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.