Oddmusic—What’s It All About? O D D M U S I C – U C is a working group of the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center focused on doing awesome things with music, people, and “odd”. We host the creation of media and performances, with ears cocked toward society-transforming conversation. We aim to continually reinvent our role within a vibrant, healthy system of parallel institutions offering new and needed alternatives to status-quo ways of thinking. Here is a quick tour:

Musical Instrument Library-Laboratory—We house over one hundred musical instruments—small to big; common to one-of-a-kind; locally-built to globally-acquired. We make these instruments available to people as tools for education, improvisation, composition, inspiration. Our collection also includes oddmusical CDs, books especially on instrument building, and scores by local composers.

Odd Event Organizing—A community articulates itself via events. At Oddmusic-UC we design and execute new kinds of events, which aim to break apart crusty old associations, ever bringing a new group of people together around a new kind of thing. Tried designs include:

• Grand Opening—make a loud entrance!
• Garden Concert—instrument design meets ecological design
• Junkmusic Workshops—make instruments out of trash!
• World’s First Udderbot Recital—new music for a new instrument
• Udderbot Marching Choir—reinventing “ensemble” as game…
• Unconference—a convergence of passions, organized on-the-fly
• IMC-OMNIA—a 24-hour flash media festival

Potential future projects include

• Sagittal Singalong—release party for the Sagittal Songbook (see below)
• Food Orchestra—a shared meal with instruments made out of food!
• Odd Karaoke—why limit karaoke to pervasive pop musics?
• Math and Music—using each to explain the other: an art exhibit
• Instrument Marathon for Non-Musicians—try 50 instruments you’ve never tried before!
• Your Idea Here!

Xenharmonic Education—We use the term “xenharmonic music” to talk about an orientation to music which involves radically rethinking pitch—highness, lowness, out-of-tune, in-tune, in-between. Oddmusic-UC collects resources for re-learning music with this new orientation.

Oddmusic Radio Shower was a weekly radio show on WRFU 104.5 from January 2010 to May 2011, focusing on xenharmonic education and experiments in listening.

Xenharmonic Praxis Summer Camp is a summer camp for the composition and performance of microtonal music. In 2011 the pilot program attracted 17 musicians from across the continent to West Virginia for ten days, where we formed ensembles and produced over 90 minutes of new performances (watch them on the Internet!) The second incarnation of the camp is being planned now. We need money for scholarships.

The Sagittal Songbook is a forthcoming collection of microtonal songs, composed by friends of Oddmusic in the past five years and notated in an elegant system of arrow-shaped accidentals.

Who has benefited? At least 50 people have checked out instruments from our library since we opened in May 2009. At least 139 people have participated in our workshops, and another 380 have attended our events. Our blog has had over 5000 hits. We curate the Xenharmonic Alliance Facebook group with 300 members and growing. We have collaborated with such organizations the CU Folk & Roots Festival, American Visionary Art Museum, IndyMedia Arts Lab, School for Designing a Society, and U. of Illinois’ Women’s Resources Center, Saturday Art School, and Office of Sustainability.

What does money go towards? Our most regular expense is the space sharing fee for our library space at the Independent Media Center ($125/mo). Our most expensive program is Xenharmonic Praxis Summer Camp, for which donations will lower the cost of the camp for participants.

There were two concerts during the Xenharmonic Praxis Summer Camp at the Gesundheit! Institute in Hillsboro, West Virgina . This is the second of the two and happened August 4th 2011.   All of the compositions excepting the piece by Vicentino were written at the camp and all of the camp participant’s music and performances are copyright by the authors and performers, all rights reserved.

If you want to download the video for posterity – go to this link: http://micro.soonlabel.com/0-praxis/video/August_2011/

Below is a reproduction of the concert program

I hope you enjoy the show,

Chris

A XENHARMONIC CONCERT ~ August 4, 2011

Madonna, il poco dolce   (31-tone extended meantone)
Nicola Vicentino (1511-1572)

Prayer of Thanks    (11-limit just intonation spiral)
Andrew Heathwaite (music),  Carey Smith (lyrics)

Thereminnards     (14 equal divisions of the octave)
Ralph Lewis

Twang     (quartertones)
Michael A. Garman

Idana Konya      (traditional tuning)
traditional Bulgarian

Microscopic Germs     (quartertones)
Dan Sedgwick (music),  Ryan Stickney (lyrics)

One for All       (7-limit just intonation)
Ryan Stickney

Sagittal Daze           (Eighth Octave Overtone)
Johnny Reinhard

INTERMISSION

Immortality         (wholetones and semitones)
Angelos Quetzalcoatl

Prelude Sonido 13 and Etude No. 1         (quartertones)
Julián Carrillo

Tribute to Van Halen          (quartertones)
Angelos Quetzalcoatl

Ruckus from the Quiet Zone        (7-limit just intonation)
Ralph Lewis

Five in 5             (7-limit just intonation)
Denny Genovese

The World Ignites       (11-limit just intonation)
Andrew Heathwaite (music), Carey Smith (lyrics)

Land Urchin         (11-limit just intonation)
Jacob A. Barton

Participants of Xenharmonic Praxis Summer Camp 2011:

Elizabeth Adams
Jacob A. Barton
Douglas Blumeyer
Joey Di Nardo
Michael A. Garman
Denny Genovese
Marji Gere
Nick Gideo
Andrew Heathwaite
Steven Kandow
Ralph Lewis
Angelos Quetzalcoatl
Johnny Reinhard
Michael Salvucci
Dan Sedgwick
Ryan Stickney
Toby Twining
Chris Vaisvil

Xenharmonic Praxis Summer Camp is presented by Oddmusic International and UnTwelve.

Special thanks to Roxanne Sawhill, the Gesundheit! Institute and School for Designing a Society.

There were two concerts during the Xenharmonic Praxis Summer Camp at the Gesundheit! Institute in Hillsboro, West Virgina . This is the first of the two and happened July 28th 2011. Some of the pieces were performed at both concerts and those will appear in the 2nd video because, more or less, the repeat performances were a bit more polished.  All of the compositions were written at the camp and all of the music and performances are copyright by the authors and performers, all rights reserved.

If you want to download the video for posterity – and see the pieces not included in the “official” video – go to this link: http://micro.soonlabel.com/0-praxis/video/July_2011/

I hope you enjoy the show,

Chris

The attempt in JI Praxis Choir is to create a more rapid alternation between theory and practice, between action and reflection, as we learn just intonation. This may be simply misunderstood as “experiential learning”, but I think it is more dialectic. This is not the ages-old dichotomy between “thinking” and “doing”—yuck! One premise might be “If you can’t sing it, you don’t really know it.”

• An impromptu jam* in 88-cent equal temperament, a tuning system which proudly lacks octaves, featuring Jeff’s (X. J.’s) midi guitar, Jacob’s keyboard (retuned by Jeff’s indispensable software Li’l Miss’ Scale Oven), and my own retrofretted steel-string guitar.
• Two meetings (so far) of an 88cET choir, which has provided an opportunity for us to rewire our brains to an alternatively-logicked tuning system in good company.  (This group will perform at a Performatorium this evening at 7:30 at the IMC as a continuation of the Instant Ensemble Project which took on 11edo earlier this semester.)
• Lots of discussions of alternative tuning paradigms — what they might look like and what they imply (to be continued today in the Microtonal Design Language Lab at 3:30 pm).
• A stellar broadcast of the Oddmusic Radio Shower, featuring wonderfully-tuned music recommended by Jeff — which you can listen to online here.
• And more to come!**

*Jeff writes on the nonoctave forum:

The jam session with two 88cET guitars and a keyboard was the greatest xenharmonic music I have heard and a most exciting experience. Everyone needs to stop what they are doing and form a xenharmonic ensemble right away. Preferably in a nonoctave tuning. It all works. It is incredible. Stop playing alone. Spread the word. You do not need theory or years of study. It is intuitive and obvious what to do. The past is gone, the future is now, the old, limiting ways of 12 are past and obsolete.

**The Microtonal Design UnConference will keep us busy through Saturday, and if you can make it to Urbana, it is not too late to get involved.  For the upcoming events, see our announcement page.

Consider yourself invited!  For all the gruesome details, see our announcement page.

“Our show today is the 11 equal divisions of the octave edition.”

Oddmusic Radio Shower last night, February 16, 2011, featured the xenharmonic tuning system 11 equal divisions of the octave or 11EDO or 11-tone equal temperament.  Special guests Zoe, Yael and Will, participants in the Microtonal Design Seminar at School for Designing a Society (with radio hosts Jacob and Andrew) formed an 11edo band for the occasion — probably the only one in existence today!

You can listen online here.

INVITATION: Write or find an 11-syllable text to set to music.  Associate with each syllable a unique degree of the 11EDO scale.  Give it a desirable rhythm and call it an 11-tone row.  We are collecting examples of this unusual form for inclusion in an 11EDO ZINE!

Through a series of historical accidents, Western society’s music—instruments, history, theory, practice, pedagogy, consciousness—has come to be dominated by a single tuning system, often called “twelve tone equal temperament.” This dominance is so pervasive that it is often completely invisible. Students of music who wonder “Why these notes on the piano, and not some others?” are all too often answered with “Those are the only correct notes—anything else is out of tune!”

A world of more satisfying answers to this question unfolds to those looking for it: millennia-old traditions of music tuned differently; surprising inquiries & insights into how we hear; proposals for new systems yet untried. This camp is for those who want to dream up and realize new, thoughtfully-tuned music and contexts which support it.

We use the term ‘xenharmonic’ after microtonal pioneer Ivor Darreg, to refer to these unfamiliar-yet-hospitable musical terrains.  We use the term ‘praxis’ after radical educator Paolo Freire, to refer to an ongoing dialectic between theory and practice, between action and reflection, each process informing and completing the other.

We envision a Xenharmonic Praxis Summer Camp where musicians from a variety of backgrounds converge and suspend the need for “one true answer” for long enough to get deep into a new, unpopular proposal; where distinct roles of audience, composer, theorist, performer, designer are inhabited temporarily, not reserved for experts or assumed as an identity.

WHEN: July 25-August 5, 2011
WHERE:  The Gesundheit! Institute, Hillsboro, West Virginia
WHO CAN COME: All self-described musicians with an interest in alternative tuning systems are encouraged to attend, from curious beginners to seasoned veterans.
HOW MUCH: $800
HOW TO APPLY:  Web form at http://goo.gl/qGpIg
WHO STARTED IT:  Presented by Oddmusic-UC in partnership with UnTwelve & School for Designing a Society
MORE INFO: go to http://oddmusicuc.wordpress.com/programs/xenharmonic-praxis-summer-camp/

The Udderbot visited the east coast this month, kicking off the Udderbot World Tour! The Udderbot World Tour is an attempt to bring the awareness of the udderbot to every human. In order to visit every human, various modes of interaction with the udderbot must be developed. This month, the following capacities were explored:

• UDDERBOT MAKING WORKSHOP.  The most direct way to experience the udderbot is to make your very own.Sprout & Co., a very inspiring community learning and research space in Boston (Somerville), hosted the making of 11 new udderbots/udderbot players, and the American Visionary Art Museum of Baltimore hosted 15!
• UDDERBOT CONCERT.  Second all-udderbot concert ever hits Virginia Beach January 19.  Seventy-plus Virginia Beachers from all walks of life now know what udderbot music is, so far.  Archive recordings forthcoming, with any luck!
• STORY OF JACOB’S MUSIC.  Udderbot in the context of Jacob’s exciting and crazy life.  A good story, it turns out!  Microtones figure in big, naturally.  Told to ~8 ODU composers and ~50 instrumental music students of GSA in Norfolk.
• JAM.  Mingle with the locals–informal and important!  One very super jam session with Dave and Doug of Norfolk, who may have recorded it.
• UDDERBOT AS FOOTNOTE.  It’s not always the most important thing!  Udderbot cameo in An Exciting Event‘s Moondog Madrigal Puppet Show Boston performance. Udderbot as a clown tool on a Gesundheit! Clowning & Caring trip to Ecuador (ongoing as I write this!)  Hundreds of people exposed to the udderbot, some without much orientation.

Total people directly affected?  About three hundred, not counting the clown trip.

Things I hope to add to the complete set of udderbot offerings

• ONLINE LEARNING. Udderbot players around the world probably need some video lessons! The Udderbot wiki is always happy to get in better shape, too.
• EFFECTIVE STREET PERFORMANCE. Mostly, the udderbot needs a companion instrument that can play harmonies, like a guitar or accordion.
• LOUD SHOW. For the hippest venues, replace classical respect for silence with room-filling sonic therapy. No hip venues yet.

A slideshow including

Notes on some Technological Developments

1. Updated and thorough guide on How to Make an Udderbot! The official word is, electrical tape is okay, sometimes even without a rubber band!  Which is good because hose clamps are otherwise the most expensive component…
2. While at Virginia Beach I happened upon the First (udder)Bot Ever.  Constructed in West Virginia at a summer session of the School for Designing a Society, this bot was made by breaking off a bottle’s bottom with a hammer (which left hardly anything) and attaching a PVC tube with electrical tape (credit to Joe Z).  The first slide bottle sounds came from submerging this in a bucket of water.  It was amazing.
3. While in a market in Otavalo today, I happened upon an Udderbot Holster! It can go over your shoulder or just around your neck, and the strap is adjustable. The udder dangles down in a heap. Many times has this been suggested, but there it was in actuality! I bought three for the Udderbot Marching Choir.

More photos are on the new Oddmusic Facebook Album (no login required).