Blackjack, Canasta, Go Fish

Hello all 450+ of you!

Wave your hands in the air! Shake'm like you just don't care!

Now then, on to my question.

Many of the people on this list, and thousands of other composers, belong to a genus of composers
that write music that i call "mathemusic". They are Mathemusicians. They only use scales with
mathematical properties, symmetries, etc.

Nothing wrong with that.

Me? I use primarily scales that tuning big-shots find laughable. I often use the Go Fish scale,
not a sub-set of the Miracle family of scales. The Go Fish scale is normally composed thus: I
create a 1/1 in whatever "key" i wish. Then i choose the next appropriate interval, from the pitch
"infinitum", whose distance and "mood" i like. Something around/ between a 13/12 or an 8/7. You
get the picture.

My point is, i have never let a scale tell me what to do, nor have i needed "a scale" to get me
started.

Meaning, i write from my "minds ear".

So, the question is, how many people here write a larger percentage of their music without the
"background" of systems both compositional, and scalar? Who just writes music from the heart, math
be damned?

I'm not trying to say my way or the high-way. I have written a fair share of mathemusic.
Just curious.

Offlist replies welcome.

George Zelenz

--- In tuning@y..., George Zelenz <ploo@m...> wrote:
> Many of the people on this list, and thousands of other composers,
belong to a genus of composers
> that write music that i call "mathemusic". They are Mathemusicians.
They only use scales with
> mathematical properties, symmetries, etc.
>
> Nothing wrong with that.

I freely admit to being a "mathemusician". In fact, I'll go even
further. I more or less exclusively use computers to compose and
perform my music. I revel in the perfection I obtain. The computer
can create more music overnight than I could write in a lifetime. The
computer can play notes in *exactly* the pitch, timbre and intensity
I want, and can play sequences of notes no human could play.

There are 44,100 samples in every second of music on a CD, usually
two channels at 16 bits each. Every single bit -- all 600-something
megabytes in an hour of my music -- is crafted by computer software,
much of it written by myself for exactly that purpose and useful for
no others.

[snip]

> My point is, i have never let a scale tell me what to do, nor have
i needed "a scale" to get me
> started.
>
> Meaning, i write from my "minds ear".

The last piece I wrote that way was a three-minute song that I wrote
in about 1966. It really sucked -- great (though depressing) words
and a childish melody. It didn't work for me. I switched to computer
music shortly thereafter and never looked back.

> So, the question is, how many people here write a larger percentage
of their music without the
> "background" of systems both compositional, and scalar? Who just
writes music from the heart, math
> be damned?

My music is cold, precise, heartless. The best thing I ever did,
really the only one of my lost tapes that I'd give *anything* to
find, was a collection of "found music" recorded from the actual
sounds of computers at work. I wrote it as background music for a
student theater production called "Man Proposes, Machine Disposes".

One act was a theatrical adaptation of Gordon Dickson's "Computers
Don't Argue", about a man who gets into a computer foul-up with a
book club and ends up being executed for the kidnap and murder of
Robert Louis Stevenson. In a way, it's funny ... in another way, it's
chilling. The cold precision of computers at work, spinning their
tapes, reading their cards, clicking their typewriters with no human
at the keyboard and punching paper tape was *exactly* what I wanted.

> I'm not trying to say my way or the high-way. I have written a fair
share of mathemusic.

Why don't you take the next logical step, then? Program a computer to
do it for you, then just sit back and listen. Tweak the parameters,
twiddle the knobs, listen some more. Tweak some more, hack the code a
little, rewrite some routines, listen some more. At some point, your
little toy will become a living thing ... a wonderful artificial life
form ... it will acquire a "heart", a "soul" and a "voice". Trust
me ... I didn't believe it at first, either. But it happened --
digital systems are like that, once they reach a certain level of
complexity and adaptive capability. Fractal Tune Smithy is more or
less at this point now; if you're not a programmer just get FTS and
play with it. The operative word here is *play* :-).
--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky, Chief Scientist, Borasky Research
http://www.borasky-research.net http://www.aracnet.com/~znmeb
mailto:znmeb@borasky-research.com mailto:znmeb@aracnet.com

Q: How do you get an elephant out of a theatre?
A: You can't. It's in their blood.

Ed,

--- In tuning@y..., "Ed Borasky" <znmeb@a...> wrote:
> The computer
> can create more music overnight than I could write in a lifetime.
> The computer can play notes in *exactly* the pitch, timbre and
> intensity I want, and can play sequences of notes no human could
> play. Every single bit -- all 600-something megabytes in an hour of
> my music -- is crafted by computer software, much of it written by
> myself for exactly that purpose and useful for no others.

I've taken a look at your site (I assumed the .net site was more work
related) and I can't find a single example or link of/to your music.
I can't believe you've churned and compiled all of this without
saving a little output for listening?!

I *am* looking forward to your Vulcan mind-meld of Partch and
Xenakis, but since you've said that you have been doing this for a
long time, how about some listening? (and I apologize if you've
posted something somewhere and I missed it; a link would suffice...).

Cheers,
Jon

I agree with Dan.
Can someone show me how to post files??

Pat Pagano, Director
South East Just Intonation Society
http://indians.australians.com/meherbaba/
http://www.screwmusicforever.com/SHREESWIFT/
----- Original Message -----
From: D.Stearns <STEARNS@CAPECOD.NET>
To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, June 30, 2001 11:25 AM
Subject: Re: [tuning] Re: Blackjack, Canasta, Go Fish

> Hi Ed,
>
> Just wanted to jump in with a "me too" as regards Jon Szanto's reply
> to your post... because I've also been patiently hoping that some
> scintilla of actual music is eventually going to pop up and accompany
> all the swell sounding verbiage about it...
>
> --Dan Stearns
>
>
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>
>

PP,

--- In tuning@y..., "shreeswifty" <ppagano@b...> wrote:
> I agree with Dan.
> Can someone show me how to post files??

I'd be willing to bet John Starrett would have the best advice on
what is entailed in posting audio files, either to the tuning punks
or elsewhere; DB is pretty smart, too.

Cheers,
Jon

--- In tuning@y..., "Jon Szanto" <JSZANTO@A...> wrote:
> Ed,
> I've taken a look at your site (I assumed the .net site was more
work
> related) and I can't find a single example or link of/to your
music.
> I can't believe you've churned and compiled all of this without
> saving a little output for listening?!
>
> I *am* looking forward to your Vulcan mind-meld of Partch and
> Xenakis, but since you've said that you have been doing this for a
> long time, how about some listening? (and I apologize if you've
> posted something somewhere and I missed it; a link would
suffice...).

1. The two web sites are identical -- this whole thing started out as
a hobby web page and someone said, "Hey, why don't you start a
business?" Right now, I'm leaning towards becoming a non-profit
organization rather than a business, but the whole thing is really in
a state of flux. I'm not willing at this point to give up a lucrative
day job, which pays for all my expensive hobbies.

2. I have indeed been making music with computers for quite some
time -- roughly since 1966, as I mentioned in the earlier post. At
present I have exactly one recording, which I made on a KIM-1 in
roughly the time period when the KIM-1 was popular. That would be
roughly concurrent with the early Radio Shack TRS-80 and the early
Apples. It is interesting but not worth posting; it's essentially
just computer sounds. In the early 1980s, I had a Commodore 64 and
did a few things on it, but essentially gave up computer music when
my job at the time had me travelling most of the week, so I wasn't
around to work on the music.

I think some of the older stuff is on tapes buried in a closet. There
should be a rather terrible stochastic composition from 1966, and
there should be the piece I mentioned in another post, which actually
has a title: _Suite and Sour for "Computers Don't Argue"_ That's the
one I really want to find; it could be cleaned up digitally and is
interesting at least to me. If I had that one, I would post it. If
the Internet had been available to me in 1974, I would have posted it
then.

3. One of the joys of having three hobbies and a day job is that
there is always something to do. As a result, progress on any one of
them can be agonizingly slow, especially when the day job goes into a
demanding mode, which it has done recently. So when the Partch -
Xenakis code gets to the point where it is producing music that I
like, I will definitely be posting some of its output for posterity
on the Internet. I hope it is worth the wait.
--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky, Chief Scientist, Borasky Research
http://www.borasky-research.net http://www.aracnet.com/~znmeb
mailto:znmeb@borasky-research.com mailto:znmeb@aracnet.com

Q: How do you get an elephant out of a theatre?
A: You can't. It's in their blood.

Ed,

Hey, no need for posting 'juvinalia' unless you still like it! I plan
on putting a link to something I have from a while back that will
allow people to bash on me mercilessly..

However, when you wrote:

"I more or less exclusively use computers to compose and perform my
music. I revel in the perfection I obtain. The computer can create
more music overnight than I could write in a lifetime. Every single
bit -- all 600-something megabytes in an hour of my music -- is
crafted by computer software, much of it written by myself for
exactly that purpose and useful for no others."

...you must have been speaking in metaphors, as you apparantly don't
have any output from anything more recent than...pre-1980? This, I
guess, is where the confusion was.

I still look forward to the work, esp Partch/X, but I may not be
alone in having gotten the impression from your discussions on the
various sound and composing apps, not to mention your own
programming, that those computers have been humming a lot, and I just
figured some of it might have gotten saved to tape/disk/file.

Well, in the future we'll get to hear the stuff...

Cheers,
Jon