Microtonal Strut

The wonderful thing about microtonal tunings is sort of a Forrest Gump deal: You never know what you’re going to get. There is literally no music theory that will explain what works harmonically and what doesn’t. It’s all down to intuition.

Here’s a new piece in 19-tone equal temperament. For reasons that you might possibly notice as you listen, it seems to be called “Now Leaving on Track 19.” The main harmonic idea is the sub-minor triad. The style is deliberately retro, except for those places where 4/4 time gets left standing on the platform.

Except for Native Instruments Battery 3 contributing a few discreet drum samples, all of the instruments are u-he Zebra 2.5. The sequencing was done in Image-Line FL Studio 10.

Something New

Last night I took a look at a graphics programming system called Processing. It’s quite groovy. I had been dimly aware of it before, but I think I sort of rolled my eyes and muttered, “Just what I need — another software toy.” But I enjoy hobbyist-level computer programming, and this week I’ve been pondering what I might want to do with it. Processing offers some intriguing possibilities.

Csound is programming, but it’s not a very good fit for my own music composition preferences. Interactive fiction is programming, but I’ve become disenchanted with both the traditional IF delivery systems and the possibilities for meaningful storytelling within an interactive framework. Javascript running in a browser is an extraordinary resource, but what on Earth would I do with it?

Dave Phillips posted a link on the Csound mailing list to a new piece that he did using a system called AVSynthesis. I liked the piece — it’s not my style, but it evokes a definite mood. But when I gazed upon the web page for AVSynthesis, it was pretty clear I would never be able to fight my way through what might loosely be called the documentation.

Processing seems to be very well documented. It’s in active development, has a large user community, and does some spiffy things. Basically, you use it by writing code in Java. The code itself is easy to write and easy to understand. You can display and animate

A Little Something Extra

Here’s a rough mix of a new tune, “Distant Armies,” that may call for a little explanation. Our usual musical scale has 12 equal-tempered notes per octave. “Distant Armies” uses 13. As a result, all of the intervals are squashed together, some more than others. The result is perhaps a tiny bit disturbing, hence the title. Trying to use triads with this tuning would make very little sense, so I had to invent some entirely new chord voicings.

A friend complained that my endings are sometimes too abrupt, so I did a sort of fadeout. It’s not a real fadeout, exactly; it’s what classical musicians call morendo — dying away.

The grooves on trap kit, triangle, and djembe are courtesy of Spectrasonics Stylus RMX. Practically everything else is u-he Zebra 2.5. The recording platform was Image-Line FL Studio 10.

Enjoy, or run screaming from the room. The choice is yours.

Nothing Happening Here

John Cage, who more or less invented aleatoric music, said, “I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is music.”

My response has always been, “You have nothing to say, so I am not going to waste any time listening to you.”

Cage’s ideas have proven fairly influential among a certain class of experimentally-minded composers, but they have hardly penetrated the mainstream of music-making, and for reasons that are not hard to discern. Most listeners hope or expect that music will say something to them.

Recently I listened to a couple of newly uploaded pieces by composers who use Csound. Both of these pieces were very nicely produced. The sounds were pleasant and engaging. But the sounds themselves formed the entire content of the pieces. Nothing was being said. There was no repetition or development of melodic or rhythmic material. Events followed one another, so in some sense there were phrases, but each phrase was a hermetically sealed entity. No perceptible musical thesis was being proposed, or subjected to scrutiny.

Composing music in a way that makes use of melodies, harmonies, meter, and counterpoint is hard work! Some people evidently have a keen desire to create music, yet lack

Fun with Synthesizers

I have an embarrassing number of synthesizers on my hard drive. It’s embarrassing mainly because I never had to pay for them. Not because they’re pirated software, I hasten to add. These are legal NFR (not for resale) installations that I’ve acquired over the years by writing product reviews, mostly for Keyboard.

A few companies give reviewers time-limited licenses, so that after a few months the instrument will no longer load. Thus I can no longer use Arturia’s ARP 2600 V2, darn it all. But most companies evidently figure it’s in their best interest for me to be aware of their software, and the best way to insure that is to give me the opportunity to use it. This is a very sensible view. When Cakewalk released Z3ta 2, for instance, I was able to write a review comparing it intelligently to the original Z3ta, because I still have the original installed.

High on my go-to list are three u-he instruments (the oddly named company is owned by Urs Heckmann) — Zebra 2.5, ACE, and Diva. Diva is pretty much a CPU hog, so I don’t always reach for it first, but it’s just as good as the other two. The patching in ACE is decidedly weird, but it’s a whole lot deeper than it looks. Following on the heels of u-he is Spectrasonics, whose Omnisphere is just plain stunning. Camel Audio Alchemy is seriously amazing too, though perhaps not quite as intuitive to do sound design on.

The Native Instruments plug-ins are all stupidly good. Reaktor 5 heads the list, of course. It’s a dozen instruments and sample-triggering beatboxes all rolled into one. FM8 is extremely versatile. Massive I use less often, but it’s brilliant too. The one weakness of NI synths is

Snapshot No. 2

Here’s another brief example of what can be done with microtonal equal temperaments — a quick pencil sketch, if you will, not a fully worked-out piece. The Asian vibe being unmistakable, I’m calling this “Apple Blossoms on Mt. Yu.”

The scale here is 20-note equal. Most of it is in 10ET, in fact, but there are a couple of inconspicuous chromatic passing tones. The fascinating thing about 20 (or 15, or 10, or 5) is that you have a pentatonic scale in which all five steps are equal interval ratios. The sound of this pentatonic was what inspired the piece.

I have no idea whether Mt. Yu is a real place. Doesn’t matter. If you suspect I’ve been listening to some gamelan, you’re absolutely right. And if you notice the deviations from 4/4 to 5/8 and 11/8, you win a Music Scout merit badge. (The merit badges are made of chocolate, but the scouts seem not to mind.)

Unstrung

I love getting together with other amateur musicians to play the great works of the symphonic repertoire. When you’re sitting in the middle of an orchestra playing a piece by Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart, or Sibelius you experience the music in a much more direct and detailed way than if you hear it from the audience or on a CD. If nothing else, playing the music requires that you pay attention and listen to every single measure. Listeners’ minds can wander; musicians’ minds … well, that happens once in a while, but you’d better hope it doesn’t happen often.

The problem community orchestras face, and it’s serious, is that there aren’t enough good string players to go around. Here in the Bay Area we have, arguably, too many community orchestras. Good amateur and semi-pro players routinely scurry around playing in two (or even three) groups — and even so, the string sections are often short-staffed.

A standard orchestral roster includes two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, three trumpets, three trombones, one tuba, four French horns — and twenty violins, ten in the first violin section and ten more in the second section. When kids start playing instruments in fifth grade, if they choose their instruments at random, it’s easy to see that when they grow up you’ll be ten times as likely to find a good oboist for an opening in your orchestra as a good violinist.

The two players sitting at the front of a string section of a community orchestra are usually comparable in ability to the wind players. The rest of the section tends to be made up of players who are not well enough trained, don’t practice enough, or both.

Violas are a particular problem, because the viola is not a popular instrument. If you have ten violinists in each section, you need eight violas to balance the sound. Chances are, you’ll have three or four.

Right now I’m playing in the Silicon Valley Symphony (not to be confused with Symphony Silicon Valley, which is a different group). At our first rehearsal this week, we had three first violins, three seconds, two violas, three cellos, and one bass. Such a tiny string section simply can’t balance the sound coming from the winds, because winds are inherently louder than strings. That’s why the standard orchestral lineup calls for more strings!

Instead of studying the music or working on publicity, our conductor has to scramble around trying to fill the empty chairs.

Another factor is that conductors like to program major works from the repertoire. These works were written (in the 19th century, for the most part) at a time when the musical culture was radically different. Amateur musicianship was more highly prized than today, because there were no recordings, no TV, no movies. People played music to entertain themselves. And while composers knew that their work would be played by talented amateurs, they wrote for professional orchestras! They seldom made the parts any easier to accommodate less skilled musicians.

As the 19th century rolled forward into the 20th, composers worked harder and harder to provide exciting, stimulating scores. And that meant writing string parts that are harder to play. This is wonderful music, and conductors are right to want to program it — but amateur musicians struggle to play it. The string sound is often messy. A community orchestra that never played anything more challenging than Mozart could sound pretty darn good. But the conductor, the more talented players, and the audiences would soon get very bored.

If half of the community orchestras in the Bay Area simply folded, the rest would have better string players. And larger audiences, too. A better solution would be for all of those miserable second-rate string players to take some damn lessons and practice three hours a day. Not being God, however, I’m in no position to make that happen.

Primate Priorities

This week my eye doctor told me I’m starting to develop cataracts. My hearing is getting a little less acute too. For a 63-year-old I’m still very, very healthy, but time is starting to catch up with me.

My career has been devoted mainly to helping other musicians. That was the mission at Keyboard, where I worked as an editor and staff writer for more than 25 years. Since being laid off ten years ago, I’ve written four books on music topics, plus a couple of hundred more magazine articles. I’ve also been teaching cello privately.

All this has been very rewarding. But in whatever time remains to me, I think I would like to concentrate on my own music, thank you very much. I think I’ve done enough to help others — this is my time.

Our ancestors evolved as social creatures. They lived in small, roving bands. Being part of the group was vital. If you wandered off on your own too liberally, your genes tended not to be passed on to the next generation. Today, we all actively seek social approval, and that’s why. Not being part of the group induces anxiety.

I’ve identified three factors that are keys to my music-making. I need to have creative input, I need a commitment to excellence, and I need some sort of social approval for the activity — some form of social feedback that keys into my instinctive need to feel that I’m part of the group.

Recently I’ve been playing in my local community orchestra. This gives me a very adequate level of social support. I’m part of a large group, we get applause, and because I’m the principal cellist I actually get a small paycheck too. Unfortunately, my creative input is approximately zero, and I would have to say that the orchestra’s commitment to excellence is marginal at best. I could give you some graphic descriptions of occasions on which excellence has not been demonstrated, but out of respect for your delicate sensibilities, I will refrain.

What I’d really like to be doing, with whatever years remain to me, is sitting here at my computer, composing and recording my own music. I have a suite of amazing, exciting tools with which to do this, and I’m proficient in the use of the tools. I have plenty of musical ideas and a high level of understanding of music theory.

This activity would be very creative, and my commitment to excellence is whatever I choose to make it. (Usually it’s very high.) The difficulty, and it’s an enormous difficulty, is that this is an activity that provides no social support whatever. When I’m doing it, there’s nobody else in the room — and when I finish a new piece, nobody cares. Sure, I can put it up on my website, but my website gets no traffic. Nobody will ever hear the music. When I die, it will be just some files on my hard drive, and the hard drive will be hauled off to the electronic recycling center and that will be the end of it.

As a practical matter, my awareness of my isolation produces waves of sadness and loneliness. I end up not producing much music, and it’s because I’m keenly aware that nobody cares. I might as well turn on the TV. If I put hours, days, weeks, months, years of creative effort into creating new music, there will be no applause. I will never get a check in the mail. I will never have anybody patting me on the back and saying, “We appreciate your hard work.”

Please don’t tell me about online self-promotion. I know all about that. Online self-promotion is, in an emotional sense, a way of courting enormous amounts of rejection. You send out emails, you send out demos — and 98% of the time, nobody cares. I don’t have nearly enough emotional stamina to put myself through that wringer.

What I want to do is what I’ve always done: I create the content, and somebody else promotes and distributes it. Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to find or create a setting in which I can do that with my own music. So I end up playing in a second-rate community orchestra, because that’s where the social support is. What a fucking waste.

Workflow in a DAW

I have too much music software. The good part about this is, when I think about how I might want to write and record a piece of music, I can contemplate various options in detailed ways.

At present, my main DAW (digital audio workstation — terrible acronym, but we’re stuck with it) is FL Studio 10. It’s an amazing program. Last month, though, I wrote a review of Reason 6 for Keyboard. I’m also working on a new text adventure game that will have my own music as a soundtrack, so I decided to do the music in Reason.

Each program has strengths and limitations. Reason is thoroughly annoying in that it won’t host 3rd-party plug-ins. Also, it has no MIDI output, so you can’t sequence hardware synthesizers as part of a Reason production.

In spite of these issues, I think I may want to use Reason for a larger project this summer. For two main reasons. First,

Sounds Good

There’s nothing new in the world. Everything has been done before. The idea of including music in a text adventure game may seem a bit eccentric — but of course graphic computer games have had music since the very beginning. So why not?

Even novels have had music. At some point — it would have been at least 20 years ago — Ursula Le Guin released a science fiction book that had a bind-in music CD. At least, that’s my dim recollection. I may even have owned the book at one time.

Right now I’m working on a new text game, which is due for release around April 1st. Also, I just finished writing a review of Propellerhead Reason 6 for Keyboard. I have plenty of other great music software on my hard drive, of course, but it occurred to me that it would be fun to write and record some 30-second music cues for the game using Reason exclusively.

Short cues are desirable because in an interactive game you can’t control how long the player stays in any one location. Writing longer music selections that can crossfade when the player moves from one location to another is technically feasible, but it’s a lot of extra work. What’s interesting about 30-second cues, I find, is that you really don’t have time to develop an idea. The music is just a gesture. It suggests a mood, and then it tiptoes away.

If you’re a graphic artist and would like to add yet another dimension to the game, I’d love to hear from you. This particular story doesn’t lend itself to photos, so I won’t be able to do my own graphics. A few illustrations would be a wonderful addition. The game will be released as freeware, so there’s no money to pay an artist. Well, maybe I could shake loose a few bucks. You might make as much as 50 cents an hour at it if you work fast. Tempting, I know. Plus, you’ll get the satisfaction of contributing to a really cool game.