Werntz/Mallia CD available -- free Real Audio samples

http://www.capstonerecords.org/

http://www.HakenAudio.com/Continuum/

that >is< interesting- sort of like a polyphonic theramin midi type thingee.

Check out the "drone and solo" in the examples section. nice.

Dante

> -----Original Message-----
> From: gooseplex [mailto:cfaah@eiu.edu]
> Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2004 6:22 PM
> To: tuning@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [tuning] interesting instrument
>
>
> http://www.HakenAudio.com/Continuum/
>
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> http://www.HakenAudio.com/Continuum/

The demos are extremely impressive. Ah, progress! The
last time I saw this thing it was a one-off and on a
grim-looking page.

Only $5300. The cost of prgress, I suppose.

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "gooseplex" <cfaah@e...> wrote:
> http://www.HakenAudio.com/Continuum/

I have read the older documentation on Lippold Haken's instrument
many times, with great fascination. We clavichordists appreciate
the nod given in the history section. I typically do not follow
threads on microtonal keyboards, believing that the Continuum has a
better musical potential to realize our beloved and obscure
consonances, while teasing the ear and the performer's precision.

But playing it would be daunting. At 56 and a professional non-
musician, I give myself no shot at it. But for those who may, I
have worked out the possbility of a tactile feedback training
device, similar to the black and white stripes illustrated on his
website. Using 31tet meantone as a reference scale, sew colored
threads front to back on the cover cloth (black and white if you
must) in a pattern of 31 equal steps per octave, but omitting the 14
least popular, leaving a visually and tactilely recognizable
representation of our Halberstadt key chest.

Since I can't draw, let me list:

C ------------
Dbb
C# ------------
Db ------------
Cx
D ------------
Ebb
D# ------------
Eb ------------
Dx
E ------------
Fb
E#
F ------------
Gbb
F# ------------
Gb ------------
Fx
G ------------
Abb
G# ------------
Ab ------------
Gx
A ------------
Bbb
A# ------------
Bb ------------
Ax
B ------------
Cb
B#
C ------------
...

Of course, you would play on the threads, until you learned to play
in the cracks. Even on B#, you could still feel the C thread to
your right. And you have a clear distinction between allegedly
enharmonic black key values. I have fancifully played on a paper
representation, and found that the actual strike point intervals are
most similar to playing in F# major on a keyboard, but not exactly.
The octave span is the same, thank goodness.

The Almost Four Octave edition is too short for golden age meantone
repertoire 1500-1750, an unfortunate limitation, and there isn't
any "short" octave in the bass. The studio monster is too big. The
hard wired midi protocol is necessarily ugly, but clever, a hybrid
of proximate note number and pitch bend, distributed over ten
channels. Obviously, I short sell the instrument by focusing on
traditional well articulated and intoned applications, and not the
new world of adaptive timbre, etc. I'd be willing to try this
myself for the five grand, but no time and I have a very pretty
instrument I need to get back to.

Jeff in Doha

PS: Might as well express enthusiasm for a remarkable young
expatriate Iraqi musician, Mohammed Saleh, who may sometimes be
heard playing an Egyptian Kahnoon and an Oud at a high level of
improvisatory skill in the Al Corniche dining room at the Marriott
Doha, and who is in demand at other venues. The Oud is a fretless
lute, antedating it's European cognate. Mr. Saleh expressed
frustration with the fretting on a lute he tried in France. The
Kahnoon (meaning lawyer, he says, reflecting complexity, and yes, I
may have heard that wrong) is a table top zither shaped like a big
autoharp, with three nylon strings per note (the bass in brass),
seven steps per octave over three octaves, played with finger picks
on both hands. The music is characterized by rapid ornamentation
coordinated between the hands. Each string choir may be stopped by
a choice of four steel nuts that swivel up a quarter tone apart,
which Mr. Saleh's left hand can operate in real time. That's a
theoretical pallette of 28 pitches per octave, but who's counting.
Our discussion of meantone keyboard tuning did not proceed far, but
the limitation was surely my lack of Arabic. The bridge on the
right bears all the strings, supported by five wooden pylons, each
riding on a leather diaphram suspended from the resonator box, which
projects loudly. The rapid alteration of scales gives me a new
perspective on the concept of modulation.