Microtonal Collection 2015-2016

6 alternative tunings superimposed vertically:  34-tet, 21-tet, 13-tet, 8-tet, 5-tet and 3-tet scales.

The overall form and structure of the piece is that of exact and broken mirroring or symmetry of motives.  In the start symmetries are clearly perceivable.  A motive happens and then reverses.  Time folds back and forward on itself in different tempos as a type of memory game. Combined motives form larger building blocks that also occur and then retrograde.  As the piece progresses patterns become more complex, symmetries are progressively obscured until the final material gets ‘stuck’ in a repetitive loop.  

Haute Rorschach

When All Memory Has Faded makes use of a 34-tet equal temperament tuning system.

There is again very little pulse or movement going on at the macro level, except for the slow repetitive microtonal clusters reminiscent of the ticking of a clock or some sort of counter ticking away at a deadly slow pace.  The distances between events grow larger and the space also.  The real movement happens in changing the timbre by switching notes between voices.  Even so, it's quite subtle.

Giacinto Scelsi’s music with its extreme subtlety in terms of pitch fluctuations is a major influence.  By dividing an octave into 34 divisions, nearly three intervals per semitone become available. A structure that allows me to stumble on some great sounding beating patterns.  At the same time, to my ears it does not sound very dissonant.

I would really like to try this out with a great analogue synth such as the Arp2600 or a combination of instruments.

Whenallmemoryhasfaded

Performed by Performed by Elise Mac on Norwegian Hardingfele and Violin.  

Drift (also titled after a Riley painting Drift2)exists in a meta tuning system, this time a G harmonic series, 5-tet, 21-tet and 34-tet are all stacked on top of each other.  As before I carefully select by ear only a small number of pitches and create a new meta scale from these notes.  The result is 34 notes to work with.  

Slow shifting microtonal.  Alternative tuning system.

Drift

Titled after a Bridget Riley painting of the same name, Gala exists in a meta tuning system: a G harmonic series, 5-tet, 21-tet and 34-tet are all stacked on top of each other.  As before I carefully select by ear only a small number of pitches and create a new meta scale from these notes.  The result is 34 notes to work with.  

Performed by Elise Mac on Norwegian Hardingfele, Violin and André van Rensburg on Shakuhachi (2016).

The 34 note meta scale presents me with somewhat subtle dissonances, which I actually prefer to call vibrations with varying intensities. I have no intention to resolve them into anything but themselves.  

The approach to form is strongly inspired by James Tenney. Through simple macro gestures, the microtonal world can open up, breath and reveal itself in vertical directions.  When you think of a sunset for example, you think of a very simple and continuous motion:  colors shift and change, intensity changes, but everything else is still.  The sky doesn’t move.  This music is similar. 

I have also become more aware of the effectiveness in leaving certain parameters open to performers.  Again, another Tenney score, Clang is a great example.  It comes with the following instructions:

 'The notation indicates available pitches to be played by sustained-tone instruments (including rolls on the percussion instruments) in the following way: each player chooses, at random, one after another of these available pitches (when within the range of his or her instrument), and plays it beginning very softly (almost inaudibly), gradually increasing the intensity to the dynamic level indicated for that section, then gradually decreasing the intensity again to inaudibility ... After a pause at least as long as the previous tone, each player then repeats this process ...  ' (Wannamaker, North American Spectralism: The Music of James Tenney).




Gala

For long I have been wanting to ‘visualise’ sound waves by devising a method of 3 dimensional steam projection, to visualise in three dimensions the actual sound waves as they interfere and bounce around a room.  Mutation 2, is a tactile alternative: when played at loud enough level, one can move through the room and experience the vibrations of the standing waves and nodes with one’s head and body.  

They key material in Mutation 2 is again micro intervals from my own scales, to create beatings.  The difference here lies in the execution: it is realised by a Nord Modular 2x synthesizer and therefore the microtonal pitch values have a certain precision that human players cannot achieve.  The synthetic sounds are presented at a relatively loud level, so that the glossy sound completely penetrates the space and body.  

When played at a decent level through loudspeakers (this effect obviously won't work through headphones), the undeniable physicality of the sounds are tangible.  They contain so much energy and the listener can move through the room and literally explore the waves. From turning the head to the sides, left right the sound changes dramatically.  Moving slightly forward or backwards, one can step into a ‘hotspot’ of pulsing beats.  One more step and the effect is completely gone, one only hears the two tones.  

At some points during the progression of the piece, I can feel my inner ear react to the sound.  I feel a vibration in the eardrum area, a kind of sympathic resonance. Something prior to otoacoustic emissions. At a louder volume full otoacoustic emission happens on some of the microtonal clusters. 

The oscillating pulsing sounds can be compared to visual flickering or strobe lights at different tempos.  It has a disorienting, hallucinatory effect (when played at loud enough level), at once putting the listeners in a kind of isolation that may feel subliminal.  This also has a powerful effect of being in the absolute ‘now’ or present – there is no tempo insinuated, only the constant bombardment of flickering rhythms.  When played at softer levels, it still has some of the effect and an austere presence that I would compare to a David Lynch slow camera movement through a dark corridor with red curtains at the end.  I say this because it feels to me as if the music completely lacks emotional content and it makes it slightly eerie. The response I feel is as if I experience my body without the soul in it, as if in a dream.  


Whenallmemoryhasfaded

Telepathic Being/Cobi van Tonder