AlphaTherem Waltz


Listen to
AlphaTherem Waltz

This lyrical piece is the second one featuring
Carlos Alpha tuning system played with my Opal Chameleon.

AlphaTheremArr

It is a duo for theremin and guitar with some “digital wind” here and there.
As you can see from the picture above I use Spectrasonics
Omnisphere and Camel Audio Alchemy. You can also notice the minute tempo variations, to say nothing of the varying degrees of quantization applied to the instruments throughout the piece.

Once I composed the piece I tried out the transnotational technique presented on my previous
article and discovered there were problems. See the picture below:

AlphaTheremScore

These are the first 20 bars of the theremin theme. If you compare the contour of MIDI notes with that of the transnotated score you see there is something wrong. In bar 10, for example, the pitch of the second MIDI note is higher than that of the first one but it is the opposite in the transnotated score.
The reason is simple but I had not figured it out until I tried playing the transnotated score. In my article
Alpha15 update I stated: “the fifteen note names I chose are: A A# Bb B C C# D D# Eb E F F# Gb G G#”. This note layout means that, for example, A3 is below C3 but that is not what happens with standard notation and because I am trying to adapt an alternative note layout to it I have to follow the rule that the lowest of pitch classes is C so, at least, I have to reconfigure the note list as “C C# D D# Eb E F F# Gb G G# A A# Bb B”.
Back to the drawing table...

Click
here for the following chapter...

AndR commented:
I really like this one, Carlo!  It's haunting, and it makes me want to play an Alpha guitar.  78¢ frets would be easy to play, I think...