East West Renders of Gene Ward Smith's "Chromosounds"

I did a render of GWS's stellar "Chromosounds" composition in
EastWest. The original was scored for tuba, bassoon, soprano sax, and
oboe. EastWest doesn't have a soprano sax, so I decided to render it
with a viola patch instead.

This sparked a number of different rendering ideas, and consequently
there are three versions. One is scored as mentioned for tuba,
bassoon, viola, and oboe. The viola sparked me onto the idea of having
the whole song rendered as a string quartet, and so you'll find that
version in there too, which might be my favorite of the bunch. You'll
also find a hybrid of the two, which is scored for tuba, bassoon,
viola, and violin.

All three of the renders can be found in my folder at
/tuning/files/Mike%20Battaglia/.

Hope you enjoy!

-Mike

Thanks for sharing, Mike. My favorite is the string quartet.
And in fact, I suggested to Gene that he take the following
works and turn them into movements of a string quartet, thus:

Nonagenta et novem
Clinton variations
Choraled
Chromosounds

My criticisms of the rendering: Stereo separation between
instruments is too extreme. Too much reverb on the strings
(whether put there by you or by EastWest, I can't say).

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> I did a render of GWS's stellar "Chromosounds" composition in
> EastWest. The original was scored for tuba, bassoon, soprano
> sax, and oboe. EastWest doesn't have a soprano sax, so I decided
> to render it with a viola patch instead.
>
> This sparked a number of different rendering ideas, and
> consequently there are three versions. One is scored as
> mentioned for tuba, bassoon, viola, and oboe. The viola sparked
> me onto the idea of having the whole song rendered as a string
> quartet, and so you'll find that version in there too, which
> might be my favorite of the bunch. You'll also find a hybrid
> of the two, which is scored for tuba, bassoon, viola, and
> violin.
>
> All three of the renders can be found in my folder at
> /tuning/files/Mike%20Battaglia/.
>
> Hope you enjoy!
>
> -Mike

> Thanks for sharing, Mike. My favorite is the string quartet.
> And in fact, I suggested to Gene that he take the following
> works and turn them into movements of a string quartet, thus:
>
> Nonagenta et novem
> Clinton variations
> Choraled
> Chromosounds
>
> My criticisms of the rendering: Stereo separation between
> instruments is too extreme. Too much reverb on the strings
> (whether put there by you or by EastWest, I can't say).

Interesting. I'm actually not sure about how to pan this - what would
you suggest? Bass, cello, viola, violin in order from left to right or
something?

What was weird about doing this was that Gene decided to compose in
the weirdest format I've ever seen - before each note he put volume,
pan, and expression controllers in addition to the usual pitch bends.
While the volume and pan controllers were the same for every single
note (!) the expression ones would change, and that's what's
responsible for the instruments sometimes drifting in and out of
volume. Removing ALL of the expression controllers tended to make the
piece sound lifeless, so I'll have to go into it and pick which ones
to keep at some point.

The other thing is that sometimes a pitch bend would kick in and cut
off a note as it was fading out, which made it sound sometimes weird -
I'm not sure how exactly to solve that problem.

I'm sure I've asked you this before, but what tuning is this in?
Sounds like possibly 11-prime-limit JI to me, although I can't tell if
it might be 7-prime-limit instead - it sounds like he hits 45/32
instead of 11/8 a bunch of times, and I don't know if he was
specifically shooting for that interval or if 11/8 just isn't a part
of the pitch set he was working with.

-Mike

I'd like to know the tuning as well and thanks for sharing too. (Ive just
listened to the SQ)

The music is happy go lucky madness?

This is pretty good . It does sound real to my ears.

If you have a midi file I can try to render with Sonar 7 and Garritan
Personal Orchestra for you.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> > Thanks for sharing, Mike. My favorite is the string quartet.
> > And in fact, I suggested to Gene that he take the following
> > works and turn them into movements of a string quartet, thus:
> >
> > Nonagenta et novem
> > Clinton variations
> > Choraled
> > Chromosounds
> >
> > My criticisms of the rendering: Stereo separation between
> > instruments is too extreme. Too much reverb on the strings
> > (whether put there by you or by EastWest, I can't say).
>
> Interesting. I'm actually not sure about how to pan this - what
> would you suggest? Bass, cello, viola, violin in order from left
> to right or something?

I don't think the order matters as much as the degree of
panning. How hard did you pan? I would do -20 -10 10 20
or less. There's hardly any intensity difference from
left to right with a real quartet unless you're sitting
within a few feet of them.

For order, I would try these:

bass viola cello violin
viola bass violin cello

> What was weird about doing this was that Gene decided to compose
> in the weirdest format I've ever seen - before each note he put
> volume, pan, and expression controllers in addition to the usual
> pitch bends. While the volume and pan controllers were the same
> for every singl note (!) the expression ones would change, and
> that's what's responsible for the instruments sometimes drifting
> in and out of volume. Removing ALL of the expression controllers
> tended to make the piece sound lifeless, so I'll have to go into
> it and pick which ones to keep at some point.

Hm. He may have used some formula to generate expressions for
the notes, but never got around to doing volume and pan.
Or perhaps there was some bug in his software stack where things
would break unless he set the values for every note.

> The other thing is that sometimes a pitch bend would kick in
> and cut off a note as it was fading out, which made it sound
> sometimes weird - I'm not sure how exactly to solve that problem.

Is it the next note's bend coming too early, or what?

> I'm sure I've asked you this before, but what tuning is this in?
> Sounds like possibly 11-prime-limit JI to me, although I can't
> tell if it might be 7-prime-limit instead - it sounds like he
> hits 45/32 instead of 11/8 a bunch of times, and I don't know
> if he was specifically shooting for that interval or if 11/8
> just isn't a part of the pitch set he was working with.

The chords include identities up to 17. It's tuned in 46-ET.

-Carl

> I don't think the order matters as much as the degree of
> panning. How hard did you pan? I would do -20 -10 10 20
> or less. There's hardly any intensity difference from
> left to right with a real quartet unless you're sitting
> within a few feet of them.
>
> For order, I would try these:
>
> bass viola cello violin
> viola bass violin cello

I just left the panning how he had it with his original MIDI file.
I'll post up another version as soon as I can get a chance with
different panning/

>> The other thing is that sometimes a pitch bend would kick in
>> and cut off a note as it was fading out, which made it sound
>> sometimes weird - I'm not sure how exactly to solve that problem.
>
> Is it the next note's bend coming too early, or what?

East west has note "tails" from the note before that fade out and into
the next note. Rather than having the note "tail" from the previous
note being left alone and the pitch bend working on the next note, the
note tail from the previous note is pitch bent as well, which
generally makes everything sound "computerized" and strange. This
might just be a limitation of the eastwest hardware though.

>> I'm sure I've asked you this before, but what tuning is this in?
>> Sounds like possibly 11-prime-limit JI to me, although I can't
>> tell if it might be 7-prime-limit instead - it sounds like he
>> hits 45/32 instead of 11/8 a bunch of times, and I don't know
>> if he was specifically shooting for that interval or if 11/8
>> just isn't a part of the pitch set he was working with.
>
> The chords include identities up to 17. It's tuned in 46-ET.
>
> -Carl

Interesting. Are there any tempered out "comma pumps" that he takes
advantage of here, or did he just pick 46-et for ease of
conceptualization?

-Mike