Performed by Sandikala Ensemble

Herutjokro as Posthuman is a piece that explores the ideas of Romo Herutjokro Semono (1900 - 1981) in relation with the discourse of posthumanism. Conceptually, it is an attempt to deconstruct and build new ideas based on the Javanese idea of rasa. At the technical level, it is an attempt to explore ideas such as orchestration of gamelan extended techniques, creation of new instrument (this piece uses new gendèr), spectral harmony, and algorithmic processes.

For score and essay about the piece, contact dionnataraja@bennington.edu

My lecture about the piece can be seen in the following link (lecture in Indonesian): https://youtu.be/YOvtjTGlBiM

Herutjokro As Posthuman

The attempt to stretch the concept of irama by exploring the liminality between pulse and noise is at the heart of this piece. This idea, coming from Central Javanese gamelan, organizes the temporal density within a piece; starting from irama lancar with one saron panerus beats per balungan notes, to irama rangkep with sixteen saron panerus beats per balungan notes. Hyperkembangan is based on a central question: what would the sound of an extremely high level of irama be, where the balungan notes is imperceivably sparse, while the elaboration is extremely dense? This hypothetical situation leads me to conceptualize a piece based on a progression from pulse, to complex sound (represented by spectral harmonies), to noise—noise here functions as a representation of an overload in the elaborative part. The piece is played with two gendèrs with pair tuning consists of customized 14-notes system that could accommodate spectral harmonies (based on the spectra of note 1 in gendèr struck with hard mallet) and its various manipulations. The "X" in the title—as well as a reference to Boulez's "Polyphonie X"—suggests a kind of cultural defacing, where new content is imposed on the cultural memory of the music, yet still maintains parts of those memories; a form of a musical palimpsest.

Perfomers - Sandikala Ensemble
Gendèr I - Yustiawan Paradigma Umar
Gendèr I - Suseno Setyo Wibowo
Gendèr II, Rebab I - Roni Driyastoto
Gendèr II, Rebab II - Mustika Garis
Percussion - Daniel O'Connor
Gong and electronics - Dion Nataraja

Mixing and Mastering - Luke Taylor
Recording - Adnan

Hyperkembangan X

Kafka, Postmortem is based on Kafka’s story titled “The Judgment.” At the end of the story, the protagonist committed suicide after his father condemned him to death by drowning (“And therefore take note: I sentence you now to death by drowning!”). The absurdity!⁠⁠ Who would drown themselves right after hearing such a literal condemnation? The story is strange without even adding elements of magical realism or surrealism; Kafka simply creates the story in a realistic manner, but with characters acting strangely, distant from how human usually acts. In the spirit of this strangeness, I asked Redian Pragina Jali to create a Javanese translation of the story’s ending. By working with a Javanese translation of this unusual text, I intend to turn the language into a strange unto itself. I sang this text with a style in between sulukan, Debussy’s Pelleas & Melisande, and kargyraa: recitative after recitative, and at several moments, accompanied by a syntactical breakdown into harsh noise (kargyraa+rebab overpressure+electronic distortion). While writing the vocal part, I was inspired by the idea of asemic writing⁠—a kind of writing in that represents grammatical breakdown⁠—and by Kristeva’s notion of the semiotic/the symbolic⁠—the semiotic refers to rhythm and tone, and the symbolic refers to grammar and syntax⁠—, where noise would function as the breaking point of the symbolic to the semiotic. I attempt to push forward the experiments that we did with our previous piece; here, we utilized four new gendèrs, which in total would form a 36-tone tuning system (two of the gendèr do not have octave repetition). The electronic materials are sourced from field recordings as well as from Denis Smalley’s Base Metals—I intend this to be an homage to the first piece that gave me a deep understanding of the power behind bell’s timbre.

Text
English: 
His father said pityingly, in an offhand manner: “I suppose you wanted to say that sooner. But now it doesn’t matter.” And in a louder voice: “So now you know what else there was in the world besides yourself, till now you’ve known only about yourself! An innocent child, yes, that you were, truly, but still more truly have you been a devilish human being!—And therefore take note: I sentence you now to death by drowning!”
...
He swung himself over, like the distinguished gymnast he had once been in his youth, to his parents’ pride. With weakening grip he was still holding on when he spied between the railings a motor bus coming which would easily cover the noise of his fall, called in a low voice: “Dear parents, I have always loved you, all the same,” and let himself drop.

Javanese: 
Bapakke kandha karo memělas, swarane ngěmu rasa pasrah, “Tak kira yen kowe bakale ngandhani luwih cěpět. Ning, arěpa saiki ya ora dadi pěrkara.” Swarane sangsaya bantěr: “Dadi saiki kowe ngěrti apa maneh ing donya iki kajaba mung dhapurmu dhewe, tekan sěprene mung ngěrti pěrkara dhapurmu tok! Kowe bocah sing lugu, ya, pancen běněr kuwi sipatmu sing biyěn, nanging luwih běněr yen kowe saiki pancene bocah kěparat! Saiki gatekna, kowe tak ukum pati, tak blěběgke urip-uripan!” 
...
Georg gěgeyongan kaya dene atlit, mempěr kayata sing tahu dilakoni Georg nom-nomane biyen, kabeh mau dilakoni kanggo nuwuhake rasa mongkog wong tuwane. Gěgěmane sangsaya suwe sangsaya suda dayane, ing wěktu kuwi uga dheweke nyawang bus sing arěp liwat, swarane kaprungu guměděr, swarane bisa dadi srana anyamarake tibaning si Georg. Dheweke kandha nganggo swarane sing gěrok, “Pake, Bune, aku tětěp trěsna karo Panjěněngan kabeh. Salawase!”, Georg banjur nglalu nibakake dhiri. 


Composer: Dion Nataraja

Performer:
Sandikala Ensemble
Yustiawan Paradigma Umar (gendèr)
Suseno Setyo Wibowo (gendèr)
Roni Driyastoto (rebab)
Mustika Garis Sejati (rebab)
Michael Wimberly (percussion)
Dion Nataraja (voice and electronics)

Translator (to Javanese): Redian Pragina Jali

Producer: Yustiawan Paradigma Umar

Mixing & mastering: Luke Taylor

Kafka, Postmortem

41-edo Kite Chapman Stick loop jam + accidental long silence

This is a reharmonization of Happy Birthday, tuned to 22 equal divisions of the octave. It is loosely centered around what we call "porcupine temperament."


Happy Birthday

Here's another little demo playing around with the "anti-harmonic" idea, but instead of using an equal temperament, I took the "pseudo-octave" of 1+phi and linearly divided it into 12 linear divisions in Hz. This is similar to the "primodal" approach from Zhea Erose but technically these aren't actually harmonics in the series.

----

This is a really bizarre tuning - pretty much deliberately bizarre - which is "the opposite of Just Intonation." The timbre here is built on the golden ratio, which is often called the "most irrational number": if the first harmonic is called "1", then the second harmonic is 1+phi, the third is 1+2*phi, etc.

This tuning is derived from harmonics 12-24 from this antiharmonic series.

Antiharmonics - Arithmetic - 12-AD-(1+phi)

keys, 2014 04 26

BEHIND ALL RESPECTABLE FAÇADES ARE FOUND VAST REPOSITORIES OF UNSPEAKABLE FILTH by Gary Lloyd Noland (May 22nd, 2023). Performed by The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble. For more information on the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

Behind All Façades are Found Vast Repositories of Unspeakable Filth

BEHIND ALL RESPECTABLE FAÇADES ARE FOUND VAST REPOSITORIES OF UNSPEAKABLE FILTH

Du hörst hier eine Komposition in einer 15EDO Stimmung. Die Octave hat 15 gleichmässig geteilte Tonschritte (Equal Divided Octave). Komm mit auf den Fliegenden Teppich der Mikrotonalität.

Fliegender Teppich 15EDO

Ballona

Title:
	No Return

Dates:
16-Mar-2024 (inception), 29-Mar-2024 (finalised), 31-Mar-2024 (released)

Artists:
Music composed, performed, produced by Norman Freund
Artwork by Norman Freund

BandCamp Purchase (and more detail on tuning):
https://normanfreund.bandcamp.com/track/no-return

Description:
Inspired by a 41 note just intonation (JI) video from the Lumatone people, thought I would construct my own 41 JI scale. Whilst trying out the scale, I liked what I heard and started composing and recording, this formed the backing track to give the feel of the piece. Could not resist to add in the main melodic and textural parts using the Soma Laboratory Pipe.

The 41 JI scale was formed by taking combinations of primes, 3, 5, 7, 11 and 13 as the numerator for the frequency ratio, then octave reducing by powers of 2. These were sorted by the least number of prime numerator combinations, (one prime the least ("pure interval"), six primes the most (complex interval)), then allocating to the nearest 41 EDO note. These primes only appeared on the numerator. So this forms a an unequal scale of 41 notes based upon just intonation.

This 41 JI was then mapped onto an Ableton Push2 midi keyboard, an 8x8 note pad. The step spacing in the horizontal direction was 7 (approximately a tone) and 1 step ( in the vertical direction. This resulted in the diatonic (white notes) to appear as a Bosanquet like shape,
forming a stair case note pattern.

A custom mapping Max for Live (M4L) device was used for the one to two dimensional keyboard mapping (NOF_Midi_NotePitchLookup_Rel08), and the Ableton Live Microtuner for the microtuning using a scala file of:

41JIFromPrimes1To13UpTo6Combinators
41
65/64
135135/131072
135/128
273/256
35/32
9009/8192
9/8
585/512
297/256
19305/16384
77/64
39/32
5/4
1287/1024
165/128
21/16
1365/1024
693/512
11/8
45/32
91/64
1485/1024
189/128
3/2
195/128
99/64
6435/4096
819/512
13/8
27027/16384
27/16
55/32
7/4
455/256
231/128
117/64
15/8
3861/2048
495/256
63/32
2/1

It was then a case of finding notes in the 41JI that suited my mood at the time and the instrument used. The 41 JI was played through tracks 1 and 2, using the Ableton Live "Poly 60 Saw" with some customisations, one of them being my M4L Device, the NOF_AENV, an audio enveloper to apply an amplitude envelope to the incoming audio, where the envelopes were a combinations of sine and pulse waves of independent frequencies and wet|dry mixes.

The remaining tracks three to nine were all sourced from the Soma The Pipe instrument. The Pipe algorithms used where Orpheus, Drum and Harcho, where my voice was the input. At times my didgeridoo playing was miced by a Sure Green Bullet, through an L.R. Baggs Para Acoustic D.I. (pre-amp), then to The Pipe, using the echo and pulse algorithms. The last track, took digital samples of The Pipe and feed it into a drum rack to play it rhythmically, plus a touch of grain delay.

The Orpheus mode of The Pipe lets the audio input exit two tun-able resonators, the tuning sets the fundamental frequency. The spectral plot of this mode shows peaks as a harmonic series, so when the voice is fed into The Pipe in Orpheus mode, a JI scale is heard.

The didgeridoo is capable of some tuning from the player, but is more relaxed for the player to adopt to it's natural frequency and overtones, so the backing tracks playing the 41 JI scale, needed a key transpose for the didgeridoo part. Hey, it's all improvised played, not a strictly planned composition, so I had to go with the flow.

41-edo Kite Chapman Stick loop jam + accidental long silence

Jeffrey Benjamin Brown