Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning Re: [tuning] A "Mode Room" online?

Dan!
Yes! but where and how?

Daniel Wolf wrote:

> From: "Daniel Wolf" <djwolf@snafu.de>
> To honor Bill Colvig and Lou Harrison, perhaps we should consider
> making an online version of their "Mode Room". Lou's original idea
> was something like the followIng: a room would be filled with drawers,
> each containing a metallophone tuned to a particular mode. The room
> would also contain tuneable harps or psalteries onto which one could
> transfer the tuning chosen. What might such a room look and sound
> like? To a certain extent, a program like Manuel Op de Coul's _Scala_
> and its extensive catalogue of scales serves this function, but I
> imagine that interface to the general public should be even
> friendlier. The "drawers" could be graphic buttons on an html page,
> and opening each one would allow the viewer to read a description and
> history of the mode as well as hear the individual tones. Possibly
> samples of or links to real repertoire for the given mode might also
> be deposited in the drawer. What kind of sampling format(s) would be
> best for such a project? Perhaps midi and mp3? Does this idea interest
> anyone? Daniel Wolfhttp://home.snafu.de/djwolf/
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
www.anaphoria.com

🔗ALVES@ORION.AC.HMC.EDU

Dan,

I think the mode room is a terrific idea. I thought about a digital version
of it some time ago, but at the time I was thinking CD-ROM. An on-line
version would be great, and I would be happy to help in the programming,
hosting, or other needs.

Bill

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^ Bill Alves email: alves@hmc.edu ^
^ Harvey Mudd College URL: http://www2.hmc.edu/~alves/ ^
^ 301 E. Twelfth St. (909)607-4170 (office) ^
^ Claremont CA 91711 USA (909)607-7600 (fax) ^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

🔗Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@anaphoria.com>

Bill!
Would you make it a part of Lou' s site. i was thinking that wouls be the
thing to do!

ALVES@ORION.AC.HMC.EDU wrote:

> From: ALVES@ORION.AC.HMC.EDU
>
> Dan,
>
> I think the mode room is a terrific idea. I thought about a digital version
> of it some time ago, but at the time I was thinking CD-ROM. An on-line
> version would be great, and I would be happy to help in the programming,
> hosting, or other needs.
>
> Bill
>
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> ^ Bill Alves email: alves@hmc.edu ^
> ^ Harvey Mudd College URL: http://www2.hmc.edu/~alves/ ^
> ^ 301 E. Twelfth St. (909)607-4170 (office) ^
> ^ Claremont CA 91711 USA (909)607-7600 (fax) ^
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
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-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
www.anaphoria.com

🔗ALVES@ORION.AC.HMC.EDU

>Bill!
> Would you make it a part of Lou' s site. i was thinking that wouls be the
>thing to do!

Kraig,

I would be happy to have the mode room hosted at any site, but I think that
on the internet (where it can be a click away from Lou's page whereever it
is physically located) it's more of a question of logistics and operational
convenience. If you're speaking of Lou's pages at San Jose State, then
Allen Strange would be the person to approach to see if it could be hosted
there. Otherwise, I would be happy to have it here and take responsibility
for updates and allocating needed server resources.

However, we also need more responses to Dan's call for ideas. Should it
include MIDI? Mp3? Pieces? Scales? What about graphics?

Bill

🔗Paul H. Erlich <PERLICH@ACADIAN-ASSET.COM>

🔗Daniel Wolf <djwolf@snafu.de>

The response has been very positive!

Finding a host is only a minor problem. A college or university site, as
Bill Alves has offered, would be best, and links to and from the existing
Harrison pages are not a problem.

I propose that we go forward as follows:

Keeping with Harrison's idea, the room would be represented on screen as a
series of graphic chest-of-drawers. Each chest would represent a
cultural or historical grouping. For example, one could be called
"Alexandria" and would include all of the recorded Greek and Hellenistic
tunings, each assigned to an individual drawer. Clicking on the individual
drawer would open a page with a description and history of the tuning. On
the page would be some clickable graphic (lyre strings, aulos fingerholes,
and metallophone bars come to mind) which would play individual tones.
Perhaps important variations could be included on the same page -- for
example: rotations of a tetrachord and both conjunct and disjunct scales
built out of tetrachords.

I would be happy to generate sound samples, and I propose that they been
available in mp3 format. Would eight seconds be an appropriate duration?
What timbres should be used? Should there be a standard tonic frequency?
If there is, then the number of samples needed could be greatly reduced
through sharing duplicated tones among the various modes. For "Alexandria",
something around "d" could be a suitable 1/1.

Are there volunteers out there who would like to serve as "cabinetmakers",
that is, to research the contents for individual chests-of-drawers? I
imagine having chests with such names as "Alexandria", "Bagdad",
"Liege" (Margo Schulter, perhaps?), "Madras", "Mataram", "Xi'an" etc.

Would anyone like to help out with graphics and html coding?

Daniel Wolf

>This sounds like a good project for some of our students
>to do next year. I have 2 students finishing up a port of
>the Just Intonation Calculator to Java this year.
>
>Best,
>
>Lydia Ayers

Nice idea. Perhaps there could be a tool box in the corner of the mode room
for this.

> From: "Paul H. Erlich" <PERLICH@ACADIAN-ASSET.COM>
>
> Perhaps we can start with versions of a major mode and come up with a
> musical example that functions as a "Jackdaws love my big sphinx of
quartz"
> -- exhibiting every triad in the mode. Anyone know a piece offhand that
uses
> the I,ii,iii,IV,V,vi, and maybe even the vii(o), triads?

I think that's a very different kind of project.

🔗Paul H. Erlich <PERLICH@ACADIAN-ASSET.COM>

I wrote,

>> Perhaps we can start with versions of a major mode and come up with a
>> musical example that functions as a "Jackdaws love my big sphinx of
quartz"
>> -- exhibiting every triad in the mode. Anyone know a piece offhand that
uses
>> the I,ii,iii,IV,V,vi, and maybe even the vii(o), triads?

Daniel Wolf wrote,

>I think that's a very different kind of project.

Well, it's what came to mind when you wrote,

>Possibly samples of or links to real repertoire for the given mode might
also be deposited in the drawer.

I thought it might be good to choose the "real repertoire" to be a good
representation of the tuning's features.

🔗Lydia Ayers <LAYERS@CS.UST.HK>

I wrote:

>This sounds like a good project for some of our students
>to do next year. I have 2 students finishing up a port of
>the Just Intonation Calculator to Java this year.

Daniel Wolf replied:

>Nice idea. Perhaps there could be a tool box in the corner of the mode room
>for this.

What I meant was, that our students have to do a Final Year Project in

order to graduate. This sounds like a good project for one group to
do next year, if you tuners can wait that long. I think we post the
projects sometime in the next month or two, and then get paired up with
a group to do it. They are finishing up at about this time of the year.
One group is just about finished with the Java JI Calc (well, they haven't
got the Web page up yet so you can't download it, but almost everything is
working that was in the original). I agree it would be nice to have
tools like this included in the Mode Room.

As our students are all experienced programmers, they should be able to
do a nice job with this. They like doing web pages and graphics (maybe
we can even get some nice animations out of them). Then they could get
all the details of what to put in the drawers and so forth from you folks.

Best,

Lydia Ayers

🔗David Beardsley <xouoxno@virtulink.com>

🔗ALVES@ORION.AC.HMC.EDU

Lydia,

It sounds like a great idea to get student programmers involved. One thing
we would need is Java to immediately play a tone of a given number of hertz
in response to mouse clicks. Ideally, we would want to be able to have the
decays overlap, so that "strumming" the psaltery (or whatever) would result
in the notes strummed all sounding together. It would also be great to have
a variety of timbres to choose from, possibly including samples. If they
have already implemented JICalc, then it sounds like much of this is
already done.

I can see several items in the drawer for each mode: a psaltery to play it,
its tuning or variations, a historical/cultural discussion of the mode with
a bibliography, links to similar modes, a discography, and example pieces
or excerpts. Anything else?

Other things in the room itself: Lou's original UNESCO proposal, other
appropriate "items" from Lou, a discussion about what a "mode" is, perhaps
brief definitions of tuning and other terms used (or links to further
discussion).

Until Lydia's students can begin work (or someone else does), I propose
that we at least begin collecting the above information. I will be happy to
serve as a central collection point if that's agreeable.

Bill

🔗Lydia Ayers <LAYERS@CS.UST.HK>

Hi, Bill and other tuners,

I'm ready to write and post the description of the Mode Room to attract the
students who will hopefully make this their project next year.

It is an advantage to get it up as soon as possible, and the first official
posting date has just been announced as today.

So can we finalize (more or less) what everyone would like to see in
this project (not the details, such as specific scales, but only the
general types of features, such as drawers, play sound using Java, etc.)

Thanks.

Lydia Ayers

🔗Jay Williams <jaywill@utah-inter.net>

Jay Williams here,
I know many "vision-impaired" musicians who'd love to explore such a page.
So, regardless of the amount of graphics, make sure that there is textual
explanations and listings and that they follow what are sposta be "standard"
Windows procedures. The screen-access software works okay so long as icons
are in the locations it expects to find 'em. I am impressed, however, with
the amount of considerateness (whether intended or not) of all the folks on
this list when posting this technical stuff. Naturally, there are some
graphical things which we cannot access and that's okay so long as there's
some text that gives a clue as to what's happening. If need be, we can
construct our own graphs from such info. Thanks much and good luck.
At 09:16 PM 3/27/00 +0800, you wrote:
>From: Lydia Ayers <LAYERS@CS.UST.HK>
>
>Hi, Bill and other tuners,
>
>
>I'm ready to write and post the description of the Mode Room to attract the
>students who will hopefully make this their project next year.
>
>It is an advantage to get it up as soon as possible, and the first official
>posting date has just been announced as today.
>
>So can we finalize (more or less) what everyone would like to see in
>this project (not the details, such as specific scales, but only the
>general types of features, such as drawers, play sound using Java, etc.)
>
>Thanks.
>
>Lydia Ayers
>
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>

🔗ALVES@ORION.AC.HMC.EDU

>So can we finalize (more or less) what everyone would like to see in
>this project (not the details, such as specific scales, but only the
>general types of features, such as drawers, play sound using Java, etc.)
>
Lydia,

I've posted to the list some of the things that I think it should include
already: virtual metallophones and psalteries that could play
arbitrarily-tuned samples (or pm or other good sounding tones) in response
to mouse clicks. I would like to put together some mock pages for examples
for discussion, but, realistically, I won't be able to before classes are
out in May. By the way, I've been exploring the possibility of a tuning
conference the last week in May, 2001. NewBand may even be here then. I
hope you're doing well.

Bill