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Theatre event in San Jose

🔗Rick McGowan <rick@unicode.org>

5/7/2001 12:11:12 PM

Ordinarily I wouldn't bother the list with this, but it's relevant to tuning.

I am doing "sound design" for an upcoming theatre production in San Jose
-- which is a first for me -- and I have composed incidental music for the
play. Included are several short pieces between scenes and one accompanied
song. How is this related to alternative tuning?

The music is performed in a tuning that picks 12 notes of 17 tET. Roughly
speaking in cents the tuning is:

C 0
C# 141.2
D 211.8
Eb 282.4
E 423.5
F 494.1
F# 635.3
G 705.9
G# 847.1
A 917.6
Bb 988.2
B 1129.4
C 1200.0

The pre-recorded music was realized on a trio of Yamaha TX802s, scored
with Finale. The one song will be sung live to a pre-recorded
accompaniment. The music is fairly conservative, apart from the tuning:
it's diatonic, makes use of the major & harmonic-minor modes, only has an
occasional 3/4 bar to toss a hiccup into a 4/4 context, etc. The sound of
this tuning is comparatively strident (check out the sizes of the 3rds &
5ths).

Where is it? At City Lights Theatre Company for their production of
Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream", in San Jose, California. The
run opens May 18 and goes through June 30. Details at:
http://www.cltc.org

The tuning isn't mentioned anywhere, I'm just posting at
tuning@yahoogroups.com in case any tuning folks are in San Jose during that
time frame and might be interested in hearing something non-12tET.
Besides, it's a fun play.

Cheers,
Rick

P.S. I will be physically present at performances on May 18 and 24, but I
won't wear any "Hello" stickers, so you'll have to find me on your own if
you want to say hi. ;-)