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Thanks for all the comments about Slow Adventiles (it's at
http://www.cae.wisc.edu/~sethares/Slow_Adventiles.mp3
in case you missed it).

Dave wrote:

> Nice piece, I like the slower rhythm (seems like a change of pace for
> you, so to speak), and I agree that it helps the unaccustomed ear
> distinguish between a tuning shift and a chord change. Out of
> curiosity, what hardware/software are you using?

The sounds are generated mostly by a Yamaha VL70m module,
which is monophonic -- so each line is recorded separately.
On the other hand, I created the piece by playing (and then editing)
using my adaptive tuning software (written in Max).

> BTW, I played your Klingon tune last night for my 14yo daughter,
> and she dug it.

Thanks... start her off with a bit of the old 60-tet!

Carl commented:

> Yo Bill, this is incredible. The rhythm track is
> still unmistakably you, but the rest seems like a
> new direction. What can you tell us about how this
> was composed and tuned?

OK... so I started out writing a piece called "Adventiles
in a Distortium," which forms the basis of this.
It's adaptively tuned like many of the things I've been
doing in the past few years...
As I was listening to "adventiles" one day, I remembered
something that Brian McLaren had said to me years ago...
something like... "all your songs move too fast..."
I had been playing around with time stretching algorithms
(I implemented a "phase vocoder" in Matlab, and then started
modifying it) and so I decided to try playing "adventiles"
at different speeds... the current version "Slow Adventiles"
is exctly 1/2 the speed of the original...
Then because it was too long, I deleted a few sections.

Aaron wrote:

> I really enjoyed the trippyness of this--you're right,
> we do get to really hear the wiggling around, and
> it's quite creepy! I liked it!

"Creepy" sounds good to me!

> BTW, I'm becoming more interested in using adaptive
> tuning algorithms. Does yours have a MIDI basis, or
> is it software synthesis (CSound, etc.) If it can
> take a given MIDI file and mess with it, is it available
> for Linux?

It's MIDI based, so I play on a keyboard (actually a MIDI
guitar, but that's irrelevant here) and the MIDI commands
go to the computer, which changes the notes adding
pitch bends (and re-channelizing), and then out to the synth module.
It's written in Max, which started on the Mac and has been
recently ported to the PC. At the moment, there seem to be
some incompatibilities keeping the adaptive porgram from functioning
on the PC (I appear to have used some nonstandard commands
that have yet to be translated -- I'm working on it...)
Unfortunately, I have not heard whether the Max people are
making a linux version -- part of me wants to say it can't be
too hard because OS X is more-or-less unix, but then
it took them several years to port to the PC....

Kraig wrote:

> It is so creepy and horrifying it makes me laugh

More creepy! Glad it makes you laugh though!

Finally, Igliashon wrote:

> ... I love it. The time-stretched drums are great, they
> totally add to the unnatural feel...the whole song feels stretched
> and "extrapolated" to me. It reminds me of being stuck in
> traffic...all that sliding around is like trying to get in the fast
> lane but then having it slow down as soon as you get into it. It's
> very clever in that it reminds me of feeling frustrated without
> actually frustrating me.

So you hit it right on the nose -- not only the drums,
but everything is stretched... by a factor of 2!
My secret is out...

--Bill Sethares

🔗Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@...>

🔗Jonathan M. Szanto <JSZANTO@...>

🔗Carl Lumma <ekin@...>

🔗Bill Sethares <sethares@...>

I had written:

>> "Adventiles in a Distortium" forms the basis of "Slow Adventiles."
>> It's adaptively tuned like many of the things I've been
>> doing in the past few years...

to which Carl replied:

> Uh, but the timbres are normal? So I guess I don't know
> what kind of adaptive tuning you mean.

Correct, the timbres are more-or-less normal (harmonic),
taken from the Yamaha VL module. The adaptation works by
moving the pitches of all currently sounding notes to
nearby intervals of maximum consonance (or, more properly,
to intervals of minimum dissonance, where the "dissonance"
is measured by "sensory dissonance"). So for harmonic sounds
you end up at a lot of JI intervals, though I suspect that
in this rendition the motion towards the JI intervals is
at least as prominent a feature as the JI intervals
themselves...

Jon wrote:

> Good stuff, even if you had to take BM's comment to
> get there!

At one point he had me redo (another piece) in slower tempo,
though then it was a MIDI rendition so slowing it down was
trivial... slowing down audio requires a lot more care.

> I found it creepy, not maximally creepy, but moderately creepy.
> I'd really like for you to re-do this piece, in a version where the
tempo
> was 1/2 the original so that the moves between notes were still slow (I
> really LIKE it in adaptive pieces when you can hear the adaption
going on),
> but with the percussion recorded in 1/1 time - the time stretching
robs the
> attack transients of any kind of power they have. Creepy, but powerless.

Very interesting idea. Not so easy to do, but a good idea.
Such a separation would also let me re-compose the percussion
parts -- I have the feeling that they are almost too sparse,
the beats too far apart.

> she said "write some music for this". It usually ended
> up as 'me', but in differing ways than 'I' would
> normally do. Pretty creepy.

Fascinating story of the compositional process,
and an interesting insight into Jon ('me') and Jon ('I').

> Did I mention your piece was creepy?

I think I might be getting that idea!

-- Bill Sethares

🔗Jonathan M. Szanto <JSZANTO@...>

Bill,

{you wrote...}
>Very interesting idea. Not so easy to do, but a good idea. Such a >separation would also let me re-compose the percussion parts -- I have the >feeling that they are almost too sparse, the beats too far apart.

Hmmm... I'm not sure the sparse nature harms it, but more my ears caught that there were no sounds that hadn't been softened by being stretched (even if only an occasional vivid attack come, it would poke through the texture). In any event, I'm not always sure how you are composing your works; if it were really a 2:1 stretch, it would seem somewhat easy to stretch the non-perc stuff, save that as audio, and put it back in over a percussion track that was running 1/2 speed, and mix the two.

But it's probably not that easy! Sounds like a new project down the line instead...

>Fascinating story of the compositional process, and an interesting insight >into Jon ('me') and Jon ('I').

Well, it was _one_ way to get me out of my rut. Pretty weird to get a whole dance (this wasn't always how we worked), and I could actually get out score paper and lay out the entire work with measures, meter changes, and tempo changes. And then I'd sit there with an entirely blank score, wondering how the hell I was going to fill in all that empty space! :)

I'm kind of excited, as another choreographer I've worked with is doing grant procedures right now to fund a *very* interesting project, one that will complement a lot of the musical, theatrical, and literary interests I've had for the last couple of decades. Finally, a prospect of a piece that contains complete inspiration for what I'd like to do.

Oh, yes: daunting as well.

Hope I didn't overdo the creepy thing...

Cheers,
Jon