Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup mills-tuning-list LA/San Diego visit

Greetings, fellow Tunesters!

I will be flying in to San Diego & Los Angeles, staying from Wed. Nov.
18 through Monday afternoon Nov. 23. My prime directive is to examine
the completed MicroZone keyboard and corresponding software for Windows
95. I'm looking forward to trying Harvey Starr's 810-key
velocity-sensitive instrument, and, providing it meets my needs, to take
one home with me (once a pitch template envelope is mounted on top, as
my Clavette has).

Almost as important is the chance to meet my fellow xenharmonicists. In
case you're not familiar with my work, you can at least get some sense
of what I'm up to from http://www.wavefront.com/~hfortuin. The Clavette
microtonal keyboard controller that I designed is described there.

Since the completion of the Clavette in 1994, the bulk of my
compositions have been microtonal, including works in 19, 22, and
31-ET. My approach in these pieces has been to revisit existing styles
of Romantic to early Modern Classical music and jazz (chromatic tonal
music), but with the additional resources of these richer ETs. I work
out new functional harmonies by modelling the voice-leading with these
ratios above 1/1:

7/6, 6/5, 11/9, 5/4, 9/7 (the five kinds of thirds)

7/5, 3/2 (fifths)

7/4, 9/5, 11/6, 15/8, 27/14 (the sevenths a 3/2 above the thirds)

17/8, 9/8 (ninths)

11/4 (the harmonic 11th)

The above ratios within an octave are used in inversion as well (I
dont entirely accept the concept of interval inversion entirely, thus
the quotes).

On first hearing, my pieces sound similar to Easley Blackwoods Etudes.
They are fully notated, and I perform them on Clavette playing
synthesizer with setups which map one keystroke to one tone, like
traditional instrument performance--I dont trigger any sequences.

I have an interest in Balkan, Middle Eastern, and Indian musics, but
have not yet written any xenharmonic work along these lines, although I
do have a Japanese-influenced piece Ill take along.

I will bring pieces on cassette, CD, and my 36-minute Clavette video
documentary on VHS. I will also bring earlier, freely atonal virtuoso
compositions on cassette and CD, including xenrhythmic work. And be
forewarned: I must admit to having a Ph.D. in music composition ;) :(

Im most interested in meeting other xenharmonicists who have built or
designed alternate keyboards or other instruments; and those
composers/improvisers/performers/ theorists with related concerns.

For now, the only thing scheduled is to visit Starr Labs in San Diego on
Wed. the 18th.
Id like to see if I could meet with San Diego xenharmonicists that
evening or perhaps on the 19th.

I expect to be in the Los Angeles vicinity from the 19th or 20th through
Mon. the 23rd.

If youd like to meet, please send me your address, phone, website, and
the dates and times you are available.

Best wishes from microtonal Minneapolis,
Harold Fortuin
hfortuin@wavefront.com

(I realize that this is a tad off the subject for the tuning list, but
since there's a lot of musicians here...)

I've always been told that one should start trills on the upper of the
two notes (i.e., the note above the notated note). I think my bassoon
teacher back in high school first pointed that out to me. It seems like
that's what I've always heard in recordings as well, but I'll have to do
some listening.

But this past Saturday, my saxophone teacher, who is working on his
music PhD but is first and foremost a jazz man, said that he'd always heard
that you should start on the notated note. Since trills are rather rare in
jazz, I at first racked it up to his background. However, I looked at the
venerable Harvard Dictionary, and it said that that is a controversial
topic, or at least that it depends on the era the music is from.

I'm going to listen to some recordings to get some statistics along
those lines, but I'm curious: what have you folks been told along those
lines? Understand that I'm talking about true trills - not mordents and
such.

Thanks!

LA/San Diego visit

🔗Harold Fortuin <hfortuin@...>

🔗Gary Morrison <mr88cet@...>

🔗Johnny Reinhard <reinhard@...>