Microtonal concert in Toronto

During a recent visit to the music department at SUNY, Buffalo, I attended
a concert of microtonal music in Toronto with Paul Rapoport, Gayle Young,
(the editor of Musicworks), her husband Reiner (a sculptor), and John
Cuciurean, a graduate student of John Clough's. The performance was by
"Critical Band," a group lead by John Gzowski (pronounced Zosky) that
plays homebuilt instruments in 19 and 31-tets as well as using the
harmonic series and empirical pitches.

John Gzowski's principal instrument was constructed as a longish and
rather wide fingerboard strung with 10 strings and fretted for 31-tet.
It was electrified and rested on stand coupled to a space-frame with
another 40 or so resonating sympathetic strings. John also played an
19-tet electric guitar. He said that he had used fretting kits purchased
from Mark Rankin to construct these instruments.

Other novel instruments included a rotationally symmetrical Kalimba
(Cylimba?) played by plucking or bowing metal tongues, and two instruments
made from large dowels marked for the harmonic series and strung with
about a half-dozen metal strings. They might be described as electric
tube zithers, though they were mostly bowed as I remember.

There was also a self-excited, free-form soundboard (called the Clusterflux,
which was strung with a large number of metal strings, studded with magnets
and pickups, and electrified. The current flowing through the strings heats
them, causing them to change pitch. After it had played by itself for a
few minutes, Marc and a clarinetist joined in playing harmonic series on various fundamentals.

Supplementing this armamentarium was a battery of found metal objects,
large clay pots, and sound sculptures such as a pair of electrified hedge
shears, which were played with great verve and concentration by another
member of the ensemble. Another instrument appeared to be part of an
automobile exhaust system with attached wires.

The performers included the violinist Marc Sabat, a clarinetist, and
two other musicians. Unfortunately, I did not get their names or the
names of all of the instruments as there were no programs and I forgot
to take notes. Marc Sabat subscribes to this List, so perhaps he will
post more information and correct any errors I have made.

The music tended to be rather dense, sometimes obscuring the character
of the non-12 tunings. This might suggest that timbre rather than pitch relations is Gzowski's primary interest at this time. A duet, however,
by Marc and John for violin and 19-tet guitar was lovely. I would
certainly like to hear more from Critical Band. It's a pity that Toronto
is so far away from California, they'd be ideal for the Sonic Arts Gallery
and similar West Coast venues.

--John


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"On playback, though, I keep hearing the "bending" between each
note. How do I get it to attack each pitch without these
little glissandi?"

You have to leave a small time delay between the bend command
and the note you want to play bent. It varies between systems,
but my PC/SoundBlaster 32 needs 20 ms. I assume that this is
simply the processing time required by the microcode in the
synth/soundcard. At present I tune 11 channels at the
beginning of each recording and simply put a 1/16th note rest
at the beginning, which seems to be adequate for all systems.
It sure complicates the programming for tuning each note in
real time!

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On Fri, 1 Mar 1996, Adam B. Silverman wrote:

> I'm having trouble getting my EMU Proteus to play microtonally:
> I use a Macintosh with Vision, and have sequenced lines, inserting pitch
> bend messages for microtonal alterations. On playback, though, I kkep
> hearing the "bending" between each note. How do I get it to attack each
> pitch without these little glissandi?
> -Adam
> asilverm@email.ir.miami.edu

G'day,

Try sending the pitch-bend before the note on message (if the software
lets you).

Cheers

Greg S


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