7, and 9.
>
> The second is an improvisation in a tuning which might approximate one
> interpretation of the style of vocal intonation advocated by
> Marchettus of Padua in his _Lucidarium_ of 1318, as suggested for
> example by Jay Rahn and Joe Monzo. Regular Pythagorean intervals,
> including the basic ratios of 2:1, 3:2, 4:3, and 9:8, generally
> prevail, but with directed progressions involving sharps featuring
> extra-wide major thirds and sixths expanding to fifths and octaves,
> with very narrow dieses or semitones around 48 cents.
>
> Most appreciatively,
>
> Margo Schulter
> mschulter@...
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>

--
Aaron Krister Johnson
http://www.akjmusic.com
http://www.dividebypi.com

Hi Margo,

Both are very nice, I particularly like the cadences (especially the unresolved one early on) in the second piece.

Do you have some longer pieces online somewhere?

- Dave

Margo Schulter wrote:
> Hello, everyone, and I'm pleased to announce that two keyboard
> improvisations are available for the moment at www.microtonal.org, a
> resource for the MMM community through which Jon has done a great
> service:
> > <http://www.microtonal.org/mp3/Zephyr24Improv01.mp3>
> <http://www.microtonal.org/mp3/PythEnharImprov01.mp3>
> > The first is a sketch in Zephyr 24, a tuning which consists of the
> 1-3-7-9-11-13 eikosany plus four added notes representing some of the
> simple factors used to generate the 20-note eikosany: 1, 3, 7, and 9.
> > The second is an improvisation in a tuning which might approximate one
> interpretation of the style of vocal intonation advocated by
> Marchettus of Padua in his _Lucidarium_ of 1318, as suggested for
> example by Jay Rahn and Joe Monzo. Regular Pythagorean intervals,
> including the basic ratios of 2:1, 3:2, 4:3, and 9:8, generally
> prevail, but with directed progressions involving sharps featuring
> extra-wide major thirds and sixths expanding to fifths and octaves,
> with very narrow dieses or semitones around 48 cents.
> > Most appreciatively,
> > Margo Schulter
> mschulter@...

Margo,

That Zephyr bit really has a catchy tune! I'd like to hear you
steady your tempo and add some phrasing & other expressivity, and
hear what sort of longer piece you might make from it. Got some
digital crumhorns?

In both cases, as in the other music I've heard from you, you're of
course putting the 3rds and 6ths be quite far off from their later,
more euphonious frequency relations. Thus, when I hear you land on 6-
3 triads at the end of a phrase as sometimes occurs
PythEnharImprov01, I find it inappropriate, in particular if you
want to sound truly Medieval. Otherwise, in such tunings and as we
know from history, the noncadential occurrences of triads are very
suited to the harmonic world of this music.

As for which tuning I'd prefer, I could answer that better if you
could retune the Zephyr in the 2nd tuning and post that.

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Margo Schulter
<mschulter@c...> wrote:
> Hello, everyone, and I'm pleased to announce that two keyboard
> improvisations are available for the moment at www.microtonal.org,
a
> resource for the MMM community through which Jon has done a great
> service:
>
> <http://www.microtonal.org/mp3/Zephyr24Improv01.mp3>
> <http://www.microtonal.org/mp3/PythEnharImprov01.mp3>
>
> The first is a sketch in Zephyr 24, a tuning which consists of the
> 1-3-7-9-11-13 eikosany plus four added notes representing some of
the
> simple factors used to generate the 20-note eikosany: 1, 3, 7, and
9.
>
> The second is an improvisation in a tuning which might approximate
one
> interpretation of the style of vocal intonation advocated by
> Marchettus of Padua in his _Lucidarium_ of 1318, as suggested for
> example by Jay Rahn and Joe Monzo. Regular Pythagorean intervals,
> including the basic ratios of 2:1, 3:2, 4:3, and 9:8, generally
> prevail, but with directed progressions involving sharps featuring
> extra-wide major thirds and sixths expanding to fifths and octaves,
> with very narrow dieses or semitones around 48 cents.
>
> Most appreciatively,
>
> Margo Schulter
> mschulter@c...

Hello, there, Carl, Aaron, Dave, and Harold, and please let me thank
you for your generous and helpful comments about my first posted
keyboard improvisations.

I should admit having some divided feelings about how best to reply: a
separate post for each of your messages, or a response to what each of
you has written that I've seen so far more in a "digest mode," as it
were.

The first approach might better emphasize how much I value each of
your messages, and would be the natural one to follow if my responses
were closer to real time.

A possible advantage of consolidating the replies is that it might
make the thread a bit more compact (fewer discrete messages from me to
keep track of), and permit a certain flow in responding to some of the
themes you've raised ranging from JI timbres to questions of
14th-century style and its 21st-century offshoots.

In taking the second approach for the moment while inviting your
feedback as to this procedural question, I'll try to do each of your
contributions some justice while also emphasizing throughout just how
precious and exciting such a response is as I take my first steps in
digital sound recording and sharing via the Internet.

Here I'll follow the order of the MMM digest, starting with Carl.

Carl:

> Margo, these are fantastic!! Especially the second one, but I like
> the way the starting and ending points of the repeated melody in the
> first one are a little ambiguous, and the sustained chord at the end
> I think is particularly tasteful.

Thank you for this encouragement! Both are improvisations that I sort
of found at the keyboard, and I'd agree that the first has a more
"ambiguous" or fluid structure; I'd like to record some longer
versions, also taking up Harold's suggestion of comparing different
tunings (JI, as here, or otherwise).

> Listening to these, it just occurs to me that the music of the group
> Other Music had significant similarities to medieval/ renaissance
> music. Many folks on this list have probably never heard the two
> albums of these JI Network founders, which were only available, last
> I checked, on LP. But I highly recommend them.

Thanks for this reference, which led me to the JI Network on the Web
and the names of these albums: _Prime Numbers_ and _Incidents Out of
Context_.

Right now I have been getting a lot into the JI side of things, and
these first two improvisations might reflect that trend.

[You added in another post:]

> I think it was your use of a metallophone patch on the first piece
> that did it.

This raises an interesting point: that Other Music did JI gamelan
music, and likewise now Kraig Grady and Anaphoria. I've just been
getting into this side of things over the last few months with the
Zephyr 24 tuning, and hope soon to post some improvisations in this
kind of style.

A final comment for now on the stylistic connection you've drawn:
maybe this improvisation, in a kind of 13th-century European style,
has a certain affinity with gamelan because we have interweaving
melodies often gently oscillating back and forth. Maybe doing this
kind of thing in a JI gamelan kind of timbre/tuning tends to
accentuate this resemblance.

Aaron:

> Thanks for these, they were very enjoyable. I like the use of
> "anachronistic" dissonance in particular (like at 0'11" and 0'20")
> in the second track. These cadential thirds are of what size?

Thanks for the composerly feedback, and your timings suggest to me
that these are indeed the special "stretched" cadential major thirds
and sixths, which _can_ sound very avant-garde today also.

The sizes of these cadential thirds and sixths are around 450 and 948
cents, approximating to a cent or so those suggested in a monochord
interpretation of Marchettus suggested by Jay Rahn, "Practical Aspects
of Marchetto's Tuning," _Music Theory Online_ 4.6 (1998),
<http://boethius.music.ucsb.edu/mto/issues/mto.98.4.6/mto.98.4.6.rahn.html>

In this JI reading, based on the division of a 9:8 tone into five
_unequal_ intervals 81-79-77-76-74-72, the last and largest ratio of
74:72 or 37:36 serves as a guide for the cadential diesis, ~47.43 cents.
Then we have special wide major thirds and sixths at 48:37 (~450.611
cents) and 64:37 (~948.656 cents).

In the JI tuning for my improvisation, interval sizes vary slightly
from these: a cadential diesis at 114688:111537 (~48.23 cents), and
wide major thirds and sixths at 37179:28672 (~449.915 cents) and
12393:7168 (~947.860 cents).

These slight divergences of about 0.80 cents result from an indeed
"anachronistic" or _neo_-medieval item on my agenda: spacing the two
Pythagorean 12-note chains so as to obtain some pure supraminor and
submajor thirds at my beloved ratios of 17:14 (~336.13 cents) and
21:17 (~365.83 cents). This spacing at 459:448 or about 41.99 cents is
happily very close to the 1024:999 or about 42.79 cents required for
Rahn's ratios for cadential major thirds and sixths and dieses.

Dave:

> Both are very nice, I particularly like the cadences (especially the
> unresolved one early on) in the second piece.

Thank you for this feedback. The unresolved or "interrupted" cadence
is definitely a calculated technique, and one that the two of us both
like -- but see Harold's interesting discussion below for an
indication that people's mileage can vary.

> Do you have some longer pieces online somewhere?

This is what I want to do: more and longer keyboard recordings of
compositions and improvisations, including historical pieces as well
as original ones. Right now a place I'm starting to use is:

<http://www.bestii.com/~mschulter/>

Harold:

> That Zephyr bit really has a catchy tune! I'd like to hear you
> steady your tempo and add some phrasing & other expressivity, and
> hear what sort of longer piece you might make from it. Got some
> digital crumhorns?

Thank you for the encouragement, and indeed I'd like to record a
longer version. Frankly, part of my mood for this first mp3 version
was: "Let me just get through this without any glaring slips of the
keyboard," since normally this is an improvisation that I'd play a lot
longer if it were just for me or a visitor.

Of course, as your comments suggest, developing my musicianship should
be a major part of this: both technique and confidence. The computer
recording is a great way to add motivation while providing ready
feedback.

As to the digital crumhorns, I do have a patch (actually a preset, A22
on the Yahama TX802) that I use as a kind of "crumhorn" or "regal
organ" sound, and I should be posting things using this soon.

By the way, I've downloaded your Ars Subtilior and Renaissance pieces
recorded with the TX802, and look forward to hearing them -- and maybe
getting a hint or two about neat timbres. In another post, I'll
respond to some of your historical tuning questions, but right now I
want to say thank you for this music!

> In both cases, as in the other music I've heard from you, you're of
> course putting the 3rds and 6ths be quite far off from their later,
> more euphonious frequency relations. Thus, when I hear you land on
> 6- 3 triads at the end of a phrase as sometimes occurs
> PythEnharImprov01, I find it inappropriate, in particular if you
> want to sound truly Medieval. Otherwise, in such tunings and as we
> know from history, the noncadential occurrences of triads are very
> suited to the harmonic world of this music.

Thank you for giving me the benefit of your listening experience and
telling things the way you hear them as someone who has not only
admired medieval music but so generously and creatively helped make it
available to others.

While the terminologies used to discuss this music vary, both your
direct and musicianly remarks and Aaron's suggest an intriguing
experiment that I'd like to try: producing and posting improvisations
similar to PythEnharImprov01 with different nuances of intonation.

Why don't I prepare these examples, digital crumhorns and all, and
then invite further comment?

Again, thanks warmly to all.

Love and peace,

Margo

Hi Margo! Just a quick note...

>> Listening to these, it just occurs to me that the music of the group
>> Other Music had significant similarities to medieval/ renaissance
>> music. Many folks on this list have probably never heard the two
>> albums of these JI Network founders, which were only available, last
>> I checked, on LP. But I highly recommend them.
>
>Thanks for this reference, which led me to the JI Network on the Web
>and the names of these albums: _Prime Numbers_ and _Incidents Out of
>Context_.

If you can still play LPs, they're worth a spin. I keep asking Henry
and David when a CD transfer will happen, and they keep saying they're
kinda waiting for the LPs to sell out.

>A final comment for now on the stylistic connection you've drawn:
>maybe this improvisation, in a kind of 13th-century European style,
>has a certain affinity with gamelan because we have interweaving
>melodies often gently oscillating back and forth. Maybe doing this
>kind of thing in a JI gamelan kind of timbre/tuning tends to
>accentuate this resemblance.

Well, Other Music's music is quite different from traditional
gamelan, and from Kraig's music -- all of which I think are
wonderful. Of the three, I'd say Other Music's reminds me most
of medieval music. Not sure why... parallel motion of thirdless
chords in general, maybe... and something's sticking about the
progression I VII I, say in the dorian mode where the VII is a
whole-step below the I. . . sorry, it's been years since I've
listened to Other Music and I don't know much about medieval
music.

-Carl

On Thursday 03 February 2005 12:23 pm, Carl Lumma wrote:

> Well, Other Music's music is quite different from traditional
> gamelan, and from Kraig's music -- all of which I think are
> wonderful. Of the three, I'd say Other Music's reminds me most
> of medieval music. Not sure why... parallel motion of thirdless
> chords in general, maybe... and something's sticking about the
> progression I VII I, say in the dorian mode where the VII is a
> whole-step below the I. . . sorry, it's been years since I've
> listened to Other Music and I don't know much about medieval
> music.

This makes sense to me, Carl. There's a lot of stepwise progression in
medieval, as our resident expert on the subject, Margo can tell you more.

-A.
--
Aaron Krister Johnson
http://www.akjmusic.com
http://www.dividebypi.com