New CDs

I would like to call your attention to a couple of CDs that might be of
interest to people on this list.

First, a CD of electronic music called _Mesita Dreams_ of an excellent
composers and friend of mine, Frederick Lesemann, has been released. Rick
has been composing electronic music since the early 1970s, and this CD
includes some of his best electronic compositions of the past 20 years. The
selection of special interest to this forum is "Angel's Flight," which was
realized in 1976 I believe using an early sequencer to control a Moog model
12 synthesizer. He tuned to the Moog to what he called "pi-monics," where
the 2:1 octave was replaced by a ratio of pi (3.1416):1. It consists of
layers of sparkling sine wave arpeggios, effectively evoking the swirling
stars around the cosmic ladder section of Dante's Paradisio, the
inspiration for this piece, and it is somewhat reminiscent of early
minimalism.

The other pieces on the CD are in 12-TET and are quite varied in mood and
style. The title piece, Mesita Dreams, is a lovely kind of drone-music
evocation of the mesas of northern New Mexico. He told me that the beats
caused by the interference between the prominently resonated harmonics and
12-TET used to bother him, but now he likes them. Currently the only place
that I know of that you can get this CD is through the composer:

Frederick Lesemann
2342 Panorama Dr.
La Crescenta CA 91214

At his last concert he was charging $20 plus tax. I don't know if that's
the standard price or what his charge for postage and handling is, so you
better contact him.

Second, if you're interested in really great microtonal polyrhythms, check
out Gongs and Vocal Music from Sumatra, #12 on Smithsonian/Folkways, in
particular the first four tracks of Talempong music from the Minangkabau
people of southwest Sumatra. I was intrigued with this lively music (and
this culture, and their food!) when I was there, but I heard too little of
it. Now, happily, there is a good quality recording of it, with examples
from four different ensembles and tunings. They use mainly gongs and
horizontal kettle-gongs, similar to those in neighboring Java. However,
their tuning system features two very small successive steps in the scale
that I have not heard elsewhere in Indonesia. I haven't measured them, but
on one of the tracks I estimate that both steps are in the neighborhood of
70 cents or less.

The rest of the CD is good, and the gong ensembles naturally use
non-Western tuning, though the polyrhythms of the Talempong are to me
especially engaging. The last track is more of a popular genre and as such
uses Western diatonicism. All of the recordings are by Philip Yampolsky.
This release is available at many CD stores. Check out
http://www.si.edu/organiza/offices/folklife/folkways/ for more info.

Bill

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^ Bill Alves email: alves@hmc.edu ^
^ Harvey Mudd College URL: http://www2.hmc.edu/~alves/ ^
^ 301 E. Twelfth St. (909)607-4170 (office) ^
^ Claremont CA 91711 USA (909)607-7600 (fax) ^
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DFinnamore@aol.com David J. Finnamore wrote:

>On the other hand, the closer the pitches of the context are to "ideal,"the
>more contrast is possible when you shoot to miss. Right? Also, couldn't
>missing virtually all the time limit your vocabulary as surely as hitting
>virtually all the time? Then, too, there's always the possibility of
>presenting a moving target. Gets hairy, don't it?

This question of a balance between hitting and missing reminds me of an
article in New Scientist a few years back. It was actually on the wider
question of predictability in music. They found that good music was
about having some predictability but not too much. We are lead along to
expect something and then oops something else happens and is quite
delightful. It may apply to all aspects of music.

I guess that there is a personal factor in how much we like to be
conformists and how many surprises we can cope with.

-- Ray Tomes -- rtomes@kcbbs.gen.nz -- Harmonics Theory --
http://www.kcbbs.gen.nz/users/rtomes/rt-home.htm

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>On the other hand, the closer the pitches of the context are to "ideal," the
>more contrast is possible when you shoot to miss. Right? Also, couldn't
>missing virtually all the time limit your vocabulary as surely as hitting
>virtually all the time? Then, too, there's always the possibility of
>presenting a moving target. Gets hairy, don't it?

Certainly limiting your vocabulary to either is significant. ETs and
JI, by all means, are both very valuable to explore.

You slightly nudged one of my hot buttons, so I'll push it down the rest
of the way and then *try* to restrain myself from continuing to yack about
it after this message!

ETs and JI can both limit your vocabulary. But limits are good. Limits
stimulate rather than stiffle creativity. If you have unlimited
flexibility to solve a compositional problem, then the solution will be
arbitrarily easy to devise, and that's boring. When you operate within
limits, you have to devise clever and exciting solutions to compositional
tasks, which is much more interesting. And more fun too.






>Just tune it!

Cute! I like that.

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