Recent Archive Contributions

RECENT CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ARCHIVES OF THE SOUTHEAST JUST INTONATION CENTER
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


BOOKS MAGAZINES, ETC.
---------------------

- GENESIS OF A MUSIC 2nd ed. Harry Partch
Long term loan from Mike Lehner

- EXPERIMENTAL MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS magazine
Denny Genovese's early collection, with replacements of
missing back issues and ongoing subscription contributed
by Editor, Bart Hopkin.

- COMPLETE WRITINGS OF IVOR DARREG: Text files on Disk
prepared and contributed by Brian McLaren


RECORDINGS
----------

- MICROTONAL BACH: cassette,
Johnny Reinhart;
- THE GATE: Microtonal Guitar, CD and Cassette,
Neil Haverstick;
- DETWELVULATE: The Ivor Darreg CD,
Ivor Darreg Memorial Fund;
- REAWAKENING OF HARMONY and INACESSIBLE PLACES, IMPROBABLE CREATURES:
cassettes by Jules Siegel;
- COMPOSITIONS: cassette
Gary Morrisson;
- SOUNDS OF JUST INTONATION: set of cassettes
Ralph David Hill;
- MUSIC FROM THE EDGE, and various other titles: 15 cassettes!
Brian McLarren and others;
- VARIOUS RECORDINGS: cassette and scores,
Alan B. Silverman;
- FROM THE PAGES OF EXPERIMENTAL MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS: cassettes,
Denny Genovese's collection combined with donations
from Editor Bart Hopkin;


SOFTWARE
--------

- FASTRACK: JI composition program for PC,
Marion McKosky;
- SCALA: Scale generation program for PC,
Manuel Op de Coul;
- MICROTONAL STRING LENGTH CALCULATOR: for PC,
Buzz Kimball;
- JUST INTONATION COMPOSITION PROGRAM: for PC,
Jules Siegle;
- MICROTONAL MIDI TERMINAL: JI scale editor for PC, plays ET synths in JI,
Denny Genovese
- VIDEO DREAMLAND; for PC,
Don Slepian;
- MIDI SOUND EXPLORER: CD ROM,
John Schweikart



- Several papers, articles, etc. will be listed in a future post.


Denny Genovese
Director

Southeast Just Intonation Center

World Harmony Project Inc.
PO Box 15464
Gainesville, FL 32604

Email: sejic@afn.org Web Page: http://www.afn.org/~sejic



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Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 09:06:58 -0700
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Two events framed my interest in microtonal and non-standard tunings. The
first was my father's off-handed comment that he wondered what 7th root of 2
musical scales would sound like and explained the "small whole number ratio"
rationale of JI. Between his slide rule, my tape recorder, and my school's
sine wave generator, I completed a rough school project on 7tet.

The second, when I was maybe 12 years old, came when my mother's copy of
Switched On Bach coughed up a second 7" single from Columbia Records with
samples of other avante-garde releases.
There were several selections (6, as I recall) but only three made an
impression:
1)Terry Riley's Rainbow In Curved Air, an accident of fate that changed my
musical life -- Riley though not a rigid JI theorist does use just tunings
on almost all of his work the past few decades,.
2) Steve Reich's Violon Phase, which when I sought out and found various
Reich albums also introduced me to tape work like Come Out and It's Gonna
Rain and, obliquely, the ideas of psychoacoustics
3) Harry Partch.

Only with Harry Partch did I get a sense that this was something I really
was supposed to appreciate, intellectually, but I just couldn't find a way
to understand and integrate his approach into my own music-making. Harry's
piece made an impression but I've never really gotten used to it.

As an adult I've re-listened to Partch and acquired two albums which rarely
leave their album covers. For me, he's one of those artists whose corpus
has a meaning that far exceeds the sum of the individual pieces. Li Po was
wonderful when I saw it live at The Knitting Factory but it was because it
was part of the Harry legend. If I'd run across Li Po on the radio, I might
well have continued searching the dial.

It seems from reading this TUNING list that a newbie with an interest in
Partch today has to do a fair amount of research to pull together enough
obscure or out-of-print recordings, interviews, personal reminisces, and so
on to get a picture of the man and his music -- and live performances with
correct instruments are rare. I hope Partch can become more "quickly"
accessible (which is different than more "easily" accessible) through a new
wave of Partch recordings and documentation. Maybe I'll give Harry another
try.

------------------------------

Topic No. 6

Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 18:44 +0200
From: COUL@ezh.nl (Manuel Op de Coul)
To: tuning
Subject: Scala command script example
Message-ID: <009A74AB8C311EA0.30B9@vbv40.ezh.nl>

In this post I shall give a short lesson of how to create a Scala command
file that calculates a scale as a function of some parameters.

Bela Bartok has devised an axis-system of notes. It consists of steps of
subdominant-tonica-dominant triplets.
There is a main step (Dutch: hoofdtrap):

f c g
S T D

and secondary steps (Dutch: neventrappen) where the mediant of the previous
step becomes the dominant:

d a e b f# c# ab eb bb
S T D S T D S T D

Arranged in axis crosses (assenkruis, Achsenkreuz):

S T D

f c g

d ab a eb e bb

b f# c#


The middle cross is used for instance for the global tonality structure of
Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta.
Reference:
E. Lendvai: Einfu"hrung in die Formen- und Harmoniewelt Barto'ks, 1957.

We can (ab)use this system to create scales with, by taking the size of
dominant and mediant as parameters. The subdominant will be the octave
inversion of the dominant.
So if we for instance start with the major triad 4:5:6 we get the scale
25/24 10/9 125/108 5/4 4/3 25/18 3/2 125/81 5/3 125/72 50/27 2/1
which ratios have lattice structure (to the right: 3, upwards: 5,
the zero is C):

* * *
* * *
* * *
* 0 *

This is sort of a slanting version of Euler's genus bichromaticum [33555].
Here comes a solution for the command file:

clear 0
echo enter the mediant
append ?
echo enter the dominant
append ?

First we have to enter the values for mediant and dominant. A question mark
is substituted with what the user enters. The working scale is cleared and
the two notes entered into it.

calculate/noout 2-%2
append $0

The value of the subdominant is calculated by subtracting the second note
(referenced with a % sign) from the octave. That value, which is stored in
pitch memory number 0 (referenced with a $ sign), is added to the scale.

calculate/noout 2+%1-%2
delete 1
copy 0 1

Now we calculate what the shift must be to get the next step. It is O+M-D,
or S+M (from C to A). This value is now in pitch memory 0.
The mediant is deleted so the working scale contains now T-D-S. This scale
is saved in scale memory number 1.

equaltemp 1 $0 3
product 1

A cycle of three steps (so four notes) of the shift value is created.
The 1 indicates it is undivided (division of 1).
Now comes the trick: the Carthesian product of this is taken with the
saved T-D-S triplet, giving the 3 x 4 = 12 notes at once.

clear 1
reduce 2/1
sort
append 2/1

Scale memory 1 is no longer needed and cleared. All the notes are octave
reduced and sorted in order and the octave is added to the resulting scale.
So instead of having to write expressions for each separate note, we make
use of the structure of the scale and use the proper Scala command that can
make it.

Taking a quarter-comma fifth for the dominant (Scala expression: 3/2-$k\4 )
and 5/4 for mediant gives us a regular mean-tone scale in the key of B-flat.

All the command files supplied with Scala may serve as other examples.
In particular the ones for creating tritriadic, tetratriadic, tritetradic,
etc. scales, for creating Fokker's single- and double-tied circular
mirrorings of triads and tetrads, for creating duodenes, straight and
reversed triadic diamonds, hexany diamonds and mean-tone scales.

Manuel Op de Coul coul@ezh.nl

------------------------------

Topic No. 7

Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 18:44:04 +0100
From: blee@dircon.co.uk (Brian Lee)
To: tuning
Subject: New Partch recordings promised
Message-ID: <199608231744.AA04918@felix.dircon.co.uk>

Here's a tidbit I picked up on the newsgroup
rec.music.classical.contemporary
on the usenet and I repost it here. Please note that the discussion on
Partch he refers to is on that newsgroup not related to what's going on here.
Toodle pip!
Brian Lee
*****************

It's great to see all this discussion about Harry Patch! CRI has kept his
music available for more than twenty years. He's a back bone of our
catalogue not to mention the experimental tradition in American music.

When we reissued on CD The Bewitched, we made a flyer offering both our
Patch CDs plus three books by our about Partch and the video of The
Dreamer That Remains. If you e-mail CRI, we can send you this flyer by
standard U.S. mail. Of the three books offered (an annotated catalogue of
his works, Genesis of a Music, and Bitter Music), Genesis is out of print
when last we checked, but the other titles can be obtained still through
CRI.

AND, we have plans to reissue the majority of Patch's remaining Gate 5
recordings on CD. Gate 5 was Patch's own label wherein he recorded the
majority of his major works. Our two CDs of recordings are drawn from
Gate 5 material. Lots still remains -- many recordings not heard in
years. I spent a weekend last spring with Danlee Mitchell, Patch's heir,
in San Diego reviewing the material. That's all I'll say for now... It's
going to be a lot of work to get this done (two or three new CDs) with
proper notes and librettos, etc. So, my guess is winter/spring of next
year will be the time to look for a major new Patch series on CRI.

Joseph Dalton
Managing Director

COMPOSERS RECORDINGS, INC.
73 Spring Street, Suite 506
New York, NY 10012-5800
phone 212.941.9673
fax 212.941.9704
e-mail: CRInyc@aol.com