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.

Commerical for a Western

Here is my one composition for Chamber Orchestra.
http://anaphoria.com/westerncommercial.mp3 The recording is from 1986 and appeared on a concert i put together at the Japan American Theater for 18 three minute works. Since i had what i considered a more important show. The premiere of my 3 projector film Long Gunn but not Forgotten I though well 3 minutes is like an advertisement anyway so i decided to do one for this upcoming show. I enjoy the fact that i was able to use a chamber Orchestra to advertise a concert on my self-made instruments. The Narrator in John Callahan who also appeared as the Sheriff in the film. He did an amazing job even though he didn't have had a chance to rehearse with the Orchestra before hand. Don Crockett conducted.

Zephyros

Zephyros for solo meta-slendro vibraphone is one of my favorite pieces. Ini.Itu was kind enough to issue it on Vinyl as the title track of
Anaphoria: Footpaths and Trade Routes
which has been its sole place of availability. I sadly is approaching going out of print so I am providing an mp3.

The Pentatonic Family pt.2/expanded

Here is a paper where we return to look at another cycle of Pentatonics within a 12 tone context in order for others to apply to the scale and subsets of ones choice. It is better to start with part one if missed it here.
I have revised this from the other day.

The Nature of Music is as much Inner as Outer

I really become more and more interested in what human beings can do musically. It is an inner reality than comes not from a mere imitating of environmental nature, yet is nothing but an expression of nature itself that we carry and comes out all by itself in a way we still do not understand.

What comes out of humans is such a wider variety than any one person or culture could ever imagine. Look at the different ways people make music, each with its own development, than often is compensatory to how it is used in other cultures. It becomes extremely difficult to reduce music to universal qualities that are common to all. At best we can find some that apply to most, yet in particular, these can vary to a degree that is equally complex.

I prefer to pursuit and defend a path which i see more as going  deeper 'into' the human as opposed to only 'outside' of it.   What is this 'musical nature" of human beings that some cast  as "inferior' to nature as if it has some original sin that must be suppressed. There is something 'puritanical' here.Might this definition of nature be one that only gives it masculine traits and characters, a suppression of all  the hidden and truly mysterious workings of nature in places outside the microscope. In the meanwhile music comes out of human beings like breath.

There is much in nature which is beautiful and listenable, and needs to be preserved. This though is as true inwardly than outwardly. The nature we find in the outer world though does not develop although it can be destroyed as is going on world wide [we all know that]. The inner nature though is one that grows and changes in unexpected ways , albeit slowly at times, but this requires a nourishment, more often in it being given expression more than it imitating an outer world. When it imitates it is more often than not  inclined toward the imitation of other humans. Even the interest in the environment, might be to big extent, imitating what others humans are doing. Within us too are the plants and varied species that we might water, the ones that grow inside of us and seem to potentially grow without limit. What nature implanted in us, might be so that in a way she might hear herself in a way she can't hear otherwise.

Bali again

Some time back we went to a concert in Sydney of the Indonesian National Orchestra. The Orchestra is headed by the composer Franki Raden, who has taken on the almost impossible task of creating a music out of the diverse islands of Indonesia. I do think he has managed to do what  he has done without homogenizing the forces he is dealing with, and yes it is still a work in progress.

Indonesia i think is a brave country to try in general the combining of all these different islands into one nation. If the world did become one, hopefully not under the banking interest, but in the interest of more humanitarian cooperation, it might be a good testing ground. But at this concert they had a raffle and right before they picked i turned to my wife who had entered and said' i guess we are going to Bali again" and sure enough they called her name although she wasn't sure at first.

We met Franki Raden for the first time unrelated to this during intermission and found out about the festival he was putting together in Bali IMEX [Indonesian Music Expo] so we both felt it was some sign to go there at that time. As politics is what it is , there was pressure for the gov't sponsors to put on many acts they thought fit and it was probably the last night that best represented Raden's vision. There was a group from Sulawesi that performed and after they warmed up, one realized that one was dealing with ritual more than just music. It was over powering. Greg Schiemer composed a work for swinging i phones holding sustain pitches that seem to fit in an uncanny way and this group joined him and it had to be one of the greatest combination of opposite technologies i have seen.

Most of our time there was spent just outside Ubud in Sebali in the company of Gusti Ngurah Suaratana who lead us to ceremonies, some on the street,  and was responsible for having our marriage blessed in a ceremony and lead us to a remote rice field where he had built a small structure. While there, his wife appeared with coffee and pastries that surprised us that she even got there at the same time. Gusti spoke a little English and Japanese and much of our communication over many long hours involved gesture that really seem to work. He was an instant friend if not member of a family as he put it. He in turn was good friends with Kris, an artist and historical prince of Ubud, who partooked of our blessing in between his heavy schedule of mediating problems in the region, all without pay. He too was a greatly inspired person who had studied abroad in order to understand his own culture and had even lived with an aboriginal family for 6 months eating everything thing but the large worms which ws just beyond of what he might do.

From Kris we learned that there is a law that every rice farmer in Bali has a equal right and access to water and that there are people put in charge to see this is in fact what happens. Being in the single rice field we were in was already a lesson on just how complex this can be and still i cannot imagine how it was done, much less on an island wide level. Bali seemed more civilized than elsewhere.

Here is a recording next door to where Kris lives of some hocketing frogs in the rain.
http://anaphoria.com/froghockets.mp3

A Resonator Mystery

Over the years i have always been amazed by what we don't know , especially in an area where it seems we have advanced so far beyond, it would have be long figured out long ago.
 No such luck in many cases.
 While they are figuring out what they did wrong at CERN with their faster than light results, i have stumbled into something that should have long ago been dealt with.

While in the process of tuning up some instruments in a new tuning, i had some tubes that are to become resonators that i decided to play with a bit  on a set of reeds tuned to the same tuning. Terumi suggested playing with open resonators so i took the caps off and found i could augment the sound of a reed and use my hand to open and close to play with the sound. The problem was that the resonators were resonating a pitch a whole tone or more lower than what all the the theoretical measurements have been telling me.

 I checked my answers with others who concluded that what i had was in the the range of what they had. I asked on the reed organ list if anyone there had such a thing happen and one suggested that it was the cavity that held the reed that jointly made a lower resonator. This made total sense to me and assumed it was correct but i thought i could check it by trying it against the second set of reeds which has a much shallower cavity. the result was the same.
 One of the things i did to test was to play the pitch it should be along with the lower pitch.
 In all cases it is the lower pitch that sounded much louder.

It appears i am not the first to notice this. i got an message from Simon Buser,  a builder and Organist in Germany who said,

"The same system of reeds 2 semitones higher than the resonators I found in Organ Clarinets of Aeolian-Skinner. Seems to be the usual way to handle this phenomena: by experience, not by calculation, I suppose."

My own theory at the moments is that since they are suction reeds not blowing reeds that the suction lowers the air pressure. But still have to figure out a way to test this.

 Oh yes BTW with a vibraphone bar it works as expected.

Anyway one can have some musical fun with this as can be heard here. [Might take a minute to load]. The top pitch is the theoretical one and the lower is the one that works

http://anaphoria.com/organharmonics.mp3