Prelude in Shur for Erv Wilson (mp3 link)

Hello, all.

It is my pleasure to offer a link to an mp3 version
of _Prelude in Shur for Erv Wilson_.

<http://www.bestII.com/~mschulter/Prelude_in_Shur_for_Erv_Wilson.mp3>

There are some comments I might make on some details and on
the tuning system, the O3 temperament, but most important is
the music itself.

With many thanks,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@...

Brava Margo- heavy metalers can hide their heads in shame, that's some some sonotities and movement of real ironclad chutzpah! Very, very strong. Looking forward to the developement- it'll fugue for instance (bom, bom, buddi-duddi, (Bom, Buom, Buddi-Duddi!..)) and details.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Margo Schulter <mschulter@...> wrote:
>
> Hello, all.
>
> It is my pleasure to offer a link to an mp3 version
> of _Prelude in Shur for Erv Wilson_.
>
> <http://www.bestII.com/~mschulter/Prelude_in_Shur_for_Erv_Wilson.mp3>
>
> There are some comments I might make on some details and on
> the tuning system, the O3 temperament, but most important is
> the music itself.
>
> With many thanks,
>
> Margo Schulter
> mschulter@...
>

I like the chord progression which is functional - especially @ 0.25/26

What are the generators for this tuning in cents (which is about all I grasp
really well right now)

Thanks!

chris

On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 3:52 AM, Margo Schulter <mschulter@...> wrote:

>
>
> Hello, all.
>
> It is my pleasure to offer a link to an mp3 version
> of _Prelude in Shur for Erv Wilson_.
>
> <http://www.bestII.com/~mschulter/Prelude_in_Shur_for_Erv_Wilson.mp3<http://www.bestII.com/%7Emschulter/Prelude_in_Shur_for_Erv_Wilson.mp3>
> >
>
> There are some comments I might make on some details and on
> the tuning system, the O3 temperament, but most important is
> the music itself.
>
> With many thanks,
>
> Margo Schulter
> mschulter@... <mschulter%40calweb.com>
>
>
>

> Brava Margo- heavy metalers can hide their heads in shame, that's
> some some sonotities and movement of real ironclad chutzpah! Very,
> very strong. Looking forward to the developement- it'll fugue for
> instance (bom, bom, buddi-duddi, (Bom, Buom, Buddi-Duddi!..)) and
> details.

Dear Cameron,

Thank you for your most encouraging response, and also the idea of
"development" in the sense of some kind of contrapuntal follow-up
piece, maybe analogous to Bach's form of prelude and fugue. And
"chutzpah" is indeed a compliment!

The curious thing is that while I started out with the idea of mostly
three-voice polyphony based on Shur, and there are certain Persian
melodic figures present, the lead-up to the final cadence came out in
a way that reminded me of Georgian polyphony.

Why don't I quickly note that this piece uses a subset of the O3
temperament:

! prelude_in_shur.scl
!
Tuning set for _Prelude in Shur for Erv Wilson_ (10)
10
!
138.28126
264.84376
472.26562
495.70313
633.98438
703.12500
760.54688
841.40625
967.96876
2/1

<http://www.bestII.com/~mschulter/prelude_in_shur.scl>

It's pretty much what I'd call a "standard" nine-note set for a
septimal version of Shur Dastgah, plus a step at 472 cents or around
21/16, which in this piece serves as a perfect fifth for the 7/4
step.

As noted in one of your recent posts, in Pythagorean tuning two 81/64
major thirds come very close to 8/5; here, with these thirds a bit
wider at 414.8 or 416.0 cents, two of the smaller size (829.7 cents)
or one smaller and one larger (830.9 cents) come very close to 21/13
(830.25 cents). The fifths at 703.125 and 704.297 cents are tempered
gently wide, in good part to produce precisely this effect.

With many thanks,

Margo
mschulter@...

Chris Vaisvil wrote:

> I like the chord progression which is functional - especially @ 0.25/26

Dear Chris,

Thank you for your comments and especially for your focus on what from the timing is likely the final cadence of the piece. While my
idea starting out was to use the steps and intervals of the Persian
Shur Dastgah or modal family of Shur in a mostly three-voice texture
influenced by 13th-century Western European polyphony, the result at
times may be like a style of Georgian polyphony going back to at least
the 12th century and still practiced by traditional musicians.

Please let me try to explain more about the final cadence and the
tuning system, while emphasizing that this is very much a learning
experience for me, and any further questions or comments you might
have could help me in expressing concepts more clearly.

This piece uses 10 notes of the O3 temperament, a 24-note system made
up of two 12-note chains of fifths, as I'll explain in responding to
your question about the generators. While my note-naming scheme is
based on the full 24-note system, there's no reason someone couldn't
map the 10-note set for this piece to a single keyboard, for example,
so the pitches and intervals in cents are more important. In the
24-note scheme, C#* for example means "C# on the upper chain," about
57.4 cents higher than C#.

For the final cadence, I'll show pitches with respect to the 1/1 (A)
by numbers following each note name; harmonic or vertical intervals
above the lowest note of a chord by numbers in parentheses; and
ascending or descending melodic intervals by positive or negative
numbers. Values are generally rounded to the nearest tenth of a cent,
with links to more precise Scala files at the end of this post.

To allow for Yahoogroups formatting quirks, I'm also including a link
to an ASCII version of this post on the web:

C#* 472.3 ---- +230.9 ---- E 703.1
(704.3) (703.1)
Bb* 138.2 ---- -138.2 ---- A 0.0
(370.3) (0.0)
F#* 968.0 ---- +232.0 ---- A 0.0

<http://www.bestII.com/~mschulter/prelude-O3_generators.txt>

In other words, the first chord of the cadence has a large neutral
third at around 370 cents and a fifth at 704 cents. The outer voices
ascend together by large whole tones of 231 or 232 cents, around 8:7,
while the middle voice descends by a neutral second of 138 cents. The
lower two voices thus arrive at a unison, and the upper voice at a
fifth of 703 cents, the goal of the cadence. In this style, thirds and
sixths are unstable intervals which often "pull toward" a stable
sonority such as a simple fifth or a fifth plus octave, for example.

> What are the generators for this tuning in cents (which is about all
> I grasp really well right now)

Apart from the 2/1 octave, the generators are chains of fifths at
703.125 or 704.297 cents (600 or 601 steps of 1024-EDO), plus an
interval of 57.422 cents (49 steps of 1024-EDO) defining the space
between two 12-note chains.

The two chains are identically arranged as follows, with A on the
lower chain as the 1/1 for this piece, and thus for the diagram.
While only 10 notes are actually used for the piece, this is the
bigger picture, with pitch locations in cents with respect to the 1/1
shown below each note name on a chain, and fifth sizes in the spaces
above and between the note names along a given chain.

704.3 703.1 704.3 703.1 704.3 704.3 703.1 704.3 703.1 704.3 704.3
Eb*-----Bb*----F*----C*-----G*----D*----A*----E*----B*----F#*----C#*----G# 634.0 138.2 841.4 345.7 1048.8 553.1 57.4 760.5 264.8 968.0 472.2 1176.6

704.3 703.1 704.3 703.1 704.3 704.3 703.1 704.3 703.1 704.3 704.3
Eb------Bb-----F-----C------G-----D-----A-----E-----B-----F#-----C#-----G# 576.5 80.9 784.0 288.3 991.4 495.7 0.0 703.1 207.4 910.5 414.8 1119.1

<http://www.bestII.com/~mschulter/prelude-O3_generators.txt>

While these values should be accurate enough to give a good idea of
the O3 system, here are Scala files for the complete O3 temperament;
the ten-note set used for _Prelude in Shur for Erv Wilson_; and the
"Zalzalian 12" set which includes these ten notes in the rotation
making Scala step 7 (704.297 cents) the 1/1.

<http://www.bestII.com/~mschulter/O3-24.scl>
<http://www.bestII.com/~mschulter/prelude_in_shur.scl>
<http://www.bestii.com/~mschulter/O3-zalzalian12_D.scl>

> Thanks!
> chris

Thank you in turn for your interest and encouragement,

Margo
mschulter@...

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cameron" <misterbobro@...> wrote:
>
> Brava Margo- heavy metalers can hide their heads in shame, that's
> some some sonotities and movement of real ironclad chutzpah! Very,
> very strong.

I have to say I do not think heavy metalers will care. I can hardly estimate the composition because of the crappy timbre and the mechanical performance.
It might, though, be interesting to hear it as a human performance with a "heavy metal" timbre. Margo, if you are interested, I can try to create one. Do you have the score somewhere?
--
Hans Straub