Gordon's Progress

Gordon, the tuning issue you mention is really quite sophisticated.

In an ensemble, such as a choir, a string quartet, a band, or orchestra the musicians listen and tune to each other.

However, a keyboard instrument such as a piano, is tuned in advance and the notes do not tune to each other interactively.

Pythagorus studied this -- he tuned a perfectly-in-tune 5th (called a perfect fifth or P5 for short), and then tuned that fifth to the next one, and so on... clear around all the notes and discovered that he didn't end up where he started. Yep, Mother Nature decided to arrange the perfect intervals in a spiral rather than a circle! This "extra" space between where we ended up and where we started is called the "Pythagorean comma".

Keyboard temperaments, then, are specifications for distributing the comma between the notes. Some temperaments keep certain keys "perfectly" in tune at the expense of other keys being "way out" of tune. "Equal temperament" distributes the comma equally per note such that everything is not-quite-exactly in tune but is in-tune-enough to be playable.

You will notice that in piano concertos, for the most part, the orchestra plays, then the piano plays, then the orchestra... back and forth! Individual instruments or small groups may play along with the piano (because they can tune to match the piano!) however you rarely hear a bunch of instruments and the piano all going at once? And the reason is the very tuning issues that you mention.

Gordon,
As a concert piano tuner, I agree with K.K..
The piano has it's equal temperment set in advance of every performance.
The intonation of almost all other instruments is set by the ear/mind of the player. Guitar and bass guitar being an exception.
teslatheremin

...whereas, if you've got the skills, the theremin can tune to absolutely anything, and even shift dynamically from one to another in the middle of a piece.

Neat. I recall there is at least one non-western piece on the good Mr Pringle's website (http://peterpringle.com/gu-zheng.html) for instance.

Oh, another interesting link. A BBC Radio 4 science programme, talking about exactly this. Lots of non-technical talk illustrated with plenty of sound clips. Not sure if it will play outside the UK - I know the BBC are occasionally stuffy about keeping things for licence payers. Here's the link (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/outoftune.shtml) anyway.

Speaking of tuning, my uncle (who played organ at Coventry cathedral) kept his piano tuned to "concert pitch" - I always wondered what that meant.

Gordon, that just means that his A was at 440 Hz.

I love the new song! You have enough material now that I created a new playlist for the iPod. All of your work so far goes together very nicely. Keep it up.
I understand the caution on panning things around a bit on the new one. Too much spice in the pot... although I wonder what it would sound like if you could've swept that piece around a 5.1 surround mix. Frother sounded really cool too.

Also: I just ordered this: http://www.thoserecords.com/egon.htm
I'll let you know how it turns out. I'm thinking of using it wth the theremin.

That egon thing is so beautiful! I recognised the casing instantly.

My stuff does kind of go together, doesn't it. Hmm. I try to do something different each time, and it ends up sounding like me. That's a good thing. Can't remember if I've said it before, but I've certainly thought it - I don't want to be the next [insert the name of a noted thereminist here], but I'd like to be the best Gordon I can be.

I've been reading about dronal music (to coin a phrase) - already familiar with Eno's drone/ambient stuff, so I get it, but didn't really know much about the modern composer side of things. My word, that Phill Niblock (that is such a funny name!) is a bit on the austere side isn't he.

I don't think I could bring myself to do something that sparse, but I think after all the movement in Plummeting Man I'm ready to try staying still for long periods. I have a few ideas, which include a fair deal of very slow panning and several extremely thin cluster drones.

Working title is Luminous Chickenwire.

:-)

Gordon,
Brian Eno still works in the twelve tone scale most of the time; with the loose descriptions he has always applied to the same. If you are looking to validate your lack of musical pitch reference by seeking artists that seek freedom from the western equal temperament--- so be it. Good for you. But, true freedom comes from knowledge. I suggest a few piano lessons.
I think you do harm to those that may embrace the Theremin without any musical background. Even the most discordant musical creation always is best administered by a musician.
I still like you... but, sometimes 'you so crazy!'
teslatheremin

Hi Teslatheremin,

I know, I am a bit hatstand at times - can't even blame it on my ME, I've always been that way. It would be nice if it was because I was a genius of the stature of Nikola Tesla (who had some unusual notions) but I'm not quite big-headed enough to make that claim.

Validate? No sir! Just mentioning that I have heard and enjoyed drones before.

I appreciate your suggestion that I take some lessons, and I did have some as a child. Apparently I had a natural aptitude - certainly enough to give the teacher the impression that I practised. The truth was that drill practice was anathema to me. Also I have an aversion to being taught in general.

Time for a bit of personal history. What I remember most clearly about grammar school was one of the teachers explaining to me that teachers did not particularly appreciate smart-ass brats who pointed out their errors and critiqued their teaching style, and actually I was not as smart as I thought I was and I ought to knuckle down and pull my socks up. Astonishing what you remember when the person telling you is assaulting you with a stick. I wish I had had the wit to respond as my sister did in similar circumstances, with a quip that perfectly summed up the proper amount of respect due to child-beaters. "[i]I can see right up your nose.[/i]"

Well, I could appreciate that adults may not like my approach to lessons, but I was not convinced by the second bit, so I checked, and actually I had been underestimating my intelligence somewhat, so I went for plan b - staying under the radar and teaching myself. It worked well enough - at college I learned Pascal, Lisp and Logo (they were teaching Basic, Fortran and Cobol) and once I was free of the strictures of formal education I taught myself Forth (allegedly the world's hardest computer language) well enough to get Best Paper at an international conference for my non-deterministic pattern matcher.

So I hope you won't be too upset if I go my own way.

As for doing harm to others... Goodness me, I hope not. I imagine that mostly people dismiss me as a bit of an eccentric, and that's probably for the best.

I still like you too. :-)

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Bowie say, when sitting down with his first synth, that he had more fun throwing the manuals out the window and making weird farting noises than actually trying to learn the thing? I love that idea. Music is so subjective. I don't really like the "color inside the lines" approach. My mother always encouraged me to make the lines myself. That idea works well for some people. Others not so much.

Do that voodoo that you do so well. I'm enjoying the auditory view from this side of the pond.

Cheers,
Weird