Lurker speaks

Listers,

There was a request for those of us who read but don't contribute to
identify ourselves, so here is my input.

I have been reading the tuning list now for about a year with great
interest. I have enjoyed reading all the helpful advice from
microtonalists around the world. My interest in microtonality came
from work in 1976-86 with Jon Glasier in San Diego, when I lived there
and studied at UCSD. Jon introduced me to Ivor Darreg, Irv Wilson,
John Chalmers and others.

In the late 1970's I built many microtonal instruments of my own
invention, including a 31 tone kalimba (the Finger Piano), several
plucked and bowed zithers, a 300 foot long guitar, some tubalongs
(after Erv Wilson's designs), spring instruments, and many balloon
instruments (see below). Lately I have been using Csound to explore 53
tone equal temperment.

The balloon instruments include:
- Balloon Flutes made from sewer pipes and balloon membranes
These exploit the characteristic of pipes with variable flexible
ends to vary pitch by the elasticity of the membrane.
- Aeromembranophones - Peanut butter jar lid with a balloon membrane
stretched over it creates a membrane; blow hard and watch out
- Balloon Bass - long sewer pipes with balloon reeds
- Balloon Shrieks
- Balloon as a resonator and suspension device for percussion
instruments, including plow shares and stainless steel wing sculptures

I still listen to some of the microtonal music I recorded of Jon
Glasier, myself and friends in San Diego, and Tom Nunn and others in
San Francisco in the mid 1980's. I have about 150 hours of casette
tapes that contain many jewels of detwelvulated exploration.

Some of the articles in the recent TUNING list messages were
especially interesting.

Brian McLaren's post in Digest 910 Nov 29, 1996 mentions problems
notating the "huge triangle of space alloy that sits atop a balloon".
I remember when we first used balloons for this purpose, not as
resonators, but rather to keep the "wings" vibrating longer. The
resonating quality of balloons was a side effect, along with the
bounciness that made the timbre change.

Brian's post from Nov 25, 1996, asks for sophisticated software for
microtonality. I have not used MIDI lately, but I have written a small
program that generates microtonal Csound SCORE files, which can
generate 53 tone music with efficiency. It's kind of a macro
processor, written in TURBO Pascal for DOS. Not state of the art, but
effective for working in equal temperments like 53 tone. The composer
dictates the note numbers (1-53) and their duration, and a few other
items, and the system writes out the Csound score file. Csound is then
called to create a .WAV file, which can be listened to.

I must say that most of Brian's rantings get sent very quickly to the
bit bucket. His railings against academia are childish. If you don't
like something, then fix it. Go teach in a university, and stop
complaining.

November 22, 1996, Digest 904 has Daniel Wolf asking for a description
of making your own pickups. I made many of these for kalimbas,
zithers, and spring instruments. The basic idea is a magnet, with
coils of magnet wire around it. The wire is very fine, perhaps the
width of a hair, insulated with a thin plastic coating. I used an old
33 rpm record turntable to wind the pickups. At first I was very picky
about the magnets, but I eventually found excellent results with
ceramic magnets, which were about six inches long, by 1/4 inch wide
and very cheap. Smaller magnets can be used for smaller pickups. I
would wind magnet wire until it was about 1/4" thick, perhaps 1,000
coils or so. Then plug one end of the wire into the positive terminal
of a mini plug, and the other end into the negative end, then send the
result to a mixer or amplifier.

wire wire wire wire wire wire wire wire wire wire to mini-plug --->
i +-------------------------------------------+ w
r + magnet + i
e +-------------------------------------------+ r
wire wire wire wire wire wire wire wire wire wire to mini-plug --->

At present I sell mainframe computers for IBM in Boise, Idaho; ski,
fish, and white water raft through the wilds of the western slope of
the rocky mountains; and indulge in midnight Csound explorations.

Prent Rodgers
Boise, ID

Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl
with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Thu, 12 Dec 1996 16:01 +0100
Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA32729; Thu, 12 Dec 1996 16:03:56 +0100
Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA32650
Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI)
for id HAA20638; Thu, 12 Dec 1996 07:03:52 -0800
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 07:03:52 -0800
Message-Id: <199612121000_MC1-D08-8846@compuserve.com>
Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu
Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu