Forum CD review

Got my forum CD in the mail yesterday. It is my honest and carefully
considered opinion that the album is quite good! It really works. I don't
have a problem ranking it with either of the JI Network compilations.

Here are my favorites...

1. New Awakening (Gary Morrison): Pure kickass. Mr. Morrison proves his
enormous potential as a composer. 88CET is cool, but I wish he wouldn't
focus on it exclusively. The old Ensoniq is sounding rather, well, bad.

2. Limp off to School (John Starrett): Rock on! John is one of the most
impressive musicians I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. This song has
got it all.

3. Certified notions (John Starrett): Another winner from Starrett. I
find it strange that nobody seems to be taking credit for these vocals...

4. Just on Time (Bill Alves): Profoundly beautiful, well performed.
Classic Alves.

Here are ones that are very good, but somehow fall short of my favorite
mark...

1. Mood of Neptune/Ashes Before the Sky, Stephen James Taylor: I have to
disagree with the critic at Westword; this tune is cool, and works fine as
an opener (for both CD and ear). Potential problems with being too dark or
conceptual are totally avoided because it *succeeds* in taking you there.

2. Kaleidophon (Carter Scholz): Mind expanding! In fact, regarding recent
talk about the tonality diamond, I believe this is a rhythmic diamond --
all circular permutations of a rhythm played simultaneously. [Carter,
please straighten me out if this is not the piece.] I like all of Carter's
stuff. In fact, his stuff is probably the best algo-comp I've heard. For
me, however, algo-comp can never quite break out of a sort of realm. Not
that it's bad, mechanical, intellectual, or any of that. Just that it
lacks a sort of shine. Hard to explain.

3. Duet for Morphine and Cymbal (Bill Sethares): Sethares' work is
extremely important because it explores the extent to which harmony is meta
timbre. Listening to his stuff is like sending your ear to graduate
school. I do have serious reservations about the strong version of the
consonance=beatless theory, regarding the ear's innate preference for
harmonic partials, as demonstrated by the virtual pitch phenomenon and the
persistence of my ear, despite much listening, to hear many of the adaptive
timbres as "coming apart", causing a loss of "bandwidth", a reduction of
the number of independent parts I can follow compared to a beatless tuning
with harmonic timbres. Fortunately, Bill doesn't really subscribe to the
strong version himself, and his book "Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum and Scale"
is very objective, first-rate stuff, presenting all sides and never
insisting on anything without good reason.

4. Glass Lake (Sethares): I like everything on "Xentonality", but I think
"Three Ears" is really something special, and would have had it before
Glass Lake or Morphine.

Worth a listen...

1. Matrix (Denny Genovese): This is really a great tune. Unfortunately,
the CD seems to have "revealed the limitations of the analog source."
Also, I am not particularly fond of this performance. I have a version
done on TX-81Z that I like much better. Theremin part clouds the thing.

2. Resuscitation (John Loffink): Synthesis is good. Music is disconnected.

3. Snake Dance (Neil Haverstick): Interesting but unconvincing.

4. Vilano (Ernie Crews): Nice idea but too long and self-absorbed.
Well-played, but riffs do not compensate for sparseness of material.

5. Pient Molles (Rick Sanford): You can hear some of the melodic potential
of 10tET. You can also hear yourself slapping three of these out between
lunch and dinner.

6. Evening in Landcox Park (Waren Burt): I wouldn't spend an evening in
Landcox Park without it.

Carl

Thanks, Carl for the CD review (and of course thanks for the compliments my
contribution in particular). I've been holding off on reviewing it myself,
since I contributed to it, in hopes that a less-potentially-biased reviewer
would come along. So I'm glad that Carl took care of it.

Anybody else care to add some comments?

Gary:

I can't follow Carl's commentary on my piece:

There isn't a single measure scored in 10-tone
equal temperament!

What is he thinking? I've never written a
10-tone equal piece in my life.

Rick Sanford
New York City

Rick Sanford wrote:

> Gary:
> I can't follow Carl's commentary on my piece:
> There isn't a single measure scored in 10-tone
> equal temperament!

Talk to Carl :-)

It was a 10-toned, but not equal, if I remember right, true?

> It was a 10-toned, but not equal, if I remember right, true?

I believe it was a sequential +1 +3 subset of 20 equidistant divisions of
the octave @ 0, 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 12, 13, 16, 17, 20.

Dan