Douglas Walker's notation

Anybody know Douglas Walker?

Anyway, his piece presented in Xenharmonicon 5 is, I feel, a good
example of unplayable and unreadable microtonal music.

He has ratios all over the place with no reference pitches to find
them... the texture is exceedingly dense. (He uses a 1/1 as G)

To complicate matters, rather than using English, he uses
the "International Phonetic Alphabet" which looks excessively
complicated, which I suspect is the intent. Singers are going to
*love* that one.

The whold score looks very cool, and extremely complex, but I believe
it's not a *performance* document in any way. He also requires that
people go out and record "pre dawn summer forest sounds" without
giving any indication that he could provide a tape...

Joseph Pehrson

--- In tuning@y..., "jpehrson2" <jpehrson@r...> wrote:
> Anybody know Douglas Walker?
>
> Anyway, his piece presented in Xenharmonicon 5 is, I feel, a good
> example of unplayable and unreadable microtonal music.
>
> He has ratios all over the place with no reference pitches to find
> them... the texture is exceedingly dense. (He uses a 1/1 as G)

(1) Ratios are extemely easy to convert to electronic renditions

(2) Ratios can be converted into your temperament of choice quite simply

Ratios have advantages for presenting a score, if not for playing it.

Hello Joseph!
I know he made recordings so the notation must of worked somehow. What's wrong with an oral
tradition?

NP Farflung-When science fails

jpehrson2 wrote:

> Anybody know Douglas Walker?
>
> Anyway, his piece presented in Xenharmonicon 5 is, I feel, a good
> example of unplayable and unreadable microtonal music.
>
> He has ratios all over the place with no reference pitches to find
> them... the texture is exceedingly dense. (He uses a 1/1 as G)
>
> To complicate matters, rather than using English, he uses
> the "International Phonetic Alphabet" which looks excessively
> complicated, which I suspect is the intent. Singers are going to
> *love* that one.
>
> The whold score looks very cool, and extremely complex, but I believe
> it's not a *performance* document in any way. He also requires that
> people go out and record "pre dawn summer forest sounds" without
> giving any indication that he could provide a tape...
>
> Joseph Pehrson
>
>
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-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
http://www.anaphoria.com

The Wandering Medicine Show
Wed. 8-9 KXLU 88.9 fm

--- In tuning@y..., "genewardsmith" <genewardsmith@j...> wrote:

/tuning/topicId_38006.html#38030

> --- In tuning@y..., "jpehrson2" <jpehrson@r...> wrote:
> > Anybody know Douglas Walker?
> >
> > Anyway, his piece presented in Xenharmonicon 5 is, I feel, a good
> > example of unplayable and unreadable microtonal music.
> >
> > He has ratios all over the place with no reference pitches to
find
> > them... the texture is exceedingly dense. (He uses a 1/1 as G)
>
> (1) Ratios are extemely easy to convert to electronic renditions
>
> (2) Ratios can be converted into your temperament of choice quite
simply
>
> Ratios have advantages for presenting a score, if not for playing
it.

***Yes, Gene... I guess my point was more that this was a
*theoretical* score than a *performance* score. That's about all I
wanted to say about it...

Joseph

--- In tuning@y..., Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@a...> wrote:

/tuning/topicId_38006.html#38031

> Hello Joseph!
> I know he made recordings so the notation must of worked
somehow. What's wrong with an oral
> tradition?
>
> NP Farflung-When science fails
>

***Hi Kraig!

Sure, if that works fine! It reminds me of my friend Akmal Parwez's
recent piece on our Composers Concordance. Akmal is a Pakistani-
American who combines Indian/Pakistani music with Western idioms, in
a creative way.

He used a sitar and tabla with the piece, which was fully written
out. However, few sitar players read music. They just don't operate
that way.

So, Akmal was able to make a MIDI recording of the piece for the
sitar player from the written score, and it all worked out great that
way!

Joseph