Austronesian Outpost of Anaphoria

The Pentatonic Family pt.2/expanded

2012-01-21T15:51:00.001-11:00

Here is a paper where we return to look at another cycle of Pentatonics within a 12 tone context in order for others to apply to the scale and subsets of ones choice. It is better to start with part one if missed it here.
I have revised this from the other day.

The Nature of Music is as much Inner as Outer

2011-12-07T12:20:00.001-11:00

I really become more and more interested in what human beings can do musically. It is an inner reality than comes not from a mere imitating of environmental nature, yet is nothing but an expression of nature itself that we carry and comes out all by itself in a way we still do not understand.

What comes out of humans is such a wider variety than any one person or culture could ever imagine. Look at the different ways people make music, each with its own development, than often is compensatory to how it is used in other cultures. It becomes extremely difficult to reduce music to universal qualities that are common to all. At best we can find some that apply to most, yet in particular, these can vary to a degree that is equally complex.

I prefer to pursuit and defend a path which i see more as going deeper 'into' the human as opposed to only 'outside' of it. What is this 'musical nature" of human beings that some cast as "inferior' to nature as if it has some original sin that must be suppressed. There is something 'puritanical' here.Might this definition of nature be one that only gives it masculine traits and characters, a suppression of all the hidden and truly mysterious workings of nature in places outside the microscope. In the meanwhile music comes out of human beings like breath.

There is much in nature which is beautiful and listenable, and needs to be preserved. This though is as true inwardly than outwardly. The nature we find in the outer world though does not develop although it can be destroyed as is going on world wide [we all know that]. The inner nature though is one that grows and changes in unexpected ways , albeit slowly at times, but this requires a nourishment, more often in it being given expression more than it imitating an outer world. When it imitates it is more often than not inclined toward the imitation of other humans. Even the interest in the environment, might be to big extent, imitating what others humans are doing. Within us too are the plants and varied species that we might water, the ones that grow inside of us and seem to potentially grow without limit. What nature implanted in us, might be so that in a way she might hear herself in a way she can't hear otherwise.

Bali again

2011-11-20T00:10:00.001-11:00

Some time back we went to a concert in Sydney of the Indonesian National Orchestra. The Orchestra is headed by the composer Franki Raden, who has taken on the almost impossible task of creating a music out of the diverse islands of Indonesia. I do think he has managed to do what he has done without homogenizing the forces he is dealing with, and yes it is still a work in progress.

Indonesia i think is a brave country to try in general the combining of all these different islands into one nation. If the world did become one, hopefully not under the banking interest, but in the interest of more humanitarian cooperation, it might be a good testing ground. But at this concert they had a raffle and right before they picked i turned to my wife who had entered and said' i guess we are going to Bali again" and sure enough they called her name although she wasn't sure at first.

We met Franki Raden for the first time unrelated to this during intermission and found out about the festival he was putting together in Bali IMEX [Indonesian Music Expo] so we both felt it was some sign to go there at that time. As politics is what it is , there was pressure for the gov't sponsors to put on many acts they thought fit and it was probably the last night that best represented Raden's vision. There was a group from Sulawesi that performed and after they warmed up, one realized that one was dealing with ritual more than just music. It was over powering. Greg Schiemer composed a work for swinging i phones holding sustain pitches that seem to fit in an uncanny way and this group joined him and it had to be one of the greatest combination of opposite technologies i have seen.

Most of our time there was spent just outside Ubud in Sebali in the company of Gusti Ngurah Suaratana who lead us to ceremonies, some on the street, and was responsible for having our marriage blessed in a ceremony and lead us to a remote rice field where he had built a small structure. While there, his wife appeared with coffee and pastries that surprised us that she even got there at the same time. Gusti spoke a little English and Japanese and much of our communication over many long hours involved gesture that really seem to work. He was an instant friend if not member of a family as he put it. He in turn was good friends with Kris, an artist and historical prince of Ubud, who partooked of our blessing in between his heavy schedule of mediating problems in the region, all without pay. He too was a greatly inspired person who had studied abroad in order to understand his own culture and had even lived with an aboriginal family for 6 months eating everything thing but the large worms which ws just beyond of what he might do.

From Kris we learned that there is a law that every rice farmer in Bali has a equal right and access to water and that there are people put in charge to see this is in fact what happens. Being in the single rice field we were in was already a lesson on just how complex this can be and still i cannot imagine how it was done, much less on an island wide level. Bali seemed more civilized than elsewhere.

Here is a recording next door to where Kris lives of some hocketing frogs in the rain.
http://anaphoria.com/froghockets.mp3

A Resonator Mystery

2011-10-19T01:40:00.001-11:00

Over the years i have always been amazed by what we don't know , especially in an area where it seems we have advanced so far beyond, it would have be long figured out long ago.
No such luck in many cases.
While they are figuring out what they did wrong at CERN with their faster than light results, i have stumbled into something that should have long ago been dealt with.

While in the process of tuning up some instruments in a new tuning, i had some tubes that are to become resonators that i decided to play with a bit on a set of reeds tuned to the same tuning. Terumi suggested playing with open resonators so i took the caps off and found i could augment the sound of a reed and use my hand to open and close to play with the sound. The problem was that the resonators were resonating a pitch a whole tone or more lower than what all the the theoretical measurements have been telling me.

I checked my answers with others who concluded that what i had was in the the range of what they had. I asked on the reed organ list if anyone there had such a thing happen and one suggested that it was the cavity that held the reed that jointly made a lower resonator. This made total sense to me and assumed it was correct but i thought i could check it by trying it against the second set of reeds which has a much shallower cavity. the result was the same.
One of the things i did to test was to play the pitch it should be along with the lower pitch.
In all cases it is the lower pitch that sounded much louder.

It appears i am not the first to notice this. i got an message from Simon Buser, a builder and Organist in Germany who said,

"The same system of reeds 2 semitones higher than the resonators I found in Organ Clarinets of Aeolian-Skinner. Seems to be the usual way to handle this phenomena: by experience, not by calculation, I suppose."

My own theory at the moments is that since they are suction reeds not blowing reeds that the suction lowers the air pressure. But still have to figure out a way to test this.

Oh yes BTW with a vibraphone bar it works as expected.

Anyway one can have some musical fun with this as can be heard here. [Might take a minute to load]. The top pitch is the theoretical one and the lower is the one that works

http://anaphoria.com/organharmonics.mp3

An Akashic Torus

2011-09-24T18:38:00.002-11:00

The title An AkashicTorus refers first to the Akashic records, that library found in the ether thatcontains all knowledge. The Torus is a donut shaped structure that somehow is acommon representational mapping in our mind of many multi-dimensional patterns.Along with the intonation employed we have a looking back but not to some‘Golden Age’ that never was, but as a door to view what been discarded asmusical possibilities or even what have been spoiled. The piece centers solely on pentatonics, an interestresurrected by my contact with Lou Harrison, who I envision as the presentcaretaker of pentatonic scales in the previously mentioned library. It is notunlike the room he had in his house of similar purpose. Of much interest also is in the effectof long meters as a resistance to the short time thinking we all are subjectto. Although the meter of this piece contracts or expands it remains centeredon a meter of 101 beats long, making each bar about 55.5 seconds long. Thestriking of a Meru Bar most often marks this meter, but not always so I advisenot counting. The piece has only11 bars to show yet it makes the piece exactly 1111 beats long.

For those interested and familiar with Moments of Symmetry patterns, here is also the final rhythmic breakdown of the piece based on secondary Moment of Symmetry patterns. The basic 101 was both subdivided by a 64 beat generator which was cycled around or another generator which resulted in 64 different subdivisions. from there the 101 pattern was both expanded to a 138 beat pattern and contracted to both a 64 and 37 beat ones.

It was a quite difficult piece to write in that the Clarinis were limited to a range of a ninth and this coincided with only the lowest octave of the vibraphone. They also were only capable of playing diatonic scales of 7 notes each and two different ones were necessary for getting all 12 tones of the scale. I worried much about the whole concert sounding too high in pitch lacking bass instruments so this is one of the reasons i added the Meru bars. You need headphones to really hear it though. Care had to be taken also to cue the Pitches for the violin like Tahru as often the lines were melodically more than harmonically conceived making it a bit harder for any string player, much less one also being handed a new instrument. Fortunately it was all recorded in the studio a few days later which should appear with the other fine works on the program which you can access the links from the youtube video.

"Prepared" Intonation as opposed to "Tempered" Intonation

2011-08-14T02:30:00.000-11:00

Maybe the most common way tuning is thought of is to enable a series of harmonies or scales to be performed in as many different ways or in related ways depending on quite a varieties of approaches. Intonation regardless of the ‘school’ has given both melody and harmony new options as well as different stresses and pull even in sometimes the most familiar of material.

These explorations have lead to sometime unforeseen musical situations that result in acoustical phenomenon not sought for but compelling when it appears sometimes out of nowhere. More than a few have sought these events exclusively by means that can be as simple as close pitches creating beat and beat patterns, or proportional triads or larger units as well as difference tones. It we pursue this path and construct tunings to do so, might the term ‘tempering” not be the best term we might use.

I think what is happening in many of these cases in pursuit of both sound and noise is closer to what Cage described and did with the term “prepared” in the case of the piano .

The prepared piano was changed so that specific notes would be changed into specific sounds. In the field of intonation this shift goes from the noun of a singular pitch to the verb of the interaction of two or more, by interval. Being tied to ‘interval’ instead of a single atom of sound allows each individual tone to act potentially in a variety of roles that might be unique in its relationship and situations to the whole matrix of others. This places an overarching "political " framework by the roles each plays within its structure. It becomes capable of personality as well as identity. This approach calls for more investigation along these specific lines as these goals and desired will lead to new forms to have them realized. While we have new melodies and harmonies, we also have new sounds and even new noises and it is these four elements that promises much to the modern sound alchemist even via just the one parameter of tone.

Another 14 tone scale [from a 2-3-7-11-13 Dekany]

2011-07-19T23:55:00.003-11:00

As a prelude let me say not to worry. I will tell you what a Dekany is , and yes somehow I have come up with quite a few 14 tone scales, in fact more than any other number.

The harmonics 2-3-7-11-13 as a set have raised some interest. George Secor and Margo Schulter, are just two important microtonal theorist who have seen interesting possibilities in them. While the former sees it as a bedrock for harmonic development and is interested in scales that can accommodate them as in this paper of his. The latter, Margo Schulter is interested in this set as the basis to explore her neo-renaissance/neo-gothic approach to music since these harmonics are the basis of the Persian scales of the time.

Margo had recently posed the question about how these harmonics might also be developed into scales that include the non-tonal centered harmonics structures of Erv Wilson's called Combination Product sets, or CPS for short. These structures provide a gateway into a somewhat 'atonal' or perhaps 'pantonal' environment while retaining relatively simple consonances. The interest is in adding to the language of this period before tonality would take such a strong hold.

The simplest CPS we can form of these is the 2 out of 5 Dekany. The Dekany is a 10 tone structure that takes the combination 2 out of 5 elements at a time and multiplies these together. [2*3, 2*7, 2*11, 2*13, 3*7, 3*11, 3*13, 7*11, 7*13, 11*13]. You can download the chart above or a larger one here to see how one can map it out on a lattice. Now while this give us a wonderful harmonic set, there is a great advantage in going one step further and trying to find what is called a Constant Structure. This is a structure where each times ratio occurs in such a scale, it will be have the same number of notes in between. [We find this property in the pentatonic scale on the black notes, in the diatonic and in the 12 tone scale for instance] Now this Dekany does not have this property on its own and the chart shows how I solved the problem and ended up with a 14 tone scale.

I preserved on the left half shows the steps it took to solve [in case one wishes to do so with any set that might interest one.]

First one arranges the main intervals from smallest to largest possible with the harmonics one is working with. This coincides with the series one sees running down the right hand side in the left half of the chart.

While 14/13 were all one unit the 13/12 we can observe that one of the three occurrences are two units to the other two being only one. Hence we need to add tones so that all the 13/12 are 2 units in size. This is designated with a circle with an arrow from side to side which is carried down and counted in determining the other intervals.

A rather odd thing happen though as when we reach down to 11/8, we can see that the 12 notes up to that point do form a constant structure, but the 11/8 is only 4 units is much too small as the smaller 4/3 is 6 units. While one can have a bit of an overlap on range, we instead fix this oddity by adding two tones in the large gap to make it at least the same number of units as the 4/3. Since the idea was to have possible repeated tetrachords the pitches chosen to be added were ones that were a 3/2 above or below tones we had. There are other solutions one could pick.

Viggo Brun's Algorithm Applied to Rhythm and Long Meters

2011-06-07T21:28:00.001-11:00

http://anaphoria.com/ViggoRhythm.pdf Here is a short paper about to be added to The Journal of Anaphorian Music theory on how Viggo Brun's Algorithm can be used to generate long meters or metric patterns. These produce different variations than the ones i have worked out with Horogram Rhythms found in that journal.

The Pentatonic Family pt. 1

2011-05-20T20:47:00.001-11:00

This is a very elementary paper that i thought i would share.
It touches upon the use of Bi-level Moments of symmetry as well as chains with slight variations.
All is discussed in terms of an undefined 12 but the principle can be applied to any tuning. hope it is helpful. http://anaphoria.com/pentatonics.pdf

It is like a third world application of Xenakis sieve method. but then again we might prefer to apply complex ideas in simple ways than simple ideas to complex ones.

The Death of [blank] Music

2011-05-07T12:58:00.000-11:00

It is not the death of new music, of contemporary music, of avant-garde music, of experimental music, of new music, of classical music, of rock music, of jazz music, of punk music, of free improv music, of indigenous music, of folk and traditional music, of electronic music, of conceptual music, of silent music, of professional music, of amateur music, of music on CDs or vinyl, of live music, or even anti-music, but it is the only the death of music that should concerns us. The healthy whole is made of many organs

Music and Evolution

2011-05-01T23:34:00.001-11:00

I keep not posting cause i don't have extended things to say , sometime only a line of two.
please forgive. But people talk about all musical innovation as being evolutionary,yet if we are basing this on nature, possibly we might be stricter and point out in nature there are all types of variations produced that don't always result in a forward progression of the species.
Many of these are sterile, so what really constitutes what is evolutionary is the ability of something to produce fertile offspring as opposed to sterile hybrids. Let history define where musical evolution is or what might be like the parallel to Monsanto. What good is it to go somewhere if once you get there there is no where to go but the way one comes in. Perhaps there are more Cul-de-Sacs than ever before, but perhaps history knows them as the commonest of lots.

Dark Dissents at MOCA

2011-04-01T11:56:00.002-11:00

http://www.moca.org/museum/event_calendar.php?m=4&day=10#10

I will be having a work premiered at this event of the above title in case you are in these environs.

'Dark Dissents' is for a retuned Hungarian Cymbolum played by Cory Beers
(It is quite unusual to have someone else perform my work)
Exploring the thresholds of where private dissents slowly transforms into public ones.

Our Rainy Season/Nuilagi

2011-02-23T18:03:00.000-11:00

I am extremely happy to announce the release of my new CD.
The first in over 4 years and it marks my first since immigrating to Australia.
Our Rainy Season involved two Australia's finest improvisers, and Nuilagi, involved two of some of the finest i had worked with in the US.
I am honored to have it released on such a fine label as and/Oar's related label Either /Oar.
more info here
http://www.and-oar.org/pop_either_5.html

Bundanon again, with Ensemble Offspring

2011-01-16T01:23:00.035-11:00

Terumi and I once again found ourselves at Bundanon. Our last time involved our participation in the Ten Trenches project and performance previously pictured on this blog here. This time we were here to lay the groundwork for just intonation works to be performed in Sept. by Ensemble Offspring, one of the leading New Music ensembles in Australia. Co- Director [w Claire Edwardes] Damien Ricketson and composer Amanda Cole will be the other two composers writing compositions with instruments the ensemble has commissioned. While we were there, Peter Garrett [former Arts Minister of Australia] stopped by as having a great interest in what happens there and Damien was able to entice him with our goings on while i accompanied him with the sounds of my vibraphone the ensemble will be using. [Photos by Terumi Narushima]

All the works will be based on a scale of mine i call Centaur.
which is a rare honor all its own. The instruments commissioned are 2 sets of 4 Clarini's [made by Linsey Pollack] to play subsets of the Centaur scale and a violin like instrument with 7 sympathetic strings called the Tarhui [made by Peter Biffin]. My 3 Octave Centaur Vibraphone will complete the tuned instruments. It is an exciting and wonderful opportunity to join with other talented composers exploring compositionally this newly created ensemble of instruments with its unique tuning.

Flying through the expanded Magic Squares.

2011-01-14T21:16:00.026-11:00

Etienne Deleflie is a composer working at the University of Wollongong on compositions dealing with the perception and simulation of spatial orientation of sound. He originally asked for help in how to map Patch’s Scale onto a matrix that lead to a deeper and deeper joint exploration of some other intonational possibilities.

It quickly became apparent that he envisioned a just intonational matrix in which one could 'fly' through, as a space where nearby harmonies would have some relation to each other yet still retain a special identity in the overall field to aid in the sense of movement. This reawakened my own interest in parallel ideas of unifying space and pitch.

Those familiar with lambdomas [of which Partch’s diamond is an example] would recognize this as a logical choice, but these result with everything higher on one end. Thus the results are rather unbalanced and also lack a harmonic variety we sought for.

The situation instead seemed ripe for other types of intonational possibilities and I thought that some of the simpler recurrent sequences would work well.

So with a bit of experimenting I found that 'magic squares' placed in the middle provided good seeds for making different series running in four directions . Nearby tones would retain various difference tone reinforcements yet over ‘space’ one would move away or toward where one started harmonically in a significant yet varied way. Yet there was something musically appealing to having certain harmonics stand out and even be repeated yet then diverge in different directions from there.

After going into the anechoic chamber where Deleflie has his speakers set up and listening to some of the results, we found it warranted pursuing an actual installation with small speakers in a space where people can walk through. We are working toward this at the moment.

While this idea continues to develop further, this diagram shows some of the ways I am constructing my matrices. This one serves as a good illustration in that it includes more than one series embedded into it. [Click to enlarge.]

The numbers refer to harmonics (that in turn have to be multiplied to get them in the hearing range). First I started with a magic square made of numbers 4-12 that one can see in the outlined box in the near middle. From here I construct recurrent sequences for each direction of two varieties.

I illustrate.

Take a number, say 5, in the box and call this A with B and C being the numbers above it. Now if we create a sequence such as A + C = D we take 5 + 9 =14 which is the number above 9. Now if we move the sequence up we add 10 + 14 = 24 and we continue this pattern. Next the same formula is applied moving to the right where 5 + 7 = 12 and 12 + 12 = 24 etc. For the other two directions I used a different recurrent sequence. This one is A + B = D. So in this case we add 7 + 12 = 19 and 12 + 5 = 17 in the case of the bottom row moving left or in the case of moving down 9 +10 = 19 and 10 + 5 =15 etc. These two sequences I learned from Erv Wilson who uses them to create his Meta-Pelog and Meta-Slendro scales. He might be the first to have found them embedded in Pascal's Triangle or Meru Prastara, as it was known centuries earlier . His papers on this can be seen here.

You will notice that being a magic square the number 24 comes out being the sum of the row or columns in the box, and if one follows any of the lines in either direction where one has three 24s in a row you might notice we get simple harmonics of this 24. Quickly each quadrant deverges in its own unique way on either side of these rows. The corners become the highest notes with the center the lowest, which is a useful balanced arc. Yet it is possible to treat this whole series as a subharmonic series where the corners become the lowest and the center the highest.

Etienne has realized this using SuperCollider. Sound examples can be heard on Etienne’s page, which should give one the idea of the area we are exploring. Much more to come.

A Reassignment for Banaphshu

2010-11-23T14:53:00.000-11:00

In response to those inquiries regarding the omission of Banaphshu’s name as a contributor here in the last month, we apologize that we delayed in order to enable her to speak for herself.

“It has been touching to read the inquiries as to my whereabouts from even people I have never met and it brings joy to my heart as I remember all the wonderful people I have come across through my work acting as a guide and consultant for first the Embassy and later this Austronesian Outpost.

I pray that many of you will find the opportunity to visit me in my new position as the director at RNC (Radio Nabu Congul) and I want to let you know those doors will be open ones.

With this new position comes access to the facilities that will enable me to pursue my own artistic endeavors and to develop much of the electronic music that has taken a peripheral or back seat since my first musical collaborations. I expect to become more active than ever before, and I am sure that my long time partner, Kraig Grady, will keep you informed of these developments as we remain committed supporters of each others’ work.

It was originally amusing to allow inadvertently our identities to become confused. Often our collaborations were of a magical nature where neither of us cared to remember who did what, so our merging identities were less about deception and more about artistry. For the record, our long and deep connection was of a spiritual, cerebral nature, not a physical one. We had little choice.

The last few years, however, have seen those collaborations become less and less frequent, as we have become more familiar with the territory each provided for the other. We both feel that we will always carry these experiences with us into our musics.

To Kraig and all the supporters of Anaphoria, I thank you with my heart and my soul. May you always be nourished by the gifts of the imaginous spirit!

Banaphshu
24th November 2010
Nabu Congul”

"Chopsticks" in the style of Charles Ives

2010-10-29T12:22:00.001-11:00

From Richard Grayson's 32nd (final) Annual Occidental College Concert, March 31, 2001. Improvisation on a theme from the audience.
Yearly he would improvise on a theme and style given from the audience.

Bagobo Agung Ensemble, Philippines 1960's

2010-10-15T14:32:00.000-11:00

Hammer Dulcimer at Serial Space (excerpt)

2010-10-11T00:24:00.001-11:00

from Serial Space- Sydney July 19.2010. NowNow series. excerpt near end of solo performance performed on Hammer Dulcimer tuned to Meta Mavila- a recurrent sequence that resembles a tuning found among the Chopi of Mozambique.
Flamenco music has always been a music that has quite informed my directions on this instrument

Why Just Intonation?

2010-10-03T20:21:00.004-11:00

A summary~

Why Just Intonation?

1. Just Intonation is based on the harmonics relations one finds in nature and is a natural product of the sounds we hear.

2. Just Intonation represents the most consonant intervals. It likewise can create great dissonances thereby extending the range of tension between the two.

3. Just Intonation is tunable by ear due to its acoustical qualities that are unambiguous in nature. This in turn gives one a palette of limitless emotional depth and flexibility.

4. Just Intonation is a modular system. . It is infinitely expandable in terms of intervals at one disposal. Just intonation scales are also ‘open’ scales. While they can form self-contained consistent structures, they are always capable of being augmented in many different ways. This though does not require having to change or discard the pitches one already has, the array of building blocks are the same.

5. Just Intonation allows perceivable structural possibilities that cannot be realized effectively any other way. While ambiguousness has it place in all the arts , It should be by choice.

6. One can have many different intonation systems and scales yet still have common tones, intervals and even scales common between them that can act as bridges. These easily can exist side by side. In a free world of any pitch at any time one can move from one system to another freely by common tone scales or chords.

7. As Just Intonation produces scales with unequal size intervals, this gives one the possibility of more different size intervals with fewer notes.
For example there are Just Intonation pentatonics that give one more different intervals than 12-tone equal temperament. As another example one particular 7 limit 12 tone scale harmonic known as Centaur will give one 50 different intervals within the octave.

8. Just Intonation allows for the possibility of each key or area of the tuning having its own unique flavor and quality.

The Shadow Theatre Of Anaphoria

2010-09-28T00:22:00.004-11:00

From The Follies of Dr. Placebo

Directions

2010-09-02T17:30:00.001-11:00

The Direction has been known for some time. There is little new to add to that.

What else can we be working toward if not total and direct freedom of expression- to convey or release whatever compels us, either personal or trans-personal, or both, by any and every means possible. Our territory is depth and the deeper the better.

In order to do this we have to keep our tools in place whether these be methods, systems, and yes processes. They provide little in themselves and yet often they are indispensable. Kandinsky was wise to point out that such paths quickly can make us its slaves. Such failures is all around us, usually in myopic segregated camps.

These tools are mere means that at their core enable a true fruition, a flow of energy from one moment to another. Can we think or express anything that is not somehow directly related to the previous? A work must preserve this by neither omitting too many steps in-between causing its disruption or stagnating it by the unessential. A focus on a ‘well made plan’ or ‘well made process” too often stop a work in its tracks.

We should liberate the concept of the idea as being based solely in the word, otherwise humans would have no necessity of anything beyond it. The ‘explanation’ of works and the forces behind it often eschew the true spirit that moves toward where it seeks. When words are used it only function might be nothing more than another element of that flow. Hence its methods and processes should be no more restrictive than the work itself. Formulas and common practice just will not do.

It is not that we will not have our “constants”, an element Pound always pointed out as being part of any work, and likewise ourselves as one also would be no different. We might accept our resonance to some and not to others, an aspect of our own antennae. The goal is to have as many open as possible.

An Aside.
It is not that History(ies) is capable of being resurrected but it is immortal as an active part of the fabric in the continuum of our present. More often than not when we find ourselves at an old intersection with the same old things on the corner, we have approached it from new directions than before. This is what is easily mislabled as “influence”.

New Research Reveals a Hidden Meaning in The Footpaths of Anaphoria’s Abdiz Valley

2010-08-10T12:06:00.004-11:00

One of the most perplexing mysteries of the footpaths found in the most rugged terrain on the island has been the many branching tributaries it seems to take without explanation. These pathways, form an entangled array rarely more than a few meters away from each other that required extensive work to build even though it follows the landscape. Scholars have studied them for years sensing a meaning that has evaded them till now.
An ancient cryptographic text found in the area being studied at the Center Of Alphabetical Sequence has revealed the paths turns out to be a score to an ancient music in 6 part harmony sung while people walked long it in groups. The text preserves what appears to have been once the oral instructions memorized by those who walked and sang upon these paths. The text also reveals the story how the music appeared in a dream to a old man who knew it related to this uninhabited area of the valley. The fragment ends there. So the mystery is not completely solved for now. What does it sound like? Prof. Mij says we won’t know till they actually go there and try it out next month with his group of singers.

(Reposting from gamelan list) Wayan Lotring. This is a film made by Jacques Brunet

2010-07-28T01:18:00.004-11:00

One of Bali's greatest composers

An example from Robert Lowell

2010-07-20T01:55:00.002-11:00

The other day I happened to glance at a book of poetry by Robert Lowell, reading a collection of his poems entitled ‘Near the Ocean’. I was completely unfamiliar with his work except recognizing the cover from many times before. It was work the grabbed me instantly. ( I am sorry I could not find an online version) .
While I know more about his overall poetic practice now after researching him, at the time the form struck me. The majority of the lines were rhyming couplets, but exceptions appeared frequently. Sometimes these stretched the limits of rhyming while other times he made no effort to force the work into this mold.
Here was a good example of how an artist can be informed by a method or system or even an idea and not become a tool of the tools they choose. What the balance should be so we prevent being lead into some robotic existence or blind worship of an arbitrary. This seem a pathetic state for the arts to choose.
Should we pursue looking for the methods or a way to find our way without them. I prefer the latter. But if we do use them we should always being the one leading as opposed to being lead.

THE ACT OF SCALE FORMATION-Erv Wilson

2010-07-01T20:36:00.000-11:00

THE ACT OF SCALE FORMATION ( Erv Wilson in a letter to Gary David from the 1960's)
The act of scale formation is inseparable from the other creative aspects of music formation. The human voice illustrates admirable how scale formation participates fully in the whole creative process of song. The scale is perhaps as unique to the song as are its rhythms and melodies. And like rhythm and melody, the scale neither precedes, nor follows the song, but progresses in the full flow of real time as a soft and sensuous and endlessly malleable expression of human consciousness.

Particularly in fixed-pitch instruments the role of scale tends to be diminished, if not entirely put aside. Even in a polyphonic keyboard instrument, whose ostensible goal is scale-making, the spontaneous, song-like scale is far from being achieved. In the design of a new instrument, one does well to recognize the technical limitations, and to compensate accordingly. (1) The fixed-tone needs to be bendable. (2) The fixed-pitch must have alternate inflections. One makes “knowledgeable guesses” as to what these will be, basing one’s judgment on past creative explorations. These are assigned to a Generalized Keyboard in an appropriately organized pattern. (3) One must have the facility for introducing, in performance, and in creative explorations, new pitches/inflections that may not have been anticipated when the “best-guess” tuning was assigned to the keyboard. Particularly as we “compose” we must be able to create our tunings, immediately from the console, as part of the same, if I may say, somewhat ritualized, creative act. To whatever level is optimally feasible, we should espouse creative tuning as part of the “live performance” (again, a ritual). The wall separating the “composer” from the “performer” should not be designed into the instrument.

The keyboard may be visualized as a Navajo loom upon which intricately lovely and endlessly variable scale patterns may be woven. A canvas. Arbitrary limitations to this variability must not be designed into the instrument. The keyboard is an art, and an interface, a crossroads and a bridge. The keyboard is a ship. In the tunable generalized keyboard we have the birth of a new art and the rebirth of an old art, as ancient as man. The keyboard must Breathe, poetically speaking, for it is the extension of a living process. The scale is a volatile genie that knows how utterly to transform its shape. Every effort must be made to accommodate this mercurial creature-of-the-psyche through the keyboard. The keyboard/console must animate the scale. While undoubtedly it is valid and admirable to study the scales of other peoples and other times, we are concerned primarily with the creative processes and the development and expression of our own arts. We see the keyboard in an attitude of creative anticipation, and to jealously guard against closed, limiting, non-living attitudes, and the great body of “tacit assumptions” and “forgone conclusions” (which, incidentally, we do not assume ourselves to be free from) which might hobble or render ineffectual those subtle intuitions of beauty.

Design philosophy, in a word, should be OPEN. Keep it general(ized), viable, versatile, changeable. Guard against the proverbial cul-de-sac, the one-track, the squirrel cages! My heavens!

The keyboard is a transient lens through which a cosmos of musical relations may be observed. Keep it volatile. Forgive the metaphor! Or interests are primarily “just” and in that regard the acoustic universe is seemingly endless.

" Iwabue " -Japanese native stone flute

2010-06-22T19:30:00.002-11:00

Thanks to Yannick Dauby for sharing elsewhere-Mr Yokozawa kazuya playing " Iwabue " Japanese native stone flute in Silkroad Butokan 14, February,2010

Podcast: The Complete Creation Myths of Anaphoria

2010-06-08T13:50:00.003-11:00

Banaphshu here presents for the first time available anywhere outside of Anaphoria the complete creation myths found on our island
Tales of Anaphoria/podcast

How all Anthems should be played

2010-05-29T11:49:00.002-11:00

When Scelsi's concept of a pitch is applied to the patriotic

Flag no.17

2010-05-17T00:50:00.002-11:00

Hall of Mirrors-Works of Ledhead-

2010-05-15T01:40:00.003-11:00

Going here by the name Ledhead, former collaborator and voyager is some recent work called Hall of Mirrors
found on our staff notices page with the center of alphabetical sequencing.
one sample

EPITAPHS SHOULD NOT END
IN QUESTION MARKS

At 3:00 in the morning
You can face any direction
And it is still night.

Is that why Jamie said,
“Acid is a jungle gym
At 3:00 in the morning.”

The Butterfly Constellation

2010-04-25T22:00:00.003-11:00

The people of Anaphoria are perplexed at how some places in the world see a hunter [Orion] where they have only seen a Butterfly [Marpessa].

This photo has been updated here
http://anaphoria.com/mintime.html

A family of 9 tone Scales with some 14 ones on the side.

2010-04-24T13:57:00.005-11:00

We have to thank John Chalmers for his Tritriadic Scales. It causes us to keep focus on the material generated by the combination of tonic, dominant and subdominant and how wide those parameters can be extended. It seems to be an idea that has been in the air recently. Warren Burt used in an installation, which you can listen to a bit here 3 11-limit harmonic series fifths apart. Such a structure while embedded in a Partch diamond (harmonic hexads on 1/1, 3/2, and 9/8) seems to stand on its own with it own life. The piece I am working on now for solo vibraphone that I will be playing in Brisbane and in Helenburgh explores these relationships within 7 tone scales much in the way Indonesians will use pentatonic within their 7 tone pelog. I mention some ideas about this here in relation to the idea of tempering to accommodate these three scales.
It appears it a similar idea caught the interest of Steve Grainger who took a classic 7-limit Pentatonic and extended it likewise up and down. This he mailed to me.
I made a mistake right off and assumed it was not a “constant structure”, that is a scale that where each occurrence of a ratio is always subtended by the same number of steps. It is a quality that gives a good melodic flow that otherwise only has harmonic relationships holding it together. Having both is worthwhile to pursue.
But I moved ahead and found 2 solutions right off for 14 tone scales. It is an unusual number to have as a scale and I seem to have come up with quite a few over the years. I am not sure why. These are illustrated and one could pick out of either set of alternatives depending on what one might like.

There is an important feature here though of Grainger’s 9-tone scale that as far as I know has been overlooked. It appears that there is a whole family of pentatonic based on 3 fifths plus 2 notes in between the fourths that will all produce 9 tone constant structures. These tones have to be larger than a 9/8 but smaller than a 32/27, most of your smaller minor thirds.

This scale would have been of interest to Rod Poole and note sure if La Monte Young has toyed with the idea, since it develops in the direction of 3 and 7s. It is in that territory

The Grounds of The Future Embassy of Anaphoria Island

2010-04-19T01:53:00.006-11:00

Pictures from Canberra on our recent trip to inspect the final grounds chosen for the future Embassy of Anaphoria Island and witness the hoisting of the flag~

Sand,Dust,Relics

2010-04-06T18:48:00.003-11:00

C. Forster’s Musical Mathematics which I reviewed in my last post reminded me of how much subharmonic material is in the musical past from places as far removed as Greece to China. While I have been working for quite a few years with various recurrent sequences (of which the Fibonacci series is just one), this exploration has been almost exclusively in the harmonic direction.

Having brought back my Marion Prosynth from the US, I remembered what a good tool it was to try out a tuning as one can use the LFOs to trigger notes in different ways so one can place weights on keys which will bring them up and down at different times. I often will let something like this run for quite some period periodically moving as I pass by or not satisfied with what I am hearing. One of my favorite series is Wilson’s Meta-Meantone though I haven’t used it as much. The CD Beyond the Windows Perhaps among the Podcorn is the big exception. If one seeds it right one can have a triad using the ol’ 27/20 wolf with a third that beat equally giving it a more ‘consonant’ sound. Playing through a few recurrent sequences in their subharmonic version I found that indeed Meta-Meantone had much to offer.

So here is a mere sampling I call Sand, Dust, Relics. That eventually moves into the triad mentioned in its minor version.

Cris Forster's 'Musical Mathematics'

2010-04-01T10:19:00.007-11:00

[C.Forster's Bass Marimba-Photo by Will Gullette]

Musical Mathematics by Cris Forster is a rigorous and highly organized book that deals with the construction and tuning of acoustic instruments. In a clear and graspable way, the book first tackles the physics of instruments, a subject that is often the greatest stumbling block for readers interested in building instruments of their own design. After a detailed examination of the subject of mass, Forster guides us through his knowledge of strings, which includes their physical properties and different usages on musical instruments. Only in retrospect does one realize what a careful choice as a starting point this is because it easily leads us to a more complex study of bars, rods, and tubes. Resonators follow, with thematic connections that reach back to earlier chapters and forward to air columns and flutes. A chapter on geometric progressions, logarithms, and cents concludes the first part of the book, and at the same time acts as a bridge to the study of tunings. The second part presents the reader with a strong foundation of the history of tuning in Western civilization and throughout the world, and the methods employed to realize these tunings. The book ends with an examination of Forster’s own instruments, which are extremely beautiful in both design and sound. He remains one of the greatest practitioners among instrument builders.

Although I have spent many years in the field, I discovered in Musical Mathematics a fresh and above all generous presentation of knowledge both with regard to acoustics and the history of scales. For example, the chapter on Chinese music discusses an approach to string tuning that I have never encountered in any other sources. Because of his own translations from other languages, Forster’s research is not limited to English texts; for this reason, his book is filled with many new sources that provide fresh perspectives of the historical record. The subjects of Indonesian, Indian, Arabian, Persian, and Turkish tunings are likewise treated with much care and depth. Perhaps the book might be compared to Harry Partch’s Genesis of a Music, but there are marked differences. The latter was written to explain Partch’s music and instruments, and only secondarily to help others build their own unique instruments. Musical Mathematics, on the other hand, focuses more on the needs of creative individuals; it encourages musicians to discover and explore aspects that are most useful and fruitful to their own work. It is toward this goal that Forster shares the benefit of his knowledge and experience.

Yes, here is a book I surely wish I would have had 30 years ago when I first started out as a just-intonation composer and instrument builder. Musical Mathematics is truly as useful to the beginner as to the most accomplished expert in the field; both will find much value in this book. Also, it is obvious from his thoroughness and practical insights that Cris is an authority who has actually worked with the materials — an important aspect that sets this publication apart. This is a work of depth and breadth written in a spirit of sharing and helpfulness for those interested in the subject. Musical Mathematics is a watershed book that will, without doubt, change acoustic instrument building for the better, and change many of our views on the history of mankind’s intonational practices.

I can't help to mention that it is

Available Here

http://www.amazon.com/Musical-Mathematics-Science-Acoustic-Instruments/dp/0811874079/ref=sr_1_1/181-1266760-1225831?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269533071&sr=8-1

Working on The Wilson Archives

2010-03-24T16:48:00.003-11:00

It is funny to think of one studying just the subject of tuning for over 20 years much less with one person, Erv Wilson. Such a subject while specialized is not inseparable from all the other aspects that go into music though. That is how it was possible and often the focus of discussion.
Much more than number games, once a scale is designed and what one understands what material is made available, one needs nothing more than ones ear to guide one into the territory one has developed.
Often I have been asked if I have been influenced by certain composers, but as in one case, I had not even heard their works until a little over a decade ago having absolutely no access to their work. Nor has much stuck since then either. Similarity can come about out of the nature of the material itself and what it enables one to do as well as what it wants to do. Say everyone in history had only done oils and a few pick up watercolor for the first time, different individuals are bound to discover and marvel at some of the things it can do. Possibly the real question is why one would want to use them like Oil since they already have the means to do so. Especially when using something as removed as glass.
Hopefully we can move on and see it as ‘sensitivity’ to the subject as opposed to an influence.
I have just returned from the US where the entire papers of this man were digitized. Myself organizing them into files of like subject while Terumi Narushima, my wife who is also working on a thesis on Erv’s Keyboard designs and strategies scanned the material. All this in the mere 17-day window we had to do it. Credit goes to Stephen Taylor also for prompting us to come to do this realizing that it needed to be done soon. Also he provided us with the workspace, even being our shuttle at times as well as diving in and putting in his full effort and advice. It would not have happened without him not to mention the others steps he has taken to help Erv’s well being. Jim French deserves much in this way too staying with him for extended stays beyond what anyone could be asked to do.
Others should be also mentioned as putting in their experience with the work in a few nighttime gatherings. These included Marcus Hobbs, Gary David, Jim French and Chuck Jonkey each who like Stephen and I and all of Erv’s students have developed their work in a singular and unique way that makes the idea of a Wilson “style” absurd. The visit also invoked Jose Garcia who I hadn’t seen in maybe 20 years as well as Marsha Mann telling Stephen what she remember of Erv.
Taylor requested, actually insisted I provide a proposed filing system in which all his could be organized and mapped. And after four goes at it, this is diagram is what I came up with (still in progress though). It reflects how the papers cross-reference themselves and not some personal preference on my part.
We ended up with over 355 files, some as many as a hundred pages and few less than a dozen. The files often were general and single documents scattered in different places. Fortunately only a few pieces that are a complete mystery yet these already are coming to light. So my work is still going on here and will take some time with the goal to make it available.
Erv stated that his work was like assembling a bird’s nest, finding the pieces and placing them in the right place when he found it. So maybe this is how his nest looks in the creative imaginative dimension he created it in and for.
He remains the one person in my life I must give the highest thanks to. I hope the finish product will be a testament to that thanks.

Harry Smith-"Early Abstractions" (1946-57), Pt. 3

2010-02-08T07:25:00.001-11:00

No. 5: Circular Tensions, Homage to Oskar Fischinger (1950)
No. 7: Color Study (1952)

Pictures from the NowNow Festival

2010-01-25T17:53:00.003-11:00

Thanks to Adrian for taking these. More wonderful shots of the festival can be seen herehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/ajebec/4302681073/
Performers were Kraig Grady
Terumi Narushima
Alex Masso (bottom pic)
and Finn Ryan who despite being the tallest is not seen.

The Chopi Timbila/Venancio Mbande

2010-01-17T08:54:00.004-11:00

The Chopi were thankfully the interest over a half century ago of Hugh Tracy who collected extensive data about their tuning, music and practice. Its closest tuning relatives in the world seem to be Burma and Thailand more so than those in Indonesia as originally thought. These traditional instruments with their tunings has now been reduced to the skill of this one man. The Chopi has been a prominent investigation and exploration of mine for years and is the basis of the tuning used on my hammer dulcimer and an organ (Meta-Mavila) . I consider it the second most important tuning i am working with. Hopefully it will manage to become an orchestra of instruments like i have been able to with Meta-Slendro. It is more important that this work continues where it started and good to see what we see here.

An Aperiodic dispatch from the CENTRE FOR ALPHABETICAL SEQUENCING

2010-01-12T13:44:00.003-11:00

TRANSCENDENTAL AND EMPIRICAL RESEARCH CENTER AND LIBRARY
OF ANAPHORIAN CRYPTOGRAPHY
418 HUGURU DRIVE
VEIVULANGIGI, ANAPHORIA

Rants the Applause

The vendor the crude country asset.

a mysterious expressway stirring underneath
the crowd presses a wary hope
a capable reminder that distances
the doubt in an abolition neighborhood.

Behind the ambassadors a parade roars after each funniest coincidence
Example a fraud appeared beside the pool bending
Spoke frog the staggering
A master gutter riots into any garbage and overcomes appeal
The offending group questions why another quiet manifesto
How can the wasteful ploy chain the infallible autumn magic?

Why does Pope ascend above the voice
so new catholic can recycle a grief
likewise treads the other fundamentalist on its followers

How did the prophet breed such a stereotype?

Even my passive corn objects.
Heaven waits for an approach toward a humane diameter.

Bequeath the psychologist proceeds a genocide.
The silent mob conveys the sneaky doom of wallet
a soldier groans with his bigot toed officer
Huff the helicopter frowns
A military expires across the horrific bridge
strays a gun strays

A bankrupt search insults one killer
A terrified commentator can only yawn
a contemporary repertoire that lifts the conspicuous policeman
The flagging civilian quibbles next to the receiver
How the collective terminator is apologized
This mass understands unhappy censorships

The intervening sunrise revolts near another mechanism.
a diagonal mud changes across the earth
Will any geography succeed to wash aside an indigenous interference?

An interactive hardware dances inside this culture.

The evolutionary reward stirs
Around the yearly childhood
The newcomer flavors a lifetime
The toy licenses a charmed adult

A stone dances over a heart.
A temple dances behind a lecture.
The applause rants throughout a seventh

Addition to National Gallery/Of Threads and Bridges

2009-12-28T18:24:00.008-11:00

What is believed to be the oldest depiction of Anaphoria by a foreigner arrived yesterday from Japan accompanied by the interim ambassador R. Tomasula. Carbon dating places it at over 3500 years old and in pristine condition for a woodcut of this age. There has been much speculation about the arc between Anaphoria's two highest peaks as it coincides with many myths of this time as a connection that existed between two famous holy men who while never meeting seemed to provide the people with almost instantaneous dual proclamations.
It was known as the time of the great thread or bridge depending on which peak one is able to trace as the source of the story. Much to do as also been made about the actual curve itself resembling the exact proportions of some of Japan's famous bridges.

notation/invention-Kris Tiner

2009-12-19T11:21:00.004-11:00

http://kristiner.com/blog/category/compositions/
It is not very often that one gets to get a good look at those whose work lie within the boundaries of composition and improvisation. Kris seamlessly combines both. I have always gained both musically and conceptually from the way Kris puts things- down on a page and also how he threats it. Especially check out Ele(jg)y and Recourse to Unison. At least!

review and dream

2009-12-07T12:15:00.002-11:00

Perhaps it is odd to repeat this review but i found it quite accurate which is rare and welcomed. He missed the instruments but that is minor as he quite understood what was going on in the music.
http://www.wonderfulwoodenreasons.co.uk/
" Anaphoria - Footpaths and Trade Routes
(ini.itu #0902)
LP
Kraig Grady has been making his beautifully rotund music for quite a while and it shows. The struck bell (or prayer bowl) like ringing tones upon which his music is established are an erratically gentle fall of sound, unpredictable and incandescent. It's form is reminiscent of John Cage's Music for Prepared Piano but of a more elegant and stately nature.
Grady has previously recorded for ensembles but the three pieces here are two solo and one edited amalgam. All are delicately poised with shifts in tension given sparingly as the music waxes and wanes. There is a moonlit quality that is hugely immersive and compulsive. The music has a pull and a call based on it's refusal to settle into one particular shape and as such I've found yourself losing hours of time as I relentlessly flip the album over replaying each side in turn.
( www.iniitu.net )"

As an aside i have a recent dream here which surely is a response to reading Jung's The Red Book. While his work has always increased my dreaming, not usually in this direction.
http://annandaledreamgazetteonline.blogspot.com/

Two Recent Sculptures

2009-11-21T18:05:00.002-11:00

Our special Antenna to get Radio Free Anaphoria and our Guardian Kachina at the outpost

Prelude to a Whirlpool

2009-11-18T10:06:00.003-11:00

Thanks to Mike Cooper for putting this up who work can be found linked to this video. A very early show of Chris Abrahams and I and early in the set. Perhaps turn down the volume a bit if it distorts. It is not easy to record such thing off the cuff. It has evolved quite a bit since here and even the instruments have changed color:)

Talaprastara

2009-11-05T09:20:00.003-11:00

Anyone who has crossed paths with Erv Wilson will sooner or later will be given a copy of Meru Prastara. So when looking at South Indian meters and stumbling across the term above, I had to take notice. In South India they have a method to figure out all the combinations and permutations, but they do so in a very specific order which when listed in a row one can easily fail to see the pattern. In these two diagrams the subdivisions of 6 and 7 are arranged in a way that i think makes the pattern method clearer.

Inverting Cage's Sqare Root Form/Wilson's Geometries

2009-10-20T11:38:00.008-11:00

It has taking me a while to figure this out. The answer finally came when I was working on another problem. My brain is just not that linear.

Some time back while looking at Takemitsu’s application of Cage’s square root idea to Pitch, I stumbled upon its relationship to certain geometric structures of Erv Wilson. Pitch or duration doesn’t matter in that the structure is the same. I posted this to the Silence list that I was on at the time. I repeat the jest of that below.

This is the simplest example using only 4 durations. This gives us a good visual representation as to what happens with more complex examples. Here is the resulting square using A B C D to be what ever you want.

AA AB AC AD

BA BB BC BD

CA CB CC CD

DA DB DC DD

Now compare this with this excerpt from one of Wilson’s letters to John Chalmers found here
http://anaphoria.com/CPStoC-pt1.PDF shown above

One has only to replace the number by the letters.
What interests me though is the second diagram on this page.
Which shows a possible variation of Cage’s square root idea in reverse with each successive element having the reverse relationship above. To make this square, one uses the complementary elements not included in the original. This is what i had missed despite being right there in front of me.

BCD CD BD BC

DC ACD AD AC

DB DA ABD AB

BC CA BA ABC

It is interesting to observe where the two intersect which he does on the next page.

More often than not such a form is used with more elements. With 6 elements [here using the first 6 odd numbers] we can see below what happens as a like wise inter structure and its complements.

The thing about the set made by the intersection forms a cycle and makes it easy to proceed to the next element in a smooth fashion. same with the other ones i mention later.
There is no reason at this point no to consider the combinations of 3 out of 6 and if we look at those points where it interests with it complement we get the Eikosany. One of Erv’s Favorite structures. Which you can find it the article linked above.

I had a dream two nights ago where i had my Meru bars in a pentagram which i post next. Perhaps my mind is more linear than i thought.

Ethiopian Ortodox Tewahdo Song

2009-10-19T22:09:00.001-11:00

Thanks to Albert Ortega for finding this

A Scale Develops: Rod Poole's Tuning

2009-10-14T23:00:00.003-11:00

It is often easier to talk about someone else’s work than one‘s own. Here I can do a bit of both. Rod Poole and I ended up sharing an interest in microtonality that moved from my introducing him to the field to him as a friendship as a shared partner of similar concerns, questions, and often difficulties. We hadn’t known each other very long when I lent him a 12-tone guitar tuned to my centaur tuning (pictured in red). It was this tuning that became his point of departure, which is illustrated in this picture.

Later Rod shared living in the house with Erv Wilson. Something I had also done twice. It has to be one of the most highly concentrated learning environments one can find one self in. I provided both the knowledge and tools he needed to find what suited him to create his own palette. This is one of the great gifts of working with a teacher like Erv Wilson.

The process I find interesting mainly in that it has a contour that resembles my own, possibly it is universal. Rarely does anyone build directly on previous paths. Often one backs up to some point first and venture in a different direction.

In our case we both worked with larger number of tones and found our self pulling back to less. Rod in turn took what he would always tell me as ‘the best 7 limit 12 scale for the guitar, period’, (something he was more sure of than me) but dropped all the 5 limit intervals. [These are the hollowed red dots in the diagram]. La Monte’s tuning brought his attention to the possibility of dropping 5s for higher limit possibilities. He preferred to add 11 and 13 over 7s though. He was not one to waste time on over explored territory. Originally he added a 17 and a 19 harmonic, I think to try them out. He felt though how the instrument felt under his hand was a prime concern, and these added more problems than he gained for musically). His tuning is the solid red and black notes together. He had 19 tones originally after toying with 22 I believe, but pulled back to 17. All after taking my 12 and keeping only 8 of 3 and 7 limit intervals. I myself ventured out to 31 tones before pulling back to 22.

Those who know tuning might say is quite a distance from where Rod started to where he ended but he preserved the consistencies in the tuning. When I saw his notes, I smiled recognizing him being a student of Erv, there is no doubt of this.

There is more though. His frets ran straight across and he did much to explore different open strings tunings, as this is something he saw as the guitars strong point. Besides tetrachords he liked finding those close intervals such overlapping of tunings can provide. Likewise the harmonic spacings natural to the guitar molded by such overlaps. We have nothing on what he did with open string tuning in detail for his own playing outside the bowed guitar work. I know that he would tune strings 7 limit intervals away from personal statements he made.
What other push and pulls happened on this level before and after we might never know.

Both are music are scale based. Presently I pulled back to a 12 tone tuning that pushes the nature of what a scale of this number can be can be and remain so. This tuning, a Meta-Slendro based on Wilson’s, I have tune out to 22 on a different instrument, but I find that it loses something by having this many tones. For contrast I have another 9 tone ( which I had taken out to 16 tones) that uses many of the intervals that I the other lacks. It kind of plays ‘Pelog’ to my Slendro. Less tones need be no less adventuresome. One can explore all the ways a particular pitch can interact with all the others. While there are those venturing forth by just simple harmonic relations, letting harmony lead the way, melody and scale can also lead . In this situation harmony can develops more on the lines of ‘pandiatonic thinking’. By this, the free use of tones within a scale as opposed to the free scale developed out of harmony. One need not have to go back the way one came, there is no problem jumping from one point to the next. These were also concerns of Rod’s.

Yang Jing and Pierre Favre: Magic Moments from Unique Duo

2009-10-12T13:18:00.001-11:00

Thanks to Phillip Gelb for this

Kadri Gopalnath

2009-10-04T14:05:00.001-11:00

Thanks to Warren Burt for this

Anaphoria: Footpaths and Trade Routes

2009-09-26T09:50:00.007-11:00

The people of Anaphoria are pleased that both some of their oldest and newest music appears on this first piece of vinyl made available in a limited edition from ini.itu We are grateful for their extreme effort and care in making this possible. Two excerpts available here. Complete press release available from this page.

The Quiet Erow/The Premiere Shadow Play from Anaphoria

2009-09-06T10:50:00.005-11:00

The Shadow Theatre of Anaphoria in association with Playscript presents their first Australian performances

THE QUIET EROW
[new and improved]
Fri and Sat. 8pm
Oct 9 &10,16 &17
at the Bushland Chapel 94 Parkes Street Helenburgh
The Story of an Anaphorian Prenatal "Robin Hood"
starring Kraig Grady [director], Seth Harris, Mark Kennedy, Hamish Lane, Terumi Narushima, Friederike Krishnabhakdi-Vasilakis, and others
Bookings 4294 1695
more information 61 2 4271 4397

more images

Ainu Mukkuri

2009-08-31T00:34:00.001-11:00

"RANAD-EK" Thailand Traditional Instrument

2009-08-31T00:25:00.000-11:00

Phin Pia, A romantic plucked instrument

2009-08-31T00:14:00.001-11:00

"Changsaton" Northern Thai new world music

2009-08-31T00:10:00.000-11:00

Rod Poole- Voice of the Bowed Guitar

2009-08-29T12:17:00.009-11:00

After Rod Poole's passing, I assembled a concert of shorten selections of some of Rods pieces from his works for three bowed guitars. I felt it was better to represent his variety on the subject and inspire maybe others to perform them as well as to allow people to hear how differently they were. Something the months in between his performances did not us able to do. In his notes we could find only 4 versions of which we realized three. It was quite enlightening what he had done.
Not only were none of the guitars tuned the same way in a single composition, instead much care was directed to the spacing of chords and doublings for resonance in what must have required much experimentation on his part. Rod did not tune to any reference pitch but worked with the sound and timbre of his guitar to start building a piece yet one version did require a capo around where the sharp 4 would be on an open string. While one might acknowledge that this began where he could get the intervals he wanted but also i imagine he also wanted to investigate that shorter string timbres as well as the difference the strings would react under the string tension.
Each of these versions represented a different way of approaching the limitation of a single chord. Each of the four versions he left couldn’t be more different in construction; the utilization of harmonics 13-14-17, an unusual Tetrachord, a 7-tone scale, or a 5-tone scale taken predominantly from the subharmonic series. On Sept 12 in Los Angeles SASSAS will be presenting a tribute to Rod taking these as it foundation. David Beardsley is also planning on presenting one in the future. I myself would like to bring this work to Australia but i also hope to write my own at some point in tribute to him and allowing the idea to continue to grow which is what Rod's approach was all about.

CATcerto

2009-07-27T21:03:00.000-11:00

Michael Tenzer posted this on a list:)

Cheb Zahouani-Rai

2009-07-26T16:55:00.004-11:00

Cheb Zahouani has always been one of my favorite Rai Artist. I have always loved the scales as well as the Synth sounds which in most other context just wouldn't work. Here they do. I am amazed how it doesn't bother me that it takes over two and a half minutes for him to even start the song.

Recent Correspondance

2009-07-24T01:34:00.001-11:00

Assist
Dear Sir/Madam,

AM King Joe and i want to know if you can assist me to make an order for scales. I would need to know the types you have in stock,let me know the prices and also the types of credit cards you do accept for payment,i also don't need shipping cost because i will be coming to your shop for pickup or recommend a shipping company for the pickup when the scales are ready. Please Advise ASAP So that the project of the scales will be fast.

Regards,
King.

Is it safe?

2009-07-21T21:57:00.008-11:00

For those of you interested in Just Intonation, i have started a yahoo discussion group here.
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/JustIntonation/?yguid=42458

Here is a safe haven to discuss the practice without having to justify itself. Something it seems it has to spend too much time doing. It is the music that matters and even though I can come up with many advantages of JI over other systems, i don't feel like putting any more energy into that. It gives us useful and rewarding possibilities, what more can one ask for. It is small group but the quality of those involved is high and most of all positive. It is more than open to those who are just getting their feet wet or want to hear what people are doing with it.

Another Yahoo Tuning Group

2009-07-21T21:57:00.000-11:00

An Eastern Western for Koto

2009-07-07T01:38:00.005-11:00

A short little composition for Koto. The scale is derived from Meta-Mavila. This scale was inspired by the Chopi tuning in the village of this name. The mode chosen was which most resembled a Japanese scale so we might have added some S.E. African reference in the title too. It is dedicated to my lovely wife, Terumi Narushima who supplied the photo of her Koto

Uroborean Mirrors-Excerpt of Audio Installation

2009-06-28T14:16:00.004-11:00

There is an excerpt of a piece now up in Newcastle, NSW, Australia. for headphone only listening on this page.
It takes my Meta Slendro splitting into two scales that produce beats only in the brain as the wave never touch. It starts unbelievably soft but does get louder. More so beyond the limit of the excerpt.
More later!

Ali Akbar Khan

2009-06-22T01:29:00.000-11:00

A soul who will be missed. but not his soul work which stays with us.

Two from India

2009-06-22T01:21:00.002-11:00

I have Mark Kennedy to thank for the first and Warren Burt for the second. Both send my way today.

http://www.emusic.com/album/Pandit-Kamalesh-Maitra-The-World-s-Musical-Traditions-Vol-10-Tabla-Tar-MP3-Download/10865021.html

Dimi Mint Abba

2009-06-17T01:41:00.001-11:00

Ooleya Mint Amartichitt

2009-06-17T01:30:00.001-11:00

THE FIRST PUPPET IN A NEW LAND

2009-06-14T13:08:00.002-11:00

Is anyone surprised that it would be Ned Kelly? Here he is, almost Kachina like, an outsider who preserves it at all cost.
For the last 10 years I have been making my own puppets for the Shadow Theatre of Anaphoria. My first was a fish. Almost all the human ones I have made have been based on traditional models in a desire to fully understand what goes on in every detail before undertaking the task myself. Even here choices have been made. Often I will survey as many variants of a puppet I could find, selecting what spoke to me most and what harmonized together. Traditional puppets are multilayered enigmas carrying an extensive history with past remnants hidden and informing the present ones. Often a stylistic code is used throughout all of them. They can consider the nature of flame, or the need to represent humans and gods where such images are not allowed. It does not say I haven’t kept ones eyes on more modern designs. Often one finds two common ones, the oversimplified puppets or realistic ones. These counterparts have often failed to hold me. What was missing? The director Eugenio Barba talks about how even a still actor on stage has to remain energized in their posture. In the case of a puppet this is even more necessary as one cannot rely on gesture or motion as easily. The puppet has to be ready and attentive at every moment. It is a new concern for puppet design and opens the door to furthering this art is general. So this puppet was a result of this direction.

As the opening invocation at the Stockhausen Day of Light

2009-06-07T11:28:00.008-11:00

At the Sydney Con on Saturday they has an entire day of Stockhausen's music. Stop. Ylem. Hymnen. The 2nd act for Tuesday- Day of light. Ensemble Offspring doing a wonderful version of 'Set Sail for the Sun' as well as shimmering arrangements of his 12 pieces for the Zodiac. I was full by the time we left.
As we were traveling up from Wollongong we decided we would catch the entire 11 hours. So we arrived at 1 to hear what was supposedly was going to be a performance of some of the schools jazz musicians jamming on his work. We entered as Warren Summers was talking to the director of the festival as they had not shown up. I mentioned that i had played much of the '7 days' and Warren had also expressed an interest in doing something to him. So with an audience waiting he said. "Well go down there and play". So along with Terumi Narushima we did so without any discussion at all besides playing 6 hand piano as all that was available. I ventured out first but for the longest time no one joined. Finally Terumi joined in on the upper part of the keyboard and still some time later Warren came in with prerecorded sound that he had of his just intonation piano music. Warren I thought was a processing of what we were playing which gives you an idea of how well it fit. Internally i followed both the instructions for INTENSITY and COMMUNION plus the plus and minus signs from what i could remember of SPIRAL. We played for 50 minutes which seem less to me. A few people came up wanted to see the score. It was highly successful and was honored to 'channel' the spirit of Karlheinz in with Warren Summers and Terumi Narushima.

Wollongong show 5/6 7:30

2009-05-24T13:50:00.002-11:00

For those in the local environs.......

Terumi and I will be playing at what promises to be an interesting art opening/happening. If in the Wollongong area, a good time to catch us.

Clocks and Clouds consist
of Terumi Narushima on Meta-Slendro reed organ and Kraig Grady on Meta-Slendro vibraphone.

Fri. 5/6 7:30 255 Keira St.
Wollongong

From Artaud to Partch

2009-05-21T21:21:00.008-11:00

Quote from Artaud's 'The Theater and Its Double' (p.95 of my Evergreen book edition)

"MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS: They will be treated as objects and as a part of the set.
Also, the need to act directly and profoundly upon the sensibility, through the organs invites research, from the point of view of sound, into qualities which present-day musical instruments do not possess and which require the revival of ancient and forgotten instruments or the invention of new ones. Research is also required , apart from music, into instruments and appliances which, based on special combinations or new alloys of metal, can attain a new range and compass, producing sounds or noises that are unbearably piercing."

Elsewhere Artaud talks about them being of human size and dimensions.
Partch must have found himself if pretty full agreement with this, except for the concentration on metal. Still many of his percussive instruments were more than capable of being piercing. If would have been interesting if the theater community would have picked up on his work before the music one. Probably the development would have been of little difference. In fact his work still exist as theater secondly even though he was on the forefront of those who took Artaud and ran with it. He still deserve more notice from this direction.

Artistic fashions/trends as a whole

2009-05-18T00:29:00.003-11:00

I really have never understood movements especially from the inside out. From the outside, they can be greatly entertaining. Not so much if one has to or feels forced to participate to be legitimate. For the growth of an art, the last thing that is needed is everyone investigating the same idea, and even more so for so long. Imagine all the poets in the world congregated at the same bluff and each writing poem after poem about the landscape. Sure a few would bring something unique. It does seem though a bad idea considering all the other bluffs in the world that are being ignored because of this. More often the bluff seems arbitrary if not shallow and/or a trivial choice. We find little out about a forest by everyone taking the same path in. How many pictures on flicker are needed from the same spot. Such situations resemble prisons.
It is not a matter of individual ego. It is just more expedient to have many people investigating many different branches that the present has unveiled. Some will naturally find themselves drawn to some like areas but not everyone in a niche and/or its pseudo-opposite. The more paths taken seems the best way for a whole art to grow wider, if not also upward.

More meanings of the 108 secret Anaphorian signs that cannot be shown

2009-05-08T13:22:00.002-11:00

More meanings of the 108 secret Anaphorian signs that cannot be shown
62. The path that is apparent only after much time and reflection.
63. When a crystalline formation informs an array of thoughts
64. That prophesy attained through grasping the waves of balance between opposites.
65. What we call and identify as personal guides
66. What is separated to be reconfigured into a better bond
67. The most individual trait that is most useful to others.
68. The study of the sparks that lead to an awaking from an oppressing hypnosis.
69. A relentless force set upon working on that which has been spoiled.
70. The pleasing glimmer at the end of a task.

Cudamani-

2009-05-07T11:28:00.003-11:00

Probably the most important composers collective and/or communal music making organization (well more than music!) on the globe at the moment. anything but your standard Balinese Gamelan.

Inuit Singing/ 2 examples

2009-04-30T01:44:00.001-11:00

Randomness

2009-04-19T19:36:00.001-11:00

The man replied,”Things as they are,
Are changed upon the blue guitar.”-Wallace Stevens

I have a small blank black book where I have kept a record of practically every I Ching hexagram I have thrown since 1977. Perhaps I am somehow deceiving myself, but every time I have thrown it, it seems to make uncanny sense. More than once when it seemed to stray, I have found I tabulated it wrong. It is more than the traditional method too. I use a variety of multi-sided dice that I pick and choose from, depending on the subject. The configuration attempted to coincide with the probability found in the yarrow stick method. Why did I pick dice? It seemed to fit my (post) western concept of chance. Las Vegas. A place I loathe. but where the power of chance is worshipped.
Funny thing though when I have used a computer to throw the I Ching ithey NEVER seem to fit. One wonders whether the programs are all defective or ‘limited’ in someway or there is more influence one puts into the results than one realizes when going the corporeal route. Perhaps my ‘attitude’. Tarot, which I have less experience with, my experience has been pretty much the same. I suspect some aspect of randomness is intangable.
Musically I have used random methods primarily when I was investigating the nature of inversions of chords. To sustain a chord on some of my faster decay instruments I would ‘randomize’ the members of the chord, learning that it worked better to play the extremes less often with the middle more. I am sure that what I do is less than what a mathematical producing might give me, yet musically the result fits as good or better. But there is an interesting symbiotic relation going on here that I think could and should be explored more. What I am doing in these instances is only because of what I have heard machines or methods do. One could say I am informed by these random generators. As there are different random processes, it seems that they each could be used as an exposure to activate similar activity within a performers ourselves. To some extent I am sure this has already happen. One wonders if a Feldman could have happen without the input of his friends exploring various random applications musically and also visually. Intuition relies on what it is presented with. It seem the process could go back and forth.
It partially leads me out of a dilemma I was having.
“ What is the difference between a piece that uses a random method and one that says it is, but doesn’t”. One could put all types of other things to replace random to be fair, but I think I made enough problems with others asking these types of questions. There is still the aspect of partisan attitude associated with method and process that becomes meaningless if one cannot tell one realization from another. We don’t need such emperor clothes, the phenomenon is or should be enough
We can see that the process can be much more interactive with other processes in a deeper sense than when one thing literally mirrors another. Our tools can inform us and in turn we can inform them.

First Contact-Film

2009-04-19T03:15:00.001-11:00

Original footage of the 'first contact' between Papuan highlanders and Australian gold prospectors in the 1930's, together with reflections from surviving participants on their swift introduction to Western colonialism.
Ripped from the DVD "Indigenous Resistance in New Guinea" made by Solidarity South Pacific: www.eco-action.org/ssp - respect!«

Thanks to Carl lumma for finding this

Hmong Qeej

2009-04-19T02:39:00.002-11:00

thanks to Taylan Susam for finding the first of these. The following i found of great interest

INSTRUMENTS

2009-04-18T15:37:00.004-11:00

Not all instruments are equal in their flexibility. Compare what can do with a piano and finger cymbals. I have a wonderful recording of a solo of the latter by Madjid Khaladj. Here on Tombak

Human beings will always be able to make music out of just about anything.
The relationship with instruments and people works both ways -each dictates what the other will do. Often time a defective one will result in an artist exploring just that defect. Keith Jarretts busted electric piano key on Miles LIVE/EVIL became the whole focus of the song as Jarrett first circles around it then drones on it. I have seen Chris Abrahams do the similar things on a “bad’ piano with finding some unique chord/timbre only available there at that moment.
Still such an instrument offers much choice in variation in sound.
While it is wonderful to see so many new instruments one would hope we can recognize the ones that offer more than one sound or timbre, one that allow the artist somewhere to go and discover beyond the immediate. It needn’t be complex as even set of bowls tuned by water gets one a broad range of expression. Often we might see an individual who no longer uses an instrument in ANY conventional way and I remember Jim French questioning why they just make an instrument that does that to start with and then venture from there. It is a good question.
What we need are instruments we can continue to explore on, not hem us in to a sound or two. Conventional ones have their own history and shouldn't be avoided. In fact how far can we get beyond variations of these great models?

SCALE

2009-04-17T22:03:00.005-11:00

It seems that in any form of communal music, scale and/or scales offer more advantages than disadvantages. I was reminded of this at the first rehearsal of a shadow play. Terumi responded how forgiving the scale on the instruments was, as if one could not hit a ‘wrong note’ yet assisted with what one wanted to do. Such was the hopeful goal when picking it years ago for use with this medium. It had to have a range of expression. So the overused generic harmonic series would not work. ( I don't think i could stand another piece on the harmonic series, especially on C)
One possibility is scale where all intervals are basically the same dissonant/consonant factor to each other. Otherwise one is working with tendencies require special handling either to resolve or avoid resolution. This allows any note to be used with any other and harmony often resulting from a combination of melodic impulses and/or doubling. Such scales are common to Africa and Indonesia, places where communal music is might be the most developed. Perhaps a good pathway is not to go outside of the great knowledge contained within these musics, but to proceed deeper within how it is put together. On the other hand if this is where we are going, the atomization of ‘sounds for themselves’ seem the foreign to where we want to get to, or is offering little in itself out of hand.
Another aspect of scale is the ‘orientation’ it provides. While this can be done by other parameters, A scale can provide an already mapping of terrain that is 'not' being included in what is being heard at the moment. We needn’t go back to 5 and 7 tone scales even though that is an area I don’t think has been exhausted. Even Coltrane returned to such material on more than one occasion. One can take scale also as a point of departure that can be expanded upon yet remain as dynamic.
One more aspect of scale though is in can creating an environmental ambiance by it very nature of its materials. By its own internal interaction with itself certain scales will carry further than others in distance. Others can be compared with placing of stones is a brook. One can create patterns of waves that are a delight to the eye. The same can be done with sound waves. [ one can add one more and it all falls apart into turbulence. One reason why I shy from combine tunings, especially 12 ET with my own. It undermines the very nature of my tuning to interact with the environment. While I do think it is possible to combine certain scales (not all) , we know too little about this at this time, the physics is already highly complex with even singular tunings and we are far from exhausting those possibilities.]

Problems of Intent and Conceptual art/music

2009-04-11T11:41:00.007-11:00

This originally was written as a response to a blog entry here
http://audibleaffinities.blogspot.com/2009/04/social-music-with-brandon-labelle.html
but since my comment would not post, i expanded upon it here. In the last paragraph he poses some good questions. i get stuck before i get to those.

To depend on intent or even conception appears problematic in that one must assume the transition from a mesocosm, say an intermediary realm of visionary imagination from which the conception appears, into the corporeal is possible without any transformation. The implication is then that they are completely alike in syntax for this to be possible. I find this doubtful even if we find them inseparable. Change occurs and these type of changes also deserve reflection. Stockhausen, who to many represent the non reflective creative spirit run loose appears to not be so. If one reads his comments about his 'from the 7 days' works, one observes that he did not shy away from reflecting that the 'results' were often different than the 'intent' of the piece. In fact he quite celebrating what he in turn learned by how these ideas manifested. Concept requires an understanding of what happens when it is enacted. Otherwise we risk degenerating into an idealistic dictatorship of 'spirit over matter' not far from the realm of religion.

The relationship between concept and realization seems best when a marriage of the two. Each adding to the mix and mutually reflecting upon their own interaction. Hence one small step toward an 'inner commune'

Charles Olson film-Polis is This

2009-04-05T23:16:00.008-11:00

I could have embedded all these but i thought it best just to provide a link to the source. A wonderful documentary on Olson that deserves more attention.
http://www.polisisthis.com/watch-now.html
While much has been said about his relation and influence on musical improvisation. I think his work has implication for Intuitive music in general. Not to mention looking at the possibilities of musical passages as being related by their 'energy' as opposed to ' technical systems' that often fail to be comprehensible. It surely leads us back to a phenomenological experience of it.

Beuys and Soleri (with a latter entrance of Partch)

2009-03-30T04:04:00.004-11:00

Entrance to Arcosanti (in progress)

While I am sure both would object, there are some striking similarities between the first two above. Both of their visions are advancements in holism. Both have been labeled incorrectly “Utopian”, for neither present answers, only a process that at most seems to be a ‘first step’ that then require reflection before proceeding. Space is both their medium of utmost importance being the medium for social change.

Both place much importance of desirability over objectivity that is a marked differentiation to the work of Duchamp and Cage. These latter individuals can be looked upon as those who expanded the concept of “framing” and how that affects and defines their medium. This framing is so powerful, they illustrated that anarchy (in the form of randomness) could indeed be objectively encompassed within it .
At the time, there were those who objected to this anarchy and randomness being more a symptom of capitalism; its nature of having no goal and it lack of taking responsibility for the course it takes. This global economic meltdown might for us cause us to reflect on the process of the economic anarchy that has caused it. It is too shaky of ground to come to a conclusion on this alone.

Not only Beuys or Soleri, but many artists of which Harry Partch would quite rightfully
fit are/were more concerned with ‘working on what had been spoiled”. There is a recognition that the unsorted product of an underdeveloped or damaged might not be automatically of artistic worth. Intuition, real or simulated, likewise cannot be any guarantee and this is plausibly a more realistic criticism.

Instead a space for the myriad of forces that exist within the individual, what James Hillman refers to as the ‘Inner Commune’, is the space Beuys and Soleri, and Partch wish to celebrate and develop toward its fullness. All this work about space, and in the end, it is all directed toward inward.

Beuys- Grond

two dreams

2009-03-22T14:11:00.001-11:00

best to read March 21 before 22,2009
http://annandaledreamgazetteonline.blogspot.com/

Some 60+ Gems

2009-03-22T13:00:00.006-11:00

I could post another 20 but i thought i would go with maybe exceptional, maybe more overlooked representations.

Even outside the message, note the angular background line in the ensemble of this tune. It is quite unusual how it comes in and disappears thoughout. I can't think of another example like it.

Now where does one hear counterpoint like this in the first tune. As an aside my Stepfather was the head scenic artist on this show.

Scott Walker who started in the 60's is still going. He is probably as close as we are going to get to Schubert as a song writer we might see in our life time. This songs takes excepts from the trials of Eichmann mixed with Henry the VIII Queen Anne.

you can't embed the following. Yes Nancy Sinatra! with Lee Hazelwood. Now if one wanted to write a 16th century mass on a popular tune. This one would be my first choice. The song always struck me as about man's relationship to nature as well as a warning not to meddle with it too much either.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb-SVPJM4L4

Sound Art

2009-03-20T22:56:00.005-11:00

Here are a few of the more fun things used in a lecture on "Sound Art" at the University of Wollongong this last week.

Premiere of Corroded Communes-Solo Piano

2009-03-12T11:43:00.005-11:00

For those of you without macro-lenses for Eyes, The concert here includes a premiere of my first piano piece in maybe 35 years.

piano racket: music for the unconventional piano: march 13, 2009, 8PM: Chapel Space @ the Good Shepherd Center: 4649 Sunnyside Ave N, Seattle

The concert includes another premiere: Flirt by Bryron Au Yong as well as works by Lois Vierk, David Lang, George Crumb and John Cage. Quite a line up
I am immensely grateful to Tiffany Lin for making this opportunity available to me. The tuning has to be one of the more conservative i have used but that is no reflection on it beauty. It is a temperament invented by George Secor which works well for much 12 tone Equal temperament music. It differs than most temperaments in that it combines the recurrent sequence idea of Erv Wilson's Meta-meantone with attempting to preserve the idea of triads being equal beating. If one had to write for 12 Tone instruments but wanted a more pleasing tool to do so, this is a strong candidate. I tend to think that it might have persauded Lou Harrison to give it a try along his use of Werk. 3.
But the proof is in the pudding and recommend trying it yourself. Here is the tuning called Secor 2 as expressed in deviation for 12 ET. It is spelled out so that everything is lower to not scare those afraid to tune up. Ideally one would keep A at A=440. if you try it out let me know how it works for you.
Secor 2
C 0.0
C# -14.1
D -5.9
D# -7.1
E -10.7
F - 0.1
F# -14.4
G -2.9
G# -9.9
A -8.3
A# -2.1
B -13.6

[i am adding this info from George Secor]
! Secor5_23STX.scl
!
George Secor's synchronous 5/23-comma temperament extraordinaire
12
!
62/59
66/59
559/472
591/472
315/236
331/236
353/236
745/472
395/236
210/118
221/118
2/1

SABBATH DANCE for Jon Rose-Performed on electrified fence

2009-03-09T15:59:00.004-11:00

While setting up for the performance in Bundanon, at one point i just struck an electrical fence near by. I noticed with large mallets you can control the pitch by how far away your are from a post. Unfortunately my head set to monitor the sound was only so long. i tried some stuff with out them but it seems passed a certain point you start getting higher harmonics of what ever the lower tone tends to be. When i had a free moment i threw off this improv which i dedicate to Jon Rose who is well known for his bowing of fences around Australia.

Pictures from Ten Trenches

2009-03-08T18:08:00.004-11:00

A great thanks to Doug Spowart and Victoria Cooper for taking these photos together

Music for Trenches/in Progress

2009-03-03T12:47:00.005-11:00

Ten Trenches

Digging for the Past, Unveiling the Future

A partnership between Bundanon Trust, University of Wollongong and Macquarie University
Funded by Arts NSW

Ten Trenches investigates the impact of sea-level rise on the Shoalhaven River in NSW. Auger holes and slot trenches reveal the flood behaviours of the river from up to 8,000 years ago – a period when the sea was about a metre higher than present – a level which is predicted to reoccur within the next 100 years.

Estuaries of the past; Centuries of dirt; We dive knife-in-mouth through tonnes of earth

A collaboration between a site-based artists and a river scientist: two brothers Michael and Tim Cohen. Ten Trenches is part of Bundanon Trust’s SITEWORKS project; a three year conversation between artists, scientists, historians, archaeologists and local people exploring the Bundanon site.

CREW: Tim Cohen, Michael Cohen, Sydney Bouhaniche, Oscar Garratt, Kraig Grady, Steph Kemode, Cecil McLeod, Katia Molino, Terumi Narushima, Brent Peterson, Craig Walsh.

UPDATE

By Day Two the crew of Ten Trenches were already 27 metres down, drilling through 15 metres of beautiful soft river sand to reach a particular time period known as Pleistocene, which dates from 10,000 years and older. The crew have discovered traces of an extinct species of tree.

On Day Three the seven-tonne excavator arrived and the digging of the slot trenches begun. To date, four trenches have been dug, positioned throughout the paddocks at Bundanon.

Elephant paints Elephant

2009-03-03T07:21:00.002-11:00

Here is an Elephant painting a picture of an elephant
I could not figure out how to embed it. if you know how let me know.

Johnathan Marmor's google concert directions plus An Interview in Deviant Nation.

2009-02-27T00:36:00.009-11:00

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Brooklyn,+NY+11217&daddr=Marrickville,+NSW+Australia&hl=en&geocode=&mra=ls&dirflg=w&sll=7.30648,-152.856575&sspn=95.142781,186.328125&ie=UTF8&z=3
And here is a recent Interview that is appearing in Deviant Nation by Seth Harris. This should keep one guessing how this happened. (link now fixed)!

Concert with Chris Abrahams/Aaron Hull

2009-02-24T16:48:00.002-11:00

From an Interview with Tessa Dick

2009-02-21T22:38:00.004-11:00

What was Philip K. Dick’s relationship to music?

TD: Phil loved music. His first job was as a clerk in a record store (Art Music). He loved classical music first, but in the 1960s he discovered rock and roll. At one time he played a triangle in an ensemble put together by the avant-garde composer Harry Partch.

Now wouldn't that had been nice to listen and see!

Recent Additions to Our North American Embassy

2009-02-21T17:31:00.004-11:00

Added to the Main Library
THE TONALITY OF THE GOLDEN SECTION-Walter O'Connell from Xenharmonikon 15 (1993)
also Selected Papers of George Secor

Larger pictures on the
MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS AND TUNINGS page

Gendhing Canright added to the downloads page

DEPT OF OVERSEAS DISPATCH and other connected pages
Has recently been declassified

Two links added to the
LIBRARY OF PROGRESS page while it is in progress
(Best approached from there)

PRESENT EXHIBITION
Untitled piece related to the use of strings in anaphoria

an ever changing about page

Page replaces previous pages
THE JOURNAL OF ANAPHORIAN MUSIC THEORY
Plus about the journal page
link to score and recording of Little Big Horn

In the THE PRETER-NATIONAL GALLERY
http://anaphoria.com/galry.html
A Tapestry of THE HORIZONTAL FORMS OF VOWELS OF LONG DURATIONS
seen above

New page under construction
THE OFFICES OF THE 13 MINISTRIES

Tuinic -Harmonic horn from Romania-Apuseni Mountains

2009-02-17T15:56:00.004-11:00