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

THE ACT OF SCALE FORMATION-Erv Wilson

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.

Working on The Wilson Archives

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.

Harmonic singing in an Anechoic Chamber

The University of Wollongong has installed an anechoic chamber in the Creative Arts building for various research. This was my third time in. Of Which i must thank Eva Cheng for making this possible. Yes you hear your ears and blood rather quickly. One becomes over aware of just yourself which is probably why they use it for torture. Actually the sensation reminded me of various experiments I did with Erv Wilson when his Scale-A-Tron organ was working. Because it manifest it pitches from a very high crystal driven pitch, if one picks the right key one can have chords in 'absolute' as opposed to just tunings. By absolute meaning not a beat in say 10,000 years. but i have digress, i guess to touch upon the similarity. During the second time end i tried doing some harmonic singing, not that i am a singer at all, but found afterwards, i felt quite altered on leaving. This time i went in with that purpose and had my pettersons tuner to give and allow me to see how steady my pitch was. Due to the quiet one can hear much higher harmonics in ones voice but as these get closer and closer, it gets harder to find the perfect resonant position to accent it. I found myself though for the first time moving much closer in between the harmonics and began to explore the space in between these strong points. Here were all types of subtle shifts of timbre that i hadn't been able to hear before. For today i picked Meta-Mavila to be the base pitches. In the 1/2 hour i recorded i sang only nine tones over a range of an octave and a third. i plan to put these together in the future. next i and planning to record on the subharmonic series to see how it all sounds when it is all put togethersince there will be one pitch all the harmonic series will have in common.