Recently visited links

Elliot Cole, a Houston-based composer and friend of mine. Take a poke around his website and you’ll find a wide variety of interesting projects.

Christopher Bailey, a Boston-based composer and friend of mine. His piece for 19-tone pianos Walking Down the Hillside at Cortona and Seeing Its Towers Rise Before Me won the Martirano Award in 2009 (Honorable Mention), which means it’s being performed this week at the awards concert…by me(!) and Juri Seo, a doctoral composition student at U of Illinois.  Wander through his page and you’ll eventually find a sneak preview of the piece.

macrotonal edos

Out of the infinite set of “ways to tune”

• take “scale” (a finite set of definite pitches)
• take “octave repeating” (at every octave, copy the structure exactly)
• take “equal divisions” (like a meter stick)
• take “macrotonal”

& you get “macrotonal edos”. “Edo” stands for “equal divisions of the octave” – as opposed to, say “edonoi” – “equal divisions of a non-octave interval”. As microtonal means (by a literal definition) “incorporating steps smaller than a semitone” (but is often used more broadly to mean “incorporating pitches unavailable in standard 12-tone tuning”), “macrotonal” can mean “incorporating steps larger than a semitone”.

“Macrotonal edos” refers to a finite set of scales which includes 1edo, 2edo, 3edo, 4edo, 5edo, 6edo, 7edo, 8edo, 9edo, 10edo, & 11edo, & nothing else.  1edo-4edo & 6edo are available in 12edo (the common practice monoscale that most of us don’t recognize as chosen), so that leaves us with 6 macrotonal edos that demand new thoughts by new composers.

I mention this so that you might know something about the talks talked at the Microtonal Composition Study Group that continues to meet on Thursdays from 5:30 to 7 at th Oddmusic Instrumentorium at th UC-IMC (room 21A). (You continue to be not excluded!) At least one participant has taken up th invitation to try these tunings out for composing (Snow Leopard has begun some work in 7 equal divisions of the octave) & at least everyone present can now say that these scales are possible.

A wee dandy chart that I made for comparative consideration:

nine things

Nine things I remember from recent office hourings:

1. Picobot lessons for Mary Ann(e)!
2. Ukulele lessons for Alicia!
3. Music theory lesson for Robbie Bob!
4. An otonal organ, its electronix fixed & carefulled over by Ben!
5. A piece of paper that says “AAAUGH!” referring to th current state of an accordion on loan!
6. A photographer from th Buzz asking us to pose with our oddstruments!
7. A crash-course in finger-hole flute for Angie!
8. A pile of toy piano parts & some head-scratching!
9. Experimental music files from our friend in Hong Kong!

Bamboo-legged PseudoTimp

by Rob Scott

I retrofitted a 40-year old bass drum with bamboo legs.
Now the instrument may be played standing up. The pitch of the drum may be adjusted by pressing with two fingers on the head after striking.

After removing one of the two sets of lugs, I filled the drill holes with bamboo pegs, which now hold the six bamboo legs.
No new holes were necessary. Nor were glue, nails, or screws.

Update: The flexibility of the bamboo legs, combined with the minimal contact area of the feet, led this instrument to “walk around” (literally, moving a few inches across the ground each time it was struck) during play. I braced the legs and wrapped the feet in some wool from an old sweater, so now it stands still. The wool also served to remove some of the buzzing and rattling sounds. (RS, Oct. 2, 2009)

microtonal composition study group

ODDMUSIC U-C is hosting a “microtonal composition study group” every Thursday from 5:30 to 7pm during the “fall semester”. We’ve had one informal & one formal meeting, with 3 & 5 participants, respectively. We want to open our doors to those who would find this of interest.

I use the word “microtonal” to refer to tuning systems outside of [our culture's monotuning of] 12-tone equal temperament – the standard piano/keyboard/guitar tuning which divides the octave into 12 equally-spaced intervals. Since pitch systems are potentially infinite & 12-equal refers to one of them, “microtonal” covers a great variety of sounds & tools.

We’re meeting to explore some of these systems together & to use them to compose.

If you think you’d be interested in:

• composing music with an emphasis on alternative pitch structures
• generating & sharing new distinctions to speak about pitch (including distinctions best described mathematically)
• expanding (maybe breaking) your “ear” in good company

…then please get in touch with Andrew Heathwaite about getting in on future conversations. (Or surprise us some Thursday by showing up at Oddmusic at 5:30 – room 21A in the IMC.)

Andrew’s email: [convert words to letters] gee tea are pea kay tea at yahoo dot sea oh em.

Andrew’s digits: 217.365.9496.

Please pass this along to anyone you know who might be tickled.

Thanks,
Andrew

ODDMUSIC II

Hi friends,

Andrew standing in room 223, empty, the following afternoon.

Last Sunday at Office Hours, Oddmusic U-C moved downstairs, to a new space in the IMC, room 21A!  Up on the second floor, we have new friends moving in, Community Center for the Arts, a (not necessarily odd) music organization, and we worked out an arrangement where they could have our old space (room 223), and we could have a new space in the basement, down the hall from the Bike Project and the Costume Closet, just off from the Family Room.  The new space is larger, more accessible, brighter, and cheaper.  I like to say that, with the upstairs becoming the “music” wing, the downstairs is becoming the “odd” wing, and that suits me just fine.

We left a note on the whiteboard in 223 for C4A.

So our new friend Mary Ann(e) stopped in to see what we’re all about and wound up merrily schlepping speakers, woodwinds and furniture.  Also joining us were Snow Leopard (rowr), Don (grunt), and Mary Margaret (who brought us all chocolate)!  With help, Jacob and I managed to fit all our stuff into the new room, kind of arrange it, and get home before midnight.

Andrew in the new room!

Carly and I visited the room the next day to get these pictures.  You can see lots of natural light streaming in our three ground-level windows.  You can’t see that the room is L-shaped.  Another section, about the same size as this one (which Carly photographed from the door, so imagine you’re standing at the entrance), goes off to the left.  We’re imagining that section sort of as “storage” and this section in the picture as “work space.”  It looks like we’re going to inherit two large metal desks (which you can see), and we’re imagining the farther one as a computer desk and the nearer one as a paper desk, for zine-making, manuscript writing and the like.  The wall on the left will probably get a white board sooner or later.

You also can’t see the family room, but if you could turn 180 degrees, you’d be looking into a large cozy space with comfy chairs and a TV – a community space currently in use for meetings and movie-watching events.  Oddmusic will be able to rent it out (cheap) for events and use it ad-hoc for less formal things like office hours.  So our space kind of has a third section, a lounge.

Jacob and I, being busy bees, haven’t gotten to spend much time in Oddmusic II yet, but I’ve really enjoyed knowing it’s there.  Carly says she likes the new room better.  You’re invited to come to office hours this Sunday (7pm to 9:30) to tell us what you think.

Love, Andrew.

Frontiers in Bamboo Construction

Rob writes:

I produced a bamboo stand for the complete set of 17-tone tubes.

It is freestanding and uses no glue, nails, screws, or wood. 100% bamboo frame.

One or two of the lowest tubes weigh as much as the entire bamboo stand.

Office hours back to Sunday nights!

Yo!

Just like the sign says, Office Hours again = Sunday night, starting tomorrow, September 6.  For this one, Jacob will be out-of-town, but Andrew will be there ready for anything odd.  Bring a vegetable that makes a funny sound!  I’d love to tell you something I’ve learned about tetrachords!  Et cetera!

tomorrow, Sunday Sept. 6

ODDMUSIC office hours

7pm – 9:30

room 223

hooray.

questions to ask odd, questions to ask music

ODDMUSIC U-C had a “grand(e) opening” this evening, in front of an audience charged w/ instruments of their own (for performing sentences in lieu of applause).  Attendees received a booklet entitled “invitations,” containing 11 to 22 invitations, depending on how you count ‘em.  For those wanting to know th “program” of this event, it went rather like (o how I love bulleted lists!) this:

• The Final Instruction ~ Andrew (voice) & Jacob (blatt)
• Curiosity II of II ~ composed & performed by Tommy Scheurich (viola), performed also by Jacob Barton (voice) & Andrew Heathwaite (voice)
• As Guudu Swept ~ composed & performed by Jacob (voice & electronics)
• Fractured Paradise ~ composed by Kyle Gann, sequenced & performed by Jacob Barton (udderbot & electronics)
• 22-tone guitar demonstration, including a whirlwind microtour of some 22edo modes (chromatic, 11edo, Orwell[9], Porcupine[8], Greek enharmonic genus, dorian superpyth, Swooning Rushes, unnamed & unnamed) ~ by Andrew
• Optimal Tuning System Blues ~ composed by Chris[topher] Peck, with text from an abstract to a paper called Optimal Tuning Systems by Larry Polansky, Wei Pan, Dan Rockmore, Douglas Repetto, & Kimo Johnson, performed by Andrew (22-tone guitar) & Jacob (voice)
• False Statement Bulletin #4 ~ composed by Jacob, Andrew, & Rob Scott (all on 17edo tubes)
• The Moth ~ composed by Mark Enslin, with text by Indigo Frank, performed by Elizabeth Adams (voice), Jacob Barton (piano), & Tommy Scheurich (drone)

We planted a “question booth” – questions to ask odd, questions to ask music.  The anonymous results?

Dearodd,

When if tempo, too with tone odd?  How to odd a pulse?

=

M. Usic,

Your in-between times are sultry.  Will you them near drones?

=

For odd:

How can I keep from singing, “The earth shakes ’round my growing tree?”  I need a strategy.

=

For Music:

How do you combine pleasure & critique?

=

For odd:

How do I performatively respond to oddness [I like] I don’t forsee liking?

=

Hey Music:

What’s your costume?

=

[musical score with extra-curly treble clef]

Thanks for asking!  We don’t know either, but we’re happy to have the questions.

Recordings coming soon, I suspect, of pieces that demand recording….

tomorrow night ! ! !