Drones (We Are) - Valediction

More drones, I know. I even gave it (the mp3) an album name, sort of a pun. My intonation isn't perfect on this recording, but I feel that I manage to hit enough 7ths, major 3rds, and that E-natural well enough to make it at least work. For those of you asking "what does Just Intonation sound like?" this is what it sounds like, but usually better assuming someone is playing it who can actually play the violin.

Valediction: For any number of strings, Indeterminate duration.

Tune violins a whole step lower; tune strings IV, III, and II of cello and viola a whole step lower (C-F-C-G-D). Tune to perfect fifths.

There are about a dozen patterns here, as well as a drone on the F. All the patterns are overtones of that F from a 9-note scale (Ionian plus Lydian plus Mixolydian, or the standard Western I-IV-V). Each player should move about these patterns at will, although not jumping more than a few patterns at a time, to preserve some continuity. Players may repeat the patterns as many times as needed, and skip patterns if they wish; however, it is highly advised that someone always be playing a held F (drone), and, if there are enough players, someone should be playing a held C as well, for tuning purposes. Optionally, the players may be spread around the performance space, behind, above, or underneath the audience. They may also be amplified, and spatialized, although not with artificial reverb or effects. Finally, it may go on as long as it needs to; there is no limit (either maximum or minimum) to the duration.

If anyone wants to perform this, let me know and I'll write up the score. Mostly, it's either in my head or on scraps of paper in a half-dozen notebooks scattered around my room.

Please suffer my four-violin recording.

http://www.willamette.edu/~acsmith/valediction.mp3

1-3-7-21-49-147

Just hit play.



Yes, friends, that is my new favorite guitar tuning. It is (if you're into this) an E (maybe), a third harmonic above that, a seventh harmonic of the E, a seventh harmonic of the third harmonic, a seventh harmonic of the seventh harmonic, a third harmonic of the seventh harmonic of the seventh harmonic (bringing us to 3x7x7 = 147).

In short, it's the greatest tuning ever created. I tried to pluck a tune normal guitar style, but it just wasn't doing the tuning justice, so I cradled the guitar between my legs like a cello, put my recorder in front of myself, picked up my violin bow, and started making noise. What you hear (as we speak, if you followed instructions) is an excerpt, after I got used to the mechanics of it, but before I started to run out of ideas. You'll notice it's mostly 5 minutes of drones; they aren't all drones, but when you vibrate the higher strings at 21 and 49 and 147 times the speed of the lower strings, their vibrations are so perfectly in tune with the natural vibrations of the lower strings that the whole thing starts to reverberate. All this really needs is to be even louder, and sustained for upwards of an hour.

Anyway, the last one (taeper, or repeat backwards) was also on guitar, but with a different tuning (1-4/3-7/4-9/4-11/4-4/1), and just the same thirteen (yes, prime numbers) notes, looped and played backward. There's a bandpass on the whole thing, so nothing changes except for the reinforced frequencies--the shift in melody that you hear is actually just a shift in filtration, like holding differently colored gels in front of a white light.

Budapest: In three parts

Budapest
In Three Parts
Copyright July 15, 2008

"It just gets destroyed, then rebuilt, destroyed, then rebuilt."
-Claire McQuerry

Pt. I: The Ottomans

All begin on pattern A, beginning at different times, in canon. Move to pattern B at will, again in canon, but with the tempos shifted so that each repeat takes the same duration. There is a simple formula for this, tX being the tempo of either pattern: tA/7 = tB/5. Play until all reach B and fade out individually.





Pt. II: The Hapsburgs

Split into two groups: one group plays notes from A, while the other plays notes from B. Repeat until it crumbles.




Pt. III: The Soviets

Pick any note from A. Change after 7 seconds. Repeat 7 times.
Pick any note from B. Change after 5 seconds. Repeat 5 times.

Rude Octaves

Just hit play while you're reading this. It's good mood music.

I created this patch that isn't very performance-friendly, and needs some debugging (the random number generator provides the same number to all 16 patches) but still got a solid 8 1/2 minutes of waves from it. At its peak, there are 16 oscillators going at once, all at different frequencies. It works like this:

16 instances of this patch, 8 on the left and 8 on the right channel, all with independent volume controls. Each patch has a cosine wave at its own frequency: 12 Hz, in the picture. Then, there's a random-number function that picks a number from 0-15 (default) every 25 (default) milliseconds. You can hear, at the beginning, it's only a new number every 1000 milliseconds (one second), but that must be changed manually. Then, that number is x in the function 2^x.

So, you have a number (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, etc.) randomly generated to multiply your base frequency by. Your frequency (12, in this case) is then 12, 24, 48, 96, etc. Now--who knew?--those are all octaves. So, what you get is a randomly generated octave jump every 25 milliseconds, and instead of a particular melody you just get weird waves of harmony.

It begins with 1 Hz (frequencies are inaudible under about 20 Hz, so you get sort of this weird clicking instead for some of the parts), then you hear the 3 Hz (perfect fifth up) enter. Later, the 5 Hz (major third up) enters, and you've got this pretty triad. Eventually, the 7 Hz (lowered 7th), 9 Hz (perfect fifth of perfect fifth, a.k.a. roughly a major second), and 13 Hz (sort of a major sixth, but way cooler than your mother's major sixth) all enter.

I save the 11 Hz for towards the end--know why? Because it's amazing. It's probably one of the wildest notes of creation. I think of it as the bastard child of the harmonic series. At least we tried to accommodate roughly the major third (5/1), sixth (1/5), the perfect fifth (3/1), the dominant seventh (7/1)--but we didn't even bother with 11/1. It's almost exactly halfway between two equal-tempered (piano-scale) notes. And one of those notes we called "diablo en musica," the tritone. Needless to say, I love the eleventh harmonic.

I'm going to London tomorrow.

bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!

So I'm plunging headlong into sine waves, stacking them on top of each other and finding octaves and harmonics and exponential amplitudes with formulas like:

x^[10 * (y/20)], given that y is amplitude in decibels and x is amplitude in a decimal from 0-1.

I don't really understand it either, except that it is interesting how we hear volume on a logarithmic scale at log10, while we hear pitch at log2. Though pitches in the lower register can change pitch with a change of 10 Hz (55 Hz = A, 65 Hz = C, almost), pitches in the higher ranges take longer to shift (the same A-to-C interval would be 80 Hz at a higher range). It makes you (me) wonder if we see on this same scale: imagine a car hurtling towards you on a back road, a half-mile off. Now imagine a car hurtling towards you about 10 feet away. Aside from the clear terror you're feeling, the car seems to be going much faster when it's about to hit you.

(Aside: remember that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail when the knight, I forget which one, is charging the camera in a continuous loop, then all of a sudden he is there and stabs the poor man? Clearly, they share my theory.)

---

I just got my visa extended for the summer, so I'm a legitimate entity again. I'm starting my first interview Monday, going to London on Tuesday, interviewing again Wednesday, coming back Thursday, and interviewing again Friday, and probably Saturday as well. It seems like I'd be busy, but between sending out a few e-mails a day and going to at least one concert a week I still manage to spend most of my time learning to make noises on the keyboard.

The main purpose of the noises is for the Autopsy section of the opera, using the text of Jorie Graham's poem "San Sepolcro." The entire section will be voice and drones of spectral-tuned waves, very ambient. No need for an orchestra, just a laptop (maybe more than one, a laptop orchestra) and about a thousand speakers.

---

I didn't know where to put this, but I thought it was funny. Finnegan's Wake in Wiki-format, so that you can add your own references for every single word or phrase. I read about five or six pages of it last night (on actual paper, from the library) but then when I pulled up the site it just made it less fun. If you read it aloud and don't click on the links it makes much more sense, or at least it's pretty. There's something to be said for picking apart every note/word of a great work, but it certainly helps to play/read it through once or twice to hear it.

The Harmonic of the Fundamental

If you take a particular signal (13 Hz, for example) and you multiply it by 2, you get an octave. If you multiply that by 3, you get a perfect fifth. If you multiply that by 5, you get a major third. If you multiply that by 72, you get the six octaves and a perfect fifth up from your original 13 Hz. If you plot a bunch of these on graph paper in colored pencils (to designate different wave forms), you get my day. Each horizontal square is one second; each vertical square is one harmonic (the first square is 13 Hz, second is 26 Hz, third is 39 Hz, etc.) Blue is a sine wave (obviously), orange is sawtooth, red is triangle, green is parabola, yellow is pulse, and brown is noise with an added sine wave for color. Brown only comes in the 64th harmonic, by the way.

And if you keep wondering to yourself, Why do I keep reading this blog, when it's usually unintelligible rambling about waves and ultimately irritating noises?, then I'll tell you why: Cousin photos.



It's only a minute long; it's not like you haven't listened to more irritating things for 60 seconds.



http://www.willamette.edu/~acsmith/struktur.mp3

Of Mere Being

It was a great success. The performance (re-listening) had a few mistakes, but I would much, much rather have mistakes than a flawless, lifeless performance. Here's the recording from tonight. It cuts off weirdly at the end, before the applause, but that's my own fault since I was the one recording it. Really, there was applause at the end, trust me.

Ezra Pound, come home to Idaho

I wrote a song a few months back about Ezra Pound, and since I got this fancy recorder for my summer project, and since I have nothing better to do, I recorded it, with a nice rhythm track of Pound's Italian broadcasts, circa 1942, which later got him jailed for treason. The poem is the first half or so of Canto I. I couldn't find Canto II, which is what I really wanted, so the first one would have to do.

This is an excerpt from the forthcoming opera examining the life and displacement of Ezra Pound, where each act is introduced and closed by a verse from this song. The country guitar (and harmonica, when I get one in the appropriate key) is juxtaposed with the intense modernist aesthetic of Pound's poetry. It will make use of leitmotif.

I also shaved my head and beard, but kept earlobe-long sideburns and a soul patch, because if you're going to have facial hair, why not have funny facial hair. I could probably pass for a youth pastor; all I would need is a guitar. Oh, wait.



And if that fails to load:
http://www.willamette.edu/~acsmith/ezra.mp3

It was first sunny, now it's hailing. I heard some thunder earlier. Audio soon.

REEEEMIIIIIXXXXX

Last year one of Luke's friends recorded a song (and nine others) in our dorm room. It was tough to fit the timpani in there, but we managed.



And if that fails to load:
http://www.willamette.edu/~acsmith/weather.mp3

Call me Ishmael

Against my better judgment (I have no judgment), I am posting the finished chorale. This is the result of basically the entire day. Nine measures. Twenty-seven beats. About 2 1/2 minutes. Anyway, if you're into pdfs, it's here. If you're into mp3s (with me singing, by the way, refer to the pdf.) it's here. The singing is a simulation of what it will sound like when the second violin and viola break out into child-like song while the violin and cello play behind them. The text is from Wallace Stevens's "The Snow Man," now in the public domain.

Additionally, (if you're into pdfs) the "7" markings refer to the 7th harmonic, approximately 1/4 of a half-step down from the equal tempered note, while the naturals with the down-arrows refer to a 5th harmonic, about 1/6 down from the written note. The sharps with one vertical line mean a half sharp, which is roughly the 11th harmonic. This is all in the recording, however. If it sounds like an out-of-tune string quartet, that's because it is actually much more in tune than you're used to hearing.

This chorale is my white whale

Avast, ye. This chorale melody is one of the first things I wrote all year, something which just came to me. I don't even recall working on it, revising it; it just was. You can heckle it all you like, because frankly now I'm ambivalent. Now it's a challenge. It's like trying to work "vortex" into a conversation, or "various states of disrepair" into a blog post.

I have tried:

1. A chorale prelude, meant to simulate improvisation at the piano; the chorale is like a set of jazz chord changes to improvise upon.
2. A traditional four-part arrangement, slowly dissolving into obscurity.
3. A fugue, a la Die Kunst der Fuge.
4. A four-part canon (it was a disaster).
5. A four-part canon using only eighth notes (it was a [expletive deleted] train wreck).
6. Having two players play the melody, one normal and one inverted, while the other two sing the parts to the words "In the sound of a few leaves, which is the sound of the land full of the same wind," from the Wallace Stevens poem "The Snow Man." This one was just goofy.

It is a 19-note Rasputin. I dare someone to come up with a coherent arrangement of it. If you want, I can lend you my notes and attempted analyses (i.e., bar 1 is D Maj. 7 to F-OCT0, 1; bar 2 pivots from G Lydian to an inverted G harmonic minor scale; bar 3 is roughly B Locrian). Go ahead, I dare you. Call me Ishmael, or something.

Edit: By "one normal and one inverted" I meant that the second melody was inverted, beginning with a fourth down instead of a fourth up. Not the actual player. Not that goofy.

You know then that it is not the reason

It looks as if the Fates have conspired to make me stay inside and compose all day. I woke up at 9, willingly no less, to slight cold and a drizzle of rain. It looks like Dublin again, finally.

The other night, after scrapping that Node Ensemble stück once I missed the deadline, Ben called me to tell me that they were planning on programming it for their April concert. So, no rehearsals have happened yet; I minimized it to electric guitar, violin, and recorder, hopefully to decrease rehearsal time and make it more precise. Four short movements, less ambition than the original, but I think it will turn out far better. Plus it gives me a chance to use that movement for electric guitar trio, without having to bother with an extra four instruments. It's still the poem "Of Mere Being," by Wallace Stevens; the electric guitar trio movement is the stanza:

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

Four more days (I hope) of work. This Sunday, and all next weekend. Oh, and I got the grant from Willamette to study the community of living Irish composers, so I'll be here all summer, until late July or early August. Stop by. It's a nice place; I hear it rains all summer. I'm really getting into delicious mushrooms now. The yuppie grocery store (Fallon & Byrne) has all their specialty mushrooms at a mix-n-match price, so I just get a bit of each and throw it into an risotto (two days ago) or an omelet (this morning) or maybe even a pasta dish, with caraway seeds (T.B.D.).

I haven't been up this early (willingly) in ages. I don't know what to do with myself.

The text shows the inability of leaving Ireland

I went to a talk on Irish writing in the 50s this evening, and one main topic was the problem of emigration. The best, they say, leave Ireland (usually meaning go to London or Dublin, which doesn't qualify as "Irish") while the slackers stay behind and drink away their inheritances on the ruined family farm. Now, Claire Wills (wrote a good book on Paul Muldoon as well) did a fine job deconstructing that monster of a commission--something about population policy--but she also did a fine job of making me want to get out. So, going to Galway next weekend. I feel like that's a start. First Galway, then maybe Vienna. Ich bin aus Österreich.

I've taken to learning German online. It gives me something mechanical to do, anyway. I probably should have learned Italian or something, but I have less of a desire to go to Italy. Too warm, too sunny, too delicious. I almost bought tickets to the Dresden music festival, but I'm not sure when my exams are. We'll work on that.

In other news, I finished four of my nine movements for this desert suite. They are, played by my computer:

1. Presto (score)
2. Allegro Pizzicato (score)
5. Geese (score)
9. Very Slow (score)

The first two movements are meant to be directly conjoined--the first, slowing down from presto to allegro, also becomes pizzicato.

In case you missed it, they get slower as the suite goes on. That haunting chord you hear the cello and viola play (and the two violins outline) at the beginning of Presto is (I know you're sweating with anticipation, sweating everywhere) a perfect fifth, D and A, in the viola, played as a double-stop on strings III and IV, and a very, very flat (49 cents flat, almost halfway to the next lower note) G#. Pretty mad. A vicious 3/4-tone leap there in the violins; you think it's a leading tone but oh you are so wrong. It's so flat it wants to pull you down to the G, not up to the A. It's almost exactly between the F# and the A, even, (the F# being the major third of the elusive triad) so it may as well just suck it up and pretend it's an out-of-tune 4-3 suspension.

I finished applying for the summer grant as well. Something changed a bit, so it's more community-oriented. Probably make things easier to get a grant than some esoteric ethnomusicological project practiced by one or two other people.

And, as a plug, our community blog slaughter and laughter is back, thanks to Alyssa. I'll throw up a new color scheme some time. I'm thinking rot und schwartz.