SATURATION

 Probably the best description of myself is that of a Saturationist. I see in saturation as important means to the creation of a transcendental space. One of the foremost qualities of saturation is that it is immersive in placing the listener embedded in an sonic environment which is not only above and below them but spills outward in waves that blend with the infinityof waves all around us. It acts as a sanctuary drawing upon higher order harmonies  to alleviate the listener from the dispersion of noise. Thus it is a shielding construct not unlike a magic circle. What the listener experiences is not what is imposed them, but what comes out of themselves when allowed to when the space has been cleared of the sounds that reinforce distractions from themselves. It invites other elements which in the past have been film, threatre and more recently shadow theatre as another antenna.

Wilson's Mapping of the Hypercube

 

For any composers interested in doing a followup to Xenakis' Nomos Alpha, here is a pitch based option. While Wilson had plotted out the cube, he also did one for the hypercube which i added some factors, a different rotation with dyads closer to the best fifth possible with 1 thru 15 to my own with pure fifths Since the only links are via dyads the piece is bound to be pretty dissonant but higher harmonics are possible of course. the latter one might be the most perceptible at least for present ears.

In the lower right version there isa repeat of the product of 3-5-9-21 and 1-7-15-27, but if i space the structure in this way 18-20-21-24-27-28-30-32 these two tones will be two octaves apart

Rethinking the Guitar as a cross-set.

 

While I am not a guitar player, I have nevertheless observed how the instrument is played and used as most of us who are non players. It has struck me that at one possibility has been over looked which i will explain here and provide one example, not to be definitive tuning but as an good example of  what i see as a fruitful direction for the instrument. 

The tuning of a guitar can be thought of as a cross-set between the open strings and the where the frets are placed. Traditionally this has resulted in the same notes of the scale but has been useful with exploring the spacing of chords as well as range. With JI or subsets of larger ETs interesting variations occur as a result. While this has been a concern those working with any type of inequality, it has advantages that open up musical possibilities. 

If we look at how the instrument is often used we see guitar players often using the upper fret area in points of  excitement. traditionally the timbre of the instrument becomes more inharmonic due to the shorter length of the string coupled with the side to side motion of the string.  and it seem that tuning systems could be designed to explore intervals that might have more of the nature of the music played. It is easier to conceive the guitar as a cross-set when we still preserve having frets that run all the way across. While it is possible to retune the open strings that have individual frets it potentially become complex .

 Conceptually this idea would be to have more restful intervals in the lower range with more bright or most even dissonant intervals above. Since it takes very few changes in a scale to change to over all character, It could be just the change in a few ratios ( or say scale steps if using an ET. A conservative example might be having more 5 limit ratios in the lower range with their pythagorean counterparts in the upper range.  For myself it would be useful also in my vacillation between my Centaur and Centaura tunings. Here is a diagram showing one fretting possibilities (not to scale) .

Hopefully this will provide some further ideas. Various high number ETs such a 31 and especially 41 could choose subsets that covered all the 41 tones just in different ranges for their different tension and expression.

Andreya Ek Frisk has been kind enough to forward this accurate fretting of the tuning discussed. 

My Introduction to the Music of Alan Hovhaness

Having to support myself while a music maker required other means.  I ended up working as a scenic artist in Hollywood. I started at the bottom which consisted of having to clean the rollers, buckets, brushes, and whatever else needed to be cleaned up and only then would i get out onto the floor.  While a noisy environment, i would still listen to the classical channel as a good contrast to the commotion.  One day a piece had just started a few minutes before when one of my co-workers, Dennis Mancini, who also worked as an actor, entered the room, stopped, and listened and then commented about how the music reminded him of his living on Mt. Shasta for months by himself. He described how he lived totally off the land and this was his way of self-healing from his time engaged in the Vietnam War. When the piece finally ended the announcer said that the piece was "Mysterious Mountain" by Alan Hovhaness and we both were quite taken back that the music had captured his experience. Something that music seems less inclined to do these days. 

Years later, the composer Los Harrison told me that the music that saved him from his breakdown was the music of Harry Partch and Alan Hovhaness. I have many recordings of both, but the later's output is so large i have much more. 

Toward a Poor Orchestra

Music imposes itself on its environment as much as the other way around. It has always refused to be held back and anything and everything is fair game. Much like animals in the deepest areas of the ocean have produced their own light, music has always found a way to develop with what it has on hand. 

It is quite astounding how earth’s music cultures have not duplicated their forms elsewhere except through contact and exchange with neighbours. Differentiation is a clear sign that what we hear now is the result of constant experimentations, accidents, and possibly even mistakes in attempts to preserve or resurrect a lost tradition. Also, what cannot be overlooked is how powerful the element of 'play' is in shaping music. Despite the talk amongst contemporary practitioners of their world of "infinite possibilities", the music remains shy of the diversity from what history and geography has produced up to now. 

Music in the West prides itself as the forerunner of musical progress. It is a rich tradition with its own internal diversity throughout its history, but it has more often than not failed to acknowledge the progress of others when different from itself. The criteria by which the West judges are usually technological, such as digital and what it enables. Historically, though, it has judged other cultures by the complexity of the music.  

I am going to concentrate on one level of which I am most familiar and most equipped to comment. This simply is the number of notes used in the scale (or its pitch palette). Different cultures are often under constraining issues such as resources and the need for mobility of instruments that prevent expansion in the direction of adding more pitches. The mistake here is equating quantity with quality. My own observations of scales have led me to a conclusion that scale development often takes place by the production of scales of unequal-size intervals while still preserving an equality of function within itself. Such scales can produce more different size intervals than those of strict equal systems and I propose for this reason we witness an absence of equal systems around the globe. The West has proposed that some of these are indeed equal while the actual measurements quickly destroy such notions. Instead, this suggests that non-westerners cannot correctly tune to what it is they want musically . In scales with limited numbers of notes, there might be certain intervals that are unique within the scale; the tones that form these intervals may also have a unique and individual role in the whole scale. These roles need not be hierarchical and often are not. As an aside, a political system that could encompass such variety as well as allowing equal prominence or rank in the overall scheme might be a system that we might welcome if proposed. One can observe, for instance, that most 5-tone Pelog scales have more different size intervals than the tuning used by Webern. Such uniqueness also provides an orientation within the scale that can be as strong as tonality. There are other forces involved that can unify the whole set of pitches which will have to be discussed later. It is also necessary to clarify that scales can involve variables which is common with a cappella voices even in the West. Little is understood how context shapes these variations and how they are perceived and understood. .  

***********************

This brings me to my own development where my musical concerns deviate from the arsenal of Western instruments and its single 12 note scale. Still, like most musical practitioners, I trace my own lineage to those before me historically. Where it diverges from the given Western path is that it was first inspired by the work and instruments of Harry Partch and later through contacts with Lou Harrison and Bill Colvig. There are also important contemporaries whose work differs yet informed my own such as contacts with Cris Forster and Jim French and others who I have missed meeting in person who nevertheless have led to instruments of my own, like Daniel Schmidt. All these though take second place to studying intonation systems with Erv Wilson over 20 or (maybe 30 years really) which save me from ever being a mere copy of these. 

Out of the empiricism of my own practice comes many unforeseen directions. Having started with embracing 60s pop music and its revolutionary spirit, the classical avant-garde at the time seemed just a parallel extension. It was the possibilities let loose by electricity upon pop music that made much available for the first time. Yet electronic instruments were not economically possible for me at the time. Synthesisers for instance were anything but cheap and/or limited to those educational institutions that could afford them. Those who were able at the time to do great work were connected more with the latter. So, when I saw Partch's U.S. Highball a year after Partch's death, I was struck by two things: 1. here was a direction that was little explored but showed promise and potential, and 2. it was not out of economic reach in that it involved instruments that even this hobo could build.

Much in my environment made this direction appealing. My day job working as a scenic artist put me in an environment where there was scrap material of all kinds laying around. I had already spent some years exploring free improvisation with such found objects, but Partch's work impressed upon me that such materials could be developed into instruments beyond just timbre and rhythm producers. This performance of Partch followed upon my first meeting with Erv Wilson just the week before. 

Erv Wilson had a Motorola tuner and he knew of a good source of plumbing tubing. Soon, I made a tubulong instrument as my first microtonal instrument which I thought I would use for ear training for the viola that I played. Somehow the lure of the tuning was too overwhelming to stop long enough to catch up on my instrument and I continued to go through scale after scale and structure after structure. The 31-tone tuning was simple to understand, encompassing much of the 12-tone language while providing completely new resources. A few years later, I travelled with Erv to Webster College in St. Louis where we conversed with Ben Johnston and I was quite taken with what he had to say. His argument for just intonation was strong yet friendly. Out of this, there was a structure of Erv's I was working with almost exclusively in 31 and decided to make a just intonation version of it in brass tubing. 

The difference between the just and tempered version in 31 was quite overwhelming in sound for me. I found myself converted to Ben's promotion of just intonation, despite Erv’s resistance at the time, even though he saw advantages to both.   

The building of these instruments was possible in that the money needed could be spread out over a long stretch of time. For example, the money needed for frames or later resonators could be acquired when I was able to save up to buy the material. This worked well too as often there was quite a bit of experimentation that was needed before later decisions were made. 

Erv had a vibraphone made out of two sets of Jenco vibes that was a subset of the just intonation scale of my brass chimes. I mounted and added resonators to the vibraphone bars and soon afterwards Daniel Wolf gifted me with a large quantity of padouk wood. This was used to make a matching marimba. 

A performance of mine at Betty Freeman's house was how I first met Lou Harrison and Bill Colvig. Together they developed a series of gamelan-like ensembles. Lou impressed upon me that while he liked Partch's instruments, he felt they did not always work together well and that his own approach was to develop orchestras or ensembles as a single unified group instead of being the result of unconnected instruments. This insight influenced my course from then on.  

Thus, I first developed instruments upward in range. Then, I followed Partch’s example by using a subset of my tuning in the bass range to keep the ensemble of instruments a reasonable size. Two smaller reed organs which had become out of fashion provided sustain tones to fill the range of the scale from top to bottom.  

A new problem arose and that was the size of these instruments. Doing each show was of major difficulty in that each instrument required its own vehicle for transportation. Regardless, I used these instruments for 15 years. 

Someone gave me a small 12 tone vibraphone and there was a tuning I had explored on another organ to which I decided to retune the vibraphone. I liked working with this scale and thus another ensemble developed over time. This one was based more on the recycling of pre-existing instruments by retuning them since I was using a 12-tone subset. The question of recycling, especially of wood, has become more and more an issue as rosewood and many hardwoods are endangered. The source of what I ended up with were often from incomplete instruments where the bars exist but somehow the frame is gone. eBay was my common source. 

A bass marimba was the important milestone to this ensemble. But Harry's (Partch) instruments presented features that I had not yet completely explored. I looked toward the diamond marimba again and its relatives that all involved the ability to sound chords by dragging over the bars. My tuning was too different to incorporate Harry's design but remained an inspiration. One weakness of his ensemble I felt was the low volume of the strings which was his source for making glissandos.

To create a glissando-making instrument, I had to expand my scale to 37 tones using four different sets of glockenspiel bars. This filled in many of the gaps and was loud enough and produced glisses with slight variations in pitch sizes. All the notes were placed in a single row almost three metres long. Thankfully, the instrument, called the Escalade, divides in half for easy transportation. It also now has a somewhat smaller relative of a wooden 22-tone subset of the 37, also arranged in a row, suspended over the 37 tone Escalade.

Who, then, plays these instruments? This is a major problem, more so since I moved to Australia where I am less known than in Los Angeles, so in a sense my situation here is similar to what it was in the 80s there (in more ways than one). The result is the people who play these instruments have more of a pop music background. In general, I have often found them more open-minded and more flexible and willing to give an unfamiliar instrument a go, so I write parts with these specific people in mind. Something not uncommon in jazz.

It is understandable that classically trained players would be less interested in playing on new instruments when they have invested time and energy in developing skills upon their own instruments. On the other hand, for me to use them can be awkward as their very nature leans toward something quite different. Omitting them altogether often fosters a subtle hostility of my approach to expanding music that doesn't include Western instruments as the best place to start. Ben Johnston commented at my first meeting with him how a finely tuned orchestral ensemble could provide the supportive environment to guide players to being able to play in different intonations in the future.

Nevertheless, the most fruitful area of exploration has been in combination with film and shadow theatre. Through my former work as a scenic artist in Los Angeles I developed my own skills in these areas and once again this relates to Partch's idea that we all have different aspects within ourselves. What James Hillman referred to as “the inner commune” that our art should allow to come forth to realise in full. In many ways, I think of myself as much connected to theatre as music. This too was Partch's desire to return to a less specialised medium he saw in the Ancient Greeks. 

A poor orchestra is what I work with, but it remains modular and expandable to fit any vision that arises. It is open to many futures.

 

LAKE ALOE FESTIVAL release

We are excited to release our field recording from the port of Barsa. Most of the information can be found on our bandcamp page LAKE ALOE FESTIVAL but here we add the both the relationship between the tempos and the the metric subdivisions.

MONUMENT OF DIAMONDS recording now available

Another Timbre has released a work of Kraig Grady called Monument of Diamonds. Composed over a two-year period. It uses a 17 tone scale which expands upon the 12 tone merta-slendro tuning common to the Anaphorian shadow ensembles throughout the island. Grady considers it  one of his best and one of his most beautiful compositions and a useful sound work to everyone. Here is where you can get it along with two sound extracts.  https://anothertimbre.bandcamp.com/album/monument-of-diamonds . Cover artwork generously provided by Fred Tomaselli,

LLAMA ISLAND

[moved here from other temporary blog] While discovered in 2009 by Joan Taylor, Llama Island has only recently come to the attention of the music world of Anaphoria Island despite it being within a two days southerly sailing distance. The indigenous inhabitants of that island have been aware since ancient times of how well their island 'tiles' space in an aperiodic way as the sole unit. One would be hard-pressed to find a single structure on the island that has not been decorated with it. The Anaphorians have been nevertheless more interested in using it musically. One of these has been as 'tonalities' on generalised keyboards. Another traces the shoreline around 13 hexanies where 7 hexanies are presented complete while 6 are incomplete having only 5 tones due to the missing of 3 internal tones. This pathway exhibits a bias that is musically useful to some in that on the map presented here the vertical appears 20 times, the diagonal down to the left 16 times and the one to the right 12 times. Thus one can accent some intervals more than others over the secession of 48 intervals around its shore. The island can be rotated in 6 ways or simply varied in 24 different ways by seeding it with the permutations of the tetrad that one uses to generate the hexany.
P.S. There is an additional 5 hexanies which exist in the negative; two of these are complete and 3 are incomplete with only 5 tones 

A DESIGN FOR A META SLENDRO MALLET INSTRUMENT ALSO CAPABLE OF SWEEPING CHORDS

It has  been desirable to be able to play chords on a mallet instrument in a fashion similar to what can be done on Harry Partch's  Diamond Marimba and Quadrangularis Reversum where one can scrape a mallet downward as in the former or upward in the latter to arpeggiate a full harmonic or subharmonic hexad.

What is presented here preserves this spirit of being able to scape  triads that mimics the 6-7-8 harmonic triads and it inversion . This scale which can find within Wilson's Meru scales found here http://anaphoria.com/wilsonmeru.html.
It can do so in multiple octaves and while preserving the conventional low to high arrangement of tones.  The layout coincides with Wilson's  3/5 keyboard which is constructed from his gral keyboard guide found here http://anaphoria.com/wilsonkeyboard.html.

This scale forms also a 17, 22, 27, 32 and 37 tone scale where it fills in the gaps as close as one can get to an equal system. This same arrangement can still be used by adding each new set of five tones  placing them below each of the ranks of bars. One could also apply this to a tempered version where the bottom set of pitches were duplicated at the top in the appropriate place making an instrument where each triad and its inversion could be easily played.

This post has been edited to replace this image below. The layout above has been chosen over this one since in the 17 tone version which i am making it places the added tones up above and the more common notes down below. Since i am using xylophone bars it is quite easy to make the bars sound so finding it easy to arpeggiate either up or down. Also i am finding that pentatonic like  arpeggios are quite nice sounding so extra happy with these lay outs.

JUST WHO ARE THE PEOPLE OF ANAPHORIA? THE DNA RESULTS ARE IN AND THE RESULTS WILL SURPRISE YOU!

As an island nation of exiles and foreigners, the assumption has always been that the genetic makeup of the Anaphorian people would be as mixed as the world at large. Well, surprise surprise. We now know this not to be the case.  DNA expert Jonathon Grasse of the Panpsychic Institute who has spent the last three years taking samples of any and everyone has come up with results no one expected, especially him.  Grasse found a universal set that seemed to be present in all inhabitants. Enough suspense! Here are his results. 

Escaped Cultivar 37%
Non-glacial Erratic 29%
Bee 17%
Bore Tide 13%
Antidote of Aether 3%

The remaining 1% seemed limited to the following almost exclusively.

Bark
Gecko
Meru Aloe 
Moss of Vale
Alluvial Fan 
Fulgurite 
Igneous Rock
Redwood Tree
Galician Porcupine

It is worth noting that there is a group in the Anaphoria midwest who identify as totally Bee even though this DNA was no higher than the rest of the island. Despite this, there is, and there has been no problem with their widespread universal acceptance islandwide.

Grasse said he was humbled in how helpful everyone was with some volunteering their own time to help and in even providing transportation to some of Anaphoria's most remote locales. Asked how he happened to pick Anaphoria as a place to investigate " he said he wasn't quite sure, but thought it might be his own DNA, "Apparently I’m 41% igneous rock, 32% redwood tree, 18% Galician porcupine, and 9% midwestern United States redneck." 

CHIPPEWAYAN ECHOES PERFORMED BY THE ISAURA STRING QUARTET

KRAIG GRADY :: Chippewayan Echoes from MicroFest on Vimeo.

Composition for Composers #1

Composition for Composers #1
These compositions seek to address the situation where there are more worthy composers than concert space can accomodate.

Nuclear Simphony #1

for 2 to 18 composers

There are 5 movements maximum in a performance each involving following number of composers. Each movement can be performed separately

Movement A-5 composers
Movement B-2 composers
Movement C-3 composers
Movement D-2 composers
Movement E-5 composers

The following is determined ahead of time.
the instrumentation
a set tempo throughout.
the tuning or tunings

Each movement can be between 90 seconds to approx. 7 minutes.

The composition is constructed in three steps.

A. The construction of a nuclear melody.
The nuclear melody is composed with each composer adding an equal part to the melody in rotation (from 1 to 4 notes) . The goal should be to maintaining enough simplicity for subsequent lines to later be written without disrupting the flow. Multiples of a quarter note with a half note being the common unit. The melody ends when a composer chooses to end for their turn.

B. Once the nuclear melody is written each composer determines where they are going write and where they are going to rest with beginning and ending points coinciding with the nuclear melody. this information is shared between composers and composers are allowed to modify their decisions.

C. final parts are written by composers  and shared either before or in rehearsal with the inserts of further rest allowed and minor changes.

———————————————————————————————————————————

Nuclear Simphony #2 for percussion
(two versions - pulse based or time based)

for 3 to 16 composers each writing for one percussion player.

The following is to be determined in advance:
A.The instrumentation based on available percussion instruments.
B. The number of movements (1-x) each with a set tempo or time scale

This composition is based on the idea of a nuclear melody except of rhythm. The next step is instead of having a set rhythmic point that is shared by all,  rests or silences are used instead

The composition is constructed in three steps.
A. Taking the set tempo or timescale, each composer in rotation composes points or spans of rest in which will remain silent during the piece. If a pulse is present, A rest should be at least one beat long. A composer chooses the ending of the piece instead of inserting further rest. 

B. Each composer composes their own section incorporating these areas of rest.

C. upon comparison before or during rehearsal slight modifications of each part is possible.
————————————————————————————————————
New party pieces
For any number of composers
starting at the end each composer composes a bar of music plus 2 notes of the preceding measure. and exquisite corpse in reverse.
————————————————————————————————————————
The Curved Space of Tetrachords
for any number of composers
(two possible versions)
live version:
instrumentation is determined beforehand.
each composer picks a tetrachord in a specific range and composes up to 20 seconds of music using it solely. volume is determined by the duration with ………..
each composer chooses the duration of rest following it up to 30 seconds afterwards. Pieces are played back in random order.


electronic version:
Each composer picks a tetrachord in a specific range and composes and records it

The Term Microtonality: Strict or Loose interpretation.

I try to avoid the word Microtonality like the plague. I never mention it on releases except for one time i included one sentence for which I was called out for by one critic (sic?).
If though we are going to tolerate the term , which encompasses more and more each day, perhaps it might be good to draw the line in the sand somewhere.
As a start and to get to the point:

 It should be intentional. For instance, accidental deviations from say, the standard scale need not apply. A lack of directionality might also be in keeping here, say not the result of a random choice of objects or even a process. A scale though determined by ear should be included as a valid method even if no math is involved.

 It should be a feature in the approach to the music. If not then perhaps we might start calling the miked acoustic guitar of a folk singer, electronic music. Technically it is, but also trivially too. Basically if it can removed without changing the character and expression of the music, we might be better to refer to the music what features the music is actually using.

In terms of other cultures, for the time being, it seems ok to refer to any intonational practice outside one's own as microtonal. In turn those in those culture should in turn be allowed to return the favor. In the long run, it might be better to limit it to being outside the cultures at hand, assuming an uncentered norm, even if the practice seems limited to one cultural practice at the moment.

For myself , I am going to use my own term Mesotonal explained back here

Pictures of a Meta-slendro Bass Marimba

 

Still researching other resonator options but this works for the time being.

Book recommendations on Microtonality

This blog post is basically a handy list of written resources for those interested in Just intonation and microtonality starting from the simplest to the more specialized and detailed. We suggest owning hard copies as all serve as important references.


The Just intonation Primer by David B. Doty
http://www.dbdoty.com/Words/Primer1.html

On The Sensations of Tone. Hermann Helmholtz
http://store.doverpublications.com/0486607534.html
   
Genesis of a Music by Harry Partch
https://monoskop.org/images/b/be/Partch_Harry_Genesis_of_a_Music_2nd_ed.pdf

Divisions of the Tetrachord by John Chalmers
http://eamusic.dartmouth.edu/~larry/published_articles/divisions_of_the_tetrachord/

Microtonality and the Tuning Systems of Erv Wilson by Terumi Narushima (available in Octotober 2017)
https://www.routledge.com/Microtonality-and-the-Tuning-Systems-of-Erv-Wilson/Narushima/p/book/9781138857568

Musical Mathematics by Cris Forster
https://www.amazon.com/Musical-Mathematics-Science-Acoustic-Instruments/dp/0811874079

Harmonic Experience by W. A. Mathieu
https://www.amazon.com/Harmonic-Experience-Harmony-Natural-Expression/dp/0892815604

'Temperament' and 'Temperament; or the Divisions of the Octave' R.H.M. Bosanquet
 http://anaphoria.com/library.html

Greek Musical Writings: Volume II, Harmonic and Acoustic Theory. Edited by Andrew Barker.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Greek-Musical-Writings-Cambridge-Literature/dp/0521616972

Multiple Division of the Octave and the Tonal Resources of 19-Tone Temperament. Mayer Joel Mandelbaum. Thesis
http://anaphoria.com/mandelbaumthesis.pdf

The Greek Aulos by Kathleen Schlesinger
https://archive.org/details/KathleenSchlesingerTheGreekAulos

Augusto Novaro Musica Natural and approximation (Two editions) 1927-29 and 1951
http://anaphoria.com/novaro.html

Bach and Tuning. Johnny Reinhard 2016.
https://www.amazon.com/Quellen-Studien-Musikgeschichte-Gegenwart-Antiquity/dp/3631672055?fbclid=IwAR3yAvoq3AzNXlG8zVEto7fjXDm-Yb-BPPp29VpCLjHQcsHdvZrnIbiIOTo

Harmonics and Spirals. Neil Haverstick. 2016 https://microstick.net/product/harmonics-spirals/

A Theory of Evolving Tonality- Yasser

https://archive.org/details/theoryofevolving0000yass

I will be updating this as i am sure i am forgetting many

Diamonds, Lambdomas, and Mt. Meru: The Return of Sacred Objects to a Secular Landscape.

Wilson's Chart of the Mt. Meru/Lambdoma interface

Today, as never before,

we are witnessing an opposition

 not between art and life,

 but between sacral and secular spaces.

-Ilya Kabakov

In the process of my wife, Terumi Narushima working on her book on Erv Wilson's Tuning innovations, the subject of the Partch's Diamond and its origin have come up. What strikes myself is that how this structure seems to have been reawakened in not only Harry’s vision even if through Mayer, but the others to as close relatives. Spontaneously they appear in others such as Novaro (in the same year as Partch, 1927), but also Schlesinger too once one scratches the surface of her subharmonic scales sharing a common tone.  That all this rediscoverering would happen within a few brief years after 2000 years is uncanny and could be seen almost as if the structure had a life of its own. In its former context it was used to please the gods or to represent the celestial clockwork or even as a reflection of political structure.  This Lambdoma returns, but not in the context of an object to be worshipped, but as a something that nevertheless is once again in communication with our secular world. It is within this contact and communication that Partch deserves credit for placing his work and vision. His rituals do not worship these objects, but nevertheless places them within the conversation throughout his own aesthetic objects.

           Erv Wilson firmly explored many of the geometrical properties of various organisations and while publicly he would not attribute anything extraordinary about them, he would always point them out when he ran across them. One of the most common mathematical figures he would return to,  or maybe uncannily repeatedly returned to him was Pascal's triangle which was known in  India where it was discovered 1000 years before Pascal it was known as Meru Prastara.

1. Mount Meru, the abode of the gods at the center of the universe in Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist traditions

 His first notice of it was in its relationship with his combination product sets. Later he appears to be the first to investigate the additions of the diagonals of Mt. Meru beyond the one known to produce the Fibonacci series. Here he found scales that reflected the practices of various indigenous music that some now found a way to appear in their own rituals.

Wilson's scale tree within the tetrachord showing
 both the super-particular ratios between the notes as well as the two sums of the diagonals.

Later I was fortunate enough to catch and point out to Wilson that Novaro’s series coincided with a reseeded triangle. From this he saw how Mt. Meru was tied to both the Lambdoma and the Farey series. The latter is imbedded in his scale tree, his reinvention of the Stern-Brocot tree. All this represented in the chart shown.

This series starts with the numbers 0/1 and 1/0 from which he described as possibly divine numbers but would not say or define further. One might wonder like myself if they are the infinitely small and large respectfully.  Then is the 1/1 like the "mesocosm" between these infinities. Hence why I have preferred to call my music Mesotonal.

Our relationship though is not in worshipping these structures even though they are probably worthy. They indeed act as forces often universal and beyond our control, even more so to surpass. Attempts to play these megastructures have proven less satisfactory than the material that rest upon them. Thus here they communicate and inform us at a distance  and there is good reason to listen.

First "Frequency" Virus Hits Anaphoria. HRZ-432

DETAIL SHOWING DAMAGE CAUSED BY THE HRZ 432 VIRUS

It didn't take long for a non fatal but extremely debilitating virus  to sweep and fan wide spread panic. " I was just filled with nausea and feelings of vision of no future. I felt stuck with no motivation could no longer eat, especially any food that hadn't been tried before" reported one citizen hit with one of  the worse cases . Without any clear cause, rumors was that finally the island was under attack by hostile forces. Finally it was found that the source lie in an old abandoned mission  recently occupied by followers of La Roche  who seemed to have entered the country illegally. Within the make shift headquarters lie handouts as well as material belonging to a Schiller Institute with plans to launch a variety of other regressive virus. It was found in fact that the sounding of 432hz was having effects of nausea and since the closing of the institute under its strong anti-missionary laws and the removal of the devices sounding 432, Health and progress have returned to the Island. Still the mere mention of the frequency has caused almost instant relapses of nausea.

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.

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

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