odd instrument garden TOMORROW

Oddmusic U-C is hosting an Odd Instrument Garden tomorrow (Sunday) at La Casa Grande Colectiva in Urbana, starting at 5 PM! We're turning our big grassy lot into a temporary sound garden, populated by odd performers and odd instruments. Around 5:30, we'll have a concert in th form of a "garden tour" with people, pieces, & a program. So consider yrself invited & consider yrself invited to invite!

Sunday June 27
5 PM
906 S. Maple St, Urbana

This event is FREE!

Donations will be graciously accepted to help support our "Artist in Residence" program, which recently brought microtonal composer Denny Genovese to this community (along with some of his odd instruments, which you'll get to see tomorrow!). We also have performers coming in from Indiana and Springfield, & of course many from C-U as well.

In th event of rain, we'll bring th garden inside for a more sedentary concert in our living room.

Hope to see you there!!

With love,
Andrew Heathwaite

p.s. Ordinarily, Sunday night means Oddmusic Office Hour in th Instrumentarium at th UC-IMC from 8 to 9 PM. We will NOT be holding office hour at th UC-IMC tomorrow night, but folks may be continuing to hang around La Casa for a good li'l while after th main event. You are welcome to linger.

ant lizard dragon man -- xenharmonized

In February, I recorded a bunch of tentative tracks for some dreamy album of microtonal songs (still in progress). One highlight is a retuned cover of ant lizard dragon man, a song I co-created with Ameh, Lucretia & Scoot a.k.a. Threshold of Pain ca. 2006.

You can listen to th February mix here.

For this recording, I used an octave-repeating slice of overtones (see here for gruesome numerics), playing an electric organ retuned meticulously by Jacob Barton some years ago; a mountain dulcimer refretted by yrs truly (kindly donated by Tilly T); tambourine, hand claps, and AndRvox. Bad mixing by me.

Original version listen-to-able on [![![!MXSPXCX!]!]!].

two sonx in orwell nine

Hi friends! Yesterday, in a mad frenzy (hooray!) I wrote, practiced, recorded & uploaded two songs for voice & 22-tone guitar. They are:

I've come with a bucket of roses
one drop of rain

By 22-tone guitar, I mean this thing:

Last year, inspired by th work of Dante Rosati (who I had th rare pleasure of getting to meet & see perform!) I modified a steel-string acoustic guitar that I've had since high school to play in a tuning system of 22 equal divisions of th octave (a.k.a. 22edo, a microtonal scale. You'll notice th bendy frets; this came from my attempt to find, by ear (matching to a synthesizer), th exact in-tune spot for each string. (Straight frets are never perfectly in tune due to irregularities in th size & type of strings & other factors.) I discovered that th irregularities & imperfections of my ears & handiwork kind of canceled out that attempt. In some places on th fretboard, this instrument is very much in tune, & in other places it isn't. For what it's worth, I've learned a lot & have done a much better job this year on a mountain dulcimer which is tuned to a just-intoned scale of overtones. More on that another day...

These two songs use a nine-note subset of 22edo called Orwell. In 22edo, there are potentially 22 orwell scales (just as in 12edo, th standard tuning of guitars & keyboards in th Western world, there are potentially 12 diatonic scales). For these two pieces I use exactly one orwell scale -- no transpositions. This is partially because th orwell scale is such an unfamiliar sound to most ears (mine included, at this point), that I wanted to start simple.

I posted these on th Xenharmonic Alliance -- a networking site for microtonal composers -- with some ideas to provoke interesting responses. I quote myself:

It is my hope that these little songs will generate some conversation. I'm up for hearing any response that they inspire, including th "constructively critical" & th simple.

Food for thought: I made these intentionally ambiguous, & I don't have a set of "answers" to all th "questions" these songs may pose. In fact, I have very few of th "questions," & would love to hear what questions these songs inspire, whether or not I'm in any special position to answer them (I may be & I may not be). Sometimes questions are more needed than answers.

Try this: Imagine that these songs come from a society that you're not familiar with. They are clearly related to modern post-industrial US of World (all th words are in English, some of th rhythms are clearly borrowed from familiar music, not to mention th guitar-voice combo) but you know that a different people (maybe in a different time -- th future? th past? or an alternative present?) made them. So consider this image: a musicologist comes to this society (let's call th place a city), sees someone with a modified guitar, walks up to him & says, "Play me a song of your people." Th musicologist presses play on th field recorder, & th musician plays two songs. During th performance of one of th songs, he sings a call & others from his city who are nearby sing a response.

I give this scenario to orient you toward my compositional intentions. When I write a piece, I don't want to give you something you already have. It's a gift, but to enjoy it, you may need to put yourself in another frame of mind. I don't mean that to sound condescending; I am sincere about this & want to help you hear my songs (& help my songs get heard).

As I've only posted that 35 minutes ago, I have not yet received replies.

So what do you think?

albumday tuningtour

(This blog entry is crossposted from Oddmusic Urbana-Champaign.)

Hi friends! I spent th first part of this day making ALBUM, & I want to take you on a tour thru my tunings, if you'll indulge me:

1. 17edo (equal divisions of th octave), as manifested in Jacob's galvanized steel tubes; a first step in making tone rows in which all 17 pitches are sounded (transposing octaves freely) before any repeat; discovering two tubes missing, I left this just begun; an assignment for self or someone else: compose a poem with six lines, each of which contains 17 syllables; additional constraint: within each line, th letters which start th words must not repeat.


2. 22edo, as manifested on th 22-tone guitar I refretted some months ago; a temperament called Porcupine-[8] with steps (in degrees of 22edo) 3 1 3 3 3 3 3 3, solfege: do ru re mi fu sol la tu do; a short song I call being a, composed, practiced & recorded in a manic frenzy, from a poem jotted down last week on a plane from Illinois to Boston.


3. Overtones 12-24, octave-repeating, as manifested on Jacob's otonal organ & my unfinished-but-playable otonal dulcimer: 1/1, 13/12, 7/6, 5/4, 4/3, 17/12, 3/2, 19/12, 5/3, 7/4, 11/6, 23/16, 2/1; a cover of a song I co-wrote some years ago, with three clap-tracks; arranged & recorded.


4. 22edo guitar again: a temperament called Orwell-[9] with steps 3 2 3 2 3 2 3 2 2, solfege: do ru ma fu sol le te ti do; a setting of a 7-line poem I wrote a few years back, responding to a prompt by Jacob; fiddled with, practiced, not finished.


5. A pentatonic scale available in Orwell-[9] which goes 7 3 7 3 2, solfege: do mi fu li ti do; it reminds me of Pelog; (Th mode played on th wikipedia page is more like 3 2 7 3 7); doodled around with it on th keyboard & mumble-sung gleefully all th walk home.

& speaking of microtones, I'll have you know that a "Spring Semester" of Microtonal Composition Study Group meets this Saturday. Th blah blah about it:

Oddmusic Urbana-Champaign hosts Microtonal Composition Study Group in the Family Room of the IMC every Saturday afternoon starting at 3:00 pm during the Spring Semester. This coming Saturday, Feb 27, will be our first meeting of th new semester.

A description of what: Interested persons meet to learn & converse about the uncommon practice of microtonal composition. Microtonal refers to tuning systems which do not adhere to this culture's assumed & often invisible tuning standard of 12 equal divisions of the octave. Our focus is on composition of new works in new tunings. Complete beginners to microtonal theory and practice are welcome.

The class is free, but donations to Oddmusic help us pay for the space and time.

rpm 2010

Yo friends, check it out.

The RPM Challenge is simple:
Record an album in 28 days, just be cause you can.
That's 10 songs or 35 minutes of original material
recorded during the month of February.

I'm this close to signing up.

Pleasure is Insurrectionary

Terrance Real, from The New Rules of Marriage, pg. 247:

In our culture, pleasure remains highly suspect. Like connection itself, pleasure is fine in measured, "appropriate" doses, so long as it doesn't interfere with the real work of production and caretaking. But the enforcers of the social order have always understood that pleasure is not a very docile or obedient force. Pleasure is hard to corral and hard to resist. What would happen if our young men, like Ferdinand the bull in the famous children's story, suddenly cared more about smelling the flowers than about donning their suits and briefcases to enter the ring? What if our young women were to care more about exploring variations of sexual pleasure than about marriage, fidelity, and children? Western society has always understood that pleasure is by its nature insurrectionary.

We don't take pleasure in one another and we don't give pleasure to one another nearly as much as we could because, as a culture, we simply don't much value it.

Quit Yr Job Day

By th way, in case you haven't heard:

Every day is Quit Yr Job Day!

& I happened to celebrate it last Thursday by doing just that!

Yay!

diadwtm

"Democracy" means
rule by th loudest,
rule by th sneakiest,
rule by th best organized.

Those who call our present system unjust
& continue to talk about "democracy"
might consider that th birthplace of "democracy"
was a war-happy patriarchal slave-economy.
It worked for them & it works for us.

I don't know if it's possible to separate "democracy"
from oppression by th "majority"
& influence by th propagandists,
who succeed in getting masses of people
to vote against their own interests every time.
If it is possible, it is only possible if we call it out -
name it - & design against it:

"This is happening - our system makes this happen.
If we want a different thing to happen,
we need to design a different system."

Democracy is a dirty word to me.

upcoming: oddmusic covergence dec '09

You’re invited to attend, as performer or audience

ODDMUSIC CONVERGENCE DECEMBER ‘09

“metablues, microtones, contraptions, utopia”

on Monday, December 14, at 7:30 p.m.

in the main space of the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center.

$5-10, no one turned away for lack of funds.





a concert featuring responses to invitations:

0. ODDMUSIC - What is Oddmusic? Show us.
1. METABLUES - Write a “blues” song which points, instead of at old problems framed in th old language, new problems which demand a new language.
2. MICROTONES - Write a piece in an odd tuning (one which is non-redundant with conventional wisdom).
3. CONTRAPTIONS – Write a piece for an odd instrument (or a not-so-odd instrument played in an odd way).
4. UTOPIA – Write a piece which speaks of alternatives not yet possible in the current system. For example, a false statement bulletin.

Some performances are already in the works which play with these invitations. We invite you to add more! This Convergence will have something of an Open Mic element to it; if you have a piece, or can put together a piece, which attempts to respond to these invitations, please bring it and share it! Surprise us with your own metablues, microtones, contraptions, or utopias.

If you want assistance making a piece happen, get in touch!

Next Sunday, December 13, the day before the Convergence, we’re holding Office Hours as usual in th Oddmusic Oddstrumentarium (room 21A of the IMC). We’ll be working on pieces then, and welcome your participation in that. Bring an interest, and we’ll work on something together!

Music is ours to odd. Odd is ours to music.

Much love, Andrew

pivot

I call something a "Pivot" when:

A & C alone contradict one another.
B contradicts neither A nor C.
A composed sequence A-B-C resolves th contradiction
since th composed sequence is neither A nor B nor C, but instead
a context in which th three can live
(a different logical type): X.

How to practice pivots?

2 Brünish somethings

2 related somethings written by Herbert Brün that I want to keep around.

First, from th program notes of his String Quartet No. 3:

If played and heard often enough, every musical gesture is prone to be interpreted, by musicians and listeners, as a gesture of musical speech. As the gesture becomes familiar, and thus recognized by society, the composed structure, in which the context generates the meaning of its components, will be misunderstood, instead, as one in which the components give meaning to their context.

In order to retard this development, this visitation of communicative familiarity, for as long as possible, I have attempted, in several of my compositions, to anticipate the gesture-forming tendencies within the composed structure and to reduce each of them ad absurdum by way of a non sequitur. I wanted, thereby, to rob trivial perception and partial recognition of the paralyzing effect that all too commonly is mistaken for understanding of music.

Th second, from My Words And Where I Want Them, #247:

Composition generates whole systems so that there be a context which can endow trivial 'items' and meaningless 'materials' with a sense and a meaning never before associated with either items or materials.

Be it linguistic art, where the sentence injects meaningful intent into mere lexicographic vocables, thus turning these into words-

be it visual art, where the configuration injects meaningful intent into mere perceptible data, thus turning these into spaces, shapes, movements and colorpatterns-

be it audible art, where the structuring of time and distance injects meaningful intent into mere acoustical phenomena, thus turning these into musical events-

sooner or later both the profiteering interpreters and the consuming audience will perversely deny the composers' competence and, instead, declare the sentence to be meant by its words, the painting to be meant by its components, and the music to be meant by its sounds.

In order to retard this unfortunate and inevitable decay (too many humans are indistinguishable from laws of nature) for as long as possible, I have contrived to inhibit such gesture forming tendencies in most of my compositions by using many a non sequitur as a structural leap over new gaps avoiding old bridges.

The intent is motivated by my non-malicious desire to keep not only my music as alienated as possible from 'business as usual' and to have not only my composition say something to the interpreter and the listener for the longer time than it may take them to just repeat their habitual commonplaces to themselves.

The survival of composition depends on the composer's art: anticommunication.

economic think(ing out loud)

Different people paying th same number of dollars does not mean different people paying th same value.

My $20 is, to me, a different value than your $20 is to you.

What would a proportional currency look like? Instead of "everyone has to pay th same dollars" it might go, "everyone has to pay th same proportion". Then, 20 proportional units ("poops," say) for me & 20 poops for you are, to each of us, th same value (more or less), but a different number of dollars.

In effect, each person would have her own currency which would convert to dollars at a different rate.

This assumes we develop a "fair" way of determining th "value" of $20 for each person.

What about th "value" of stuff for th seller? If I charge 20 poops for a candy bar, then some folks would spend more dollars than others on th candy bar (because of th different dollars to poops rates). If I'm selling a candy bar & I want more dollars, I'd try to attract th folks whose poops are worth more dollars.

But why would someone want more dollars? If I find a way to make more dollars, my poops are worth less.

If we had poops (& we cared about fair distribution of power), we wouldn't need dollars at all. Poops could cancel out th power of dollars entirely.

Maybe a proportional currency could exist alongside standard currency, added to th current economy for ease of sliding-scale-type transactions. If it were made easy for people to charge proportional prices instead of standard prices, I wonder if they would do it.

Another can of worms: organizations that function as people. Companies, corporations, non-profits, unions, committees, political parties. Do they get poop rates? Can a small business spend fewer dollars than a large business, but th same number of poops? Where do I stand next to X-mart, when we're competing to buy a thing?

Maybe dollars & poops are in contradiction. Yes, I think they are, & for th contradiction to get resolved, we need a different system.

a/c minn

Carly & I made it to Minneapolis. No puppet show after all -- we're here on vacation (till Tuesday).

We stayed th last two nights with a new friend from couchsurfer.com named Rachel. She was lots of good to us, & now we're staying with Brian from the Twin Cities Independent Media Center. We spent hours today trying to get our mitts on bikes, & we finally found a place that'll rent used bikes cheap (three of my favorite words!). We biked th beautiful park district bike paths around three teeny lakes tonight, & Carly has drifted off to sleep for an evening nap. I like this place & wanted to type some words about it (stockpiling warmth, she said when she woke up).

Recently, one question at SDaS experimental composition seminar has been, "how to seek your fruitful conflicts," &, meeting new people, I'm finally finding fruitful conflicts! I'm learning about questions & dynamics.

Brian says he's making dinner & Carly says she's baking vegan cookies. I have made no culinary promises, & might partake of something resembling a nap myself.

Love from a new state,
AndR

puppet something to come

Carly, Jacob & I are putting together a something:

Oddmusic U-C* presents: 25% MORE, a music-o-puppet extravaganza, coming to a Minneapolis near you November 7-9, 2009.

25% MORE takes a sideways ponder at the tyranny of work, the tyranny of measurement systems, and the tyranny of doing something different.

We'll offer an evening of workshops and songs, with a main entrée of original puppets & music by Carly Nix, Jacob Barton & Andrew Heathwaite.

“Whaddaya mean, workshops?” Imagine 20-minute crash courses in:

GHOST-WHALIN' -or- How to play the musical saw
UDDERBOTSMITH -or- How to tootle with a slide bottle
METABLUES -or- How to think in 22-tone guitar
REP. CARDS -or- How to art yourself out of bad grooves
AUDIENCING -or- How to give multiple attentions
DESIRING WITH TEETH -or- How to make unfortunately false statements

* Oddmusic Urbana-Champaign “is” a project to connect experimental composition, performance art, nonstandard tuning practices & instrument-building with non-sectarian radical social change. We insist upon “music” as a type of “odd,” desirable when it avoids the same old society telling itself what it already knows.

hello from/to September

I just noticed I haven't blogged here since June. I've kept myself busy.

Big cloudy mess (list) of what's-been-goin'-on: got a great new lover (3 months together now) ; been involved w/ School for Designing a Society Language Lab & more to come ; getting my work schedule etc. figured out for th rest of th year ; playin' 22-tone acoustic guitar & anticipating new songwriting explosions ; almost caught up on rent ; great new people moving into La Casa ; grand(e) opening for Oddmusic, & now a period of what's next ; putting my desires in order & watching them dissolve & transform each other ; helpin' some pumpkins get sun ; eating adzuki beans ; ...

FWEET

I don't know who reads this blog exactly, but if someone who does happens to have a passionate interest in Finnegans Wake, as I sometimes do, then I'd like to alert you to a website of some value.

FWEET, which stands for Finnegans Wake Extensible Elucidation Treasury has a very powerful & friendly search engine for probing th Wake. It contains over 79,000 "elucidations" about each line of th Wake, & you can search th text of th elucidations & th text of th book. For instance, a search for th word "buggy" (a word that came to mind just now) gives us one line from th Wake itself & two elucidations containing "buggy".

In th FW text, it gives us just that one line, from page 85, "buggy and bike, to walk, Wellington Park road, with the curb," & if I want to see th lines before & after it, I can click on th page number (085) & get this page.

When I do my bibliomantic divinations using Finnegans Wake, I like to nab a smallish & interesting phrase, so I'll expand that just a bit to:

open to buggy and bike, to walk, Wellington Park road, with the curb or quaker's quacknostrum under his auxter and his alpenstuck in his redhand

So today it seems we have an image of a thoroughfare & a person walking w/ a quacknostrum (quack remedy) under his arm (auxter, from oxter, armpit) & a walking stick (alpenstuck, from alpenstick) in his redhand. To whom in my life (since it's a divination for me after all) does this refer? Me? A friend? Someone to watch out for somewhere in th world? Th FW gives us a clue where to find him: somewhere open to buggy and bike. I suppose I could take that literally, altho maybe it means something else... like a blog! Ha, maybe it refers to FWEET, a website that seems very elucidating, but actually carries quacknostrum under its auxter. Hmm.

All in all, in spite of any strange divinations that may come up, I do recommend FWEET for joyful Finnegansplay.

a Bouyant Bloomsday 2009

Hi friends, & again, Happy Bloomsday. As you may recall, 105 years ago to th day, took place th events of James Joyce's Ulysses, altho some miles away in Dublin, & not here in Urbana, Illinois. (& of course, in another Dublin than th one that exists today, since time & space remain inseparable in practice indeed.)

(He flourishes his ashplant shivering the lamp image, shattering light over the world. A liver and white spaniel on the prowl slinks after him, growling. Lynch scares it with a kick.)

I don't have big plans myself; some folks're gathering in Champaign later on, says Facebook, so I'll probably join. It seems I forgot all about it last year, so simply taking a moment to poke thru Ulysses, which has sat on my shelf unread for a few years, counts for something. I quietly recited some of Finnegans Wake to myself last night, & may do that again today. But for th most part, no big plans.

However, for "old time's sake" & to renew a worthy fascination, I'll do a quick bibliomantic divination using th good FW. Ahem. Page 126:

Who do you no tonigh, lazy and gentleman?

birthday party

Happy Birthday!

I type to you now from th Orpheum Children's Science Museum, where I work th front desk these days. On my right, I hear th sounds of birthday party nomming - a cupcake cake! I gave these folks a short animal show, where they got to meet three of our critters: Windy, an ornate box turtle; Patricia, one of our bearded dragons; & Corny, th corn snake. Everybody got along swimmingly - no one eaten, no one brought to tears, no minor deaths.

Later tonight, I'll do a workshop on magic. I have about five easy tricks to show off & teach. I did a sloppy li'l preview for my house last night, & I feel good about that.

In between that & this, maybe a nap?

ThunderMe

Oh, a sleeping drunkard
Up in Central Park,
And a lion-hunter
In the jungle dark,
And a Chinese dentist,
And a British queen--
All fit together
In the same machine.
Nice, nice, very nice;
Nice, nice, very nice;
Nice, nice, very nice--
So many different people
In the same device.

~53rd Calypso of Bokonon

Storm tonight, a big one, which, says Ronna, came all th way from Texas to greet us. Big thunder. Big lightning. Big me, in it.

I ran in it, jumped in it, danced in it, but mostly stood in it, w/ my arms raised. I wanted to feel every drop, hear every nuance of th constant rumbles in my ears, sense every blade of grass (getting taller!) that went between my toes. I wanted to blur th line between Me & It.

We talked about th end of th world (climate change!), & I thought, well of course th world is ending. Also beginning, both of those, in every moment. But things will never be th same again. How could they possibly?

We live in a most massive non-trivial machine. We are it. If lightning strikes me, it's not an It & a Me, separate things. It's one divine It, this very same device. Me becomes (Me) becomes () becomes...

2s & 47s

Moving lots of files from place to place. Th computer says: "Copying 2,222 items to HBParkhouse," & as I notice this & think about twos, I see th computerclock, which reads 2:22 pm. Now, of course, they say "2,197" & "2:27".

A few days ago I saw a pair of 47s, an interstate & a time. I took special note of th interstate, then noticed a carclock reading something:47.

Ah, & now that I open my book, I see that I've stopped on page 44, twice 22. Th 22nd word on page 22: "book". 22nd sentence on page 22: "That's all I wanted to say". 22nd paragraph in th book: "I can walk across the bridge hundreds of times without stepping on that board, but Margaret always steps on it."