The Pentatonic Family pt. 1

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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. The piece is now available here https://anaphoria.bandcamp.com/album/second-flight-over-an-island-interior