Watching Rudy Giuliani's convention speech, I noticed that it had an oddly musical quality to it. I ran it through Ableton Live's tuner utility and sure enough, he's mostly ranting in C minor. Even better, the more intense the sentiment, the farther it is from the tonic. The wildest bits fit neatly on the dominant chord.

So, I decided to build a piece around these observations. Here are the rules:

* No retuning. The whole point of the piece is that the pitch content is already there. (One exception: The opening phrase, "Thank you, New York", was just a tiny bit flat, and I decided to adjust the pitch ever so slightly because I couldn't find a better line to set the mood.)

* Gentle warping is okay, to fit the rhythm and tempo of the piece. It didn't take a lot of warping to make everything fit, though.

* No audience noises. It's one thing to twist the words of the speech; it's quite another to manufacture audience reactions to a mangled speech.

It took more than a month to finish this (still working on my production skills), so the content may be a bit stale by now. Fortunately(?) Giuliani has established himself as one of Trump's most vocal surrogates, so it still seems relevant.


Pitched Insanity