Re: [tuning] Rhytmic primes

Mats �ljare wrote,

> While meters like 17 and 19 can be built up in the same way of
shorter and longer sub-cycles,they simply refuse to"flow"in the way
the previously mentioned meters does(a subjective experience.)

Hmm, I think most any number taken as a cycle of easily digestible
twos and threes can be internalized and set into motion very quickly;
2 2 2 3 2 2 2 2 with a big stress on the first two and a light stress
on the three and the following two in 17 for instance flows very
nicely...

BTW, way back in the early 1930s, Henry Cowell commissioned Leon
Theremin (I think I remember Jan Swafford mentioning in his book "A
Life with Music" that while this was Cowell's idea, Ives actually
financed it), to build a machine -- the "Rhythmicon" -- capable of
transforming harmonic data into rhythmic data and vice versa:

<http://www.obsolete.com/120_years/machines/rhythmicon/index.html>

Dan

Dear Mats �ljare;
In Anaphoria, such long meters are common and spontaneous. It is considered ideal in that
it promotes what you call "long term" thinking. It is my understanding that such meters are
also common in the Mid East where not so much primes are used but other even rhythm. I mention
these because when they are used, they are not subdivided into their simplest units. For
instance, 21 is not divided into 7x3. One piece comes to mind in a long Prime rhythm is one
that Kraig and I collected for the "Interiors of Anaphoria CD" Gending Boehme is in 79
(subdivided 8-8-8-5-8-8-8-5-8-8-5). It flow quite naturally and once the pattern in heard ,
one expects it to continue. Noticing that this is an MOS pattern, Kraig wrote a paper which
you can find http://www.anaphoria.com/hora.html .
I know for a fact that Kraig has used 17 throughout his Film "Mystery without Clews"
subdivided 5-3-4-3-2 and 19 in his opera "War and Pieces subdivided 3-3-3-2-3-3-2. He has in
conversation expressed that for quite a period of time he used such rhythms as a unifying
device.
It is my understanding that rhythms of 13 were common in your neck of the woods, being
used by the Vikings.
Augusto Navarro illustrates many ways in which higher harmonics can sound consonant as in
32-37-42 each separated by '5".

"Mats �ljare" wrote:

> I�ve been wondering recently if there is a direct parallel between prime
> ratios in pitches and in rhythm.For most people,the sensation of consonance
> all but disappears at primes 17 and higher.Accompanied by a chord like just
> 1-3-5-7 for example,it blends in but by itself,17 and higher primes do not
> give the smooth sound lower primes has in most human ears.
>
> While meters like 17 and 19 can be built up in the same way of shorter and
> longer sub-cycles,they simply refuse to"flow"in the way the previously
> mentioned meters does(a subjective experience.)

-- Banaphshu
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
www.anaphoria.com

We're getting dangerously close to the work of Joseph Schillinger here :-).
Sadly, his books are out of print and very hard to find. I have a copy of
Volume II of The Schillinger System of Musical Composition but not Volume I.
I also have "The Mathematical Basis of the Arts". I have literally begged
the publisher to return them to print, but they are being stubborn.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: D.Stearns [mailto:STEARNS@CAPECOD.NET]
> Sent: Sunday, August 20, 2000 1:44 PM
> To: tuning@egroups.com
> Subject: Re: [tuning] Rhytmic primes
>
>
> Mats �ljare wrote,
>
> > While meters like 17 and 19 can be built up in the same way of
> shorter and longer sub-cycles,they simply refuse to"flow"in the way
> the previously mentioned meters does(a subjective experience.)
>
> Hmm, I think most any number taken as a cycle of easily digestible
> twos and threes can be internalized and set into motion very quickly;
> 2 2 2 3 2 2 2 2 with a big stress on the first two and a light stress
> on the three and the following two in 17 for instance flows very
> nicely...
>
> BTW, way back in the early 1930s, Henry Cowell commissioned Leon
> Theremin (I think I remember Jan Swafford mentioning in his book "A
> Life with Music" that while this was Cowell's idea, Ives actually
> financed it), to build a machine -- the "Rhythmicon" -- capable of
> transforming harmonic data into rhythmic data and vice versa:
>
> <http://www.obsolete.com/120_years/machines/rhythmicon/index.html>
>
> Dan
>
>
>
>
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Joe Monzo wrote,

> Primes are particularly of interest to me, considering the role they
seem to play in my harmonic theories. But my personal feeling about
meters is that their full unit measurements don't compare as
prime-factor _gestalts_ they way harmonic prime-factors do (or seem
to, as a template into which we fit our perception of more complicated
proportions). It seems to me that any metrical structure can be, and
is, perceived as series of 2- and 3-beat units.

While I certainly agree that most any metrical structure "can be"
easily perceived if broken down into easily digestible groups (twos
and threes generally being the easiest), I don't know about "and
is"... I use a lot of odd meters based on say melodic phrase lengths,
or sustained durations, where the meter is much easier to understand
if it's counted exactly as it's written. "Day Walks In" for instance:

<http://stations.mp3s.com/stations/55/117_west_great_western.html>

has an opening section that goes 4/4, 4/4, 2/4, 3/8, 2/8, 7/16, 7/8,
7/8, 7/8, 7/8, 3/4, 4/4, 4/4, and this originated by exclusively
following the contour of a melodic line where only the four measures
of 7/8 are perhaps best understood taken as subdivisions.
(Incidentally enough I never ended up using this melodic line in the
finished piece, and these meters ended up being pretty difficult to
grab no matter how you look at 'em!)

An interesting exercise along these lines might be to listen to
something fairly simple like Charles Ives' short song "The Cage"
(which for the most part is written without barlines), and try
dropping barlines where you think they most naturally seem to fall.

BTW, though I haven't listened to either of these yet, I did noticed
that there are a couple of odd meter stations up at MP3.com:

<http://stations.mp3s.com/stations/85/_odd_meter_radio_.html>
<http://stations.mp3s.com/stations/93/-_odd_meter_radio_2_-.html>

Dan

Check out Steve Vai's article on polyrhythms:

http://www.vai.com/LittleBlackDots/tempomental.html

D. Burgess
SEJIS

Darren Burgess wrote,

> Check out Steve Vai's article on polyrhythms:

Thanks Darren. I've never seen this article before, but I've long held
Vai's transcription work on "The Frank Zappa Guitar Song Book" to be
one of his very finest achievements... and I guess in a way I've
always hoped that at some point he'll do a CD that will gravitate
towards something intensely committed along these -- or his microtonal
guitars you occasionally read about -- lines.

Sometimes tuning list contributor Christopher Bailey had some REALLY
beautiful (as well as extremely rhythmically complex) handwritten
score excerpts (and a highly entertaining interview as well) up at his
site... however, it appears as though the site has disappeared --
Chris are you still on the list? (I've also had the opportunity to
hear some of Chris's music, and I was very, very impressed... some
exceptionally vivid pieces!)

In an old arrangement that I did of Lowell Masons' hymn "Work for the
Night is Coming," I used a method of rhythmic notation (which I called
"polytempo time signatures") that assumed a steady underling,
centralized pulse, while also spelling out overlaying cross rhythms.

The first verse of this arrangement is scored for oboe, bass clarinet,
cello, and guitar quartet (two electric, and two steel string
acoustic), and the tuning is an unusual sort of modal composite where
the electric guitars take C as the 1/1, while the oboe, bass clarinet,
and acoustic guitars take F (4/3) as the 1/1, and the cello takes D
(9/8) as the 1/1. So while the basic step structure of the electric
guitars is 10/9, 21/20, 9/8, 8/7, 28/27, 9/8, 8/7, i.e., LsLLsLL:

1/1, 10/9, 7/6, 21/16, 3/2, 14/9, 7/4, 2/1

10/9
|
|
|
14/9-------7/6-------7/4------21/16
`. ,' `. ,'
1/1-------3/2

The step structure of the oboe, bass clarinet, and acoustic guitars is
sLLLsLL:

1/1, 28/27, 7/6, 4/3, 40/27, 14/9, 7/4, 2/1

40/27
|
|
|
28/27-----14/9-------7/6-------7/4
`. ,' `. ,'
4/3-------1/1

The step structure of the cello is LLsLLsL:

63/32, 9/8, 5/4, 21/16, 189/128, 27/16, 7/4, 63/32

5/4
|
|
|
7/4------21/16------63/32-----189/128
`. ,' `. ,'
9/8------27/16

Here's a composite of the various (and often times simultaneous)
meter's (or polytempo time signatures) tempos that I used in the first
verse of this arrangement of Lowell Masons' "Work for the Night is
Coming" (generally speaking, anything that might appear to be a
compound meters is always taken sans syncopation, i.e., eighth usually
always equals eighth):

eighth note equals quarter note equals

3/4
--- 112.5 56.25
4

7/8
--- 131.25 66.625
4

4
--- 150 75
4

17/16
----- 159.375 79.6875
4

9/8
--- 168.75 84.375
4

5/4
--- 187.5 93.75
4

11/8
----- 206.25 103.125
4

While this chart is (obviously) overaccurate in any sort of a
realistic playing sense, I included the "useless decimal places" just
for the sake of trying to be clear about exactly what it is that's
going on. The benefit of this notation as I see it is that it
eliminates a lot of the imposing thicket of brackets. (This also
allows yet another layer of even more complex and ambiguous cross
rhythms to be added with somewhat of a minimum of notational clutter.)

"Day Walks In," "At a Day Job," "One Step from the Street," and the
big scherzo ending of "With Eyes so Blue and Dreaming" all have
instances of this type of rhythmic notation as well:

<http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/72/the_tuning_punks.html>

Dan

BTW I have a cakewalk 9.0 CAL routine (that I lifted from Monz) that will
allow input of any length note durations and map the pitches to the 8x8
tonality diamond that my synth is tuned to. Also the very simple 16 bit
Midiworks sequencer does a great job of handling polyrhythms (using
tuplets), where the $600 cakewalk struggles to escape from conventional time
concepts. I have the disks if anyone is interested, and it may be available
for free download somewhere.

Another software note:
Some of you may be aware of the keykit midi proggie and language. Recently,
A fellow in france developed a app he dubbed Geomaestro using the keykit
language. It uses geometric relationships(complete with a graphic GUI) to
musical events to create algorithmic music. Very interesting app and it is
in active development (new build every few days!). It is available at the
keykit download site, which is accessed through www.nosuch.com , follow the
tim thompson link.

Darren Burgess

SEJIS