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.
