lunar aspect

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Riley's 5 limit tuning for "Harp of New Albion"

Riley's 5 limit tuning for "Harp of New Albion"
I had recently replaced my missing copy of Harp of New Albion by Terry Riley and decided to lattice out the tuning which i guess many might have already done. It is interesting in how La monte uses 7 limit intervals to approximate 5 and here we have Riley doing the opposite with the 16/15 over the 15/8 7 cents shy of an 8/7. Riley's use of the tuning is interesting also in that he never uses the 1/1 of his tuning for the tonic, albeit the D of 16/15 could have been also a good choice for the 1/1. Anyway in the context of the pieces it shows how far one can go into new territory with a relative simple 5 limit. I like the choice of the 64/45 giving him two just major scales which he seems to avoid using more than using. If you tuned the row with 5/3 , 5/4 and 15/8, and decided keep it in the same relationship wit h3/2 and 9/8 by lowering thise too, the scale would coincide with the Centaur Scale.

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

THE DOWSING POLES- New instrument member of the Meta-Slendro Ensemble


The Dowsing Poles This instrument grew out of a desire to have something like Tubular Bells to add to my ensemble of Meta-Slendro instruments. This tuning is anything but a conventional Slendro encompassing instruments using 12, 17 and 22 unequally spaced pitches in the octave informed by both traditional sources and recurrent sequence mathematics. 
In order to realize such a Tubular Bell instrument and after much experimentation, I decided to explore the possibilities of suspending the tubes in the middle instead of the conventional nodes used on all my other instruments. This produces a somewhat similar sound to the desired orchestral instrument but with even more pitch, making the use of small distances between some pitches in the tuning much more practical and realistic.

Mounting the bars in this fashion was extremely difficult as it a point of balance, but wanted the tubes to be vertical in order to take up less space and easier to play. The present method of tying elastic cord seems to work well but am still not cutting the cords quite yet in order to see how it works after at least a few weeks. Hence why they can still be seen for the time being. This instrument is also quite modular being usable in any or all of the three sections and it allows the tubes to be placed in any order of which is shown here. The sections themselves are also flexible in being placed in a chain of any configuration here conforming to the only flat section on the Anaphorian Embassy grounds. This instrument will get it premiere at the Now Now Festival this Thursday night at 107 Projects

Saturday, February 28, 2015

A Near Flatland with a Bastard Lattice- An Addition to The Journal of Anaphorian Music Theory

This paper is an addition to the Journal of Anaphorian Music Theory that looks at one set of progressions that occur  within the normal 12 tone scale.  The overall idea is that analogous structures can be constructed in other systems but worth sharing with a broader music community for those interested in what can be done with pitch.
http://anaphoria.com/flatlandbastard.pdf