THE HISTORY OF PROTEST DURING ANAPHORIA’S GREAT MISSIONARY EXPULSION

This short but distinct book by the respected historian Vunos Rainter is now available at the Center of Alphabetical Sequencing.  Already it is being heralded as an important work in detailing the unique methods of protesting during the last great upheaval on the island more than a century ago.  Since the Missionaries were strongly supported by military “advisors”, a different tactic was taken than the usual attempt of soliciting large group protest that normally take place in such situation. Instead the protest involve simultaneously appearing on as many different street corners possible. The effectiveness of this was it ability to be seen by more people that a concentrated group pushed to remote locales would not. When infiltrators seem to tip off the powers that be, smaller groups where formed that if need be would break into free acting protestors appearing randomly at times of high visibility.  This greatly hampered the mobilization of small but stronger forces who were unable to be everywhere at once.  The book also chronicles other tactics that appeared at the time like short 15 minute protests of large groups that would be gone by the time forces could be brought into place. Later there were even ‘groups of fives’ where smaller protest units divided into 5 groups would appear in a chain of locations each for a short period of time but them proceeding to another. Some locations could and would be visited within a few hours by a different group.

Forming Tetrachordal Scales from the Subharmonic Series

Here is a page of a document  added to The Journal of Anaphorian Music Theory. The document looks at one simple way one can derive tetrachordal scales from a subharmonic series. Such scales have been observed on equally spaced holes on flutes as well possibly the Greek Aulos.  Regardless of the case,  the scales manage to touch upon some well known ancient Greek ones as well as presenting  a method to finding others. Such a method could be easily tuned with only an ability to tune fourths and fifths above a given note.
A direct link to the PDF is also Here.

Performance from Yours and Owls 3/13

Here is an almost year old video clip from Yours and Owl's in Wollongong. It might be my favorite video on youtube as it seem to have less problems with it than the others. It is too bad the slower beginning didn't make in in, but it stands on its own. With Terumi Narushima as the duo Clocks and Clouds. A big thanks to Rory Anderson for putting this together on the fly.

CAS Commission Investigates Churchward's Map of Mu Resemblence to Anaphoria

A recently surfaced map of the Mu empire has lead to the formation of  a Center For Alphabetical Sequencing  commission to investigate it supposed source. This map of the Mu empire by James Churchward  that up till now had been unknown, has struck many in Anaphoria as being almost identical to the shape found in some of the oldest maps of the island. Some have disputed that the location and especially the size  is too far off for this to be anything more than a coincidence. Still others find evidence with Churchward stating this island was inhabited by people called the Naacal. While there are no such people on Anaphoria, the word does exist  in the language of the people surrounding village of Aal, meaning "family" or "social group".  Wikipedia states- Churchward claimed to have gained his knowledge of this lost land after befriending an Indian priest, who taught him to read an ancient dead language (spoken by only three people in all of India). The priest disclosed the existence of several ancient tablets, written by the Naacals, and Churchward gained access to these records after overcoming the priest's initial reluctance. His knowledge remained incomplete, as the available tablets were mere fragments of a larger text, but Churchward claimed to have found verification and further information in the records of other ancient peoples. 

It is reported by the commissions spokesperson  that while Churchward appears partially mistaken due to the incompleteness of data, it places possible  contact with India much further back and on a deeper level than previously conceived.
The  commission hopes this might solve certain unanswered questions about Anaphoria's ancient and cryptographic history.

A 19 tone extension of Centaur for Strings- Silenus

While my Centaur tuning was originally designed for 7-limit ear training back in the days when electronic means were too unstable to use, it has been imposing itself in recent years for a variety of projects. The occasion for this has been in having to write for ensembles to play music in another tuning but one that is also manageable to those not specializing in such things.

 One such project was for the Australian group, Ensemble Offspring and it soon again became useful in composing a String Quartet to be work shopped in Aberdeen. The latter had its real premiere last Nov. in Los Angeles by a string quartet led by Melinda Rice. As I invited to do another piece by Melinda as well as a another group, Locana, which includes a cello and violin, a new question arose: is there a 7 limit tuning that preserves the open string tunings in fifths yet gives some of the basic material also found in Centaur.

Since a shape of an interval learned on one string easily translates to another, the limitation to 12 pitches was unduly restricting. Hence the next point where things fell into a nice shape was with a 19 tone scale which differs by only one note from one worked out by Terumi Narushima in a lesson. Since the context is its use with strings, certain options present themselves as easily transposed from one string to another.

Landini in Exile

This is a little experiment with transposing sections of a piece of Landini into Wilson's Meta-Ptolemy.This gets us close to 7 equal country without degenerating into it. Hence it has more shape and contour as can be seen above.
 The piece uses the same 3 instruments and 3 lines but transposed to different places in the scale with the lines also being exchanged in the instruments.

IN A PENTAGON ROOM CD AVAILABLE

The Archives of Anaphoria is pleased to present its first release in 8 years 

IN A PENTAGONAL ROOM

Performed by Clocks and Clouds

Kraig Grady Meta-Slendro vibraphone

Terumi Narushima Meta-Slendro organ

http://anaphoria.com/music.html

IN A PENTAGONAL ROOM is the first CD of microtonal performance duo CLOCKS AND CLOUDS. The title refers to the unique five-sided reverberation chamber in which the recordings are made. The shape and surface of the room produce sounds and decays that last as long as 12 seconds enhancing the unique sounds of the duo's specially tuned instruments. The interaction of harmonics produced by the Meta-Slendro vibraphone and organ is captured via a special five microphone setup, resulting in what will probably be considered the definitive recording of these instruments. The album is totally acoustic and free of overdubs or enhancement. Even equalization is by-passed in order to retain the high quality of the original sounds.

              Dawn Crossing of the Bridge- Beginning Excerpt available here

http://anaphoria.com/music.html

New Instrument In Meta-Mavila

Here is a new instrument that features a scale called Meta-Mavila (sometimes called mavila is some tempered version). It is only a nine tone scale. It could have been a 16 tone scale but when i had that version on organ, i was not as happy with it as much as only this subset. 

It will mark the first time i am working towards an ensemble with a scale of less than 12 pitches. But it is really only the third such endeavor of ensemble building i have undertaken. But I am far more instrested in ensemble of instruments or families instruments than individual instruments that might sound good but not with others. The other ensembles have been first a 31 tone scale with a 22 tone subset. The second is my Meta-Slendro 12 tone tuning which works well on retuned 12 tone instruments.

 Am i becoming more interested in less notes? It seems like it. More than anything it is more like a refinement of a musical poetic language, cutting out the unessentials and having some sense of what it is im most interested into exploring in depth. This scale has no real connecting points with European tuning outside of just being one. Some intervals that might have 3 steps on the piano are here subdivided something closer to 2. But it is not an equal scale at all. Each tone has it own unique place in the overall sequence of things of equal value and relationship. 

Add caption

 There were simpler ways to mount this, but I was missing having a scale with a generalized pattern where each scale or chord always has the same pattern over a keyboard, or in this sense a layout of bars. I plan to use it in an installation in April where others know nothing of the theory behind but will be able to play it.  Experimenting will let one discover they can take a pattern they like and repeat it or imitate another on a different places on the instrument and will sound the same. This will make it fun if more than one joins in being able to imitate someone else by working with the same pattern. 

The whole tuning based on a recurrent sequence has ways of reinforcing the harmonics found elsewhere so tends to all work together well in a environment of spontaneous playing. info on tuning is for the asking but too ponderous to try to cover here. i already have a hammer dulcimer which i have been tuning to this scale so plan on using the two together along with some bowed psaltries. Since i have two of my bass bars that coincide with this tuning, i need only add 7 more with if another project happens next year, it will be perfect for that. Remaining to be seen. Sound sample are coming but want to live with it a bit more before the introduction. Stay tuned~

Anaphoria: Creolization and Bricolage as opposed to Utopian Geography

In it amazing to find in reading ideas and expressions that fit so well with our own understanding Anaphoria as something besides a utopia and aptly describe what we are doing.

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Derek Walcott suggests that the fitting together of the fragmentary is characteristic of Antillean

art, which does not present a seamless or perfect unity of the fragmentary but results in a

multiplicity, reflected in the topographic image of the drifting archipelago of islands, broken

off from the mainland.

For other Caribbean theorists, bricolage has come to be seen as a cultural process that could also serve as a model for articulating identity in an increasingly globalized world. Such a perspective is reflected in Françoise Vergès’s definition of the relationship between bricolage and creolization:

Creolization is about bricolage drawing freely upon what is available, recreating with new content and in new forms a distinctive culture, a creation in a situation of domination and conflict. It is not about retentions but about reinterpretations. It is not about roots but about loss. It must be distinguished from cultural contact and multiculturalism because, at heart, it is a practice and ethics of borrowing and accepting to be transformed, affected by the other. In the current era of globalization, processes of creolization appear in zones of conflict and contact. They are the harbingers of an ongoing ethics of sharing the world.

Raphaël Confiant.......sees the Creole
person as cohabited by different gods or as a site where the pieces and parts of identity are
constantly mingling and disentangling, simultaneously embracing and excluding one another.
Confiant argues that this intermingled experience also applies to the domains of cuisine,
clothing, technology, and language. He reaffirms the view, previously articulated in the Eloge
de la Créolité,9 that a pluralistic identity prefigures globalization.10 Confiant’s description of
Creole bricolage seems to imply a utopian outcome in which the processes of colonization,
creolization, and globalization enable new forms of identity formation and processes of
communal enrichment through pacific intermixtures and aggregations.
While Confiant’s literary works offer more complex treatments of cultural fragmentation,
this affirmation is problematic because he ignores the possibilities for cultural impoverishment
as a result of the deliberate obliteration or unconscious repression of cultural fragments. 

 from

Colonization, Creolization, and Globalization: The Art and Ruses
of Bricolage
Knepper, Wendy.
Small Axe, Number 21 (Volume 10, Number 3), October 2006, pp.
70-86 (Article)
Published by Duke University Press

First Stage of Construction Has Begun

We are happy to announce the beginning construction of the Anaphorian Embassy of Australasia.  While Anaphoria has rare deposits of purple marble, it was only the work of Italian immigrants that began its being used in various buildings. Here you can see freshly installed as the chosen exterior for the structure structure. Outside of just being our field office it will also will function as the storehouse of the Wilson Archives.

Form with Mnemosyne (Memory) In Exile.

   The essence of all form might be memory, what holds and what and can be recalled. The post-war abandoned it possibly having little desire in returning, when that might have meant to the great destruction just witnessed. The latter minimalist kept it distance too. It extended the timeframe of the present and sought to exhaust the possibilities instead of encompassing what a reflection might cast about it. Both hovered in an endless unity that kept all within it borders. Shadows were the last either embraced.
    Must we keep memories pools and mirrors at bay, or must we remained blinded in a ‘been there, done that’ way to not face the unfinished or changed. Must all work stem from the perpective of the sun. The sun that sees no shadows.
   It took Zeus to have a  Mnemosyne (Memory) that could gave birth to the muses. Might we find some place for her and her children in a direct fashion? Might we now gain by presences that so symbolize inspiration that appear beyond us yet as close as our shadows?

Speaking on Erv Wilson.

Here is an excerpt of what i had to say on reflection on the work of Erv Wilson. This is an extract from Stephen Taylors' Sonic Sky

A message from the Anaphorian Ambassador in Canberra

Site of Embassy in progress

The Anaphorian flag

Back in 2010, we brought you these pictures on the progress of our Embassy in Canberra. As the purification rituals had run into problems due to constant contamination by our neighbors and the general surroundings, building has not progressed very far. The ambassador {who does not use his name in order not to confuse himself with his role} manages to stay on the move in order to accomplish those things that seem  always to be pressing. This last week we attempted to catch up with him but found it was only in his yearly  'State of the Island Address' where we actually crossed paths. There was a brief meeting at the Vanuatu Art exhibit in the National Gallery but he was leaving as we were entering. We were able to record the main section of his delivery which occurred within the James Turrell Skyspace where the ambassador explored the shifting resonance of the space.

Inside the SkySpace

Looking up

Beyond One Sided Listening.

    If we entertain there is something to Jung's Psychological types, and apply it to ways of listening things take on an interesting form.  If nothing else it exposes the fallacy of either one or the others being more ego based than the others. It would be the extrovert who we would find interested in the 'sounds around us'  while the introverts the sounds that come from our interior. Perhaps the further distinction into four types is better in showing other ways of hearing too. Sensation being the former with the intuitive with the latter. We  also have the functions of thinking which analyses, breaks into pieces and defines the parts and material. The emotional on the other side would accept what emotions  that come up spontaneously. Historically, music has been thrown back and forth between these, each claiming a superiority. It seems it is as if music is at odds with itself, even ill. We are constantly asked to listen to works in one way or another. Sometimes these are  demands, that we listen in no other way.  It is no wonder that in the midst of the so-called assumed freedom we find little that truly convinces of it. At this point, i would prefer some path to a complete way of hearing, a harmony or a even dialog between all of these.

A Place for Distance in Field Recordings.

 

 Top of Mt. Dana - Yosemite

Field recordings are too often an extension of our urban perspective. One of the most common features in the urban landscape is the lack of distance in viewing and hearing. Outside of looking up, our opportunities to look or hear at long distances are few or limited. It is this same cramped horizon we find common in field recordings with a prevalence of closely recorded sounds with a push to get even closer than we could ever get with or bodily ear. An aural claustrophobia is easily invoked. The childhood wonder of echoes seem to be so often forgotten.  One morning as I lay in bed I remember hearing the most unforgettable sound, echoing at a great distance. It was late in the day when I discovered it had been a train wreck 8 miles away.  There were recordings in Tehran of people on the roofs yelling protests one could hear both close and far. Neither of things are pleasant and perhaps why distant sounds are both rare and avoided. Is this the only context we hear distant things?  Just as my eye craves to focus at a large distance, a reason my vacations have always sought such landscapes over other cities, my ear craves the same.

The Shadow Theatre of Anaphoria - Inauguration of Shadow Puppets

 The Shadow Theatre of Anaphoria invites you to the first stage in inaugurating a collection of new Shadow puppets. This ongoing Ritual process will take place at the Verge Gallery. Jane Foss Russell Plaza, City Rd, University of Sydney,  from Nov 1-7 Monday - Friday as the second week of their Speed Show. 

Preparatory Altar for  the 114 Sacred Stones

 The first night Nov. 1 at 6pm will include a rare performance by Whirlpool [Kraig Grady Meta-Slendro vibraphone and Chris Abrahams Meta-Slendro Pump Organ] of which subsequent ones are being planned . This and subsequent musical performances will be based on 704 throws of the I Ching thrown and recorded over the last 35 years by Kraig Grady. Each Hexagram has been translated into a harmonic sonority and as each throw often involved a hexagram changing into another this results in over 1300 chords that will be sounded over the 7 days.

Instruments will be on hand for others to participate as well and those wishing to engage in the playing process are asked to contact us to arrange an appropriate time. It takes a village to raise a puppet.

Alternating with music will be an ongoing process of pouring of sand pathways in order to connect the 114 stones that have upon them the symbols of the 114 sacred Anaphorian signs http://anaphoria.com/minspirit.html. The actual signs are only visible during such ritualistic conditions, yet the correspondence between signs and meanings remain a closely guarded secret. This does not mean that single signs and meanings have not been revealed for the benefit of those in the present. 

The process required that preparation already began today  [Oct. 18] with the building of an altar, made out of ruins as required by tradition to prepare each of the stones at the Austronesian Outpost of Anaphoria Island. Situated in Berkeley, NSW near Lake Illawarra

Questions and Answers from Furman University

Michael Vick has been teaching a class that I wish I could have taken called Tuning Systems & the Aural Experience at Furman University in South Carolina. He asked if his students could send me questions which I was pleased to do. Here is the interchange.

Marielle Lemasters - When you were young, were you interested in tuning music or was it an interest that grew on you?

Partch was the only real tuning-oriented music going on at the time and it was seeing his US Highball live more than his recordings that really moved me with the possibilities. I don’t think I even knew there was such a variable as ‘tuning’ before him. 

Scott Crane - How much of an influence has Harry Partch played in your musical career?

Too much might be the truest answer. For years Partch was given a bad rap and anyone connected with him also. So I took a lot of that flak even when it didn’t apply to me, and maybe still do. This is not to say I like and agree with him on everything. Perhaps the most important aspect of his music is it being transcultural. He was a big step away from both European art music and the more urbanized academic music of the US at the time. This is what led to my own concept of a meta-culture of Anaphoria Island, a “place” where such music can occur, drawing upon the practices around the world.

         I tend to like his instrumental works more. Delusion of the Fury is a piece in which I never seem to fail to hear something new. I don’t like the video because it was a rushed and very fragmented job that wasn’t the makers’ fault, so I just listen to the recording. Castor and Pollux still impresses me with its form of a set of 3 duets played one after another then altogether, and then this pattern is repeated again. Daphne of the Dunes has a complexity, but still remains immediate and enjoyable.

         For me, growing up around the film industry, Partch was a good fit because of his interest in music as a theatrical endeavor. His use of the visual element inspired 10 years working with silent film with live music and now even longer with shadow puppets. The latter is my favorite activity for it allows me to do music, puppet operation and design, writing, lighting, and just organizing all together. It is rewarding as it allows many aspects of my self to exist and be given expression. This is a reflection of Partch’s ideas of allowing the total human being to find expression. It parallels the theatre anthropology of Eugenio Barba, and the polytheistic concept of the soul in both Jung and James Hillman. So his influence exceeds just music or at least was an antenna of what was to come. Rock music is as much video as audio now, something he foresaw.

Joanna Brady - Which is your favorite tuning system to perform/compose in? Why?

Originally it was Erv Wilson’s D’Allesandro tuning. It contains within it a structure called the Eikosany that is an uncentered analog to Partch’s Diamond. It is a good tuning to have consonant chord structures without a tonic that at the time was of interest to me. This was the first tuning I built a whole ensemble around. There was much to think about and explore too. The tuning is like a 12 dimensional crystal that would look like a donut from 12 different points, all with a basic structure of 20 tones. Such ways of thinking about music are not really possible in 12 ET so it opens up one’s mind to possibilities. The version I used went up to 36 pitches, but I made some instruments that only had a 22 tone subset, but they all worked together. It also has all types of scales it wasn’t designed to have being so condensed that made it almost inexhaustible in what music I could do on it. I worked with this tuning for 15 years. I still highly recommend it as it really is a world all its own.

The second tuning that inspired me enough to also make an ensemble of instruments was Wilson’s Meta Slendro. With the way this tuning is put together it is almost impossible to make it sound very dissonant past a certain point. It has only 12 notes, though very different from 12 equal, so I could retune many existing instruments to it. This saved me a lot of work and allowed me to notate it traditionally for mallet players, and also allowed for more compact instruments. This tuning I have been using the same amount of time as the former, which might explain how I am slowly working toward another, an ensemble of Wilson’s Meta-Mavila. This one is kind of a complement of Meta Slendro in that the two use intervals that the other doesn’t have. For instance Meta Mavila is saturated with neutral thirds while Meta Slendro has none; in turn we find large whole tones bigger than the piano with the latter but only smaller ones with Meta Mavila. While some people like to use many different tunings, I prefer to really investigate a few, but as deeply as possible.

Michela Bologna - For the Ensemble Offspring piece, you used a microtonal tuning system called Centaur. What is different about this system versus other microtonal systems?

It works as a very good introduction to working in just intonation as others have found. There was a guitarist Rod Poole who first tuned it on his guitar to then develop his own 17 and 22 tone scale. He would always tell me it was for him the best 12 tone just scale he could find. So I think it was one of those times I might have done something better than what I had planned.

I came up with the Centaur scale in 1979 in order to tune a reed organ - the only sustain instrument I had at the time - for ear training in 7-limit intervals. It preserved the 12-tone context since the reeds could only be retuned so much. It is quite conservative in that regard but 10 tones also overlapped a very complex 36 tone 11-limit tuning I had in wood and metal, while the organ could exist independently as a complete character.

For the Ensemble Offspring project the inventor of the clarini had scales in mine and we were pleased that two of these were readily found within Centaur. It was difficult that it required two clarinis to play all of the Centaur pitches that I think the composers dealt with superbly yet still limited what could be done. Being a beginning, it is something that will develop. The pieces came together more in the recordings made right after this which will come out some time next year. It is my first and only ensemble piece in a somewhat classical vein.

I hadn’t used the tuning since the 80’s when I used it with a retuned hammer dulcimer and films when I played in punk clubs in Los Angeles. Microtones at the time were shunned by those in academia whereas that environment I found accepting and appreciative more experimental and more fun.

Joanna Brady - What is your favorite instrument that you've ever built? Why?

The first original instrument I made was out of brass tubing and it had the 36 tone tuning I mentioned earlier. It was damaged and lost during the Northridge earthquake unfortunately. It has a really unique sound but brass tubing is not made the same way as it used to be so I was never able to replace that instrument.

         Partch’s book as well of some other people scared me about making bass instruments, so when I made my first set of Bass Meru Bars and it worked so well, I was really excited for years. I had a hard time controlling myself from just playing as many and as fast as I could to make it sound like thunder. This was after not having any bass instrument at all for 10 years. I still enjoy that I have an instrument in that range.

Michela Bologna - What instrument, in your opinion, is able to produce the broadest range of notes when using microtonal tuning system?

If we were to consider electronics an option, I would say the Starr Lab keyboard controller designed by Erv Wilson. While it is just a MIDI controller, it makes possible in real time what software can do but we lack the interface to easily do so. It is really this generalized keyboard that allows us to control the machines in a more far-reaching way. There are cheaper and less developed compromises, and they are just that, compromises.

A keyboard in general (electronic or acoustic) is ideal for a single instrument with the biggest range possible giving one person the ability to play many different parts.

Considering only acoustic instruments I take what Lou Harrison learned from the weakness of Partch’s instruments. It is ‘ensembles’ that are needed that can work together, more than single instruments that might not do well besides others. Like Harrison, I like tuned metal bars as they remain very stable in that tuning. These easily become guides for less stable instruments such as strings or winds to tune to, which in turn give us bends and inflections not possible with metal or wood.

I have to end this with saying I am still concerned with people making music together and putting their full means and bodies into it. This broadens the range of human experience. This is the range I am interested in. Partch gave us this.

Marielle Lemasters - Where was your favorite place where you displayed your instruments and music?

When I lived in Los Angeles, there was a couple, Susanna Dadd and James Griffith, who would come to my shadow plays. They had this steep backyard and decided to turn it into an amphitheater that they called the Folly Bowl. It was this beautiful stepped garden where for 3 years I presented shadow work. They couldn’t have been more supportive and said when they made it they had my work in mind which was quite humbling. It is always a treat to play outside in nature.

Resonant spaces are great too. Recently I played at a place called the Casula Powerhouse. I really liked how the sound carried there even though it was a big venue.

Marielle Lemasters - Where do you find your most inspiration for creating music?

The sounds of my instruments most of all motivate me to make music. Besides that having a show coming up and knowing that one is going to be heard is always an inspiration. It is more than a deadline and more sharing where you are at the moment. Even if it is small, it conjures enthusiasm as I imagine the space and the context. This makes me think differently about what I will perform. So I try to play as much as possible and in different contexts. Even playing an older piece, I adapt it to the time and place.

Michela Bologna - What genre of music (classical, blues, etc.) do you prefer to play in when using microtonal tuning? 

Like just about everyone now, my musical taste has never been limited to any one genre or even a few.

I think of microtonality in turn might or could be a meta-genre all in itself with each tuning implying subgenres and in turn, all of these still at some beginning stage. At least this is what I want for it.

If one is sensitive to the stresses and pulls of the new tones available it can lead to new forms, structures and ways of using tones. I never would have done the music I do if it were not for the tunings. I just make music I think is beautiful using beautiful sounds I didn’t have access to before.

If I had to place it in the genre, I think of it as extended world music as that is what I listen to the most, and it also provides the greatest resources of scales and how to use them.         

Michela Bologna - Do you ever take previously existing music and play it using microtonality?

This can be a funny and quick way to get a feel for a new tuning. I can’t say I like playing preexisting music except in passing. I am more interested in finding out what a tuning allows me to do that those musical styles don’t. One does like to play with associations though and it can and does happen especially if you are working with film or theater. Some tunings make it impossible.

Since I am working with tunings that are not equal-spaced tones, this means the transpositions of melodies and harmonies into different keys vary the intervals and feel of them so I can play with my own preexisting ideas without going back.

What we have before us though are, new structural interactions, new reactions of sounds in time, and yes importantly new emotions not possible before. I think that music does more than express emotion, it actually makes them possible as often it is the only place I experience them.

Marielle Lemasters - Do you wish your type of music was more widely understood?

I have never had any problem with the public or even artists in other fields. It is usually other music people, whether players or critics or even other microtonalists, who bring to the music the most preconceived barriers one has to break though.

Of course I don’t or ever will play in big stadiums but I am not interested in that anyway. I prefer smaller places where I don’t have to be amplified and that I can mix in with the crowd and get a feel of the energy of the people there and talk with them afterwards. I like to play on a floor rather than a stage when possible since I dislike that barrier that much. Often I will invite people on stage afterwards to get a closer look at the instruments. In clubs I would often play in the middle of the room.

Marielle Lemasters - Do you hear everyday noises differently than the typical person, and how does that affect your music?

I did not start with the best ears but working in tuning has sharpened my ears to smaller fluctuations of pitch than even most musicians, it seems. I suspect that this might give me a better perception of noise or that I hear different things in it than those who obsess over it. I am not sure. I am just not that enamored with everyday noises compared to the acoustical phenomena I can play with in different tunings.

It has given me a greater understanding of music of other cultures - how they develop shades of pitches in the way western music develops harmonies and rhythm. When a culture cannot afford the luxuries of even a 12 tone system, they find ways of developing the music by what they have on hand, intonation and ornament are two such examples. Western music ignores many of these variants and quickly label it underdeveloped or inferior when it is often just a matter of where the focus is put. It is the superior stance of colonialism that still needs to be taken back to a better perspective. So I think I hear those cultures not using western instruments and scales differently than most people.

Scott Crane - What is your take on concentrating on harmony versus dissonance? Is it possible to have both?

One really wants both and I have to say I don’t really think about either anymore. I tend to think about melody and sonority. The tunings I work with usually are designed to have a certain spectrum of equal tension throughout so I can be less concerned with it. I think there is enough tense music in the world there is no reason for me to do more. I don’t object to it, but don’t see it being useful when people can get that elsewhere. Myself as an artist I don’t have to prove I can do it either. Doing things to ‘impress’ others seems a pretty shallow motivation. What I do has to be meaningful to me, which I assume might be to others, and if not, at least I have gained something from it myself.

Scott Crane - Have you ever thought to produce a piece that is in a different tuning system, rather than 12-TET, that sounded indecipherable to those who are not able to distinguish a difference between closely sounding pitches?

I have found one has to do very little in any direction to make music indecipherable. It is hard enough for people to catch things out in the open. Even in painting, in which it is easier perhaps to catch things, people miss certain details, so with sound it is even harder to get people to even hear what might be obvious. I like the conceptual idea though and perhaps those with different ears already hear different things.

Meeting Mike Gibbs

Mike Gibbs at the Outpost

It was a real pleasure to meet Mike Gibbs last year when he came and conducted some of his composition at the Kinetic Jazz Festival. I am sorry i am going to miss him there again here this year but those locally i recommend meeting a truly unique artist. The first time i saw his name was on the Gary Burton Album Throb, later i noticed he was doing the arrangements for the Mahavishnu Orchestra when it grew in size to be called such. Later I see him arranging strings on Joni Mitchell's Paprika Plains. This in itself is a pretty varied output. but if you look at his discography there is even more. The list goes on. impressive versatility with a wonderful spirit.

Additions To The Augusto Novaro Society

The Minovar of Augusto Novaro

Here is a picture of the Minovar. An instrument designed and possibly built by Norvaro based on his experiments in spiral shaped bodies that he also used on guitars. On the web page of the Society is also a passport picture of Novaro from society member John Schneider. This is  from a collection of files he obtained from the Guggenheim Foundation. We are looking forward to see what treasures these documents hold for us. In the meantime more pics of the violin can be seen here

A tuning for Satie's Vexations

Notes on a tuning for Satie’s VEXATIONS
I was asked to provide a tuning along with others to be included in a shorten performance of Satie's piece as apart of Microfest 2012.
Here is the final tuning

I decided to take a conservative approach to the problem. I thought I might rely on some historical model of music like Vexations that involves repeats over a long period of time. The one that came to mind was Pibroch, a style of bagpipe playing. The bagpipe tuning is quite impressive. It avoids simple ratios of most consonances leaving any repose in the melody to still be propelled forward by ratios of mild acoustical dissonance. The tuning also has some proportional triads. These type of triads have difference tones that support notes in the chord or scale which provides an overall unity, yet can depending on its complexity, can suspend the music in the air for undetermined periods of time without really resolving yet still reinforcing the tones being used. This is used to great effect with melodies repeated for hours.
Vexations with its preponderance of diminished triads made me look for the simplest proportional triad of this shape. The simplest one I could find was one of E. Wilson’s recurrent sequences A+C=F which he labeled as Meru 8. This eventially will converge on a chain of minor thirds 306.75991106 cents in size but there is a fair bit of oscillating back and forth that gives sometimes for some nice variation.
If you are unfamiliar with these types of scales look here



To seed this formula, I took the Lucas Series that Satie was fond of. This series is like the Fibonacci series but starts with 1 and 3 instead of 1 and 2 and adds them together and continues this process with the answer and the last number added [1+3=4, 3+4=7, 4+7=11, etc.]. Using the 1-3-4-7-11 to seed the sequence that is then treated as harmonics, the series was continued until it converged to within a cent, and enough to place the 21 different pitches in a consistent order one finds notated in the score. Much to my surprise the first place where I could find this started on the 43,184th harmonic which effortlessly unfolded like a snail shell up to the 73,676,000th harmonic (odd harmonics happen in between to prevent a simpler reduction).
Here is the sequence
1............[A+
3
4 ............C=
7
11
5............. F]
10
15
12 You can see here that at the beginning of the pattern you can have a lower number occur. this is why you have to take it so high
21
20
22
36
32
43
56
54
79
88
97
135
142
176
223
239
311
365
415
534
604
726
899
1019
1260
1503
1745
2159
2522
3005
3662
4267
5164
6184
7272
8826
10451
12436
15010
17723
21262
25461
30159
36272
43184 THE SCALE STARTS HERE=and we take it out to 43 places to close out our cycles of
51421
61733
73343
87693
104917
124764
149426
178260
212457
254343
303024
361883
432603
515481
616226
735627
877364
1048829
1251108
1493590
1784456
2128472
2542419
3035564
3622062
4326875
5164036
6164481
7362439
8786098
10491356
12526475
14950579
17853795
21312573
30380270
36263152
43295730
51692843
61705087
73676000
This puts the fundamental at a little over 3.5 kilometers in length which tempted me to proceed up high up the harmonic series until I reach a fundamental distance equal to the time sounds travel during the length of the performance, but like I said, I decided to take a conservative approach for the moment.
Even with this sequence we can see in the diagram below that besides the 43 tone scale we ended up using where the 11 unit is equal to our minor third generator. we could have also used all those scales from the 6 units of a 23 up through a 27, 31, 35, and 39 tone scale with the numerator being the number of units steps the minor third. The 43 tone scale used ends up being about .216 away from equal.