hi there mark a steven, and thanks for the interest .here's a list by
the same author of some suggested micro-listening,and seeing how it
includes me, it's got to be good, right?
<emoticon of your choosing goes here>
McLaren
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Here's a list of really _great_ microtonal music to hit listeners in
the face with. Hell, don't even tell 'em it's xenahrmonic, just play
it for 'em and watch their brains turn to strawberry jelly and ooze
out their ears:
[1] Ivor Darreg - Prelude Number One in 19 equal
[2] Bill Wesley - track 5 from "For A Few Notes More" in 35 note
Pythagorean
[3] Kyle Gann - "Custer and Sitting Bull" 13 limit JI
[4] Jeff Stayton - track 3 from "Industrial Raga"
[5] Jonathan Glasier - track 10 from "The Microtonal Music Of Jonathan
Glasier," 19 equal guitar
[6] Easley Blackwood - 15 equal and 13 equal and 23 equal compositions
from the CD "Twelve Microtonal Etudes for Electronic Music Media"
[6] Glenn Branca - Symphony No. 3 for the first 128 members of the
harmonic series
[7] Carter Scholz - "Lattice" from the CD "8 compositions"
[8] Larry Polansky - "Another You," variations on "My Funny Valentine"
for microtonal 17-limit JI harp
[9] "Portrait In Saws of Two Tuning Theorists," No. 2, Erv Wilson, by
Warren Burt, 17 limit JI Farey Series tuning
[10] Neil Haverstick - "Birdwalk," 19 equal
[11] X. J. Scott "Alligator Scamperizo" 11 equal + 17 equal from the
CD "Zxhrgenian Night Melodies"
[12] William Schottstaedt - Dinosaur Music, Colony Five, The Gong-
Tormented Sea, or any of his other masterpieces
[13] Jean-Claude Risset - "Songs," "Inharmonique," "Mutations"
[14] Wendy Carlos - "Beauty in the Beast" from the CD of the same
title, also "A Woman's Song" from the same CD
[15] Ivor Darreg - 9 equal, 16 equal, 17 equal, 20 equal, 22 equal, 31
equal from "Beyond the Xenharmonic Frontier" Volume One, "All Systems
Go!"
[16] John Bischoff "Next Tone, Please"" in 31 equal from the CD
"Artificial Horizon"
[17] Gamelan Pacifica - any track from their CD "Trance Gong"
[18] Gamelan Son Of Lion - anything from Barbara Benary's CD of
gamelan music
[19] Skip LaPlante - Variations in 13 equal from his CD
[20] Johnny Reinhard - reconstructed Charles Ives "Universe Symphony"
[21] Kraig Grady - pretty much anything from any of his CDs, it's all
excellent
[22] Jon Catler - Sleeping Beauty
[23] "Mister Yasser's Piano" by Warren Burt
[24] Julian Cope - "Breath Of Odin" 1999 Good luck find it. Totally
out print. Fortunately, you can download it on bittorrent.
[25] M. Joel Mandelbaum - "Andante Cantabile" from the CD
"Electronica"
[26] Lydia Ayers - just another anything from any of her 3 excellent
computer music CDs. I'm particularly partial to "Bioluminescence" but
it's all wonderful magical JI computer music.
[27] Elaine Walker - "Men and Martian Machines" in 19 equal
[28] Ben Johnston - String Quartet No. 9 for 31 limit JI
[29] Harry Partch - music for the film "Daphne of the Dunes," also
"Ring around the Moon"
[30] Ivor Darreg - 5 equal, 10 equal, 20 equal from the 2-CD set
"Multiples Of Five"
[31] Ivor Darreg - both 7-limit JI compositions for Elastic Tuning
Organ from the CD "More Microtonal Music by Ivor Darreg"
[32] Gary Lee Nelson, "Fractal Mountains" in 96 equal
[33] Three Inverse Genera, 19 limit JI tuning forks, Warren Burt
[34] Genesis (Arabic Meantone), Ros bandt
[35] "From Temporal Silence," 60 equal, Richard Boulanger
[36] "Farabi" 31 equal, by John Bischoff & Tim Perkis
[37] Meditation on Two Themes from the Day of Existence," 72 equal,
Ivan Wyschnegradsky
[38] "Preludio A Cristobal Colon," Julian Carillo, 96 equal
[39] "Three Quarter-Tone Pieces," Charles Ives
[40] "Four FM Percussion Studies," Eric Stanley, 24 equal
[41] "A Little Girl Dreams Of Taking the Veil," 13 limit JI, Erling
Wold
[42] "Paradigms Lost" and "Bodhisattvas in Berkeley? Mu!" by David
Doty, 7 limit JI, from his CD "Uncommon Practice"
[43] "Two Studies On Ancient Greek Scales," Harry Partch, 7 limit JI
[44] "Fulcrum" and "Lachrimae" by Mark Trayle, harmonic series 1-60
[45] "A Study In Fives" (25 equal) and "De Spiritu Sancto" Wilson
stellated [1,3,5,7] hexany, by Paul Rapoport
[46] "Quadripartite," William Meadows, 19 equal
[47] "Composition en Quarets de Ton," also "Etude Sure Les Mouvements
Rotatoires" by Ivan Wyschnegradsky
[48] "Sleeping Beauty," Allen Strange, 7-limit JI, also the
algorithmic piece he did for the TX802 that maps altitudes on a map
into tones
[49] "31 equal electric guitar solo," Buzz Kimball
[50] "Flight," 72 equal, Ezra Sims
[51] "Whispers Out Of Time," non-just non-equal-tempered tuning, James
Dashow
[52] "Suite for Microtonal Piano," 7 limit JI, Ben Johnston
[53] "Xenomelophilia," Martin Bartlett, JI
[54] "Bending Space," JI William Alves, from the CD "The Terrain of
Possibilities"
[55] "Gending Alexander," also "Cornish Lancaran," Lou Harrison, from
the CD "Gamelan music of Lou Harrison"
[56] "Dance Of the Testifiers," JI, Erling Wold, from the CD "Music Of
Love"
[57] "Yquem," Bruce Mather, 48 equal
[58] Henk Badings, "Sonata 3 for viola" and "Reeks voor Kleine
Klanksukken," 31 equal, from the CD "50 Years of Stichting Huyghens-
Fokker"
[59] "Mysteries," 19 equal by Neil Haverstick from the CD "Acoustic
Stick"
[60] "Duet For Morphine and Cymbal," William Sethares, non-just non-
equal-tempered tuning, from the CD "Xentonality"
[61] "Klaviers" by Iannis Xenakis, 72 equal
[62] "Traveling Music," JI, Loren Rush
[63] "It's Not That Simple," 24 equal, Brian Reinbolt
[64] Track 4 from "Fear Of Open Spaces," Jeff Stayton, 22 equal guitar
overdub
[65] Track 1 from "The Microtonal Music of Jonathan Glasier," 100-
equal harp built by Pepe Estevan
[66] "Steam" Partch 43-limit + 12 equal simultaneously, by Julia
Wolfe, from the CD "Arsenal of Democracy"
[67] "I Heard A Thousand Blended Notes," Jim Horton, 17-limit JI
[68] "Harbinger," JI, David Behrman, track 6 from the CD "Unforeseen
Events"
[69] "Transparences" and "Cosmos" from the CD "Homma A
Wyschnegradsky," 24 equal
[70] "Mata" (The Mother), 24 equal, Alois Haba
[71] "Songs of the Wind," Sarah Hopkins, 7-limit JI whirly, from the
CD "Austral Voices" (though this is arguably not very microtonal,
since the only really non-12 pitch is the just 7th)
[72] "Water Music" I & II, 11 equal & 48 equal, William Schottstaedt,
also "Dinosaur Music," from the CD "Dinosaur Music." More masterpieces
by the best living American composer.
[73] "Stria," 13 equal or 9th root of phi if you prefer, by John
Chowning. From the CD "Computer Music of John Chowning"
[74] "The Well-Tempered Piano," JI, but impossible to get because
LaMonte Young has raised the price of this multi-CD set so high no one
can afford it.
[75] "The Harp Of New Albion," JI, Terry Riley. Arguably not very
xenharmonic, since it's only 7-limit JI and not exotic 7-limit like
Doty's "Bodhisattvas in Berekely? Mu!"
Follows a list of music whish is xenharmonic but not microtonal. That
is, this music sounds distinctly and audibly different from
conventional 12 equal, but does not necessarily adhere to a single
specific set of pitches. In some cases it's electronic tape music; in
other cases it uses acoustic "found" pitches; while in other cases
it's vocal and exotic and highly-non-12 but not systematically so.
[1] "Sirens" by Anna Homler. From the CD "Do Ya Say Di Do"
[2] "Scambi," by Henri Pousseur
[3] "Noise Study" by James Tenney
[4] "Sud" by Jean-Claude Risset
[5] Csound and guitar feedback by Jeff Stayton, from the CD "Fear Of
Open Spaces"
[6] "Forbidden Planet" soundtrack by Louis & Bebe Barron
[7] "Low Speed," "Moonflight," many others by Validmir Ussachevsky &
Otto Luening; also "A Poem In Cycles and Bells" by Ussachevsky &
Luening from the out of print Lousiville Orchestra LP
[8] "Piano Tuna Fish Scale" and "Green Ideas Sleep Furiously" by Ivor
Darreg
[9] "Skala Nuova" by Oskar Sala from his CD "My Marvellous
Instrument"
[10] "Risveglio di una Citta" by Luigi Russolo. From the CD "Futurism
and Dada Reviewed"
[11] "Over and Under" by Ellen Fullman
[12] "Threnody For the Victims Of Hiroshima" by Kryzstof Pendercki.
Notated as quartertone, but, really, you don't hear it that way
[13] "Transparence" and "Flight of the Cybernaut" by Marc Battier.
[14] "Turntable Quartet" by Dan Stearns
[15] "Arras" and "Solar Ellipse" by Barry Truax
[16] "Apocalypse," Quatermass," "Two Moons of Quatermass," "Luna Park"
by Tod Dockstader, America's greatest electroacoustic tape composer
[17] Almost anything by Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaefer
[18] "Fourth World Music" by Jon Hassel
[19] "Three Constructions" by John Cage
[20] Music for Wing, Godzilla and waterphone - Jonathan Glasier
[21] "Glyptodont" by Skip LaPlante
[22] XX by Elodie Lauten
[23] "Kyema: Intermediate States" by Eliane Radigue
[24] Anything by Robert Rich. Doesn't sound microtonal, but is clearly
xenharmonic.
[25] "Metal Machine Music" by Lou Reed
[26] "Mesa" for cybersonic bandoneon; also, "Hornpipe," by Gordon
Mumma
[27] "I of IV" and "Beautiful Soup" by Pauline Oliveros
[28] "Harmony 101" and "Tears for Tlaloc" by Bill Wesley
[29] "Neural Synthesis Numbers 6-9" by David Tudor
[29] "Traffic Study" by Paul Lansky
[30] The live electronic version of "Kontakte" by Karlheinz
Stockhausen where all the sounds come from an electronically
manipulated gong
[31] The Hub - most of their music sounds non-12, but not
systematically so. They did some pieces in specific recognizable
scales with timbres that let you hear the tuning, but not a lot.
[32] Tuvan throat-singing.
[33] "Deep Listening" CD by Pauline Oliveros
[34] Almost all French spectral music.
[35] "Kraanerg" and "Eonta" by Iannis Xenakis.
[36] "Atmospheres" and "Lux Aeterna" and "Volumina" by Gyorgy Ligeti
[37] Any compositions performed by Laetitia Sonami using "The Lady's
Glove"
[38] Any compositions performed by Michel Waiszwicz using "The Hands"
[39] "Swan Song" by Max Mathews
[40] "Quintet" by Ezra Sims. Uses harmonies made up of difference
tones.
[41] "Critical Band" by James Tenney
[42] "Hamiltonian Circuit" by Carter Scholz from his CD "8
Compositions"
[43] Any installation by Trimpin
[44] Anything by Einsturzende Neubauten
[45] Many of the tracks from the CDs of Skinny Puppy or Severed Heads
[46] Pretty much anything made using MAX/MSP. For more videos of this
stuff than would be required to choke a medium-sized dog, see
http://youtube.com/user/cycling74com
Snarkified version here:
http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2007/07/ten-entertaining-videos-about-maxmsp.html
Basically, this is music without a beat and without a melody and
without audible organization. Lotsa noise flailing around. Doesn't
sound like conventional 12-equal to me. Doesn't sound microtonal
either. YMMV.
[47] Noise music by Crash Worship or that piece by Glenn Branca for 30
electric guitars "amplified beyond the threshold of audible pain."
Yum. Zippy the Pinhead asks, "Are we making microtonal music yet?"
[48] "Cartridge Music" by the Coin-Flipping Kook. Doesn't sound like
12. Doesn't sound like much of anything. Again, YMMV.
[49] Indusitral noise-drone music by groups like Decoded Feedback. So
much noise it's hard to tell what tuning it's in. Doesn't sound like
conventional 12 to me, but with this kind of feedback and extreme
noise processing, you'd be hard-pressed to say what tuning it's in.
One thing for sure, this ain't your daddy's Dvoark New World Symphony,
kiddies.
[50] Orchestral timbre-magiicians like Henri Dutilleux or French
electroacoustic composers like Francois Bayle. None of this stuff
sounds particularly 12-like to me, but it doesn't sound
_systematically_ microtonal. Could be I'm just missing something.
[51] Journeys on the Winds of Time by Alan Lamb. This guy put contact
microphones on abandoned telegraph wires strung across the Australian
outback. Doesn't sound like anything I've ever heard, and it's
xenharmonic as hell, but clearly not _systematically_ microtonal.
[52] "Black Lightning" from the cassette "Critters" or the tracks on
"Identity" by Tom Nunn
http://www.edgetonerecords.com/catalog/4047.html
Tom builds his own instruments and his music sounds like nothing else.
Highly xenharmonic...but once again, not _specifically_ microtonal.
Tom Nunn typically doesn't tune his T-rodimbas or the spines of the
Crustacean to a particular definite xenharmonic scale. They just are
what they are.
[53] "Opus Contra Naturam," electroacoustic music by Dan Stearns. This
falls somewhere in between industrial music and tape musique concrete
collage. It's highly xenharmonic, but don't expect to hear, say, 37-
equal triads making a nice IV-V-I chord progression. Dan doesn't have
a lot of patience with the major and minor triad, he's tired of 'em,
and the thinks you should be too, and that's what makes his music so
refreshing and so vibrant and vividly memorable.
On Jan 21, 2:18 pm, Mark & Steven Bornfeld
Post by danstearnsPost by g***@googlemail.comOn 30 Dec 2008, 00:04, Mark & Steven Bornfeld
At the other extreme, I'm going to try to listen to some of Dan Stearns
and his microtonal mindblowing music. ;-)
I'm still finding my way around the 12-note scale.
To have to abandon that and think in a whole
new musical universe would be..... unthinkable.
--http://www.gillsmith999.plus.com/
In his 2008 article, "Why teaching microtonality from familiar ->
exotic is a bad idea", Brian McLaren makes the case, one I agree with
FWiW, that if if swimming is your goal , you should forgo timidity as
a matter of course and jump in the deep waters…by analogy, something
akin to what McKenna would refer to as a meaningful, committed, or
heroic dose.
Why Teaching Microtonality from Familiar -> Exotic is a Bad Idea
Brian McLaren
March 3, 2008
The entire idea of trying to introduce microtonality to people by
starting with what's familiar and gradually moving by baby steps to
more exotic tunings is a disastrously bad idea. A lot of people have
done this, and it has _always_ worked out badly.
Let me explain why.
[1] People who are interested in learning about microtonality are
generally not shrinking violets. Any folks who sign up for a class on
microtones are usually among the more adventurous musicians in a
group. Easing these folks into microtonality by starting with trite
junk like quartertones will at first frustrate, and soon annoy and
eventually enrage them. These folks want to hear the real deal, music
that sounds radical and striking. They don't want to hear a bunch of 5-
limit diatonic 12-note JI and listen to someone try to tell 'em that's
microtonal -- they know damn well it isn't. That's pissing on peoples'
legs and telling 'em it's raining. They get fed up with that kind of
condescending treatment _fast_.
[2] If you're dealing with a casual listener who just asks "So what's
all that xenharmonic stuff about?" you want to show casual listeners
_right off_ just how awesome and powerful microtonality can be, and
that means you hit 'em with the wild exotic stuff. Many people
mistakenly imagine that the average listener is conservative or
fearful of novelty. In my experience, not so. The average listener is
much more open-minded and much more eager to immerse hi/rself in
radical new sounds than most folks think. What the average listener
does NOT want is jargon and numerology. You start spouting a bunch of
fancy Greek words (diatoniaion and epimore and epimere and comma) and
drawing lotsa geometric diagrams and numbers on a blackboard, and the
average listener's eyes glaze over. They get sick of that crap
_fast_.
So for an average listener, just hit 'em with radical novel microtonal
music. Don't bother to go into details. You don't even have to tell
'em it's non-octave. If they want to know, you can go into details,
but the music's what matters. Shoot, don't even tell 'em it's
microtonal. Just play it for 'em. They'll love it.
[3] The biggest problems with starting with familiar tunings is that
these are by far the least interesting-sounding of all microtonal
tunings. In fact, most of 'em are boring as crap. So there you are,
droning on through this familiar bland stuff, 5-limit diatonic 12-note
JI, 19 equal in the diatonic mode that sounds just about exactly like
12 equal, and everybody is nodding off. People are starting to leave
the freakin' room. They're rolling their eyes. They're whispering to
one another, "THIS is MICROTONAL? Ye gods, this is BORING!"
BAD way to introduce microtonality. Bad, B*A*D*, _BAAAAD_ idea. Half
your group is likely to sidle out of the room before you work your
way, slowly and gradually, by baby steps, up to the point where the
xenharmonic tunings sounds distinctly Unlike conventional music, and
start to sound spicy and vivid and startlingly new.
[4] Starting with familiar-sounding novels unconsciously creates an
"anchor point." And it's a piss-poor anchor point. See Khaneman and
Tversky's Nobel-prize-winning work on the irrationalities of human
judgment -- "anchoring," which they first categorized and quantified,
is one of the most notable examples.
Anchoring occurs when you skew peoples' beliefs by the way you present
information. For example: let's assume you don't know the population
of Turkey (you probably don't) and I ask you "What's the population of
Turkey? 80 million? 120 million? 140 million?" You'll give me an
answer and it's probably going to be around the middle of the choices
I gave you. But if I ask a different group of people "What's the
population of Turkey? 10 million? 20 million? 30 million?" I'll get a
different set of answers, grouped around the middle of the second set
of choices.
The way the information is presented created an "anchor point" which
distorts people's expectations. In the first example, people's answers
will tend to cluster around 120 million, while in the second example
peoples' answers will tend to cluster around 20 million.
The population of Turkey is 71 million, by the way. Notice how we can
distort people's judgment about the size of the Turkish population
just by using this anchoring technique. Political polls do this all
the time, as do product evaluation polls set up by companies that want
to sell a product. It's all a form of psychological manipulation.
Creeps do this today with the post-9/11 hysteria: "Which do you
prefer? Freedom? Or security?" Anyone who's not brain-damaged will
obviously answer security. Freedom doesn't do you much good if you're
dead. But suppose you change the question -- "Which do you prefer?
Having every aspect of your life controlled by the security state? Or
being free?" Guess which answer people give _then_...?
Such is the power of anchoring.
The problem with starting with a familiar set of 12-like tunings and
gradually moving toward unfamiliar tunings that don't sound like 12 is
that you've created an anchor point -- and your anchor is 12. This is
a bad mistake. By the time you're halfway through giving your
introduction to microtonality, your audience will get the idea -- THE
WRONG IDEA: any tuning is good insofar as it is like 12. If doesn't
sound like 12, it's not so good.
This results in the kind of dismal crap you see on sinkholes of
deluded folly like the Alternative Lying List, where all tunings get
judged in a foolish continuum that runs from "very similar to 12 =
good" and "very different from 12 = bad." This naturally leads to
crazy and insanely stupid conclusions, like "all non-octave tunings =
bad."
The musical reality turns out to be just the opposite. The real value
of microtonal tunings involves getting away from what's familiar.
History shows that the most popular microtonal tunings are those which
audibly differ most drastically from 12 equal. 15 equal is extremely
popular, used by Wendy Carlos, Augusto Novaro, Ivor Darreg, Bill
Wesley, Easley Balckwood, myself, and many many others. 15 equal is
popular because it sounds radically and wildly different from 12
equal. You don't get anything like a conventional diatonic scale. You
get major and minor triads, but they sound noticeably different from
the major and minor triads in 12. You don't have a conventional
leading tone. Everything is different. This makes music in 15 equal
sound fresh and lively and vivacious. 15 equal breaks open a smelling
salts capsule under the audience's nose and really wakes 'em up.
By contrast, 19 equal can sound almost identical to 12, and this tends
to bore the audience. "If we wanted to hear 12," their attitude tends
to be, "we would've stayed with 12. Why bother with this?"
Once again, 9 equal sounds radically different from conventional
western music. You hit an audience with 9 equal, and they'll get
excited. But if you have the bad judgment to start the audience out
with the Greek chromatic and diatonic genera, the audience is likely
to snooze off. That stuff sounds almost identical to conventional
western music. The audience fidgets. They shift in their seats. They
start to get antsy. "When are we going to hear the real stuff/" they
start to ask. They get impatient.
Back in the 60s and 70s it used to be chic to play a familiar song
like "Greensleves" in 31 equal and call that "microtonality." Bad bad
bad idea. Ivor Darreg had a better idea -- he used to play visitors 13
equal melodies on a bunch of bronze slats he had set up as tubulongs.
The exotic inharmonic percussive timbre combined with the novel sound
of 13 always perked people up. They got interested. It piqued their
curiosity. They wanted to know more.
Playing "Greensleeves" in 31 equal never worked. 31 equal used to be
touted back in the 60s as some kind of "universal tuning" which,
academics claimed, would be ideal because you could play conventional
western music in it and it would sound almost identical to what we're
familiar with, as well as playing new music.
Well, that didn't fly. No one interested in new music gives a damn
about hearing the same old thing played in the same old way. They want
something NEW. The "old wine in new bottles" is an absolute plague in
cesspools of musical ignorance like the Alternative Lying List, and
you constantly find people wasting their goddamn time playing Fur
Elise in 5-limit diatonic JI. That's crap. It's death. It sounds
lethally boring. No one cares. Jettison that junk. Deep six it. Press
the eject button on that garbage. The way to get people excited about
microtonality is show 'em vividly and audibly, first-hand, just how
different and exciting microtonal tunings can be... And that means
playing radical new
...
read more »- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -