Text with Accompaniment

Dance track where I sing about how much I love microtones. This was performed at my senior composition recital, too. I also played some fake instruments for comic effect during the little interludes of the song.

The lyrics:

(Intro)

I dance and sing to the beat of a drum
Ignoring its sum
With the throng

No time to find the deeper meaning
I’m busy feeling
Hyped for each song

Nothing’s new, tonality’s dead,
Or is it alive? I haven’t checked, for
I don’t hum any serial tunes, 
And theory class abandons its roots.

Only one sound provides that rush
Tuning! Gives me tools, too much 
Resurrecting the new in music here!
Tradition broken, true final frontier!

Its spectrum causes the ear to flinch!
It actually emancipates dissonance and pitch!
Nothing else does that quite like this!

(Interlude in 11-EDO)

Xenharmonics are aplenty
Tuning! Gives me tools many  
Finding the keys to music theory’s youth!
Eclectic, yet it holds to the crucial…
Tonic.

Its beauty causes the ear to stand!
Starving on this dissonance now seems bold and grand!
Nothing else does this throughout the land!

I dance and sing to the beat of a drum
Ignoring its sum
With the throng

No time to find the deeper meaning
I’m busy feeling
Hyped for each song

(Interlude in porcupine scale)

(Spoken)
Chords speak
The ear is piqued.
The voyage into new tunings has begun!
Unlimited sounds, and compositional fun!
And the best part is, it only strengthens the familiar knowledge!

Thank you, thank you!

Emancipate Pitch! (22-EDO)

This piece is designed to evoke aesthetic similarities to Kafka’s work (and uses some of his texts freely). Many of his texts describe something strikingly ordinary, but with hidden, unhappy meaning. Intentional ambiguities in this musical work are: the placement of a tonic, the feeling of hovering between life and death in imaginary matters, and lexical ambiguity in the title. 7-tone equal temperament is well suited for this task because of its simplicity and symmetry (which echo the feeling of a blank, motionless thing existing in a context of isolation). Rhythms are made simple, but strange, and the pentatonic subset of 7-equal is purposely avoided; the entire scale is used for heptatonic implications (this is also idiomatic for the dulcimer, which plays a 7-note scale). Extended techniques are used for expressive effect and contrast between storytelling sections.

Performance and composition by Stephen Weigel. First performed at the BSU Student Composers' Forum, April 6, 2017.

Death Giving Monolith (7-EDO) (premiere)

I'm terrified and sad because of global warming and the future it's going to force most of us to face. To me, there's almost nothing sadder than witnessing the world die, in all of its innocence and beauty.

When I look at nature 
I see so many lovely things
The singing of Earth’s
Bio-diversities 

Nature is the last remaining
thing we haven’t ruined, and
I…
weep for what I think will be the 
last age of history
Where we will even get to see it
Doo, doo doo, doo...

Nature is the last remaining 
thing that we can kill, and 
I…
weep for the innocent death
Of billions of animals 
And people too
Too, too too... 

I…
weep for all us poor souls that will 
lose the race

When I stand in nature
I relish the solitude
I hope it won’t rot
Because of our mistakes
It can be prevented

And I…
don’t want to watch us pass away
And I…
don’t want to watch us pass away
And I…
don’t want to watch us pass away
And I…
don’t want to watch us pass away

Featuring Dr. Jody Nagel of Ball State University, talking about the pond cycle. The pond cycle causes cycles of mass extinction in ponds, and could be considered a microcosm of what's happening to humans now.

Warning About The Pond Cycle (19 - EDO)

Xenharmonic art-song. Several other art-songs are quoted either indirectly, melodically, or both (for example, the opening line is a sound-alike to Caro mio ben, and the steps in the same ratio to each other... which end up landing in very different spots in this scale). See how many you can find. The singer is addressing another person who exists in his/her life who has a capacity for joy and fascination, but who cannot face it for other reasons. Hopefully some of the same emotional content transmits.

These lyrics of mine capture the unique emotions that 6:7:11 chords give me, namely, that of a realization. The "realization" I get from these entities are best manifested as... disappointment in joylessness. It's a very specific, multi-meaning, gloomy, non-12-edo feeling, that isn't JUST xenharmonic. You know how when you were a kid, adults would be worried about everything, and you never knew why, but it made you sad? That would be a helpful association. This song has been performed at multiple venues in Indiana and Chicago.

The 11-note mode used is 6L 5s - wickedly difficult for beginners to sing, but wildly interesting-sounding, giving abundant 6:7:11 chords. The song modulates a 23edo step (1\23) higher about halfway through, and all 23 pitches are used at least once; the 11-note 6L 5s twice, plus an extra chromatic note. Other chromatic notes to 6L 5s exist in the main passages anyway, acting like borrowed chords or secondary dominants in a very complex modal language.

Far o’er low bend,
Crazy, all spent
Sits, me-a detained
Languishing hoper
I reach, always too far 
But never far enough
I put myself out just 
To be ignored,
Ignored, when I love optimism more than you, 

My smile, always in vain,
Mirrored through your face:
Showing you what they want
Without a trace of hate 
Only a glare, 
And before you turn away,

I give a prompt,
Hoping your mind will dance,
Though you are always swamped
And you won’t take a chance,
To be enthusiastic about life with (chromatic) me,
“Why have you interest in things? Why not accept that we’re bored?” You say,
 
And you turn away, 
As unemotional
As a half,
Forgotten song,
Like a ship at sea my heart sank,
Knowing that your sense of fun was bleak.

Many years later, I acquired a new voice 
giving me choice of finally finding yourself
    
I reach, always too far 
But never far enough
I put myself out just 
To be ignored,
When I love optimism more than you, 
More so than you,
When I first met you I couldn’t see
Clearly, and that was exciting,
It was a time where we enjoyed 
Life,
Then we found out 
Our ideas of adventure
Were contradictory,  

I changed for you and I
Wouldn’t have changed for me
If I had known that joy
For you cannot arrive at the right time,

And before you turn away,
I give a prompt,
Hoping your mind will dance,
Though you are always swamped
And you won’t take a chance,
To be enthusiastic about life with (chromatic) me

Oh my beloved, 
Find me at last,
Your eyes, your mein, declare complacency everywhere!

Curiosity Finds A Frown (23 - EDO)

I would like my dreams to mean something, something…
Inspiring timeless art within my wasting head, the perfect scene…
But without my conscious will, my brain is truly fickle
Yielding no constructive weight in this deterministic tickle
I don’t want to go to sleep! I don’t wanna!

I will be mature enough to leave the comfortable bath
My eternity of make-believe training gives light to my path
To put on clothes without closed eyes!

Why make mountains out of molehills,
When we are all ants,
And the universe is billions of lights,
And billions of light years,
And trillions of years will defeat all fears.
Dissipating into the void, equalized in death!
I don’t want to go to sleep! I don’t wanna go!

Oh, but I’ll have to go to sleep…
Every day is 24 hours and that’s the way it keeps!
I don’t want to go to sleep! Not right now, not right now!

How long would you have to be awake
before the world would make no sense
Your joys and hopes and urge to dwell
Why, Wormwood, this would all be quelled
Dulled, dead, doornail, polished stars of night!
Night, Night, Night, Night, Night, Night... 

(Interlude)

All shower songs I sing are wasted breath and water,
Made a heathen anthem sinking and lowered into the drain,
Pain is relative but I am real,
I do not believe in me anymore...

Dreams have told me I may live
Through the portal of death’s door
Mortal as we may seem
Seizing according scream
Freezing our thinking love in a sunbeam

(Small instrumental)

I would like my dreams to mean something, something…
something… something… something… something… something…
My last, my last dreamscape rolling on
always nonsense, distant watchman
Nightmare spirits vanishing
Smoke and mirrors ‘flect forgetting!

November 17, 1998:
"My story begins when it was nighttime, I had a dream. It was not a happy dream but it was a nightmare. My pillow changed its picture. My sheet's colors looked new. And the eating gorilla came out of my pillow. It was very, very, very, very, very, very, very scary. It started to eat my head while I was laying on it. I felt so scared that I am frightened. Um, and he cooled my head down and then his mouth ate it. But it was just a quick pretend dream. Then I said, 'Nightmare!' and then my mom ran upstairs and I woke her up in the middle of the night. Um, when the dream was over, it wasn't scary anymore. I was very scared last time. And then I promised next time I wouldn't wake her up. And that's all of my story."

Music and Lyrics by Stephen Weigel, 
July 5th, 2018.