Seraph's RSS Feed

13 Miles

Carlo Serafini — 2012-05-01T21:32:10+02:00

Listen to 13 Miles Lately I have noticed an increasing interest of the microtonal community for 13ED2 (the Equal Division of ratio 2:1 into 13 steps of 92.308 cents each) so, out of curiosity, I decided to try it out myself. I had always thought it had to sound awful (or at least extremely xenharmonic) considering its very high “harmonic error” but once I tried it out I had to reconsider it. I had no particular difficulty assembling this piece and actually it developed smoothly. In order to use the scale with my Halberstadt keyboard I decided to skip one step to fit the scale into the usual 5 black and 7 white keys note layout. This piece features sounds by Omnisphere, Alchemy and Stylus RMX. The title alludes to 13ED2 and to the use of a trumpet sound as main instrument, for which I tried to replicate slight intonational nuances, characteristic of the acoustic instrument, through pitch bend.

Bossa Sbilenca

Carlo Serafini — 2012-04-16T22:01:03+02:00

A simple song in Carlos Alpha tuning system featuring Spectrasonics Omnisphere and Camel Audio Alchemy sounds. ...I started using sounds from a previous song (Alpha Therem Waltz) then I added double bass and a drum loop. This song is related to that song also because of the “transnotational” issues involved (see Transnotating Carlos Alpha and Transnotating Carlos Alpha 2). ...as you can see from the above picture, the Disarray output (MIDI data from the Chameleon remapped by it) is sent to Logic Pro’s input twice: directly and through the “transnotation map” so that each MIDI note creates two events. ...The instrument receives on MIDI channel 2, events on channel 16 are created by the “transnotation map” (see previous picture). ...Once I use the command “Separate MIDI events by event channel” I get MIDI notes on one track: ...(actually notes you see here are the result of manual correction of the score created by the “transnotational map”. ...The title refers to the fact that a straight bossa nova rhythm is used to play a slightly “sbilenco” non-octave piece. This note reminds me of what Michael Brecker wrote about his friend and colleague Don Grolnick: “he liked living close to the edge... as long as it was two or three blocks away”. That sentence explains, somehow, what I aspire to do musically, in my own way and with all due respect for those two great musicians I deeply admire and whom I don’t dare to compare with.

Primitivo

Carlo Serafini — 2012-04-08T19:06:19+02:00

This audio/visual work was composed during the Spring of 2007 as partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Master’s Degree in Music and New Technology awarded to the author at the Conservatory of Music in Florence, Italy in the Fall of 2007. It started out as a long audio/visual improvisation done using the application Metasynth 4 Pro by U&I, recorded on a digital VCR, then edited and processed with Apple iMovie and Final Cut Pro. The graphical approach to music composition of Metasynth permits the composer to draw on a virtual blackboard while the application, in real time, transforms the visual images to audio. All the parameters for these transformations can be programmed: vertical pixels to pitch, horizontal pixels to time, different colors for positioning sounds in the stereo field, dullness/brightness to loudness, waveforms, signal processing etc. The title “Primitivo” (Primitive) hints at the esthetic rawness of the movie that tries to recreate the atmosphere of the experimentalism of the “Fifties”. The basic esthetic choices, in order to achieve this goal were: 1) black and white images 2) use of sine waveforms, most of the time ...4) quarter tone tuning system

Tecnologia e Sistemi di Accordatura p.24

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-28T00:01:10+02:00

Questo brano utilizza un’accordatura di origine balinese (Indonesia) chiamata “gamelan luang, banjar Sèséh” (McPhee, Music in Bali, 1966), elaborata da X.J.Scott, al quale il pezzo è dedicato. Si tratta di una scala cosidetta “pelog” di 7 toni, tipica delle locali orchestre “gamelan” che normalmente comprendono metallofoni, xilofoni, tamburi e gong. ...Come si vede dall’immagine qui sopra, la fondamentale è D3 = 276 Hz e difatti il brano è in “Re maggiore”. I 7 gradi della scala vengono assegnati ad altrettanti tasti bianchi di una tastiera digitale, come si vede qui sotto (si noti che la terza maggiore di Re, 5/4, 386.314 cents dalla fondamentale, è assegnata al tasto Fa che sarebbe la terza minore): Il brano è stato assemblato in Logic Pro con LMSO, il sintetizzatore Yamaha Motif-Rack ES (unica sorgente sonora per questo brano) ed il piano digitale Kawai MP4 (come master keyboard). ...In questo caso l’ho utilizzato per creare un “multi” ovvero un insieme di vari strumenti per questo pezzo. Come si può vedere, il brano utilizza 5 voci: 4 per ricreare il “gamelan” e la quinta per delle “tabla” che non hanno niente a che fare con l’Indonesia ma ho inserito ugualmente, incurante della accuratezza filologica della mia scelta. La polifonia minima necessaria per la parte del “gamelan” sarebbe di 2 voci ma ne utilizzo 4 (simili ma diverse) per aumentare la varietà timbrica dello strumento. Non avendo le “tabla” necessità di essere riaccordate, invio i dati midi necessari per suonarle direttamente al modulo sonoro mentre invio i dati riguardanti il “gamelan” a LMSO che elabora l’accordatura e successivamente trasmette il risultato allo stesso modulo sonoro. ...
Questo opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0.

Tecnologia e Sistemi di Accordatura p.23

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-27T00:00:01+02:00

Risorse hardware, software e online per la musica microtonale (tesi di laurea di secondo livello in musica e nuove tecnologie - INDICE) ...Ascolta Summer 2006 in 11 Limit Questo brano è un insieme di “musica concreta” ed elettronica, nel senso che alcune registrazioni da me effettuate nell’estate del 2006 in vacanza al mare sono state elaborate elettronicamente e montate insieme a suoni digitali creati con Metasynth (si veda la pagina dedicata al mio brano “Metashakti” ). L’idea di unire questi elementi mi è venuta mentre stavo sperimentando con lo stesso sistema di accordatura utilizzata per l’altro mio brano “piano11”, con Metasynth. Alcuni suoni mi ricordavano il frinire delle cicale e così ho deciso di prendere le registrazioni fatte al mare per vedere cosa poteva venire fuori. In questa operazione mi sono ispirato alla scuola franco canadese di musica elettronica di cui uno degli esponenti di maggior spicco è Francis Dhomont. Il brano è stato assemblato, come sempre, con Logic Pro: La voce che si sente è quella di mio figlio Jarik. ...
Questo opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0.

Tecnologia e Sistemi di Accordatura p.22

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-26T21:53:14+02:00

Grazie al mio amico Nicola Settimelli, orgoglioso proprietario di un sintetizzatore analogico Serge semi modulare, ho potuto sperimentare la possibilità di utilizzare LMSO per riaccordare uno strumento che non è nemmeno MIDI! Nell’angolo inferiore sinistro della foto qui sopra si può vedere l’apparecchio Doepfer MCV4, un convertitore da MIDI a “CV/Gate” per pilotare sintetizzatori analogici che utilizzano un voltaggio di controllo di 1V/ottava, come il Serge. ...Ho effettuato 2 esperimenti: il primo è consistito nel far suonare al Serge il preludio della suite n.1 per violoncello di J.S.Bach utilizzando un’accordatura “Just Intonation” a 12 toni che si ripete all’ottava con le seguenti caratteristiche: ...1/1, 19/18, 9/8, 6/5, 5/4, 4/3, 7/5, 3/2, 8/5, 5/3, 16/9, 15/8 ...LMSO invia, sul canale midi 1, i dati alla porta 1 dell’interfaccia midi collegata a sua volta al Doepfer MCV4 (e al Serge) e, contemporaneamente, a LMSO IAC 1 che a sua volta è collegato al IAC Bus A di Reason che esegue il file con un suono tipo archi. ... Ho inviato il brano riaccordato a 2 sorgenti sonore per assicurarmi che l’accordatura fosse corretta e ho constatato la perfetta intonazione del “New Timbral Oscillator” del Serge. Per arrivare a questo risultato abbiamo dovuto intonare il Serge con LMSO assicurandosi, con un frequenzimetro, che la frequenza della nota G2 fosse 196.00 Hz (sul Serge) e impostando la stessa nota come la fondamentale in LMSO (si veda la precedente immagine dove si vede l’”anchor key” impostata a 195.998 Hz). ... Inoltre, abbiamo impostato l’ampiezza possibile del “pitch bend” a 1200 cents (mentre il valore per LMSO IAC 1 è rimasto il consueto 200 cents) L’altro esperimento è consistito nel far suonare al Serge la parte del violoncello del mio brano “Nemovar” ...
Questo opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0.

Tecnologia e Sistemi di Accordatura p.21

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-26T10:59:30+02:00

La prima copia del programma, per Atari, che ho avuto mi fu data personalmente da Chadabe, nel 1989, quando visitai la sede della Intelligent Music, di cui lui era presidente, a Albany, NY quindi ho una lunga frequentazione di questa applicazione. ...Nell’immagine qui sopra si vede che i dati midi arrivano da “Port 5” (la porta 5 della mia interfaccia midi), vengono registrati/elaborati dal programma e indirizzati a 2 destinazioni differenti: “LMSO input” e “from M 1”. In M un pattern può, al massimo, avere 4 voci/parti (qui ho utilizzato i canali midi da 1 a 4). Le prime 3 parti vanno a LMSO per essere riaccordate, la 4 va direttamente a Reason in quanto serve per creare la parte ritmica. ...Le 4 note di polifonia del bus A sono assegnate a 4 istanze del campionatore NN-XT con 4 suoni differenti che simulano 4 strumenti a fiato. Le 2 note di polifonia del bus B sono assegnate a 2 istanze del sintetizzatore Malstrøm con 2 suoni differenti tipo “pad”. ...Una volta che il brano è pronto per essere eseguito, si pone il problema di registrare l’uscita audio di Reason. ...Solitamente, per registrare l’uscita audio di Reason utilizzo la tecnologia ReWire, ma in questo caso si crea un conflitto tra M e Logic Pro (l’applicazione che di solito è il “master” ) per cui ho utilizzato il seguente stratagemma: avviando Logic dopo Reason non si stabilisce la connessione ReWire tra le 2 applicazioni quindi ho proceduto a connetterle tramite Soundflower, un programma di utilità della stessa Cycling ’74, gratuito, per trasferire dati audio da un’applicazione ad un’altra. ...Fatto tutto ciò sarà possibile improvvisare con M, riaccordare il risultato con LMSO, farlo eseguire a Reason e registrare il tutto con Logic Pro, in tempo reale! ...
Questo opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0.

Tecnologia e Sistemi di Accordatura p.20

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-25T21:59:07+02:00

Questo brano è stato assemblato con Logic Pro utilizzando due synths virtuali: U&I Metasynth e Native Instruments Absynth. Con Metasynth si possono trasformare immagini in suoni dove i colori vengono utilizzati per indicare la posizione spaziale e la maggiore o minore brillantezza per indicare l’ampiezza, del timbro utilizzato. Ho utilizzato la funzione ”Image Synth” di Metasynth per “disegnare” i vari temi che costituiscono il brano: ...Ognuna di queste immagini viene letta da Metasynth da sinistra verso destra, ad una velocità programmabile dall’utente, con un timbro anch’esso programmabile. ...La scala musicale utilizzata da Metasynth per “suonare” un’immagine è anch’essa programmabile. In questo caso la scala utilizzata è basata sulla divisione di un quinta giusta naturale in 6 parti uguali (701.955 / 6 = 116.993 cents per grado). ...Ovviamente anche l’altro synth virtuale utilizzato nel brano, Absynth, è stato riaccordato secondo la stessa scala (vedi foto sottostante: 3/2diviso6) con un procedimento simile di LMSO. ...Come si vede nell’immagine precedente, ogni sezione viene ripetuta 3 volte in modo sfalsato con sovrapposizione delle varie sezioni, con l’unica eccezione del tema 1 che viene ripresentato nel finale. Le prime 2 tracce includono un filtro con la frequenza di taglio a 1000Hz, la prima di tipo “taglia bassi” e la seconda di tipo “taglia alti”: ...
Questo opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0.

Tecnologia e Sistemi di Accordatura p.19

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-24T23:21:18+01:00

Questo breve brano è stato composto come esempio di funzionamento di una patch di Max/MSP creata da me durante un corso di “linguaggi di programmazione” del Prof. ...L’idea è la creazione di una patch con 2 subpatches: la prima per dividere un intervallo X in un qualsiasi numero di "gradi" equidistanti Y (come quella illustrata dall’immagine precedente) e la seconda per creare un timbro, in sintesi additiva, costituito da 8 parziali le cui frequenze si basano sui rapporti intervallari della scala creata dividendo l’intervallo X in un numero Y di “gradi”, cioè per mettere in relazione il timbro con la scala in uso. ...Sethares “Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale” del quale l’autore dice: “… ho investigato sui rapporti tra timbro (spettro) di un suono e l’accordatura (o scala musicale) nel quale questo suono risulta essere più consonante all’orecchio”. ...La patch in questione è monofonica per cui, per ottenere il risultato che si ascolta, ho utilizzato Logic Pro e Max/MSP via ReWire per inviare, via midi, i dati di una sequenza da Logic a Max che li elabora ed il cui risultato sonoro viene registrato su Logic. Per la registrazione della seconda traccia del brano il procedimento è lo stesso, con la prima che viene riascoltata in audio. Poi, una volta ottenute entrambe in formato audio, ho proceduto ad effettarle per attenuare quel senso di “crudezza” dovuto all’utilizzo di un timbro con soli 8 parziali. Nell’immagine qui sopra si vede che il brano è basato sulla divisione equabile in 12 toni dell’intervallo 3/1 cioè un’ottava e una quinta giusta naturale (1200 + 701.955 = 1901.955 cents) ...0.000000, 158.496000, 316.993000, 475.489000, 633.985000, 792.481000, 950.978000, 1109.474000, 1267.970000, 1426.466000, 1584.963000, 1743.459000, 1901.955001 ...Il coefficiente moltiplicativo della frequenza della fondamentale per arrivare a quella degli altri 7 parziali è basato sull’idea che in una scala che si ripete all’ottava gli 8 parziali debbano avere frequenze in rapporto 1:2:3:4:5:6:7:8. ...
Questo opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0.

Tecnologia e Sistemi di Accordatura p.18

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-23T23:55:01+01:00

La scala su cui si basa il pezzo è composta di 12 gradi e si ripete ogni 1200 cents (un’ottava). ...1/1, 11/10, 9/8, 7/6, 5/4, 11/8, 10/7, 3/2, 8/5, 5/3, 7/4, 20/11 ...Nel gergo dei microtonalisti una scala del genere viene indicata come: “extended just intonation” per indicare 2 cose: la prima è che la scala si basa su semplici rapporti intervallari (“just intonation” ), la seconda è che i rapporti intervallari includono numeri primi che sono stati esclusi dalla teoria musicale occidentale ( da qui il termine “extended” ). ...Poiché gli intervalli che compongono la scala non sono uguali tra loro (la differenza in cents tra i vari gradi della scala è la seguente: 165.004, 38.906, 62.961, 119.443, 165.004, 66.17, 84.467, 111.731, 70.673, 84.467, 66.17, 165.004) ogni modulazione genera altezze diverse a seconda della nota che si considera la fondamentale. La tabella seguente indica la variazione (in Hz) dell’accordatura di ognuno dei 12 gradi della scala (all’interno di un’ottava) dovuta alle 4 modulazioni utilizzate nel pezzo (C, F#, G, B). ...I dati midi sono stati indirizzati all’ingresso di LMSO che ha calcolato, in tempo reale, la variazione dell’altezza del suono tramite variazioni di “pitch bend” per riaccordare le note. Essendo il pitch bend un valore unico per canale midi, la possibilità di riaccordare ogni singola nota autonomamente, in modo polifonico, implica l’utilizzo di più canali midi. Ecco perché, nella foto precedente, si vede che vengono utilizzate 15 voci (ovvero altrettanti canali midi) a partire dal canale 11 per evitare il canale 10 sul quale, lo strumento che ha eseguito il brano, un pianoforte digitale Kawai MP4, ha, di default, suoni di batteria e percussione. Fondamentale, inoltre, per il corretto calcolo della riaccordatura, è che l’ampiezza del pitch bend di LMSO e dello strumento che eseguirà il brano sia identico (in questo caso 200 cents, 2 semitoni). ...
Questo opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0.

Tecnologia e Sistemi di Accordatura p.17

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-22T00:01:18+01:00

Questo brano utilizza una scala che non si ripete all’ottava (1200 cents) ma ogni 1466.871 cents, ovvero un intervallo 7/3. Questo intervallo equivale a 2/1 + 7/6 cioè un’ottava + una specie di terza minore (266.871 cents) più piccola sia di quella temperata (300 cents) che di quella naturale 6/5 (315.641 cents), un intervallo non utilizzato nella musica occidentale che non contempla la possibilità di costruire intervalli basati sul numero primo 7, come già accennato nel capitolo sulla storia dei sistemi d’accordatura. ...Benade come facente parte di quegli intervalli “speciali”, caratterizzati da semplici rapporti, che tendono a soddisfare la sensazione di consonanza nell’ascoltatore (i più comuni sono 2/1, 3/2, 4/3, 5/3 etc.). ...Questa scala fa parte della famiglia “nonoctave” poichè, come già spiegato, la sua struttura non si ripete all’ottava (2/1) anche se, come si è appena visto ci sono delle ottave “nascoste”. ... La pagina “tonic shift” di LMSO rende possibile la visualizzazione dei modi della scala e dei relativi intervalli, uno strumento molto utile nell’analisi di scale dagli intervalli diseguali come questa. ...“Septimal Klezmer" è stato assemblato, registrato e mixato con Apple Logic Pro e Propellerhead Reason (via ReWire), il piano digitale Kawai MP4 (sia come generatore sonoro che come tastiera di controllo) e LMSO per la modifica dell’accordatura. ...L’immagine sottostante mostra il segnale inviato da Logic Pro all’ingresso di LMSO che elabora i dati e li invia alle sue uscite connesse a due “bus” di Reason e al piano MP4. Qui di seguito si vedono i dettagli delle impostazioni di LMSO per gli IAC 1 e 2 e per l’MP4. Si noti la differente polifonia dei 3 strumenti: 15 per l’MP4, 8 per lo IAC 1, 1 per lo IAC 2 e la conseguente assegnazione a più canali midi dei dati elaborati. ...
Questo opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0.

Tecnologia e Sistemi di Accordatura p.16

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-21T09:44:10+01:00

Il titolo di questo brano si riferisce ad un scala della musica tradizionale araba qui elaborata in versione “just intonation” da X.J.Scott. ...L’altra versione della stessa pagina è la seguente (con le tracce VibesArp e VibesArp2 in “mute” e la traccia “vibes” attiva): ...che a sua volta invia i dati sul canale midi 3 di LMSO input. che elabora l’accordatura dei dati in ingresso e invia il risultato a 15 canali midi (escludendo il n.10) del piano digitale MP4 per consentire la possibilità di riaccordare fino a 15 note contemporaneamente. ...che a sua volta invia i dati sul canale midi 2 di LMSO input. che elabora l’accordatura dei dati in ingresso e invia il risultato al solo canale midi 2 di LMSO IAC 2, per 1 unica nota di polifonia. Lo strumento midi “to LMSO IAC1” invia i dati sul canale midi 1 di LMSO input che elabora l’accordatura dei dati in ingresso e invia il risultato ai canali midi da 1 a 4 di LMSO IAC 1 per consentire la possibilità di riaccordare fino a 4 note contemporaneamente. ...LMSO IAC 1 riceve sui canali midi da 1 a 4 ai quali sono stati assegnati 4 istanze monofoniche del campionatore NN-XT con 4 timbri differenti per rendere meno statica l’esecuzione della parte assegnatagli. ...Reason, inoltre, viene utilizzato, col suo sequencer interno, per eseguire la parti di percussioni del brano e per automatizzare il livello del volume del suono assegnato al canale 6 (Tech Lead 3). ...
Questo opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0.

Tecnologia e Sistemi di Accordatura p.15

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-20T00:05:32+01:00

La caratteristica di questo brano è di partire nel consueto temperamento equabile dell’ottava a 12 note (12tET) con una armonizzazione della melodia tipica della tradizione occidentale per poi svilupparsi in modo polifonico utilizzando una diversa accordatura rispetto alla precedente. ...Nemovar è stato assemblato, registrato e mixato con Apple Logic Pro utilizzando i sintetizzatori Yamaha VL70m, Kurzweil Micro Ensemble, Native Instruments Absynth, Native Instruments FM7, Propellerhead Reason e Kawai MP4 (quest’ultimo sia come generatore sonoro che come tastiera di controllo), l’accordatura è stata modificata con LMSO. ...L’ordine in cui si aprono le varie applicazioni coinvolte è cruciale specialmente se si deve riaccordare un sintetizzatore via il protocollo ReWire (in questo caso specifico Logic Pro è il programma “master” che quindi deve essere aperto prima di Reason, il programma “slave”, ma prima di entrambi è fondamentale aprire LMSO perchè altrimenti Logic Pro non creerà la connessione virtuale ad esso). ...Nel caso di esecuzione dal vivo, i dati midi in arrivo dall’interfaccia di controllo (a tastiera o di qualsiasi altro tipo) vengono inviati direttamente a LMSO che li elabora e li invia al generatore sonoro. ...Il passo successivo, dando per scontato che la scala da utilizzare sia già stata messa a punto, è di assegnare una destinazione alla traccia da elaborare, assicurandosi che il canale midi della traccia in oggetto coincida con quello che LMSO si aspetta di ricevere. Nel caso sottostante la prima traccia di Logic Pro (cello) è inviata sul canale midi 1 all’ingresso virtuale di LMSO, ugualmente settato, per la ricezione, sul canale midi 1, al quale sono assegnati i valori necessari a trasformare l’accordatura dei dati midi in ingresso in quelli della scala desiderata. ... Come si vede dalla finestra “Nuscale Input Routing”, i dati del canale midi 1 vengono inviati a LMSO IAC 1 (IAC è l’acronimo di Inter Application Communication, un protocollo che consente il trasferimento di dati da un’applicazione ad un’altra). ...Ecco invece cosa succede per assegnare un altro strumento (accordion) ad un altro Bus di Reason: i dati vengono inviati sul canale midi 3 su LMSO IAC 3 e assegnati al canale midi 3 del Bus C di Reason (anche questo strumento è monofonico come il precedente). ...Come si vede nella schermata sottostante, la finestra “tuning” di Absynth ci informa di star leggendo i dati necessari per la corretta esecuzione del brano, che sono stati precedentemente inseriti nell’apposita cartella dove l’applicazione, al suo avvio, acquisisce le informazioni riguardanti l’accordatura. ...
Questo opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0.

Tecnologia e Sistemi di Accordatura p.14

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-19T22:04:13+01:00

Una delle conseguenze degli studi sui microintervalli è stata la messa in discussione del modello di tastiera musicale che si era andata affermando con l’avvento della divisione dell’ottava in 12 parti, difatti, la configurazione tradizionale con 7 tasti bianchi e 5 neri non è funzionale se si utilizzano più o meno di 12 suddivisioni di un dato intervallo. Come già visto nel capitolo sulla storia dei sistemi di accordatura gli esperimenti per arrivare a strumenti a tastiera che potessero suonare più di 12 note per ottava sono cominciati secoli fa, per esempio l’archicembalo di Don Nicola Vicentino della metà del Cinquecento. Una categoria speciale di strumenti a tastiera è quella “isomorfa” (dal greco, che significa “stessa struttura” ) nei quali a ogni intervallo musicale corrisponde sempre lo stesso intervallo di spazio e quindi la stessa diteggiatura, a prescindere dalla nota di partenza. Mentre la tastiera musicale tradizionale è inerentemente legata alla divisione dell’ottava in 12 parti, una tastiera isomorfa può essere costruita in modo da facilitare l’utilizzo di vari sistemi di accordatura. L’evoluzione degli strumenti elettronici non può prescindere dal tema dell’interfaccia utente e, credo, che questo sarà un campo che vedrà un grande sviluppo nei prossimi anni. ...L’idea di base per questa configurazione è di consentire una stessa diteggiatura in qualsiasi tonalità e di accorciare la distanza tra le note facilitando l’esecuzione di intervalli ampi: la distanza lineare di un’ottava viene ridotta rispetto ad una tastiera tradizionale di circa il 25 per cento. ...Le file di tasti si sviluppano in diagonale e invece che ripetere a file alterne le stesse note come nella configurazione di Janko, queste possono essere utilizzate per aumentare il numero di suddivisioni dell’intervallo di riferimento (normalmente l’ottava). ...La configurazione di Bosanquet è stata utilizzata da Fokker (si veda il capitolo sulla storia dei sistemi di accordatura) e da vari costruttori di tastiere elettroniche: Terpstra (non commercializzata, al momento) e da Starr Labs (commercializzata), su progetto di Erv Wilson: Una configurazione simile, ispirata dal modello di Bosanquet, è quella della tastiera Tonal Plexus della H-Pi Instruments, commercializzata in vari modelli: ...
Questo opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0.

Tecnologia e Sistemi di Accordatura p.13

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-19T11:47:38+01:00

Battimento: un tipo di fenomeno psicoacustico che si manifesta quando 2 suoni sufficientemente vicini tra loro suonano insieme e che viene percepito come un effetto “vibrato”. ...I comma più conosciuti sono quello pitagorico risultante dalla differenza tra un intervallo calcolato come 12 quinte giuste naturali (di 701.955 cents l’una) e lo stesso intervallo calcolato come 7 ottave. 701.955 * 12 = 8423.46 mentre 1200 * 7 = 8400, quindi il comma pitagorico misura 23.46 cents (questo comma appare nel calcolo del circolo delle quinte). L’altro è quello sintonico risultante dalla differenza tra un intervallo calcolato come 4 quinte giuste naturali (di 701.955 cents l’una) e lo stesso intervallo calcolato come 2 ottave + 1 terza maggiore naturale. 701.955 * 4 = 2807.82 mentre 2400 + 386.313 = 2786.313, quindi il comma sintonico misura 21.507 cents (questo comma sta alla base del calcolo del temperamento mesotonico). ...Equabile (temperamento): qualsiasi sistema di accordatura che divida un qualsiasi intervallo in un qualsiasi numero di parti uguali tra loro, come il 12tET. ...Isomorfe (tastiere): uno strumento a tastiera nel quale a ogni intervallo musicale corrisponda sempre lo stesso intervallo di spazio e quindi la stessa diteggiatura, a prescindere dalla nota di partenza (vedi APPENDICE). ...Temperamento: il procedimento di alterazione dell’accordatura naturale di una nota, come nel 12tET, per risolvere il problema dei “comma”. ...In senso più stretto, si chiama "tonale" la musica che stabilisce un rapporto di gerarchia tra la tonica e tutti gli altri suoni di una scala. ...
Questo opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0.

Tecnologia e Sistemi di Accordatura p.12

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-19T00:23:12+01:00

Anche il nome di questa funzione utilizza una similitudine gastronomica per descrivere le sue caratteristiche che sono quelle di creare scale basate sull’interazione di 2 intervalli come quelle mesotoniche e le cosiddette MOS (“Moment of Symmetry” cioè scale che contengono solo 2 tipi di intervalli). ...Nella pagina “the oven” si nota che la fondamentale di questa scala a 12 toni, che si ripete all’ottava, è D3, una quinta temperata di 696.578 cents sotto A3, accordato a 415 Hz come si usa oggigiorno per l’esecuzione della musica di quel tempo. Nell’altra pagina si vede che per arrivare a questo risultato si è partiti da un intervallo di quinta giusta (3/2 o 701.955 cents) riducendolo seconda la formula di suddividere un comma sintonico (81/80 o 21.50629 cents) distribuendolo su 4 intervalli. ...E’ una scala a 12 toni, che si ripete all’ottava, basata sul 31tET (quindi un modo del 31tET come la consueta scala maggiore è un modo del 12tET). Questo lo si deduce dalla differenza, in srutis, tra i vari gradi della scala (3+2+3+2+3+2+3+3+2+3+2+3=31 srutis di 38.7097 cents l’uno). La fondamentale è D3, una quinta temperata di 696.774 cents sotto A3, accordato a 437.5473 Hz (come fonti storiche, in particolare Jorgensen 1991, riferiscono essere utilizzato da Huygens). Come si vede nell’altra pagina, per determinare l’ampiezza dell’intervallo generatore (2^18:31), si eleva 2 (l’ottava) a 18/31 cioè si sceglie il 18° dei 31 srutis che compongono la scala (ognuno di 38.709 cents), ottenendo un intervallo di 696.774 che viene adattato dentro l’altro intervallo (l’ottava). ...Si tratta ancora di una scala mesotonica ad un ¼ di comma sintonico che si sviluppa però su 31 toni nell’ambito di un’ottava. ...L’intervallo di partenza è una quinta giusta naturale (3/2 o 701.955 cents) che viene ridotta a 700 cents distribuendo quei 21.50629 cents del comma sintonico equamente tra i vari gradi della scala. ...
Questo opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0.

Tecnologia e Sistemi di Accordatura p.11

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-18T23:48:33+01:00

nell’esempio qui sopra sulla sinistra si vede la finestra “the oven” (il forno) dove si assemblano i dati base per la costruzione di una scala. La descrizione dice che quella che si vede è una scala a 7 toni che si ripete ogni ottava. La struttura è quella di una scala maggiore (2,2,1,2,2,2,1 significa tono, tono, semitono, tono, tono, tono, semitono). La nota base è C3 per cui quella che si vede è una scala di Do maggiore. 440/semitone^9 significa che la frequenza della fondamentale è 9 semitoni sotto il La 440 Hz. La dicitura “srutis difference” si riferisce al fatto che la scala contiene 7 delle 12 possibili unità di misura (semitono di 100 cents l’uno, in questo caso) che in LMSO vengono chiamati srutis come nella musica indiana. ...In quest’altra immagine si vede la stessa scala di Do maggiore e una possibile variante “just intonation” costruita quantizzando la scala di partenza verso la frazione più vicina nella quale il numero 15 è il numero dispari più alto utilizzabile sia come numeratore che come denominatore (notare che il valore della quantizzazione è regolabile. 100% in quest’esempio). In questa immagine si vede che la scala maggiore di partenza è stata quantizzata in versione JI ed il risultato è visibile nella finestra “the oven” (la scala espressa in cents dalla fondamentale è: 0., 203.91, 386.314, 498.045, 701.955, 884.359, 1088.269) e che stiamo prendendo in considerazione un’ulteriore elaborazione, visibile solo nella finestra IQ (in quanto non ancora eseguita), nella quale si costruisce una scala di 7 toni basata sul 53tET scegliendo i gradi 0, 9, 17, 22, 31, 39, 48, 53 (la messa a punto della divisione dell’ottava in 53 parti uguali viene attribuita a King Fang, uno studioso cinese del III° secolo a.... In questo caso l’unità di misura, o sruti in LMSO, è 1/53 di ottava ovvero 22.6415 cents come si vede nella parte bassa della finestra IQ (la scala espressa in cents dalla fondamentale sarebbe: 0., 203.774, 384.906, 498.113, 701.887, 883.019, 1086.792). Un altro possibile utilizzo di questa funzione è seguire il percorso inverso a quello visto nel primo esempio, quantizzando una scala non equabile (tipo JI, per esempio) in una equabile potendo decidere la maggiore o minore approssimazione rispetto alla scala di partenza. ...
Questo opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0.

Tecnologia e Sistemi di Accordatura p.10

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-18T19:14:35+01:00

Il nome di questa funzione continua l’utilizzo di similitudini gastronomiche, che si trova anche altrove nel programma, per descrivere le sue caratteristiche. Questa funzione crea scale che si rifanno al modello di “Diamante Tonale” (dalla caratteristica disposizione a rombo degli elementi che lo costituiscono) messo a punto da Max Meyer e reso “popolare” da Harry Partch. In particolare questa funzione è utile per lo studio di scale “just intonation”, accordature razionali* e scale simmetriche. In pratica, in entrambi i campi che appaiono sopra il “diamante” si inseriscono 2 liste di numeri che vengono moltiplicati tra loro creando una griglia (o matrice) che corrisponde ad una serie di intervalli. Per questa operazione ogni valore della seconda lista di numeri viene trasformato nel suo reciproco, quindi nell’esempio precedente 3, 5, 7, e 9 diventano 1/3, 1/5, 1/7 e 1/9. Guardando il “diamante” si vede che dalla casella d’apice andando verso destra si trovano 1/1 (3/3), 5/3, 7/6, 3/2 (9/6) ovvero le frazioni che hanno nel numeratore i 4 numeri della prima lista (tutte le diagonali che vanno da sinistra verso destra condividono questa proprietà ). Dalla stessa casella andando verso sinistra si trova 1/1 (3/3), 6/5, 12/7 e 4/3 (12/9) ovvero le frazioni che hanno nel denominatore il reciproco dei 4 numeri della seconda lista (tutte le diagonali che vanno da destra verso sinistra condividono questa proprietà ). ...Per ulteriori approfondimenti si veda Harry Partch e tonality diamond (e gli ulteriori “link” che da lì si possono trovare) su internet ma soprattutto il libro “Genesis of a Music” di Partch dove l’autore presenta le sue teorie in modo esaustivo. * Nel gergo dei microtonalisti viene considerata una accordatura razionale una variante di “just intonation” che utilizza elementi della scala armonica che normalmente non vengono utilizzati perché troppo in alto nella serie e quindi senza la sufficiente energia sonora per risultare rilevanti, almeno per quanto riguarda la teoria acustica sviluppata in Occidente. ...
Questo opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0.

Tecnologia e Sistemi di Accordatura p.9

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-18T10:32:32+01:00

In passato avevo passato ore a cercare di riaccordare sintetizzatori che consentivano di creare tabelle alle quali la macchina faceva riferimento per riaccordare lo strumento. ...L’alterazione dell’accordatura di ogni singola nota consisteva nell’inserire manualmente il valore necessario per spostare la sua altezza dalla consueta accordatura dell’ottava in 12 parti uguali. ...Fortunatamente gli avanzamenti tecnologici in questo settore sono stati notevoli, malgrado non molti utenti di strumenti musicali elettronici pongano la capacità di riaccordare il proprio strumento tra le loro priorità. Non sono sponsorizzato da X.J.Scott ma se lo fossi non parlerei di LMSO in modo più entusiastico di quanto farò adesso. ... Un altro programma che consente di farlo e di farlo gratuitamente, essendo freeware, è Scala che grazie anche a questo, oltre al fatto di essere disponibile per varie piattaforme, è divenuto lo “standard di settore”. ...X.J.Scott ha messo a punto un’applicazione molto potente grazie alla sua profonda conoscenza della materia e alle sue ottime capacità di programmatore. Un vantaggio per l’utente che si rivolge ad una piccola casa di software è avere accesso a molto di più di quello che di solito viene chiamato “aiuto online”. L’autore dell’applicazione ha, per esempio, aggiunto il supporto per un sintetizzatore che un suo cliente gli aveva chiesto di inserire tra quelli riaccordabili e personalmente ho avuto modo di apprezzare la sua disponibilità sia a parlare di problemi tecnici e teorici, sia a scambiarsi reciprocamente informazioni e suggerimenti. ...LMSO è in grado di riaccordare un gran numero di sintetizzatori e campionatori hardware e software (si veda una lista qui) compreso alcuni che non prevedono esplicitamente capacità microtonali come il popolare Reason della Propellerhead. ...
Questo opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0.

Tecnologia e Sistemi di Accordatura p.8

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-16T14:34:54+01:00

1) utilizzeremo esclusivamente rapporti tra 1 e 2, questo perché l'ottava ( il rapporto 2/1, ovvero la frequenza doppia della fondamentale) essendo l’intervallo più semplice, in musica, dopo l’unisono, viene percepita come la stessa nota di quella di partenza (avente lo stesso nome, non la stessa altezza). ...Un intervallo di quinta giusta equivale alla frazione 3/2 e uno di terza maggiore alla frazione 5/4 per cui (3/2)*(5/4)=(3*5)/(2*4)=15/8 (in Do equivale all’intervallo Do-Mi più Mi-Si cioè Do-Si). ...Un intervallo di quarta giusta equivale alla frazione 4/3 e una terza minore alla frazione 6/5 per cui (4/3)/(6/5)=(4/3)*(5/6)=(4*5)/(3*6)=10/9 (in Do equivale a Do-Fa meno Re-Fa cioè Do-Re). Se sommiamo una quinta giusta ad un'altra quinta giusta avremo (3/2)*(3/2)= 9/4. 9/4 è maggiore di 2 (ovvero di un'ottava) per cui per riportare questo intervallo all'interno di un'ottava lo divideremo per 2. (9/4)/2=9/8 (in Do equivale a Do-Sol più Sol-Re cioè Do-Re) e qui si può notare che abbiamo 2 frazioni differenti per rappresentare l’intervallo che nel temperamento equabile è un tono (10/9 e 9/8). ...La minore: il rapporto tra la fondamentale e la terza minore è 6/5 e troviamo una triade minore partendo da La (La, Do, Mi) i cui rapporti sono 5/3, 1/1 e 5/4. ...Mi minore: incontriamo un'altra triade minore partendo da Mi (Mi, Sol, Si) con rapporti 5/4, 3/2 e 15/8 e di nuovo, moltiplicando la tonica per le stesse frazione utilizzate per La minore otteniamo lo stesso risultato. ...Re minore: il problema appare cercando di fare lo stesso partendo da Re (9/8) ma 9/8*6/5=27/20 e 9/8*3/2=27/16 che non sono frazioni appartenenti alla scala originale. ...Se provassimo, come visto precedentemente, ad utilizzare Re (10/9) come punto di partenza, il risultato sarebbe corretto: 10/9*6/5=4/3 (Fa) e 10/9*3/2=5/3 (La) ma dissonante rispetto alle altre triadi perchè la tonica di questo accordo (10/9) non è parte della scala da cui siamo partiti. Si può notare che sia tra 27/20 e 4/3 che tra 27/16 e 5/3 (come già avevamo visto tra 9/8 e 10/9) c’è la differenza di un “comma sintonico”. ...
Questo opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0.

Tecnologia e Sistemi di Accordatura p.7

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-14T23:53:05+01:00

Le considerazioni che hanno portato nel corso della storia alla costruzione di scale musicali sono state molto varie, da quelle numerologiche di Pitagora a quelle che ritengono che gli intervalli di una scala dovrebbero riflettere i rapporti degli armonici di un suono con forma d’onda periodica e, quindi, essere basati su semplici rapporti numerici (come nelle scale naturali o just intonation), fino a considerazioni pratiche che hanno portato al temperamento equabile. ...La divisione equabile dell’ottava in un qualsiasi numero di parti richiede che il rapporto tra ogni grado di essa e il successivo sia costante e nel caso del 12tET questo equivale alla radice dodicesima di due, ovvero quel numero che moltiplicato per sè stesso 12 volte dà come risultato 2 ( = 1.05946309). ...Il grafico mostra che 12tET è la scala equabile che col minor numero di gradi consente la migliore approssimazione a rapporti armonici (come in Just Intonation). ...Un esempio comune è l’accordatura di un pianoforte durante la quale l’accordatore tende ad allargare l’estensione delle ottave, soprattutto di quelle estreme, per controbilanciare la normale inarmonicità delle corde, ovvero l’impossibilità, dovuta alla rigidità della corda, di produrre armoniche esatte. Utilizzare una accordatura allargata con un timbro dai parziali perfettamente armonici, come è possibile negli strumenti elettronici, introduce dei battimenti che danno al timbro uno “scintillio” che, nella giusta dose, è molto gradevole, rendendolo meno statico e cangiante. Ovviamente questa sarebbe una ricetta indigesta per i fautori della “just intonation” che invece prediligono la statica bellezza di intervalli caratterizzati da semplici rapporti numerici. A proposito di ottave allargate vorrei citare una scala inventata da X.J.Scott e da lui battezzata “superpythagorean” che grazie ad un’ottava leggermente allargata risolve il millenario problema del comma pitagorico. Come è noto, una scala pitagorica è basata su un circolo di quinte (3/2 ovvero 701.955 cents) con l’unico problema che dopo 12 di queste quinte (trasposte nella stessa ottava) non si torna al punto di partenza ma ad un altezza (in termini di suono) 23.5 cents distante dal punto di partenza. ...Il ragionamento di Scott è il seguente: 12 quinte sovrapposte equivalgono a 7 ottave per cui 701,955 x 12 = 8.423,46 e 8.423,46 ÷ 7 = 1.203,35142857 cents, ovvero l’ampiezza di una pseudo-ottava che consente di avere una scala equabile di 12 gradi nella quale si crea un vero circolo di quinte giuste (3/2) e non una “spirale” di quinte come accade con un’ottava di 1200 cents. ...
Questo opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0.

Tecnologia e Sistemi di Accordatura p.6

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-14T15:11:10+01:00

Questo non significa che il valore del loro apporto sul tema dei sistemi di accordatura sia direttamente proporzionale alla loro notorietà, semmai che coloro che sono più noti hanno avuto maggior influenza degli altri sulla percezione generale della questione. ...Come scrisse il teorico Johann Georg Neidhart nel 1732: “il temperamento equabile porta con sé vantaggi e svantaggi, come il sacro vincolo del matrimonio” (citato da Isacoff) e lo dimostra la semplice considerazione che, nell’accordatura naturale, gli intervalli di ottava sono potenze di 2 mentre quelli di quinta giusta sono potenze di 3 e nessuna potenza di 2 coincide con una di 3 per cui o si aumenta il numero delle note, riducendo l’ampiezza degli intervalli, alla ricerca di maggior consonanza o ci si accontenta dell’approssimazione ottenibile con 12 note. ...Questa è essenzialmente la situazione nella quale si trovarono i compositori occidentali all’inizio del XX secolo: tutto quello che era possibile fare utilizzando le risorse del sistema temperato era già stato provato. ... I compositori del XX secolo hanno cercato, invano, di scoprire o inventare altri principi organizzativi che fossero altrettanto potenti di quelli utilizzati nel precedente “periodo d’oro”, col risultato di aver creato sistemi essenzialmente arbitrari e musica che per la gran parte della popolazione risulta incomprensibile e inascoltabile”. Questo giudizio sulla musica del XX secolo dal tono provocatorio è sicuramente molto controverso nella sua analisi ma, credo, sia interessante citarlo per alimentare il dibattito sul tema dell’accordatura che per molti, anche tra gli addetti ai lavori, pare essere un dato acquisito ed immutabile. ...I motivi di ciò sono vari: il consolidamento della sua posizione nel mondo musicale occidentale è coinciso con l’industrializzazione del XIX secolo, la produzione di massa e la conseguente standardizzazione degli strumenti musicali (in particolare gli strumenti a fiato orchestrali: legni e ottoni). Gli unici strumenti che richiedono il temperamento sono quelli ad accordatura fissa (piano, organo, arpa, percussioni intonate e strumenti a corda con i tasti), essendo gli altri sufficientemente flessibili per variazioni d’intonazione richieste dal contesto musicale. Ciò nonostante l’accordatura dei legni e degli ottoni fu standardizzata in modo da renderli capaci di suonare una scala cromatica con altezze il più possibile vicine a quelle del 12tET. ... L’orchestra, il pianoforte e i musicisti istruiti ad eseguire il repertorio del XVIII e XIX secolo, erano le risorse che i compositori del XX secolo avevano a disposizione se volevano che la loro musica venisse eseguita, e tutte queste risorse erano dedicate a musica che presupponeva il temperamento equabile. ...
Questo opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0.

Tecnologia e Sistemi di Accordatura p.5

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-13T15:08:30+01:00

Il 12tET nella seconda parte del XIX secolo era ormai universalmente accettato: la musica del periodo richiedeva modulazioni sempre più ardite, cromatismi e armonie complesse e per ottenere ciò gli strumenti a tastiera dovevano offrire una flessibilità armonica totale, malgrado ciò alcuni tenaci studiosi e teorici della musica continuarono a sperimentare nuove scale e sistemi di accordatura principalmente su strumenti a tastiera di loro invenzione e costruzione. ...Il suo trattato del 1863 “On the Sensations of Tone” tradotto dal tedesco all’inglese e ampliato, da Alexander John Ellis (1814-1890) viene tuttora considerato uno dei testi fondamentali in questo campo. ...Tra i contributi di Ellis va ricordato l’invenzione del cent, l’unità di misura che divide il semitono del temperamento equabile in 100 parti e l’ottava in 1200 e che ha consentito ai successivi studiosi di calcolare la grandezza degli intervalli musicali con relativa semplicità. ...Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) va annoverato tra coloro che immaginarono il futuro della musica: nel suo “Appunti per una Nuova Estetica della Musica”, del 1907, incluse, tra quelle che lui riteneva sarebbero state le sue caratteristiche, il superamento del 12tET (attraverso terzi e sesti di tono, ovvero 18tET e 36tET) e la musica elettronica. ...Charles Ives (1874-1954) compose “3 pezzi per quarti di tono per 2 pianoforti”, ma più in generale c’è chi ritiene che la sua musica possa ritenersi basata su una accordatura “pitagorica estesa”, nel senso di includere un numero superiore a 12 toni dalla “spirale” di quinte giuste naturali caratteristica dell’accordatura pitagorica. ...Julián Carrillo Trujillo (1875–1965) scoprì la possibilità sul suo strumento, il violino, di dividere l’ottava in microintervalli e questo lo portò a sviluppare un sistema d’accordatura (chiamato “Sonido 13” ) che utilizzava il 96tET (sedicesimi di tono) e tutte le possibili divisioni dell’ottava che fossero sottomultipli di 96 come quarti (24tET) e ottavi di tono (48tET). ...Ivan Wyschnegradsky (1893-1979), ritratto nella foto sottostante nel 1935 davanti al suo piano a quarti di tono, compose musica utilizzando il 24tET (temperamento a 1/4 di tono) e il 36tET (temperamento a 1/6 di tono) e scrisse saggi come il “Manuel d'harmonie à quarts de ton” del 1932. ...Una figura a sé stante, iconoclasta e visionario, inventò un sistema di accordatura naturale che includeva come rapporti musicalmente rilevanti quelli ottenibili con i numeri primi fino all’11 compreso (limite 11), dividendo l’ottava in 43 parti, non equidistanti. ...Diventata famosa per le sue versioni elettroniche di brani classici (“Switched on Bach” e “The Well Tempered Synthesizer” ) col suo album “Beauty in the Beast” (1986) ha mostrato cosa sia possibile fare con sintetizzatori accordati con scale etniche, storiche o contemporanee (da lei stessa inventate). ...
Questo opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0.

Tecnologia e Sistemi di Accordatura p.4

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-12T19:10:54+01:00

Scrisse che alcuni degli intervalli di questa nuova arte popolare erano “consonanze imperfette” e in particolare descrisse come i cantanti scegliessero intuitivamente le terze 5/4 e 6/5 piuttosto dei difficilmente intonabili intervalli 81/64 e 32/27 della scala pitagorica. ...Calcoliamo, per esempio, l’intervallo costituito da 4 quinte giuste naturali 3/2x3/2x3/2x3/2=81/16, equivalente a 2 ottave più una terza maggiore naturale e calcoliamo poi lo stesso intervallo come 2/1x2/1x5/4=80/16=5. ...Nella tabella sottostante si vedono quali triadi maggiori, costruite utilizzando la precedente scala, sono più o meno consonanti (tenendo conto che la terza maggiore naturale, 5/4, è 386.3 cents e una quinta giusta naturale, 3/2, è 701.9 cents): ...Il frate francescano Gioseffo Zarlino (1517-1590) è stato uno dei teorici musicali più influenti dei suoi tempi e dei secoli successivi proponendo uno schema della consonanza basata sul “senario” formato dai numeri 1-2-3-4-5-6 e dai relativi rapporti intervallari possibili utilizzando questi numeri. Egli chiamò i numeri primi superiori a 6, irrazionali, paragonandoli ai 6 lati di un cubo (preso come esempio di perfezione) spiegando che, come non c’è un settimo lato nel cubo, così non può esistere musica che includa rapporti intervallari basati sul numero primo 7 e successivi. ...Il monaco francese Marin Mersenne (1588-1648) identificò gli armonici superiori nel suono di una tromba osservando che questi andavano ben oltre l’accordo maggiore per cui non c’erano ragioni che i rapporti intervallari considerati consonanti dovessero coincidere con quelli stabiliti da Zarlino. Per questa ragione propose di includere i rapporti intervallari basati sul numero primo 7 tra quelli consonanti e nel suo trattato “Harmonie Universelle” del 1636 presentò alcuni progetti per la costruzione di strumenti a tastiera che dividevano l’ottava in 19 e più parti. ...Nel tentativo di raggiungere un compromesso tra purezza di intervalli e possibilità armoniche molti musicisti e teorici misero a punto vari temperamenti per cui fosse possibile suonare in ogni tonalità ma allo stesso tempo si mantenessero il maggior numero possibile di intervalli puri. ...I fautori dell’accordatura naturale fanno notare che se i suoni originali sono in rapporto semplice tra di loro lo sarà anche l’eventuale suono differenziale relativo, con conseguente rafforzamento della consonanza, ma se, come nel caso del 12tET, i rapporti intervallari tra i suoni originali sono complessi, lo sarà, di nuovo, anche l’eventuale suono differenziale confondendo l’identità armonica dell’intervallo. ...
Questo opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0.

Tecnologia e Sistemi di Accordatura p.3

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-09T23:51:31+01:00

Poiché l’altezza di un suono e’ inversamente proporzionale alla lunghezza di un corpo vibrante (in questo caso una canna, ma lo stesso varrebbe anche per una corda, non tenendo conto che la lunghezza non è il solo fattore che determina l’altezza del suono prodotto) tagliando una canna a 2/3 della sua lunghezza si ottiene un suono che ha una frequenza 3/2, ovvero 1,5 volte, più alta della precedente. ...Si può notare che nessuna delle frazioni contiene multipli di numeri primi superiori al 3 e quindi si dice che 3 è il numero limite di questa scala ovvero che gli unici intervalli considerati consonanti sono quelli che hanno rapporti riconducibili a numeri primi non superiori a 3 (in gergo, “limite 3” ). ...Il procedimento di Pitagora non è molto differente da quello di Ling Lun ma, invece di utilizzare canne di bambù, per i suoi studi scelse il monocordo, una corda tesa tra due ponti con un ponte mobile per determinare varie proporzioni tra l’altezza dell’intera corda e parti di essa. ...Facendo vibrare 2/3 della corda Pitagora scoprì che il suono risultante stava in rapporto 3/2 rispetto al suono della corda intera: se la nota di partenza è DO (1/1) arriviamo al SOL (3/2, la quinta giusta naturale). ...Senza scendere in ulteriori dettagli si può facilmente intuire dai rapporti tra i gradi della scala che se gli intervalli di quarta e quinta sono rappresentati dai più semplici rapporti disponibili per quegli intervalli (4/3 e 3/2), altrettanto non si può dire per gli altri gradi della scala che sono rappresentati tutti da rapporti complessi e conseguentemente dissonanti. ...Il fatto che Pitagora non abbia proceduto a suddividere la corda del monocordo utilizzando anche intervalli basati sui numeri primi 5 o 7 è dovuto, secondo gli studiosi già precedentemente citati, alla percezione, nel mondo greco a quel tempo, del numero 3 come immagine di perfezione divina (e conseguentemente di consonanza perfetta) impedendo così l’esplorazione di rapporti intervallari basati su numeri più grandi. ...C., partendo dalla scala pitagorica, sostituì l’intervallo 5/4 (terza maggiore naturale) al difficilmente intonabile 81/64 (già utilizzato anche da Ling Lun) e 8/7 a 9/8 aprendo così le porte alla successiva accettazione degli intervalli basati sui numeri primi 5 e 7 come intervalli musicalmente validi. ...A lui si deve la sostituzione del rapporto 6/5 (terza minore naturale) al più difficilmente intonabile 32/27 calcolato da Pitagora (questo intervallo nasce se si calcola, per esempio, la distanza tra il secondo e il quarto grado della scala diatonica pitagorica: 4/3-9/8=4/3x8/9=32/27), che conferma l’uso già fatto da Archita di rapporti intervallari basati sul numero primo 5. ... Questo procedimento è speculare a quello denominato “proporzione armonica” in quanto l’unità di suddivisione della corda risulta essere 1/1 (la fondamentale), due parti produrranno un suono che sta un ottava SOTTO la fondamentale (1/2), tre parti 1/3 etc. ...Egli notò che dopo 53 intervalli di quinta giusta naturale, la 54esima canna (con le dovute trasposizioni di ottava) aveva una frequenza quasi identica a quella di partenza ( un errore di +3,6 cents), anticipando di circa 18 secoli la scoperta in Occidente del ciclo di 53 quinte perfette naturali da parte del matematico tedesco Nicholas Mercator (1620-1687) da cui prese nome il suddetto errore, chiamato da allora “comma di Mercator”.

Tecnologia e Sistemi di Accordatura p.2

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-07T22:05:57+01:00

Kyle Gann: Come dice Terry Riley, la musica occidentale è veloce perché è stonata…ho imparato ad ascoltare la musica in temperamento equabile come una sorta di “caffeina sonora”, troppo agitata e nervosa…il temperamento equabile potrebbe essere descritto come l’equivalente musicale di una dieta a base di molta carne rossa e zuccheri lavorati e al guardare film di azione con molta violenza. ...(per la verità mi risulta che il temperamento utilizzato da Stockhausen in questa composizione sia la radice venticinquesima di 5, cioè la divisione in 25 parti uguali di un intervallo composto da due ottave, 4:1, più una terza maggiore naturale, 5:4, con gradi di 111.45 cents ognuno) ...La musica è sia un fenomeno culturale e quindi, come tale, si modifica sia nel tempo che nell’area geografica dove si sviluppa, sia un fenomeno con radici biologiche come, più in generale, il “suono” è sia un fenomeno fisico che percettivo. ...C. circa, il significato dei termini cambia, prendendo in considerazione l’effetto che gruppi di note suonate contemporaneamente hanno nel contesto musicale, per cui lo stesso gruppo di note può risultare consonante in uno e dissonante in un altro. ...5) nel XIX° secolo Helmholtz torna a prendere in considerazione il rapporto tra 2 note simultanee ma lo interpreta in termini di battimenti e di coincidenza degli armonici superiori nell’intervallo considerato (consonanza = assenza di battimenti e allineamento degli armonici superiori tra le note dell’intervallo). ...La membrana basilare (dell’orecchio interno) è un organo lungo circa 35 mm. composto da recettori che risuonano in punti diversi della sua lunghezza a seconda della frequenza del suono in ingresso, scomponendolo nelle sue componenti di base e quindi funzionando in modo simile ad un analizzatore di spettro meccanico. ... L’ampiezza della banda di frequenze adiacenti a quella centrale, coinvolta in questa risonanza, viene chiamata “banda critica” in quanto 2 note simultanee la cui differenza di altezza fosse inferiore a quella della “banda critica” non verrebbero percepite come 2 note distinte ma come battimenti. Questa definizione di consonanza “sensoriale” mette in risalto anche il rapporto tra questa e il timbro, in quanto uno stesso intervallo suonato con un timbro sinusoidale, con un timbro complesso ma armonico o con uno inarmonico produrrebbe effetti molto diversi tra loro. Come si vede, il concetto di consonanza e dissonanza ha avuto significati diversi nei vari periodi storici e tuttora si dibatte sull’argomento, per cui si presume che anche in futuro questo concetto continui ad evolvere. ...
Questo opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0.

Tecnologia e Sistemi di Accordatura p.1

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-05T23:46:13+01:00

Come per la quasi totalità di coloro che sono nati in Occidente, il mio incontro con la musica microtonale e’ stato fortuito e tardivo. Nella seconda metà degli anni ’80 ero uno studente al Berklee College of Music di Boston, U.S.A. iscritto al corso di Music Synthesis e conoscevo Wendy Carlos soprattutto per la notorietà che la musica elettronica aveva ottenuto grazie al suo album “Switched on Bach” del 1968 che aveva reso la parola “moog” familiare a molti e sinonimo di sintetizzatore. Nel 1986 Wendy Carlos aveva pubblicato l’album “Beauty in the Beast” nel quale si faceva largo uso di scale differenti dal temperamento equabile a 12 toni comune in Occidente e questo mi sorprese e incuriosì. ...Il tema di come organizzare i rapporti di altezza tra i gradi di una scala musicale e dell’accordatura degli strumenti musicali ha affascinato teorici e studiosi dall’antichità in poi e tutt’oggi si continua a dibattere sull’argomento anche se tutte queste ricerche, l’innumerevole mole di documenti scritti a questo proposito e gli esperimenti nel settore, sono del tutto sconosciuti alla quasi totalità della popolazione di quell’area del mondo che per semplicità chiamiamo Occidente, musicisti inclusi! Ritengo che il tema ”scale e temperamenti” sia inesauribile e non ho la pretesa di aggiungere niente di nuovo sull’argomento ma semplicemente di offrire un contributo per favorire la conoscenza e l’uso di scale alternative alla nostra scala temperata, data la possibilità che la tecnologia ci offre per entrare in questo mondo allo stesso tempo così vicino e così lontano. L’assunto di partenza per questo lavoro è che l’attuale periodo storico, con i suoi rapidi progressi tecnologici, consente al musicista, al compositore, al musicologo e a chiunque altro sia desideroso di avvicinarcisi, di studiare, sperimentare e suonare utilizzando sistemi di accordatura diversi dal temperamento equabile al quale siamo stati abituati negli ultimi centocinquanta anni circa. Il suddetto temperamento (da qui in avanti abbreviato come “12tET” ovvero temperamento equabile a 12 toni) è il risultato di migliaia di anni di studi durante i quali teorici, musicisti e costruttori di strumenti musicali hanno cercato di risolvere l’enigma dell’accordatura degli strumenti musicali arrivando ad un compromesso appunto nella forma del 12tET (tutto ciò si riferisce allo sviluppo della musica europea ed occidentale). ...La mia convinzione è che il campo più idoneo per queste ricerche e sperimentazioni sia quello della “computer music”: la capacità di calcolo di un computer attuale, la disponibilità di strumenti elettronici che consentono di modificare la propria accordatura e le applicazioni per computer sviluppate in questo settore permettono di studiare, sperimentare e comporre in ambiti diversi dal 12tET come mai prima d’ora. Da non sottovalutare inoltre la possibilità grazie ad internet di entrare in contatto con altre persone interessate a questo campo di studi e di poter consultare un’enorme quantità di documenti disponibili in rete. ...
Questo opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0.

Tecnologia e Sistemi di Accordatura

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-03T00:00:25+01:00

A distanza di cinque anni dal conseguimento della laurea di secondo livello in musica e nuove tecnologie presso il conservatorio di musica Cherubini di Firenze ho deciso di pubblicare la mia tesi di laurea che è presentata qui sotto forma di articoli del mio blog di cui questo costituisce l’indice. ...03) Una Breve Storia Dei Sistemi Di Accordatura p.1 - Antichità 04) Una Breve Storia Dei Sistemi di Accordatura p.2 - Dal medioevo al XVIII secolo 05) Una Breve Storia Dei Sistemi Di Accordatura p.3 - Esploratori microtonali del XIX e XX secolo 06) Una Breve Storia Dei Sistemi Di Accordatura p.4 - Considerazioni finali ...08) Il Problema Dell’Accordatura - Un Esperimento ...10) Alcune caratteristiche di LMSO p.1 - Waffle Iron Appliance 11) Alcune caratteristiche di LMSO p.2 - Interactive Quantize 12) Alcune caratteristiche di LMSO p.3 - Knead and Fold ...
Questo opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0.

Alpha seems to be the hardest world

Carlo Serafini — 2012-03-01T23:52:34+01:00

It alludes, of course, to that of a famous song but I changed two words and, besides the title, it does not have anything to do with it. ...The idea was to try a different approach to the use of Melodyne than that tried with my previous projects: Alpha Choir and Alpha El Din. ...composing it, playing a dodecatonic mode of Carlos Alpha (the same one of Alpha Choir) with an Halberstadt keyboard, then creating a tempo list and a music score. You can see a rendition of the piece at this stage played with a Camel Audio Alchemy’s choir sound. ...At this point I started using Melodyne Editor 2 adapting syllables of the original phrase you hear at the beginning of the piece to create the four voices of the piece. ... I had both Melodyne and score pages open to make sure I was placing Melodyne’s “blobs” where notes appear on the score. ...Melodyne names notes a little different than how I do but it did not take me long to adapt to them, so, for example, going up the second D I call it D#, the grayed out D# is the note I call Eb and so on. I have used, modified, mangled those few syllables so many times, creating this piece, that I could identify them by simply watching to their “blob shapes”! ...I had to synchronize each one of the four Melodyne instances I had open, it is not a global setting. After the four vocal tracks were done I added some reverb and a few Spectrasonics Omnisphere’s sounds to increase the oddness of the piece (and to mask some audio artifact due to sound manipulation).

Alpha Choir

Carlo Serafini — 2012-02-01T00:00:01+01:00

What I would be the most keen to hear from Melodyne would be something a cappella oriented; perhaps in four to six voice harmony and sang at a moderate tempo so one could savor the harmonies and intonational nuance. ...That message was the input for this piece, a short “a cappella” composition for four voices at a moderate tempo tuned to a dodecatonic mode of Carlos Alpha. This dodecatonic mode is the one obtained playing only natural and sharp notes on my Carlos Alpha note layout for the Opal Chameleon but this piece was composed with my Halberstadt keyboard. ...Because I am the only “singer” involved on the recording of this piece I had to take into account my vocal range, even though I knew I could stretch it with Melodyne. ...As you can see I recorded a few bars at a time trying to memorize notes I had just heard before starting each recording. I did not pay any attention to background noise that I discovered after the fact but with Melodyne I was able to substitute a few “offending “ notes with “clean” ones. I am not a singer so I noticed I had to remember to breathe between notes because that positively affected intonation! I recorded everything in one hour (I have to do something like that when there is no one else in the house) trusting Melodyne for fixing mistakes. I then started listening to each recorded track with the corresponding Omnisphere track in the background and started editing with Melodyne set to Carlos Alpha Dodecatonic. ...I chose to mix the Omnisphere’s tracks (low in the mix) with my vocal ones (adding a pinch of reverb) to increase thickness.

Alpha El Din

Carlo Serafini — 2012-01-15T18:30:03+01:00

This song is the natural evolution of my experiments with Melodyne Editor 2.0. The song started as a Carlos Alpha improvisation played with my Chamelon and an Omnisphere guitar sound. After creating a reasonable musical structure I added some percussions with Stylus RMX. At this point I took courage and started singing! The voice mostly follows the guitar improvisation. I did not record many takes trying to keep a fresh approach trusting Melodyne to fix any kind of rhythmic and/or intonation problem and it did! The above picture shows the first bars of the vocal track with Carlos Alpha as reference scale. It was really amazing to use Melodyne tools to fix what I heard as improvable: ...Here and there you can hear some audio artifacts but in general the voice keeps its natural timbre. The Carlo Serafini Band now has a new member: the xenharmonic singer!

Melodyning

Carlo Serafini — 2012-01-02T12:04:26+01:00

Here there are a few experiments done while learning Melodyne 2 by Celemony. The first one shows a very simple phrase in C major retuned in real time to a couple of xenharmonic scales, my beloved Carlos Alpha and Carlos Gamma (that I created very easily in Melodyne) and then back to the standard Western tuning. Getting the same audio effect with a soft (or hardware) synth would mean playing the same phrase three times and each time with a different tuning system and note layout. This way, auditioning different scales with Melodyne, becomes a child play (you can read more about it here). ... The second one shows how to display intervals as frequency ratios. You can see that corresponding “blobs” get moved automatically (you can read more about it here). ... Lastly a little composition created copying, pasting and editing an initial vocal phrase.

Gadudyne

Carlo Serafini — 2011-12-18T22:17:03+01:00

Nothing could be more diverse from my last project, the Adagio KV540 by Mozart, than this one. This is an experiment following the upgrade to version 2 of Celemony Melodyne. I took an old piece with a gamelan sound created with additive synthesis in Max/MSP called “Instant Gamelan” (written as an assignment when I was a student at the Conservatory) and overdubbed it with a crazy performance playing my duduk. Last Summer I asked an Armenian friend of mine who was going to visit his parents in Yerevan to bring me a duduk, so now I have one. It is clear, from my performance, I don’t know how to play it. I had thought of sampling it and play it from a keyboard but the experiment wasn’t successful. Few days ago, after upgrading to Melodyne 2, I had the crazy idea to try playing it and whatever was coming out of it would have been retuned by Melodyne! Because Melodyne 2 features support for microtonal scales I chose the Indian Todi Raga for both instruments. ...I started moving notes around with the polyphonic gamelan and the monophonic duduk. This piece presents, first, the version edited with Melodyne and then the two original recordings, for comparison.

Adagio KV540 - 55ED2

Carlo Serafini — 2011-12-14T21:24:35+01:00

I happened to listen to it after a long time and it reminded me of a book I had read: “How equal temperament ruined harmony (and why you should care)” by Ross W. ...The large one (L) measures 5 commas and the small one (s) 4 commas where one comma is 1/55 of an octave (21.818 cents), so, L = 109.091 cents and s = 87.273 cents. ...This piece is in B minor (the relative minor of D major) so I created the following scale based on D: ...I also decided that the frequency of the root note of the piece (D) should be 32 commas (a compressed fifth of 698.182 cents) below an A tuned to 415Hz. ...I have never used its sounds for microtonal music because of its shortcomings: the piano section can not receive on more than two MIDI channels at the same time and that, for retuning technology based on pitch bend, means a maximum of two notes polyphony. ...1) I played it, in 12tET, few bars at the time, at a steady tempo, making sure to play with the right articulation and dynamics. 2) I imported the audio file of the performance of this piece by a famous pianist, I will not name, into Logic Pro and used it as reference to create a tempo list with the beat mapping function. ...3) In order to retune the piece to be played by the NS88 I edited the two MIDI tracks (right hand and left hand) I had recorded, assigning MIDI channel 1 to all the notes that could be played by a duophonic instrument and assigning MIDI channel 2 every time I had a third simultaneous note. ...Assigning MIDI channel 1 as the LMSO input I made sure not to exceed the maximum two notes polyphony available to retune the NS88. So, I recreated the piece, now retuned to 55ED2, recording three audio tracks: the first one playing notes on channel 1 of the right hand track, the second one playing notes on channel 1 of the left hand track and the third one playing notes on channel 2 of both MIDI tracks.

DisMLosphere

Carlo Serafini — 2011-12-01T09:15:54+01:00

This video shows an experiment using my Opal Chameleon sending MIDI data, through Disarray, to M and, from there, to Spectrasonics Omnisphere, through Logic Pro. ...Here I show a few: it can be used as an improvising partner, meaning that a MIDI performance can be changed, in real time, by variables set up in advance and controlled by an automated conductor, without recording any MIDI data. ...M offers many variables which can be used to introduce rhythmic and melodic variety to the music and conducting is a special performance technique that essentially lets you change the selected positions of many variables simultaneously. The second technique I use is similar to the first one but with the recording of some MIDI data that are then rearranged by variables and played along what is played in real time afterwards. For this piece I alternate between empty patterns where what you hear is only what I play in real time and patterns where I recorded MIDI data, while filming the movie. ...It was given to me by Joel Chadabe when I visited him in Albany, NY at Intelligent Music, a pioneering software house of which he was president. That day (December 1989) I met also Richard Lainhart (at the time IM’s technical director) and Eric Ameres (who had ported M to the Atari ST platform). After all these years M (version 2.7.2) is still compatible with Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and able to exchange data from Disarray and to Logic Pro even though the set up is a little flaky. I wonder if upcoming releases of Mac OSX will allow the sharing of data among applications or if Apple will make Macs behave as overgrown iPhones where apps have their own data that they don't share with others. ...There is also a movie showing similar techniques here and a forum post where I explain a few things about this piece.

In ricordo di Mauro Crocetti

Carlo Serafini — 2011-11-18T21:51:22+01:00

L’occasione per scrivere questo articolo, a quattro anni dalla sua morte, è stata una sua commemorazione alla scuola di musica CAM di Firenze qualche giorno fa (il 13 Novembre 2011) alla quale i suoi genitori hanno donato gli strumenti e altro materiale musicale di Mauro. ...Stavamo nell’ultimo banco e ricordo dei giorni in cui uscivo da scuola con le mascelle doloranti da quanto ridevamo (mai più successo dopo quel periodo, con l’eccezione, forse, della prima volta che vidi Frankestein Junior al cinema Universale a Firenze). ...Avevamo cominciato sentendo i gruppi della West Coast americana tipo Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna, Quicksilver Messenger Service e Grateful Dead, da lì passammo al rock progressivo inglese tipo Yes, Genesis, Gentle Giant, Strawbs, King Crimson, poi arrivammo al “Canterbury rock” di Gong e Henry Cow e fatale fu l’incontro con i Soft Machine (visti a Firenze nel 1974). ... A Firenze c’era il mitico Diskemporium che vendeva dischi e trenini elettrici in Via dello Studio, ma noi ogni tanto andavamo anche da Nannucci a Bologna in treno (ricordo l’eccitazione quando trovai l’originale Solid State di “Now he sings, now he sobs” di Chick Corea), ricevevamo pure il catalogo di Nannucci per posta e durante le ore di scuola lo consultavamo e poi facevamo ordini. ...Iniziammo a suonare insieme con Diego ai fiati e Guido Pratellesi alla batteria (il gruppo si chiamava “Assemble Permanente”, un nome azzeccato se si inquadra il periodo storico in cui gli avvenimenti qui narrati si svolsero) poi arrivò Lorenzo “i’secco” Lazzeri alla batteria che poi fu sostituito da Alessandro “Fabbrino” Fabbri (il nome del gruppo, nel frattempo, era cambiato, adesso eravamo l’ “Azzibibbo quartet”!!!) ...Dopo una scorpacciata di musica allucinante tornammo in stazione ma la trovammo chiusa e scoprimmo che il primo treno partiva verso le 6 della mattina (una notte all’addiaccio, qualcuno di noi cercò di raggomitolarsi in una cabina telefonica nel tentativo di riposarsi ma fu un disastro ed era inverno!). ...Chiesi a Mauro se gli andava di andare a salutarle, lui mi disse di no, ma io insistei e per farla brevissima una di loro due, Marina, diventò la mia ragazza e poi mia moglie (con cui sono tuttora sposato). ...Continuammo a suonare insieme fino ai primi anni ’80 ma c’era già stata una pausa per il servizio militare e nel frattempo erano successe altre cose che avevano fatto divergere le nostre strade senza che ci fossero stati motivi di attrito personale causanti questo allontanamento. ...Allora lei mi abbracciò e mi disse che quelli passati con noi erano stati gli anni più felici della sua vita ed è probabile che avesse ragione perchè avrei potuto dire altrettanto, per lo meno furono i più spensierati. ...Da allora ho pensato spesso a Mauro, di come le sue fragilità potevano essere le mie e di come eventi che, nel momento che avvengono, appaiono effimeri e privi di possibili conseguenze possano risultare, sulla lunga distanza, fondamentali perchè una vita vada in una direzione invece che in un’altra.

Cubana Al Cubana Pha

Carlo Serafini — 2011-11-03T09:49:40+01:00

This piece is a study in the use of different user interfaces. In this case I use an Halberstadt keyboard (Nord Stage 88 Classic), an isomorphic one (Opal Chameleon) and a ribbon controller (Doepfer R2M). The picture above shows Logic Pro’s Environment page with MIDI signals arriving to the sequencer input from R2M (port 4), NS88 (port 5) and Disarray/ Chameleon (read more about it here). The flute and marimba sounds come from Reason’s NNXT sampler (with samples retuned to Carlos Alpha thanks to LMSO). Reason is in Rewire Slave Mode. ...The bass sound comes from Omnisphere. Actually it is a Trilian sound opened from within Omnisphere because it allows retuning samples. As you can see from the picture above the sound is transposed one octave down but because I am using a non-octave tuning system similar to 15ED2 it means I use different root notes for the bass than for the other 2 instruments (just to make things a little trickier!). The percussion tracks (bongos and drum set) are built with a variety of audio loops. Note for those wondering about the title of this piece: it refers to “Cubano Be Cubano Bop” (1947), a famous piece by George Russell.

Transnotating Carlos Alpha 2

Carlo Serafini — 2011-10-08T21:32:24+02:00

Because of the errors I discovered in my previous Carlos Alpha note layout for my Opal Chameleon I had to figure out a solution and found it. First of all, as already stated, I had to start pitch classes from C and not from A, so, I changed the list of note names from “A A# Bb B C C# D D# Eb E F F# Gb G G#” to “C C# D D# Eb E F F# Gb G G# A A# Bb B”. ...What I mean is that I was looking for a note layout that would be compatible with both my Chameleon and a regular Halberstadt keyboard. ...I started creating a dodecatonic mode of Carlos Alpha then started experimenting having both Chameleon and NS88 turned on, connected through Logic Pro to LMSO, on different MIDI channels. The problem of my previous note layout was that LMSO and Disarray had different “anchor keys”. You see, on the picture above, that the two scales (Carlos Alpha Dodecatonic for the NS88 and 3:2div9, aka Carlos Alpha, for the Chameleon) share the same anchor key: C3. ...So, I was looking for a note layout that made possible to play the C3 key on both my controllers and have the same MIDI output: MIDI note 60 (because C3 is the pitch from which all others are calculated). The above picture shows my new map for the Carlos Alpha transnotation and below there is the new note layout for the Chameleon: ...1) Using the two scales shown above (Carlos Alpha Dodecatonic for the NS88 and 3:2div9, aka Carlos Alpha, for the Chameleon) I am able to play the same note (except blue ones) on both controllers and get the same MIDI output ...4) The blue notes have to be manually remapped (as already explained in my previous article Transnotating Carlos Alpha) to standard notation.

AlphaTherem Waltz

Carlo Serafini — 2011-10-07T09:23:11+02:00

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

Alpha Dulcimer

Carlo Serafini — 2011-10-01T00:11:18+02:00

This is my first piece composed using Carlos Alpha with my Chameleon but not the first time I have tried out this tuning system. The oldest experiment was AlphaBlues (2007) then, in 2008, came AlphaPanther (read blog for details) and AlphaDesert (read blog for details). ...This piece features a nice Spectrasonics Omnisphere sound and a simple drum loop. Because I use a note layout that fits both Carlos Alpha and 15ED2, I tried playing it with both tuning systems. ...I would say Carlos Alpha, to my ears, sounds a little mellower than 15ED2 because, as Wendy Carlos says on the above mentioned article, it has “amazingly pure harmonies” but no octaves and that makes it definitely xenharmonic. You can compare intervals of the two tuning systems on my Alpha Compressed Octave. I only had to adjust a single note between the two versions. The lowest note of the very last chord is, somehow, a doubling of the note an “octave” above it but in Carlos Alpha I use a note that is 16 steps below the other one (1248 cents apart) because it sounds better than the one 15 steps below (1170 cents) while in 15ED2 the two notes are an octave apart (15 steps or 1200 cents). This thing reminds me of stretched tuning typical of pianos. It’s hard to consider 48 cents (almost a quarter tone) as “stretched tuning” but on the low register, where this note plays, it sounds definitely better than its flat counterpart while in the middle and high registers the flat one is better than the stretched one.

Transnotating Carlos Alpha

Carlo Serafini — 2011-09-26T13:15:20+02:00

You can read about the note layout I have created to play Carlos Alpha and 15ED2 with my Chameleon here. Twelve out of fifteen notes (natural and sharp notes) of each (pseudo) octave can be directly transnotated using a “transformer” object of Logic Pro’s Environment (see the “TransNotateMap” object on the picture below). On this example I am playing a key, on the Chameleon, that Disarray (an utility by X.J.Scott) maps to MIDI note C3 (the real MIDI output of the Chameleon would be G#2). C3 (MIDI note 60, on channel 1) is mapped, only for notation purposes, to E2 (MIDI note 52, on channel 16). ...Changing the MIDI channel from 1 to 16 makes it simple to identify notes sent to a sound source from those only used for notation purposes. ...On the example below I am playing the key that on the Chameleon is labelled Eb2, that Disarray maps to MIDI note B2 and that LMSO retunes (see “from LMSO IAC 1” ) to a note that is 77.995 cents below E2 (the note of the previous example). The problem with flat notes is that there is no way to automatically transnotate them (because Logic Pro’s maps only support the usual 12 notes), so, how do I solve the problem? ...You can see, from the picture below, that I map MIDI note 59 (B2) to MIDI note 5 (F-2) because I do not use that range of MIDI notes other than for notation purposes. Below you can see the seventeen flat notes of my Carlos Alpha note layout so, for example, when I see a F-2 note I know that I have to manually move it to Eb2. Of course I only need to go through this troublesome process if I want to notate my music in Carlos Alpha with standard notation otherwise I can simply forget about it!

Alpha Compressed Octave

Carlo Serafini — 2011-09-24T00:05:04+02:00

A further development of my previous posts (Alpha15 note layout and Alpha15 update) was the creation of a fifteen note version of Carlos Alpha. The Carlos Alpha tuning system divides an interval with ratio 3:2 into 9 equal steps but I use a 15 steps note layout for my Chameleon based on 15ED2 so I decided to come up with a 15 note version of Carlos Alpha. Although I consider myself mathematically challenged I found what I consider an elegant solution thanks to LMSO and what I have learned from X.J.Scott: 3:2^15:9 = 1169.9250014 cents! It means that Carlos Alpha can be considered as the 15 equal division of a 1169.9250014 cents pseudo-octave. Compare Carlos Alpha, Alpha Compressed Octave and 15ED2 tuning systems:

Spectral Mappings for CARLOS BETA

Carlo Serafini — 2011-09-19T22:17:39+02:00

This article is a follow-up to my article Spectral Mappings for CARLOS GAMMA. The reader should refer to it for more details. This article comes a bit late because I have already dismantled the note layout for Carlos Beta on my Chameleon that is getting ready to be played in Carlos Alpha and 15ED2. I had created a possible list of ratios to calculate the frequency of the first sixteen partials of a “spectrally mapped” sound to be played with Carlos Beta tuning system but never tried to apply it to a real sound. So, it remains only as a reminder of a way to calculate similar spectral mappings. One step of Carlos Beta is the 11th root of 3:2 = 1.037548235794 or , said another way, 1.037548235794^11 = 1.5 caret (^) is computerese for “raised to the power of” Using this coefficient (1.037548235794) to approximate ratios of a harmonic sounds results in a similar list: ...The frequency ratios of the 16 partials were chosen in order to minimize the “perceptual change” of the “destination” spectrum compared to a harmonic “source” spectrum (the frequency of the 2nd partial is close to 2 times the frequency of the fundamental, the 3rd to 3 times it et cetera). All partials are powers of the 11th root of 3/2 = 1.037548235794

Alpha15 update

Carlo Serafini — 2011-09-19T11:41:03+02:00

Contrariwise to what I had stated in my previous article, I ended up choosing another note layout to play Carlos Alpha and 15ED2 tuning systems with my Chameleon. When I started thinking about how to notate those two tuning systems with Logic Pro I realized the previous note layout was wrong. Instead of 7 white, 4 red (sharps) and 4 blue (flats) notes I chose 7 white, 5 red (sharps) and 3 blue (flats) notes because 12 notes can be directly “transnotated” into standard notation (white and red notes) and the remaining 3 (blue) ones need another procedure to get notated. More about it on an upcoming article. So, the fifteen note names I chose are: A A# Bb B C C# D D# Eb E F F# Gb G G# and the layout looks like this one:

Alpha15 note layout

Carlo Serafini — 2011-09-11T10:03:01+02:00

While on vacation in Austria I came up with the idea that Carlos Alpha (9th root of 3:2 with steps of 77.995 cents) and 15ED2 (15th root of 2:1 with steps of 80 cents) were similar enough to be able to share the same note layout for my Opal Chameleon. So, I proceeded creating an arbitrary 15 note list using the usual note names with sharps and flats because my goal is to be able to visualize notes with Logic Pro, that only uses standard notation and that explains also why I am using an octave-centric notation based on 15ED2 for Carlos Alpha whose repeat ratio is 3:2 and is a non-octave tuning system. The note names I chose are: A A# Bb B C C# Db D D# Eb E F F# Gb G and the layout follows the usual melodic table scheme so, I move 9 steps going north and 5 steps going north east. I tried out a few color patterns then I settled on the following one: Now I have to remove the old Carlos Beta stickers from my Chameleon, clean the keys, prepare new stickers and attach them to it. Once everything is in place I will see if my theory makes sense.

Austrian Fantasy

Carlo Serafini — 2011-09-05T15:31:06+02:00

This movie was filmed in and around Salzburg during a recent vacation me and my family spent in Austria. ...This time the used tuning system is Carlos Beta that I played with both my Opal Chameleon and Nord Stage 88. ... From a harmonic point of view the isomorphic one is by far superior because, thanks to a meaningful note mapping, intervals are more easily visible and recognizable but playing fast lines may be easier with the Halberstadt one, simply because of my many years of acquaintance with it even though its black and white pattern of keys is absolutely meaningless for a non-octave tuning system like Carlos Beta. First I assembled the movie with iMovie using many of its editing features (like slow down speed, reverse direction, crossfades etc.) then I imported it into Logic Pro and started working on the soundtrack. Because the movie starts (and ends) with me dancing on those metallic bars I thought to use that melody as a leitmotif. The featured synths are Logic Pro’s EXS24, Spectrasonics Omnisphere and MOTU Ethno2. EXS24 is only used to double the sound of the above mentioned metallic bars. ... Ethno2 is retuned through LMSO even though it supports Scala files because I do my best to avoid them. ...As you can see from the above picture I had first to bounce the Ethno2 tracks (harp and violin) to audio because otherwise I could not export them to video. I think it is a bug because Omnisphere or other softsynths (like Camel Audio Alchemy, for example) do not need this kind of treatment.

23 Laments

Carlo Serafini — 2011-08-02T09:33:24+02:00

Listen to 23 Laments, possibly with headphones or a good sound system because of the very low pedal tones. This is a follow-up to my previous piece Desert Winds. This one uses a few sub-modes of the 23 EDO 7s+2m+3L mode presented on my previous article: Desert Winds. This piece features 2 tonal centers, 313.043 cents apart, that on my Halberstadt keyboard appear on Eb and C: Eb heptatonic sub-mode: steps 0, 1, 7, 9, 14, 15, 21, 23 (of 23 EDO) ...C heptatonic sub-mode: steps 0, 7, 9, 14, 16, 20, 21, 23 (of 23 EDO) Both sub-modes are part of the same hendecatonic mode of 23 EDO: steps 0, 1, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 17, 21, 23 ...steps 0, 4, 6, 7, 9, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20, 21, 23 ...The sounds are 2 of the 3 ones used for Desert Winds:

Desert Winds in 23 EDO

Carlo Serafini — 2011-07-23T21:25:14+02:00

I did not edit a single note but copied parts of it assigning them to a flute and a synth bass sound to enhance top and bottom lines then I edited the overall volume of this piece and the relative loudness of components of a couple of patches (you can see on the picture below, 1A and 3B levels being automated). ...Igs presents four 23EDO heptatonic (7 notes) MOS modes, so I started wondering if I could elaborate on those scales and come up with dodecatonic (12 notes) variations of those modes (simply because I wanted to try out 23EDO on my Halberstadt keyboard). ...(steps 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 23) (steps 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 23) ...The following strategy was to take those heptatonic scales by Igs and intersperse 5 more steps to make them dodecatonic. ...(steps 0, 2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 23) ...(steps 0, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 22, 23) ...(steps 0, 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, 20, 23) ...(steps 0, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 23). ...Then, of course, it is possible to create sub-modes of these dodecatonic scales as I did with Desert Winds where, I guess, I have not used more than 8 out of 12 notes of the chosen scale.

Spectra Trio

Carlo Serafini — 2011-07-11T21:50:59+02:00

Listen to SpectraTrio1 Listen to SpectraTrio2 Listen to Maelström These 3 pieces are studies I recorded while learning how to interact with the Spectrasonics trio of softsynths: Omnisphere, Trilian and Stylus RMX. I have had Omnisphere for a few years but I had refrained from acquiring the other two because I thought they were going to choke my MacBookPro. I was wrong and was pleasantly surprised to see how CPU efficient they are (I am not affiliated with Spectrasonics, just a happy customer). The first two pieces are new ones while the third one is an old one I had composed many years ago but never recorded. These pieces should be evaluated as technical exercises more than for their aesthetic value but personally I find them enjoyable too.

Possible Worlds

Carlo Serafini — 2011-07-10T23:58:51+02:00

Read about and download “Various Artists - Possible Worlds” I am very pleased and honored to be part of this xenharmonic compilation released by Spectropol Records featuring: ...Carlo Serafini - Bicycles and Bowls ...Jukka-Pekka Kervinen - nearby outer pink Beach Babies - Heave a Shinbone Manfred Stahnke/Nora-Louise Müller - Die Vogelmenschen von St. ...Fiale - quattro supernovate in faccia Bruce Bennett/Vance Galloway - lament Norbert Oldani - Improvisation (Mean tone in F) ...Chris Vaisvil - Harmonics 12 to 30 in 15

UGDoLA

Carlo Serafini — 2011-06-19T11:09:00+02:00

This song is the Carlos Beta version of Un Giorno Dopo L’Altro (1966) by Luigi Tenco (the included YouTube link to the original song features it as background music for the title sequence of a famous Italian television series). This is the second song by Luigi Tenco I have arranged with Carlos Beta (the first one is Angela B. ...I use two different techniques to play the theme and the ensuing improvisation as you can see on the following video. ...The theme is a “diatonic” melody that I play with one hand. Notes of a “diatonic” scale are so far apart (with the note layout I use) that I can only use second and fifth finger to play it, with a few exceptions. ...The improvisation is played with two hands sharing the duties of playing a single line. You can see that I use more fingers of each hand and that makes playing more intricate phrases possible. This technique is very alien for a keyboard player but I don’t see any other solution to play anything reasonably fast on my Opal Chameleon “tuned” to Carlos Beta. The improvisation is based on the same “diatonic” scale of the theme: D major. You can check out for yourself, looking at the above mentioned note layout, the position of notes of this scale and try to figure out how to play them!

Angela B.

Carlo Serafini — 2011-06-01T22:13:50+02:00

Angela is a song originally written by Italian songwriter Luigi Tenco in 1966. The idea to make a xenharmonic cover of the song came to me when I listened to the same tune played by the Luca Flores Trio for the album “Sounds and Shades of Sound” (1990). ...Mine is an instrumental version but the original lyrics are interesting, this is my approximate translation: ...Angela believe me, I didn’t want that. ...I can’t believe all of a sudden ...My version starts with a piano sound in 12tET stating the theme, that is restated by a guitar sound in Carlos Beta. Next an ostinato bass line, based on the first four chords of the song, is used as background for an improvisation (in Carlos Beta). In the end the theme is again stated twice, the first time with the melody in Carlos Beta and a celesta-like sound playing chords in 12tET, then by a piano sound in 12tET. ...The parts in 12tET were played with my NS88 and those in Carlos Beta with my Chameleon. The guitar and celesta-like sounds come from Spectrasonics Omnisphere.

Peter Davies and my Chameleon

Carlo Serafini — 2011-05-12T21:55:55+02:00

This is the collection of videos filmed by Peter Davies playing my Opal Chameleon before it was shipped to me and/or when I sent it back to him for repairs.

tiBETAn Dreams

Carlo Serafini — 2011-05-08T16:32:07+02:00

Listen to tiBETAn dreams I was experimenting with a mode of Carlos Beta called CarlosBetaPIANO1 when I stumbled upon the 10/4 phrase appearing at the beginning of this piece. I played that phrase with a Spectrasonics Omnisphere’s Gamelan. It sounded interesting so I kept adding other elements and sounds that became the present song. This piece features 3 Omnisphere’s sounds and was played on a Halberstadt keyboard.

Modes of Beta

Carlo Serafini — 2011-05-08T10:28:25+02:00

Carlos Beta divides the interval 3:2 into 11 equal steps whereas 12tET (for which HKs are built) divides the same interval into 7 steps, so, the first approach was to choose 7 out of 11 Beta steps to fit the usual “Western” note layout of a perfect fifth. After a few experiments I arrived to the following rules for selecting notes: only 2 step sizes are allowed where the large one is twice the small one (L = 2s) and adjacent small steps are to be avoided. ...The chromatic mode I have created uses the following Beta steps: 0, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11 (L, s, L, s L, L, s) that results in the following scale 0, 127.628, 191.442, 319.07, 382.885, 510.513, 638.141, 701.955 cents (other modes can be created rotating these intervals). ...Other scales I tried but discarded early on, because not compliant with the above stated rules, were: s, L, s, s, L, L, L (2 adjacent small steps) and s, s, s, L, L, L, L (3 adjacent small steps). Seasoned microtonalists can easily see that the scale I built is quite consonant (having very good thirds) but it remains a non-octave scale with all its quirkiness if used for tonal music. Because of the uneven distribution of pitches, pseudo-octaves can be either 1212.5 or 1148.7 cents, major thirds 382.9 or 446.7 cents, minor thirds 319.1 or 255.3 cents and so on. Not only that, the same interval may sound different on distinct areas of a HK, so, for example, if the interval C3-E3 measures 382.9 cents C2-E2 is 446.7 cents wide because of the non-octave nature of the scale. ...Another approach I tried, trying to fit Carlos Beta to the constraint of a HK, was to consider it the 19 equal division of a stretched octave 1212.468 cents wide (see 19edo vs. ...This scale is more “tamable” because it repeats every 12 steps but still has its “wolf” intervals: 1 out of 12 “perfect fifths”, for example, is 765.8 cents wide! ...My conclusion is that (paraphrasing Joseph Yasser) the highway of tonal evolution will proceed from new tuning systems and consequent user interfaces (such as isomorphic keyboards) but there can be “byways” in the form of modes of new tuning systems, like the ones examined here, that can be played on established user interfaces, like HKs, that may be useful for those already acquainted with them.

Beta Easter(n)

Carlo Serafini — 2011-04-23T18:22:53+02:00

For details about this tuning system and its implementation with my Opal Chameleon, you can check out my previous articles The Dawn of Beta and 19edo vs. ...The title refers to the fact that this piece was composed/improvised during Easter week and that it, somehow, sounds “Eastern” to me. ...Working at “soundsource” level it is possible to immediately audition them with the right tuning system. If you audition complete patches they are usually saved with the default “Western” tuning system (12tET) and they must be edited each and every time in order to hear them in the desired alternative tuning system. The only soft synth I know of that allows to audition complete patches preserving a chosen tuning system is Camel Audio Alchemy! ...All the material I had in my mind when I started recording was a general idea of a chord progression and the initial phrase I play with my right hand. ... The piece, listening back to it, seems to have a complete structure, at least to my ears and that really amazes me. ...You can notice a couple of technical improvements comparing this video with Jingle Gamma Bells (my last one with me playing the Chameleon): ...You don’t see it but comparing the 2 videos you will see that now the Chameleon is positioned differently. ...I had to wear my sacred white robe in order to get into the right mood to perform this solemn piece!

Retuning Reason 5 with LMSO

Carlo Serafini — 2011-04-14T09:15:14+02:00

The main reason to write this article is to have a memorandum where I explain (mostly to myself) how to retune Reason 5 by Propellerheads using LMSO by X.J.Scott. ...It has been possible to retune Reason with LMSO for a long time using the four External MIDI busses A-D and/or retuning NNXT samples. ...The Reason’s manual explains: “You can lock a control surface or an additional MIDI keyboard/controller to a specific device so that it is “tweakable” and record enabled, regardless of which track has Master Keyboard input in the sequence. ...As you can see from the above picture the incoming MIDI data come from Disarray (an utility by X.J.Scott to remap the note layout of my Opal Chameleon) ...The reason to do it is that I could have a retuned sequence “embedded” in the Logic Pro file to be sent directly to the sound generator without opening LMSO. In order to do that I took the output of the four (5 to 8) LMSO IACs (playing the first part of the song) and recorded it back to Logic Pro. ...The bass line is the same but it looks diferent because at bar 1 you see notes BEFORE retuning and at bar 21 you see them AFTER it. ...Off topic: when Reason is in ReWire Slave Mode audio inputs are disabled (see the “hardware interface” ) meaning that you can not send audio from the audio host to it but only from slave to host. ...Each LMSO’s Nuscale Dynamic Retuner can receive data on a separate MIDI channel so my reasoning has been: I keep MIDI channels 1 to 4 to send data to IACs 1 to 4 and from there to Reason’s four External MIDI busses A-D (allowing me to have four POLYPHONIC retunable instruments), the remaining 12 MIDI channels may be used to send data to IACs 5 to 16 that can be “locked” to as many MONOPHONIC instruments. For this example I have retuned NNXT and NN19 sounds with LMSO’s Nuscale Dynamic Retuner but they could also be retuned modifying their samples so, thanks to LMSO, Reason can be a very powerful microtonal rack of virtual instruments.

Tribalism #2

Carlo Serafini — 2011-04-02T09:25:48+02:00

This is a follow-up to Tribalism #1 because part of the material used this time had been recorded for the previous song and then split off. ...To stay in tune with Carlos Beta, the featured tuning system of this tune, I have had a little help from Melodyne Assistant! ...It only has a handful of preset scales and does not read Scala files or any other tuning format. ...but, of course, it does retune notes as you can see on the picture below. ...You see that the first note of the flute track is A#2. Now the question is: what is the pitch assigned to MIDI note A#2 in Carlos Beta? The answer is given by LMSO when you save Carlos Beta in ASCII text format (as on the window shown below) and is B2 -27.628182 cents (if the anchor note is C3)! ...You can see on the top left corner of the above picture that the pitch of that blob is B3 -27 cents (actually it is an octave higher than expected because of the Melodyne algorithm but it works anyway). You can see that it is a rather tedious process to retune a microtonal melody with Melodyne so I have come to the following conclusion: it is best to record the best possible vocal performance and then fix only what is macroscopically wrong instead of recording some inaccurate vocal line hoping to fix everything later on. It may sounds like an obvious analysis but I had to experience it first hand to realize it.

Five years ago I got LMSO!

Carlo Serafini — 2011-03-24T21:35:43+01:00

Five years ago I got LMSO! ...I received the installation CD from X.J.Scott at the end of March 2006. Actually he had to send me two CDs because the post office screwed up the shipment of the first one that was first sent to Florida then to Canada, where it sat for some time, then back to the USA and finally to Italy, as a result I got it a long time after I had already received the replacement sent by Jeff. I have already told this story on the xenharmonic wiki and when I was interviewed by Steve Mueske. The fact is that up to that time I had never been able to play and/or compose music other than in 12tET. ...I had also tried other software applications for retuning MIDI instruments but they were too convoluted. ...X.J.Scott has been a great influence for my musical life. If I had not stumbled upon him I could probably have stopped making music because accessing new tuning systems breathed new life into an otherwise stale situation. So, I am just a newcomer to xenharmonic music but I am making progress as you can see going through my website! I just wonder why Jeff has never charged me any money for the many updates I have received during these five years.

Tribalism #1

Carlo Serafini — 2011-03-13T09:19:54+01:00

I had thought to explain the origin of this piece by saying that during my worldwide wandering I had landed on a mysterious island where I had recorded the chanting natives but the truth is that it is only me in my recording studio going berserk in front of a Neumann microphone! I had also thought of doing something “tribally” different, but my muse forced me somewhere else, nevertheless, as the title implies, more “tribalism” lies ahead. This is probably a natural reaction after the sleekness of ECM-flavored tunes like “Over The Beta Rainbow”. The form of this piece is the traditional “call and response” structure. ...This element was actually the initial idea for this piece and was influenced by Jackie Ligon’s “Other Time” album. This song is a pitch shift tour de force. Both the leading voice and the choir are created this way (both derive from the same audio recording). There is also a third, rhythmic, vocal element that you can hear underneath lead voice and choir. In order to create the choir I automated some parameters of Logic Pro’s pitch shift: semitone shifting and mix between natural and processed voice. I also used Logic Pro’s Flex Time function to quantize audio tracks.

Over The Beta Rainbow

Carlo Serafini — 2011-03-01T09:00:12+01:00

This piece is an orchestration, tuned to Carlos Beta tuning system, of the famous song “Over The Rainbow” by Arlen and Harburg as played by Keith Jarrett in his album “La Scala”. The original idea was to choose an harmonically sophisticated song and see how it would sound after receiving a “Beta treatment”. My approach was simple: take the original score and play it with my Opal Chameleon set to Carlos Beta/19EDO note layout. Playing a 12tET score with this setup is not hard (as long as you remember that flats and sharps are not enharmonically equivalent). ...I use strings mainly to double some of the top and bottom lines and the other 2 remaining voices mainly to double the 2 inner lines. ...I took the piece by Jarrett and played it while trying to play quarter notes at his tempo, not a simple task. I then took “his” tempo list and with Logic Pro’s Beat Mapping I assigned it to become the tempo list of my orchestration selecting “Beats from Region” and “Protect MIDI”. ...Jarrett uses lots of fourths resolving down to major thirds and the only way to disguise those dissonances is to assign them to not sustaining instruments like my main mallet one. ...the album starts with 2 long free improvisations called “La Scala” part 1 and part 2 and ends with “Over The Rainbow”. Jarrett while improvising seems hard at work trying to force the piano beyond the outmost limits of its sonic capabilities then goes back to more familiar territories with this lovely song.

Yasser, Fibonacci and Carlos

Carlo Serafini — 2011-02-25T23:54:11+01:00

19EDO, according to Joseph Yasser, should be the natural evolution of our present tuning system: 12EDO Yasser, in his book “A Theory of Evolving Tonality” explains how the evolution of musical scales started, in ancient times, with the infra-diatonic one then to the present diatonic and will continue evolving to the supra-diatonic one. He represents each of these 3 scales as having both regular and auxiliary degrees. So, the infra-diatonic scale has 5 regular and 2 auxiliary degrees, the diatonic one 7 regular and 5 auxiliary degrees and the supra-diatonic one 12 regular and 7 auxiliary degrees. The evolution of musical scales, according to Yasser, follows an increasing number of steps, from 5 to 7 to 12 to 19 per octave. I am not the first one noticing that this series of numbers is a Fibonacci sequence: 2, 5, 7, 12, 19, 31, 50 etc. where each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two and every 3rd number is even. It is interesting to notice that the number following 19 is 31. 31EDO has been one of the most studied alternative tuning systems since Renaissance! ...She created the Carlos Beta tuning system that is a close relative of 19EDO even though it does not repeat at the octave. ... This is why I stumbled upon 19EDO, Yasser and so on.

Gammatar

Carlo Serafini — 2011-02-06T20:08:27+01:00

Carlo Serafini and Split Notes Microtonal Netlabel present: ...This album contains songs composed between November 2009 and December 2010. All of them have two things in common: 1) the songs have been composed using the Carlos Gamma tuning system and 2) the main instrument is always some kind of guitar sound, courtesy of Spectrasonics Omnisphere. All songs have been previously published on my website but the ones presented here are new versions (remixed and mastered at a higher bitrate). Some of them also feature new drum tracks or new lead sounds, some are longer and other shorter than previous versions. This is the definitive collection of my Carlos Gamma guitar songs! Below find a list of blog articles I wrote when the songs were originally published on the web for more details and comparison with older versions: ...Thanks to Sean Archibald at Split Notes Microtonal Netlabel for featuring Gammatar among their music releases!

19edo vs. Carlos Beta

Carlo Serafini — 2011-01-18T09:35:29+01:00

There is a vast literature about 19EDO so I went back reading “Multiple Division of the Octave and the Tonal Resources of 19-Tone Temperament” by M. ...Joseph Yasser at one time suggested an incursion on the hegemony of the octave by treating the perfect fourth or the perfect fifth as a complete identity capable of enclosing a musical system. ...This is exactly what happens, for example, with Carlos Alpha, Beta and Gamma where a perfect fifth is considered a “complete identity capable of enclosing a musical system”. I even created a notation system for Carlos Gamma where each perfect fifth interval is identified by the same letter name. ...In addition to proposals to eliminate the octave or to replace it as the primary "identity" in music, there have been a few suggestions of recent origin that the octave should not be tuned precisely. A number of studies have shown that at the highest and lowest ranges of hearing the interval 2:1 must be stretched a substantial amount to produce the psychological effect associated with the octave. ...It remains to be seen if Mandelbaum would consider a stretched octave of 1,212.467 cents “slightly enlarged” (as with Carlos Beta). ...Dividing 13,337.145 cents by 11 we get 1,212.467 cents (Carlos’ Beta “octave” ) ...This analysis is based on a similar one X.J.Scott did for his “superpythagorean” scale (a chain of 12 perfect fifths divided by 7 octaves resulting in a “slightly enlarged” octave 1203.351 cents wide). ...Beta sounds even better than 19-step Equal, which is troubled by a fairly flat major third of less than 379 cents, which sounds rather anemic to our ears, brought up as we are in a very sharp major third world of E.T.

Lonely Beta Woman

Carlo Serafini — 2011-01-02T00:04:18+01:00

Listen to Lonely Beta Woman The idea about this piece came while playing The Dawn Of Beta. That melody reminded me of something but it took me some time to recall what it was. Then I recalled what it was: “Lonely Woman” by Ornette Coleman from his album “The Shape Of Jazz To Come” (1959). The cover art is a citation of the “Lonely Woman” album by the Modern Jazz Quartet (1962). This is a transcription of the song I found on the internet. I only used the A section of the original song for my version. What’s new, besides my electronic arrangement, is the tuning system: Carlos Beta. The drone sound comes from Spectrasonics Omnisphere while the 2 lead sounds come from Camel Audio Alchemy.

The Dawn Of Beta

Carlo Serafini — 2011-01-01T23:52:52+01:00

I composed my first piece using it, Adagio Gamma, in April 2009. I have spent a considerable amount of time studying it, trying to figure out how to notate it, how to create a reasonable note layout for my isomorphic keyboard as testified by my many blog articles. But I felt it was time to move on and decided to choose another of Wendy Carlos’ non-octave tuning systems: Carlos Beta. The legacy of Gamma made possible to create a Beta setup in less than a week including a new note layout: and the transnotation of MIDI notes coming from the Opal Chameleon and remapped by Disarray. The following is a picture taken while I was setting it up: I used the same methodology developed for Gamma, adapted to Beta (if anyone needs more details simply ask me). It did not take me long to realize Beta and 19tET are similar: So I decided to adapt a note layout usually associated with 19tET to Beta even though the first is octave-based and the second is a non-octave one. ...C C# Db D D# Eb E Fb F F# Gb G G# Ab A A# Bb B Cb

Jingle Gamma Bells

Carlo Serafini — 2010-12-20T00:40:24+01:00

(a new version of Jingle Gamma Bells, with a new drum track, is featured on my Gammatar album) After completing my previous blog post about Gamma major scales I thought of composing some examples, then I recalled an old arrangement of Jingle Bells I had written for my students, when I was a piano teacher. It is a good example of a diatonic song, even though my old arrangement introduces some chromaticism. ...Two years ago I had already composed an arrangement of this song in 88cET (actually 8th root of 3:2) called 88 Jingle Bells. This new version features both another tuning system, Carlos Gamma and a new musical interface, my Opal Chameleon with the C central note layout. ...As you can see from the above picture both guitars I play are composite sounds. The arpeggio is played by 2 guitars on MIDI channel 1, the melody is also played by 2 different guitars on channel 2.

Gamma major scales, a major labyrinth

Carlo Serafini — 2010-12-04T15:43:05+01:00

While working on this subject I have found out that different approaches are possible and that each one of them leads to distinct solutions: I have created scales by ear, by hand position (with my isomorphic keyboard) and by adding repeating patterns but all the scales I have “discovered”, that sound consistent with a root note, have something in common, they are based on disjunct tetrachords! ...Because Gamma seems ideally suited to something like that and because, while exploring new tuning systems, we may start from something we are already familiar with, trying to make sense of the maze of new notes, intervals and harmonies unfolding in front of us. The tricky part, trying to apply the above-mentioned concepts to Carlos Gamma, is that both tetrachords and “octaves” can be either narrower or wider than, respectively, 498.045 cents (4:3 ratio) and 1200 cents (ratio 2:1). ...You see that the structure of the first and third “octave” is the same while the second one is different. ...After “discovering” this scale I figured that something similar could also be created on the left of the root note, so I built “C Gamma Major Left”. ...Again, the structure of the first and third “octave” is the same while the second one is different but the order of tetrachords is the inverse of that of the previous scale. ...Again, this is a scale you can not play with one hand but, at least, it uses notes on “only” six columns. ...It looks nice on paper because the three “octaves” have the same tetrachordal structure but the triple “octave”, for example, is off ratio 8:1 by 20 cents (3580 cents or 102 CGS). ...Finally, I present a scale that does NOT follow the rule “each tetrachord is repeated twice and the last note of the previous one becomes the first of the following one” and you will hear there is something wrong. ...There is also an exception: the last note of the third “octave” should be 105 CGS above the root note but it would be off ratio 8:1 by 85 cents (3685 cents).

KYMI Exercise #1

Carlo Serafini — 2010-11-14T17:58:28+01:00

This is intended as an example of technical exercise to familiarize with a new musical interface and/or tuning system. The idea is to adapt existing exercises and techniques, written for different musical instruments and tuning systems, to alternative setups (this is the exercise I was referring to in my previous article). ...But because it is in Carlos Gamma and because it gets transposed 1 Carlos Gamma Step (CGS) up (35.1 cents) each time, it is quite tricky to play. In order to show the 4 patterns, I have used different colors for the following diagram: ...Below you find the order of notes I played, trying to explain the relationship among them so, for example, I start with G#2 (in parentheses you see the pitch relationship with the root note of the arpeggiator) then I play E+4 (34 CGS above G#2) and so on. ...Looking at the above diagram you can see that the orange and blue patterns span 16 columns, the gray one 13 columns and the green one 20 columns and all of them, regardless of their span, have different shapes. This is because, for a huge tuning system like Carlos Gamma, it would take a much larger isomorphic keyboard to accommodate all the possible permutations of even a simple line like the one presented here.

Invocation

Carlo Serafini — 2010-11-07T18:10:34+01:00

I would say playing it was the easy part (it did only take a few minutes to set the camera and record it) but it took me a long time to get a grasp of what I had done. Because I had found notes by ear I knew they sounded good to me but when I started analyzing them I noticed there was something wrong, however could not figure out what it was. For example, the note I had considered the root note of the solo did not have any frequency relationship close to 2:1, 4:1 or 8:1 with the root note of the arpeggiator even though I knew it should be something like that. I checked the tuning of the oscillators of the 3 Camel Audio Alchemy’s patches (2 for the arpeggiator and 1 for the solo) that I had used and they were all correct. ...In order to correctly view what I had played I had to turn the master tuning of the solo patch back to zero and transpose the solo track I had recorded, up 12 semitones. ...The picture above shows arpeggiator’s notes in red and notes I play, in the video, in blue (the yellow one is played by both). ...The yellow one is played by both, arpeggiator and solo and is, in fact, the root note of the solo having a frequency ratio close to 4:1 with C1 that is the arpeggiator’s root note. ...You can easily see that on both diagrams there are 2 blue areas and each one is played by one hand but the 2 areas are inverted. They do not look exactly the same because, when I turned the master tuning of the solo patch back to zero and transposed the solo track up 12 semitones, I went out of range with a couple of notes: A#5 and C#6 of the first version would become E+6 and G#6 on the second one but there are not such notes on the Chameleon (tuned to Carlos Gamma). ...Notes in parentheses are alternative ones so, for example, Bb4 and B+4 resemble a minor and a major “third” of E+4 (see diagram below).

Reverse Engineering Transnotated Carlos Gamma Scores

Carlo Serafini — 2010-11-01T23:07:22+01:00

This article explains how to edit MIDI notes (recorded playing my Opal Chameleon through Disarray) when starting from a transnotated score in Carlos Gamma. I know this article can only make sense to me so, consider it as a personal note that I store on the web. So far my goal has been to solve the notation problem while playing Carlos Gamma with my Opal Chameleon but now I see another problem to solve: if you start from a transnotated score and want to edit a note both there and on the original MIDI track you need to know which MIDI note corresponds to the one appearing on the score. ...The second example is the original MIDI track of the same 8 bars from which the transnotated score was created. ...If you are still following me let’s have a look at the first note of the transnotated score: G#2, let’s say you want to change that note to G#3 (that in my notation system means 701.955 cents above). ... Go to the original MIDI track recorded on the sequencer and change that note from note number 54 to 74 (note 54 = F#2 is the note that is remapped to G#2). As you can see moving from G#2 to G#3 means moving up 20 MIDI notes that in Carlos Gamma equal a ratio 3:2 or 701.955 cents. Another example: the second note of the transnotated score is E+4 (notated with a different notehead). Search for that note again on the remapping2.pdf file but this time on the “Disarray to Chameleon” column. ...Search for it and you will see that it corresponds to MIDI note 68 (again an interval of 20 MIDI notes).

Autumnal Modulations

Carlo Serafini — 2010-10-25T00:01:52+02:00

To demonstrate that, I have recorded 2 short movies where I perform the “lead guitar” part of portions of the original tune while listening to the pre-recorded “bass” and drums parts and reading my transnotated score (see below for more explanations). ...fs=1&hl=en_US">

Transnotating Carlos Gamma

Carlo Serafini — 2010-10-01T14:49:58+02:00

C3 (MIDI note 60) is not remapped but its MIDI channel is changed to 16 to distinguish notes going to the sound source from those used only for the transnotated score. ...Disarray remaps it to G#4 (MIDI note 80), 20 MIDI notes above C3 that in Carlos Gamma equal a 3:2 interval (as before the signal goes to LMSO and then to the sound source). If I turn the TransNotateOnOff switch to 0, as in the above picture, the signal goes also to the above mentioned map that remaps it to MIDI note 72 (C4) on channel 16, 12 notes above note 60, an octave in standard notation but not on my Carlos Gamma one (see the above mentioned article on this matter). ...fs=1&hl=en_US"> ...fs=1&hl=en_US"> ...The second time you see the automated score with 3 notes way above all the other ones, the first one is a “blue” one, the other 2 are “yellow” ones (as before I have to manually transnotate them referring to the above mentioned diagram), I have to manually turn Bbs into A#s (“green” notes) and notate the 2 “yellow” ones with different noteheads. ...fs=1&hl=en_US">

Double Trouble

Carlo Serafini — 2010-09-21T20:51:22+02:00

As promised at the end of my previous article, I am posting a couple of video examples employing the note layouts presented there: These videos demonstrate that it is possible to move from one keyboard to another with relative ease even though they do not share the same note layout, as explained on the above mentioned article. In fact I had never played those two keyboards at the same time before and, as you can see, their position is not particularly ergonomic, nevertheless it is feasible, at a glance, to conjure up some music. You can hear that I move back and forth from a somehow major to a somehow minor tonality.

"C central" note layout

Carlo Serafini — 2010-09-18T21:54:32+02:00

This new layout is a variation of my previous one (“A central” ) that I have created following this basic idea: to find a common way to notate Carlos Gamma on both an Halberstadt keyboard and an isomorphic one. Lately I have been using either my digital piano with a dodecatonic mode of Carlos Gamma or my Chameleon with a full Carlos Gamma note layout, so the question is: is there a common way to notate music that can be applied to both keyboards even though they do not share the same layout? If you go back to my “Adagio Gamma Revisited” article you see that, at the time, I thought I had to “trans-notate” a piece of music originally played on a standard keyboard to be able to play it with my Chameleon but I was wrong. ...I proceeded playing single notes on the NS88 looking at the MIDI data coming from it and checking if their position on the Chameleon was where I expected them to be. ... In the above case you see that I play C3 with no pitch bend (0 64 value) on both keyboards. ...So, as long as I play within this area of white and green buttons (on the Chameleon) I can switch from one MIDI controller to the other and play the same notes using the same standard notation but, of course the sonic results are not those of a regular keyboard tuned to 12tET, so, for example, keys C3 - C4, on both keyboards, sounds the same perfect fifth (3:2) interval, keys C3 - F#3, on both keyboards, sounds the same major third (5:4) interval, keys C3 - F3, on both keyboards, sounds the same minor third (6:5) interval (see note chart below). ...To understand what really happens “behind the scene” look at the following diagram: inside each button you see the MIDI message sent when it gets depressed (MIDI note name, octave, pitch bend value). ...Each corresponding key of the NS88 would generate exactly the same MIDI message (with the exception of notes on blue and yellow columns that do not exist on it). ...A full Carlos Gamma layout on an Halberstadt keyboard is highly impracticable so it is better to use a good approximation of it that nicely fits within its 12 note pattern. On the other hand it would be a sacrilege to have a fancy isomorphic keyboard like the Chameleon and not take advantage of its features that make a full-fledged Carlos Gamma layout “manageable”.

Elba Gamma

Carlo Serafini — 2010-09-01T15:05:38+02:00

This summer I went to the Elba island on vacation with my family. The island is part of the Tuscan archipelago, a lovely place! ...When I came back home I edited a few of them with iMovie and created a soundtrack. It goes without saying the tuning system I used is Carlos Gamma! I slowed the movie down to 20% of its original speed, I edited exposure, brightness, contrast and saturation. ...My idea was to have a slow paced video supporting the soundtrack and not vice versa (usually it is the soundtrack that supports video). The sounds you hear come mainly from Camel Audio Alchemy’s Planet Earth soundbank with exception of a horn-like sound from Spectrasonics Omnisphere and a few drum loops from Apple sound library. ...

A review of “Musical Mathematics” by Cris Forster

Carlo Serafini — 2010-08-22T15:19:16+02:00

Forster too has been “seduced into carpentry”, like Harry Partch, and that means he is not only a very erudite man because his sources for writing “Musical Mathematics” were not only a myriad books but his own direct experimentations building instruments, measuring string length ratios, tuning pianos etc. ...I can easily retune my synthesizers (hardware and software) to any imaginable tuning system and those who follow my blog know my favorite one is Carlos Gamma (20th root of 3/2, a non-octave one), I can instantly convert ratios to cents and viceversa too. Heidi Forster, his wife, says it took him ten years to write it and more years to prepare it for publication but this is obviously the work of a lifetime. ...There are chapters I am not going to read because 1) they are too difficult for me 2) I am not interested (I know it sounds like Aesop’s fable “The fox and the grapes” but that is the truth). ...Forster knows that not all readers will go through his book from A to Z and for this reason suggests possible paths to follow. My main path has been chapters 3,9,10 and 11 (see Table of Contents) but I started from the epilog written by his wife where she tells the story of her husband’s life. ... I, then, jumped to chapter 3, parts of chapter 5 (because I am a keyboard player) then to chapter 9 to finally land to chapters 10 and 11 that were my real targets. These two chapters alone could be a massive book, almost 500 pages long, on the history of the tuning of musical instruments. ...Someone could ask why an electronic musician like me should read this book considering that it deals exclusively with acoustic music. ...From my point of view I would like to add something about “the structural limitations of keyboard instruments” and “the physical limitations of the human hand” (section 10.30, page 349).

Bicycles and Bowls

Carlo Serafini — 2010-08-21T15:23:24+02:00

Listen to Bicycles And Bowls This piece is a free improvisation featuring 3 Spectrasonics Omnisphere’s sounds: You can see now why I named it “Bicycles And Bowls” The song, then, inspired the creation of the image on the top of this page. The tuning system is again the mode of Carlos Gamma already featured on many of my recents pieces (see Hal Trumpetti for more informations).

Bad Henkings

Carlo Serafini — 2010-07-29T23:54:10+02:00

Listen to Bad Henkings This song is a collaboration among Alister Flint, Chris Vaisvil and me. The title is an anagram but I will not reveal the source. The image has some obscure reference to the song, so cryptic I forgot about that. Chris posted an initial file that I mangled beyond recognition with Metasynth, Alister disfigured it even more adding effects, drums, percussions. I then added the trumpet part (thanks to Camel Audio Alchemy) that, of course, uses the Carlos Gamma tuning system. Chris’s file was microtonal too but using a different tuning system (its name has something to do with the title so I will not tell you anything about it). Alister used one more tuning system so the tune is definitely poly-microtonal! Al then added voices so that the final piece sounds like a band from some unknown planet playing at a Martian cosmodrome while aliens wait to embark for their galactic journeys. I hope you enjoy the trip!

Edonoists Of The World Unite!

Carlo Serafini — 2010-07-17T20:52:18+02:00

I was reading “We're Just a bunch of EDOISTS” and following replies. I am not going to discuss this matter here but I was surprised by the term “EDOIST” that means a supporter of EDOs (Equal Division of the Octave), see Equal Temperament. I think I coined the term EDONOI in July 2009 when I created the group “Equal Division of Non-Octave Intervals” at Xenharmonic Alliance. Unfortunately ning.com is going from free to paid service and that will probably means: a) Xenharmonic Alliance will go the way of the Dodo by the end of August 2010 b) everything that was discussed there will probably disappear into oblivion. Nevertheless I think we need more EDONOISTs! There will be a xenharmonic diaspora but there are already a few possible aggregation points on the internet: ...Edonoists Of The World Unite! UPDATE: Xenharmonic Alliance at ning.com is now defunct

Conference of Flutes

Carlo Serafini — 2010-07-15T15:01:27+02:00

Listen to Conference Of Flutes This piece is a demo of MOTU’s Ethno2. You can see from the above picture that I use 8 different sounds in a single instance of the application: 6 wind instruments and 2 loops (actually I also use 1 more drum loop from Apple Logic’s library). In order to play everything live I had to try a few streaming settings even though all intruments are monophonic. I suspect Ethno2 does not correctly address multi-core processors like those of my MacBookPro. You can see this is Ethno version 2.0.1 because I have loaded a user tuning (the previous version did not allow that). The tuning is the usual dodecatonic mode of Carlos Gamma I have recently used (see Hal Trumpetti for more explanations). The inspiration for the title comes from an old album by Dave Holland called “Conference of the Birds” (whose title was taken from that of a 4,500 line epic poem by Persian Sufist writer, Farid al-Din Attar). Not that my song has anything to do with Dave Holland or Sufis. I just liked the idea of a song with woodwind instruments named that way!

Crack My Pitch Up

Carlo Serafini — 2010-07-12T20:52:22+02:00

I am very pleased and honored to be part of this microtonal compilation released by Split Notes Microtonal Netlabel It is downloadable here You should not pass up the opportunity to listen to such a notable work of art! Excuse the shameless plug but it is worth it!

Gamma Breezin'

Carlo Serafini — 2010-07-01T15:19:58+02:00

Listen to Gamma Breezin’ (a new version of Gamma Breezin’, with a new drum track, is featured on my Gammatar album) I cannot fail to notice that Breezin’ was a famous album by George Benson, that the initials of this song are the same of this great guitarist and that this is a guitar song but I did not have him in mind while playing it! This is a song featuring again Spectrasonics Omnisphere’s wonderful sounds. Other guitar songs I wrote using a similar setup are Gamma Monk, Glorious60, Glorious Guitars, Chameleon And Me (video) and Chameleons In The Sun. The tuning system is again the mode of Carlos Gamma already featured on many of my recent songs. See Hal Trumpetti for more explanations. The title says it all: I play Gamma “in a casual or lighthearted manner”. Hope you enjoy it too!

The Solstice Song

Carlo Serafini — 2010-06-20T08:52:20+02:00

The structure of the song has an arch form, so each one of these parts represents a movement of the composition. ...The first and the last movements are microtonal (using Carlos Gamma tuning system), the second and fourth ones are in 12tET and the central one uses both tuning systems, either by themselves or both at the same time. ...The song features Spectrasonics Omnisphere, Camel Audio Alchemy, MOTU Ethno2 and Apple EXS24 virtual instruments, Nord Stage 88 piano, a few percussion loops and myself singing! ...There are 12 virtual synths and 4 audio tracks (the four muted tracks are MIDI tracks for the Nord Stage 88 bounced to audio). A few instruments appear with both tuning systems as you can notice listening to the song. ...I am not by any stretch of the imagination a singer so it’s only an ironic small thing but I felt that melody needed a voice and mine was the only one available. The compositional technique used throughout the song is that of the “leitmotif”, in this case the “solstice theme”. The same theme is used for each one of the five movements and, as the Wikipedia definition says: “...such a theme should be 'clearly identified so as to retain its identity if modified on subsequent appearances' whether such modification be in terms of rhythm, harmony, orchestration or accompaniment” and, in this case, tuning system. ...It’s interesting that this composition started out using the new Xx5 algorithmic composition tool and MIDI sequencer by U&I. ... You can hear them on the first and last movements played by a tuned percussion instrument that reminds me of those marimba-like instruments built by Harry Partch!

The Summer Solstice Online Streaming Concert

Carlo Serafini — 2010-06-09T09:27:56+02:00

16 hours of live music streamed online: 23 artists from UK, USA, Italy, Netherlands, Croatia, China and Sweden. It has been a tradition at electro-music.com to organize events like this one but it is the first time I participate. This summer solstice coincide with the 7th anniversary of myself joining this forum so, I thought, it was a good reason to do it. I will be playing a song I have composed for this event appropriately named “The Solstice Song”. I have reserved 30 minutes for myself and that’s the duration of this song. You can read about the event here and about radio.electro-music.com here. My concert will take place June 19th from 21.30 to 22.00 GMT. Make sure to check out the difference between your time zone and GMT. My song will be partly microtonal (Carlos Gamma tuning system) and partly “straight” (12tET). The song features Spectrasonics Omnisphere, Camel Audio Alchemy, MOTU Ethno2 and Apple Logic’s EXS24 virtual instruments, Nord Stage 88 piano, a few percussion loops and myself singing!

Gamma Raga

Carlo Serafini — 2010-06-01T08:29:45+02:00

Click on the image above to watch a movie of the scrolling score while listening to a lo-fi version of the song. What you see is NOT what you get because the tuning system is not the traditional 12tET one (see below), so, for example, an octave interval, on “paper”, equals a 3:2 ratio!! This song features a couple of violin sounds from MOTU Ethno2, a Nord G2 drone sound and a few percussion loops. The idea for this song came to me when, one day, I stumbled upon this G2 sound I had created a long time ago and never used. As soon as I played a single note I visualized an Indian setting and from there I started creating a song around it! I wrote this melody for a single violin then I thought I needed some variations so I searched for a compatible sound and found a second violin for which I created a counter-melody with varying contrapuntal motions. The two violins are panned hard left and right. The function of the G2 sound is that of an Indian tambura. The tuning system for this song is, again, a mode of Carlos Gamma already featured on many of my songs (like Hal Trumpetti. ...The Ethno2 sounds are retuned with LMSO, in real time, as already explained on my article about the Delta Gamma Blues song.

Talking Gamma In Your Sleep

Carlo Serafini — 2010-05-11T14:48:50+02:00

“Talking Gamma In Your Sleep” is a xenharmonic remake of “Talking In Your Sleep”, a popular song by The Romantics. I took the video from YouTube, removed the audio and created a new xenharmonic soundtrack. The first step was creating a tempo track to sync the video with the new soundtrack. As you can see from the above picture I had to synchronize every single bar (with Logic Pro’s Beat Mapping command) to stay in sync with the video. Once again the tuning system I have used is a mode of Carlos Gamma (already used for many other songs, like Hal Trumpetti). The sounds are mostly from Camel Audio Alchemy with the exception of drums (Logic Pro’s sound library and Ultrabeat drum synthesizer) and vocoders from Nord G2 (I sang twice using different vocoder patches). To see how to retune the Nord G2 see “The singing alchemist” Lyrics are partly in Gamma and partly in English! The idea for this remake came to me after creating the group “XenoRomantic movement” on Xenharmonic Alliance where it belongs.

Hal Trumpetti

Carlo Serafini — 2010-05-01T20:38:02+02:00

Hal Trumpetti is a XenoRomantic song composed using the same mode of Carlos Gamma already featured on Adagio Gamma and many other songs. It’s a dodecatonic linear scale based on the generating interval 3:2^9:20 (or 315.88 cents) and repeat ratio 3:2 (or 701.955 cents). The instrument playing trumpet, piano and bass is Camel Audio Alchemy which is great. That “preserve” button you see on the above picture is vary handy: it allows you to change patch without changing the selected tuning (Alchemy reads .tun files). I have not seen anything like that on other softsynths. Omnisphere, that I love and often use, forces you to reload the same tuning system (unless you use 12tET) every time you try out a new patch. ...The following movie shows an excerpt of the trumpet track. Although that Alchemy patch is using the above mentioned scale, you can see a lot of pitch bend data going on. I am using it “subconsciously” probably because of my Nord Stage 88 Classic’s very sensitive pitch bend lever (see above), achieving something I think is close to the natural inflections of acoustic instruments. Click on the above picture to watch the movie on YouTube or click here for better audio/video quality.

Delta Gamma Blues - Version 2

Carlo Serafini — 2010-04-25T11:32:45+02:00

This is a follow up to Delta Gamma Blues. This new version was created as my entry to the “AEH Ethno2 microtonal demos competition” Rules of this competition state that all sounds have to come from MOTU Ethno2 and my previous version featured drum samples coming from Logic Pro’s sound library. So, I replaced the original drum track with 5 percussion instruments as you can see on the following picture. The trio playing harmonica, bass and balalaika has remained the same. So, there are 2 instances of Ethno2 playing at the same time. Click on the above picture to watch a short movie, on YouTube (or click here for better audio/video quality). The movie shows Logic Pro’s Arrange page while playing the first half of this tune. The scrolling score and the data list on the right are from the harmonica part. Lots of data for a monophonic line that then go to LMSO to be retuned in real time as explaining on the previous article.

Delta Gamma Blues...

Carlo Serafini — 2010-04-13T00:09:05+02:00

(a new version of Delta Gamma Blues, with a new lead sound, is featured on my Gammatar album) ...MOTU is working on it and there is already an available workaround: instead of saving a user tuning to the UserTuning folder, you can drag and drop a Scala file to Ethno’s main page into the “Tuning” field. ...I had Scala installed on a previous machine, tried to learn it but gave up when I found a much better application well worth the time spent learning it: LMSO. LMSO’s users can use another way to retune Ethno’s sounds (and those of version 1 too). ...Click on the picture above to see this short movie or click here to watch it on YouTube. ...The selected sounds is “Harmonica 1” and you can see that I am not using any alternative tuning system (from within Ethno) but what you hear is certainly not 12tET (you can also notice that polyphony is set to 1 note). ...On Logic’s Arrange page I set 3 tracks called “to LMSO In” 1, 2 and 3 sending data on midi channels 1, 2 and 3 to LMSO. ...Data of each track get separately retuned and sent back to Logic’s “Ethno2” instrument through IAC (Inter Application Communication protocol). You can see, on Logic’ Environment page, cables connecting “From LMSO IAC” 1, 2 and 3 to Ethno2 (btw the Ethno2 icon you see on that page is only an “alias”, the original is on the mixer page). ...The tuning system used for this song is a mode of Carlos Gamma using 12 out of the 20 equal divisions of ratio 3:2.

Dynamic modulation vs. static retuning techniques - part two

Carlo Serafini — 2010-04-01T20:45:35+02:00

Dynamic Modulation “enables you to instantly change the anchor settings of your scale, to move the note that the tonic note of the scale appears on to a new anchor key, and to transpose the anchor frequency of the scale accordingly so that things line up.” (from the LMSO manual) ...Our “GammaTetra7” scale has 2 kinds of steps: 6 large ones at 105.293 cents each and 1 small one at 70.195 cents. ...What’s going to happen when we move the “anchor key” from one note of the scale to another one? ...The 7 rows indicate the 7 possible anchor keys and the 20 columns indicate the 20 possible steps of Carlos Gamma tuning system. ...Starting with C we get a “L L L s L L L” scale, starting with C# we get a “L L s L L L L” scale and so on. After the 7 possible rotations we have touched 13 of the 20 possible steps of Carlos Gamma (of course we can not have more than 7 available steps at a time). ...It is like if we had built the above mentioned linear scale (shown in Part 1 of this article) building a chain of 13 generating intervals (instead of 7). This scale uses the following Gamma steps: 0, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20 (the difference among steps is 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2 Gamma steps, making it, again, a MOS scale). ...Setting up a system capable of “dynamic modulation” (shown here) is much trickier than setting up a system for “static retuning techniques” (shown in Part 1). ...LMSO IAC 1 is connected to a channel splitter sending data to 4 monophonic instances of Camel Audio Alchemy playing 4 different “pad” sounds.

Dynamic modulation vs. static retuning techniques - part one

Carlo Serafini — 2010-03-24T23:45:50+01:00

This is the first installment of a two-part article about “dynamic modulation vs. static retuning techniques” Lately I have been thinking of ways to nicely accomodate Carlos Gamma tuning system to an Halberstadt keyboard. ...One mode that seems to be reasonable is the one I call “GammaTetra7” using 7 out of 20 Gamma steps so that 3:2 (Gamma’s repeat ratio) fits into 7 keys of a regular keyboard (from C to F#, for example), making it very similar to 12tET. ...This mode is a classic example of a linear scale: a chain of one interval (generator) divided down into another interval (repeat ratio). In this case the generator interval is 105.293 cents (3 Gamma steps or 3:2^3:20) and the repeat ratio is 3:2. ...Creating a chain of 7 such intervals and folding them into the repeat ratio we get a mode using the following Gamma steps: 0, 3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 17, 20 (the difference among steps is 3, 3, 3, 2, 3, 3, 3 Gamma steps, making it a MOS scale) ...Depending on the synthesizers at hand, setting up a synth to play such a scale is simply a matter of saving it in the required format and loading it on the synth. ...The objection to the use of this mode could be that it sounds too similar to 12tET even though it is still a nonoctave scale, so, why bother? I have an ace up my sleeve to spice things up a bit called “dynamic modulation”...

"A central" note layout

Carlo Serafini — 2010-03-11T14:43:17+01:00

This is a follow up to my previous blog entries regarding the note layout of the Chameleon when using Carlos Gamma tuning system (see Gamma Chameleon Notation, Adagio Gamma Revisited, Gamma Elegy and Tetrachordal Gamma). I have been developing the idea to have a single note always representing the “prime unity” of my “Gamma” music (a concept borrowed from JI and Harry Partch and usually not associated with EDONOIs, short for “equal division of non octave intervals”!). Because Gamma Chameleon Notation starts with the letter “A” I decided that “prime unity” would have to sound as an “A” pitch (440 Hz, 220 Hz, 110 Hz or any other one). So, if A0 is “prime unity” and sounds like an “A”, A1 will sounds like an “E” (3/2 above “A” ), A2 as “B” (3/2 above “E” ) and so on! Notes without labels remain outside of the midi notes range. If you compare this layout with that of Tetrachordal Gamma, you will see that I had previously considered the bottom note of both leftmost and rightmost columns as the starting point of the layout (the note now called D#-1). While playing with that layout I came to the conclusion that if there is a starting note it should stay in the middle and not on the sides of the keyboard and so this is how my Chameleon looks now. ...and that’s why I called this layout “A central”. More to follow...

MicroVocoder I

Carlo Serafini — 2010-03-01T11:22:13+01:00

This is a follow-up to The Singing Alchemist For this short video I have again used Tim Kleinert's Spectral Vocoder for the Nord G2 backed by drums (Logic Pro Apple Loops library) and steel guitar (Spectrasonics Omnisphere). The tuning system is Carlos Gamma. Read the above mentioned article to see how I retune the G2 in real time (Omnisphere reads .tun tuning files) The vocal track has been enhanced using compression and reverb. The guitar part has been added later. All parts played with my Opal Chameleon. The original audio track of the video has been replaced with the one created with Logic Pro.

The Singing Alchemist

Carlo Serafini — 2010-02-14T10:57:21+01:00

Listen to The Singing Alchemist This is a song born from a couple of recent updates to my setup: Camel Audio Alchemy BigTone sound library and Spectral Vocoder, a Nord G2 patch by Swiss synthesist Tim Kleinert. Other elements of this song are my constant companions: Carlos Gamma tuning system, LMSO, Logic Pro and Opal Chameleon. All parts are played on the Chameleon, midi notes to be sent to the G2 are remapped by “Disarray”, a small utility by X.J.Scott (see Gamma Elegy for more informations about it) and sent to Logic Pro. From Logic Pro they are sent to the LMSO input to be retuned. LMSO then sends them back to Logic Pro thru IAC (Inter Application Communication protocol) and from there to the G2 ...while singing, shouting and/or whispering on the Shure WH20XLR headset microphone connected to its mic input. UPDATE: this song is featured on the “Les Hall & Friends - Electro-music Collaboration” compilation

MacBook Pro: Distorted video or no video issues?

Carlo Serafini — 2010-01-23T23:23:40+01:00

(click on the image to enlarge it) I own a MacBook Pro 15-inch model (2.4GHz) with NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics processors manufactured between approximately May 2007 and September 2008. Yesterday the computer screen started looking like the image above. I panicked!!!!! Fortunately the guy at the store where, 2 years ago, I bought it knew about this kind of problem. He told me to check out this link by Apple. My MBP is one of those mentioned on the article. I am writing on this very MBP because I have found out that it still works if connected to the power supply but I will bring it to the service center as soon as possible! UPDATE: fixed problem at no cost!

East Of The Moon

Carlo Serafini — 2010-01-19T20:48:41+01:00

This is a follow-up to Breath of the Chameleon. As you can see, from the flow chart, I use a similar set-up. Ribbon (Doepfer R2M) and breath (Yamaha BC3) controllers make for a great way of playing a monophonic instrument (like the VL70m): the R2M generates note messages and the BC3 controls dynamics. The scale I am using is a Carlos Gamma tetrachord suggested by John H. ...The closest we get to an octave is 1193 cents (instead of 1200). ...I investigated which note layout to use for both Chameleon and ribbon controller to play it. It was clear from the start that using the same layout previously featured on Gamma Elegy and following pieces did not make sense: using only 7 out of 34 notes of Carlos Gamma’s compressed octave made playing it very awkward: Note names on the example above refer to my Gamma Chameleon Notation but besides that, you can see it is impracticable to play it with one hand. So, for both controllers I chose a “diatonic” note layout: ...

Breath of the Chameleon

Carlo Serafini — 2010-01-12T09:08:32+01:00

I have recently experimented playing my old Yamaha VL70m sound module with the Opal Chameleon. Being a “breath controller freak” I also own a Yamaha BC3 headset and a breath controller processor by Midi Solutions. The idea is to use BC3 and Chameleon to expressively play the VL70m retuned to Carlos Gamma. ...The outputs of both my controllers get merged by a midi interface (the BC3 is connected to the the Midi Solutions device that is programmed to send out continuous controller #2 on channel 1 with value range 00-127, this is done sending a sysex message to it). Midi notes are remapped by “Disarray”, a small utility by X.J.Scott (see Gamma Elegy for more informations about it) and sent to Logic Pro. From Logic Pro they are sent to the LMSO input to be retuned. LMSO then sends them back to Logic Pro thru IAC (Inter Application Communication protocol) ... I recorded my “performance” both as video and midi data. Then, with Logic Pro, I turned the midi track into audio and replaced the original audio of the video recorder’s microphones with Logic Pro’s track.

Chameleon and me - a short video

Carlo Serafini — 2009-12-23T21:04:39+01:00

First attempt at filming myself playing the Opal Chameleon in real time. My compositions usually start this way, as frozen (and edited) improvisations. So this could be considered the first step of an unborn piece. Actually I have used the same guitar sound featured on previous tunes like Glorious Guitars and Glorious 60 (thanks to Spectrasonics Omnisphere). The many articulations you hear are all dependent on midi velocity (no aftertouch or pedals are involved). The note layout is the same I introduced with Gamma Elegy.

Glorious 60

Carlo Serafini — 2009-12-17T20:47:12+01:00

Listen to Glorious 60 (my submission to the 2010 60x60 project) (a slighty longer version, called Glorious61, is featured on my Gammatar album) When I read Prent Rodger’s announcement of the 2010 60x60 project (on the MakeMicroMusic list) I decided, on the spur of the moment, I wanted to partecipate. In a matter of 2 hours I downloaded the submission form, filled it in, composed a song and uploaded the zipped file! I play my Opal Chameleon with a Spectrasonics Omnisphere’s guitar sound and a percussion loop provided by Logic Pro. The Chameleon’s note layout I use is the same of my most recent songs (Gamma Monk, Chameleons in the sun etc.) I have noticed that having used the same note layout for a month now I start feeling acquainted with some finger movements that give sonic results I can predict but it is still a far cry from knowing exactly what I am doing! UPDATE: My song has been selected for the 60X60 2010 UnTwelve Mix

Gamma Monk and The Semitones

Carlo Serafini — 2009-12-10T10:13:24+01:00

One night I had a dream of myself playing B*** M*** by T********* M*** on my Opal Chameleon tuned to Carlos Gamma with an Omnisphere’s guitar sound. ...It’s an easy one for a jazz buff even though my song does not follow neither the structure nor the mood of the original one. Trying to replicate a chromatic melody written in 12tET on the Chameleon, set to Carlos Gamma, is not easy. The note layout I have used is the same of my previous pieces (Gamma Elegy, Glorious Guitars and Chameleons in the sun). The Gamma note closest to a tempered semitone equals 3 Gamma steps (35.09 * 3 = 105.27 cents) and, as you can see on the following picture, it takes a large leap to play such a small interval either going east (red arrow) or west (blue arrow). Moving horizontally (with this layout) you go plus or minus 2 Gamma steps (each step) and moving northwest or southeast plus or minus 9 Gamma steps (again, each step) so, in order to find the note that is 3 steps away, if you move east you go 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 - 9 = 3 ...Using Carlos Gamma with an Halberstadt keyboard it would be the opposite: the following picture shows the first 4 chords of the theme as they appear with standard notation. See if you can play them on a regular keyboard with your right hand while playing the arpeggio with the left! I played that in real time on my Chameleon: LEFT hand playing chords, RIGHT hand playing the arpeggio! That is possible playing a two-dimensional keyboard where pitches go from low to high moving either way: left/right or up/down.

Chameleons in the sun

Carlo Serafini — 2009-12-01T00:01:00+01:00

(animated gif built with permission by theshapeofmusic.com) Listen to Chameleons In The Sun (a new version of Chameleons In The Sun is featured on my Gammatar album) One more song using Carlos Gamma tuning system and employing the same note layout for my Opal Chameleon of my previous two songs (Glorious Guitars and Gamma Elegy). Again I use Omnisphere’s guitar sounds. This time there is also a groovy drum beat and some sound effects. I was listening to what I thought was the finished piece (without sound effects) when I opened the home page of www.theshapeofmusic.com and heard my song plus the sound effects of that page and thought it sounded cool so I started looking for samples and found a couple I liked. I mixed them with my previous tracks adding some slow panning. Headphones recommended!

Tetrachordal Gamma

Carlo Serafini — 2009-11-24T21:37:07+01:00

Gamma stands for Carlos Gamma, the tuning system devised by Wendy Carlos dividing a perfect fifth (ratio 3:2) into 20 equal steps. While studying Carlos Gamma on my Opal Chameleon I noticed patterns of perfect fourths and whole tones that reminded me of tetrachords. Gamma has good approximations of both intervals: 491.36 cents (instead of 498.04) for the perfect fourth and 210.58 cents (instead of 203.91) for the whole tone. ...Keys 42, 84, 126 and 168 appear as blue, but they could also be yellow (those numbers are all multiples of both 6 and 7). Imagine to create tetrachords, as with octave based tuning systems and from two of those create a 7 steps scale: Let’s try this one: 0, 6, 9, 14 (a minor tetrachord) then repeat the same a fifth above (20, 26, 29, 34). ...Since going north (using this note layout) we move up a fifth, the 2 tetrachords share the same 4 columns! ...A major tetrachord could be 0, 6, 11, 14 and the second one 20, 26, 31, 34. ...Gamma divides its framework interval into 20 equal steps, a Chameleon has 21 columns so, after 20 columns we are back to the starting point! ...The answer could be that exploring such tuning systems is not easy and I think it is good to start from something we are familiar with, plus, we could create melodic scales that sound familiar and "eerie" at the same time.

Gamma Elegy

Carlo Serafini — 2009-11-13T00:09:07+01:00

This piece is the second one I have composed using my Opal Chameleon (the first one is Chameleon In The Dark). What’s new is that I have used a completely different note layout for it thanks to an application created by X.J.Scott. ...This is an example of the layout for this piece: from C1 to G#2 there are 20 midi steps, from C1 to B1 11 midi steps and from C1 to A1 9 midi steps. ...The tuning system for this piece is again Carlos Gamma that divides a ratio 3:2 into 20 equal steps. So, with this layout, playing C1 and G#2 I get an interval with ratio 3:2 (a perfect fifth, in traditional terms). ...A step in Carlos Gamma is 35.098 cents, so 11 steps equal 386.078 cents (ratio 5:4 is 386.313) so we can say it equals a major third. ...35.098*9 = 315.882 cents (ratio 6:5 is 315.641) is very close to a minor third. So, the chord C1/B1/G#2 is a major triad and the chord C1/A1/G#2 is a minor chord. ...Direction south/north equals a chain of intervals with ratio 3:2, direction southwest/northeast equals a chain of intervals with ratio 5:4 and direction southeast/northwest equals a chain of intervals with ratio 6:5 (notice that going west/east we get steps of 35.098*2=70.196 cents). ...This piece features Spectrasonics Omnisphere and a mysterious singer adding the necessary “dash of imperfection” to an otherwise very

Adagio Gamma Revisited

Carlo Serafini — 2009-10-21T11:25:03+02:00

I chose my “Adagio Gamma” to see how I could apply this notation to create a score for the Chameleon. The piece was originally played on a standard piano keyboard with a mode of Carlos Gamma (12 out of 20 steps in order to nicely accomodate a 3:2 interval into a piano octave). ...The interval C - Ab is actually a narrow fourth (491.4 cents), Ab - C is a wide step (210.6 cents), C - C is a perfecth fifth! The same 8 bars in full Carlos Gamma tuning system look like this: The first note is a C-2 that Logic Pro shows with a double flat (a bug, I guess). ...Once I had the completed score for Carlos Gamma recorded with Logic Pro I proceeded to create a version for the Chameleon using my “Gamma Chameleon Notation” (again, one note at a time. Actually I used the Logic Pro command “ select all following with same pitch” to move all notes of same pitch at once). ...In order to memorize note positions I attached stickers to the Chameleon following a couple of patterns I had devised a few months ago: ...In the meantime someone MUCH more knowledgeable than me sent me a little application called “Remapper” that will probably revolutionize my approach to isomorphic keyboards. ...The audio is 44.1 kHz, 16 bit, mono and the video is recorded at 10 frames per second to keep the file relatively small (17.6 Mb).

Gamma Chameleon Notation

Carlo Serafini — 2009-10-12T11:09:36+02:00

This is my first attempt at solving the notation problem playing with Carlos Gamma tuning system and Opal Chameleon isomorphic keyboard. The idea is to use the usual staff, treble and bass clefs, note symbols and note names assigning them different meanings. ...I propose calling it “diapente”, the Greek name for this interval (I already discarded other names like “quintave” or “pentave” ) but if others have suggestions let me know. ...I propose to use note names A, B, C, D, E, F and G so that a diapente starts and ends with the same note name. Each note name describes three steps using accidentals (flat, natural and sharp) except A (no Ab). So there are 6 (notes) X 3 (accidentals) =18 + 2 (A and A#) = 20 steps. ...I propose to call A the lowest note of a zone and go up from there. The position of notes on the staff is that of usual treble and bass clefs. ...Note transposition will not affect note placement on the staff, so, if necessary, it will be part of auxiliary informations to the score. ...As far as I know there is no sequencer able to assign different midi meaning to enharmonic notes like A# and Bb (and with this system they are 35.1 cents apart).

Chameleons in the dark

Carlo Serafini — 2009-10-07T11:33:42+02:00

This piece is the first one I have composed playing my Opal Chameleon, arrived only one week ago. ...The Chameleon is an awesome midi controller hand built in the UK by Peter Davies (inventor and responsible for hardware design and construction) and Jim Wills (electronics engineer and software writer). ...All the previous ones using it (Adagio Gamma, Moonlight Gamma serenade, Gammalan, Bix in the sky with Gamma, An Irishman in Guangdong) were played on an Halberstadt keyboard and a mode of this tuning system. ...Probably using it with 12tET would be easier than with Carlos Gamma but the only reason to get it, for me, was to use it for xenharmonic music, so, I will have to deal with it! ...Instead of having the 3 zones replicate exactly the same midi note assignment I decided to transpose zone 2 by +20 and zone 3 by +40 midi notes. ... This piece is based on a single pattern with variations and they would not fit into the span of a single zone if it wasn’t for my transposition trick (the range of midi notes used for this piece is around 90). ...This picture helps me visualising the spatial distribution of notes on the keyboard but, of course, does not tell me much about interval relationships. Fortunately for me LMSO has an invaluable feature called Dyadometer (quote from the manual: “A Dyad is an interval of two notes played at once, just as a triad is a chord containing three notes. The Dyadometer shows you the actual pitch in cents or ratios of what you are hearing and it tracks it as you play” ) so, I can always check out intervals while I am playing! ...Once I saved my performance I “orchestrated” it with Spectrasonics Omnisphere using the same tonal palette previously featured on “Underwater Dreaming”.

Quasiton

Carlo Serafini — 2009-09-26T20:37:28+02:00

This song is part of my personal farewell celebration of the Halberstadt keyboard (see also Will I ever bid farewell to Halberstadt? ...I had recorded a free improvisation on my sequencer that was, afterward, edited up to the smallest detail, in order to give it a “recognizable” structure. You can notice (after a few listen) that there are sections that get repeated throughout the piece, small musical sentences that are being played on different registers for “call and response” effects and other compositional devices. ...I had wanted to do a newer version of this song for a long time and now the time has come. On my website you can find another version of this song I had created, a few years ago, with Propellerhead Reason to partecipate to a contest for which it was required to create a song only with Reason sounds (no audio samples were allowed). Fortunately I still have that version because I can not find the original one anymore (I searched backup CDs and old floppy disks to no avail). ...I chose a long sample that was at 310 bpm, imported it into Apple Loops Utility in order to make it “time-stretchable”. The original file by Peter Erskine has been chopped up to fit the requirements of this piece. ... I increased the tempo to 290 bpm to make the digital artifacts of time stretching less evident and also because it gives an impracticable and fictional character to the piece. ...I have always been proud of this song (only my Muse knows how I could come up with a free improvisation like this one!).

An Irishman in Guangdong

Carlo Serafini — 2009-09-23T15:27:09+02:00

Listen to An Irishman in Guangdong This song features the same gamelan sound and tuning system of my previous piece called “Gammalan”. The patch was created with Spectrasonics Omnisphere and Carlos Gamma tuning system. The title alludes to the hybrid character of the song. The melodic line reminds me of traditional Irish music but played on exotically tuned Asian instruments as if an Irish expatriate was trying to recreate the music of his/her native country with instruments at hand in some far away area of the world. Fortunately, our expatriate had, at least, access to some native percussion instruments, a bodhrán! Being neither Irish nor Chinese, you will excuse me if my recreation of traditional folk music does not sound as you expect! That’s how it sounds in my head. Retrospectively, I can say that the melodic material is mostly pentatonic that could easily recreated using the usual Western tuning system but, of course, without the ethnic flavour available here. ...Only to create an assonance between my title and that of a famous song by Sting (or was it Godley & Creme?): “An Englishman in New York”!

Bix in the sky with Gamma

Carlo Serafini — 2009-09-13T00:04:16+02:00

The 2 melodic instruments are both resynthesized versions of wind instruments (originally a trombone and a soprano sax) processed with Camel Audio Alchemy Partials of both sounds have been inharmonically retuned to comply to the requirements of Carlos Gamma tuning system (see “Spectral Mappings for Carlos Gamma” for more explanations) that is featured throughout this song Everything started with me improvising with my ribbon controller and the trombone sound over a drum loop (that I afterward discarted and substituted with the “cool jazz” one once the song took shape). ...Part of the melody came to me while walking Jerry, my Golden Retriever, at night. So, once back home I had to rapidly turn on my MacBook Pro and Halberstadt keyboard to save it for posterity I am using the same mode of Carlos Gamma devised by X.J.Scott I have used sofar for all my Gamma pieces (Gammalan, Adagio Gamma, Moonlight Gamma Serenade) while waiting for my Opal isomorphic keyboard to arrive The song title has something to do with Bix Beiderbecke (I mangled the soprano sax sample enough to become what, to me, sounds like a cornet that immediately reminded me of him). It also has something to do with a Beatles song for inexplicable reasons This “cornet” sound is the first one I have created with additive synthesis that has struck my fantasy as “potentially” functional ...This tune sounds, to me, like the soundtrack of some TV series of the 50’s (incidentally the first episode of the Perry Mason series was aired only few days after I was born)

MetaSynth5 experiments

Carlo Serafini — 2009-08-30T21:45:03+02:00

I recently upgraded to MetaSynth 5. I had already used MS4 for some projects: ...Brain The Size Of The Universe Summer 2006 in 11 Limit ...For these projects I had used MS4 to create some effects but the pieces were always assembled with my main sequencer: Apple’s Logic. You can read reviews about MS5 all over the internet so I will only add it is true MetaSynth is a "paradigm-smashing composition environment" (suffice it to say it does not have anything to do with MIDI). The 2 examples I include here are experiments trying to create complete compositions only with MS5 ( and the tools provided by MetaEssentials) ...In order to add some vividness to this page I am also posting some pictures I painted as audio filters to use with MS5! MS5 is a world apart from anything else on this planet. I love it!

It's all Wendy Carlos' fault...

Carlo Serafini — 2009-08-21T09:32:36+02:00

What's the reason of my fascination with Carlos Gamma tuning system? I have finally traced the reasons of it and they all lead to the discoverer of this tuning system! Actually there is a single document responsible for it: Wendy Carlos' 1986 article "Tuning: At The Crossroads" (the article originally appeared on Computer Music Journal in 1987 but I found it inside the "Beauty in the Beast" Enhanced CD, plus, it gets being mentioned almost every time someone talks about “exotic” tunings). In that article she wrote a few things that really stuck in my mind: She presents Gamma as: "the essentially perfect (!) Gamma (on the classical just curve)", then says that "Gamma really requires a "Multiphonic" Generalized Keyboard, like most >24 divisions" and finally that "Gamma (9 steps to the minor third - 11 steps to the major third - 20 steps to the perfect fifth) is slightly smoother than Alpha and Beta (two other scales devised by her), having no palpable difference from just tuning in harmonies." Isn't that enough for someone in a xenharmonic state of mind? And so here I am, having already composed 3 pieces using a mode of Carlos Gamma on a regular Halberstadt keyboard (Gammalan, Adagio Gamma and Moonlight Gamma Serenade) and about to get a "multiphonic generalized keyboard" for which I have already started devising some specific keyboard layout for it. Looking forward to write the sequel of this article!!!

Spectral Mappings for CARLOS GAMMA

Carlo Serafini — 2009-08-15T19:42:29+02:00

“Spectral mapping is a transformation from a “source” spectrum to a “destination” spectrum...it can be used to create inharmonic instruments that retain much of the tonal quality of familiar (harmonic) instruments”. ...For example, when working with nonoctave scales, harmonic instruments usually sound more “out-of-spectrum” than “out-of-tune” meaning that “partials of the sound interfere when played at certain intervals”. Carlos Gamma tuning system divides an interval/ratio 3/2 (701.955 cents) into 20 equal steps of 35.09777 cents each and does not repeat at the octave. Wendy Carlos calls it “essentially perfect (on the classical just curve)” meaning that it approximates very well many just intervals, except the octave! So, probably, it’s one of the nonoctave tuning systems that works better with harmonic instruments as I have already demonstrated with my previous experiments (Adagio Gamma and Moonlight Gamma Serenade) nonetheless this process can be tried for it too. ...The following one is one of the many possible spectral mappings for Carlos Gamma. The frequency ratios of the 16 partials were chosen in order to minimize the “perceptual change” of the “destination” spectrum compared to an harmonic “source” spectrum (the frequency of the 2nd partial is close to 2 times the frequency of the fundamental, the 3rd to 3 times it et cetera). ...Another method for devising “in-spectrum” partials and increase the consonance of some desirable interval is to start from such interval, for example Carlos Gamma’s repeat ratio 3/2 (1.02048015365^20=1.5) and find functional powers of it to use as “destination” partials of a sound. ...If this article intrigues you but sounds like Greek the best way to shed some light on this matter is to read “Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale” by Wiliam A. Sethares, “Tuning: At The Crossroads” by Wendy Carlos and start experimenting with LMSO and IntervalCalc by X.J.Scott.

RibboMan And The Maniacs

Carlo Serafini — 2009-07-26T11:00:05+02:00

This is another example of using a ribbon controller to play midi notes. This is a song featuring only hardware synths, actually it involves the use of a single synth: a Nord/Clavia G2. It is the first time I use only one synth for a song but, of course, the G2 has many aces up its sleeve! As you can see from the diagram, the G2 is triggered from both its keyboard and a Doepfer R2M ribbon controller. In both cases midi data are first sent to LMSO, for retuning them and then to the sound engine. The featured tuning system is "Septimal Heaven" by X.J.Scott, the same I used in 2007 for another piece called "Septimal Klezmer". The long solo was recorded in a single take, then cut and interspersed between short refrain sections to add variety to an otherwise static “ribbon extravaganza”. The “voco-bass” plus “voco-choir” accompaniment is doubled at times with a G2 brassy patch to add timbral variety. The “wild” ribbon solo has not been edited to preserve what I think is its fresheness. It’s far from being perfectly tuned and/or rhythmically correct but I like it as it is because it sounds “true”, not “doctored”.

If partials are inharmonic

Carlo Serafini — 2009-07-22T22:00:47+02:00

"Each profile definition requires a pair of files with identical base names and different extensions: the profile corresponding to a knob value of 0% has the extension .csv, while the profile corresponding to a knob value of 100% has the extension .csv2." (csv stands for "comma-separated values"). I created 2 files of this kind (boggling.csv/csv2), as you can see from the picture below: The grayish one on the left simply tells Alchemy to use the usual harmonic relationship among partials, the one on the right is an arbitrary one I chose to make sure that it sounded different from the first one. ...The nature of this offset depends on the setting chosen in the Pitch pop-up menu directly below the knob". ...That's what I have done while playing an arpeggio based on the simplest harmonic progression of Western music: I IV V I. ...Look at the knob on the bottom right side: as the Pitch knob moves from 0% toward 100% the familiar progression gets increasingly out of tune and vice versa. ..."William Sethares (2004) wrote that just intonation and the western equal tempered scale derive from the harmonic spectra/timbre of most western instruments. Similarly the specific inharmonic timbre of Thai metallophones would produce the seven-tone near-equal temperament they do indeed employ. The five-note sometimes near-equal tempered slendro scale provides the most consonance in the combination of the inharmonic spectra of Balinese metallophones". As a researcher of alternative tuning systems (to 12tET) I think the road to follow for their advancement is the creation of new classes of instruments capable of playing them in a consonant way.

Soprano RibbonSax

Carlo Serafini — 2009-07-13T23:16:47+02:00

Listen to Soprano RibbonSax Soprano RibbonSax is another experiment using the Doepfer R2M ribbon controller (see other ones here). The soprano sax (Logic’s EXS24) plays an heptatonic subset of 53EDO (steps 0, 5, 17, 22, 31, 36, 44, 53) based on Maqam Hijaz, an Arabic scale. This song shows 2 slightly different settings of the R2M differing only for the amount of pitch bend allowed by it. First, a narrower amount, then a wider one. Each section (with different settings) lasts a minute. The piano drone is played by the Nord Stage 88 Classic Revision C (with its internal effects) and the talking drum samples are simply audio loops. The setting is similar to the one used for R2M and CC#1: midi data generated by R2M are sent from Logic Pro to LMSO, retuned, and sent back to Logic. The soprano sax is heavily and dynamically effected (see included picture).

R2M and CC#1

Carlo Serafini — 2009-07-09T21:22:44+02:00

How to create timbral variety with CC#1 using a R2M as note generator. This tutorial shows my setup playing a microtonal scale with a Doepfer R2M ribbon controller and Logic's EXS24 sampler. The R2M is connected to port 4 of my midi interface As you can see midi data coming from the R2M (using a generic GM Device 1 name) are sent to LMSO input to retune them. Midi data from LMSO are sent to LMSO IAC1 back to Logic and assigned to play a monophonic instance of EXS24 virtual sampler. The problem of using the R2M to generate midi notes is that it can not transmit midi velocity (it always sends midi velocity 127) limiting its usefulness as an alternate controller but I figured out a way to circumvent this problem. The R2M can send 2 simultaneous midi data. If the position sensor is used for midi notes (with or without pitch bend), the pressure sensor can be assigned to a variety of midi signals. I chose to assign the second one to continuous controller #1 (modulation wheel) and to control filter cutoff frequency of the EXS24 instrument with it. So, pressing on the ribbon controller I open up the filter by a maximum amount of 20 per cent (the value you see is negative but it is inverted).

Studio Pictures

Carlo Serafini — 2009-07-06T21:56:20+02:00

Seraph Sound Studios - July 2009 (click on the thumbnails to see bigger pictures) These are a few pictures taken today to show my home studio. You can see it is very compact and ergonomic! The latest addition is the ribbon controller on top of the NS88. The headset microphone on the G2 is the one I use for the vocoder!

Moonlight Gamma Serenade

Carlo Serafini — 2009-07-01T01:39:11+02:00

This is the third piece I compose using the same mode of Carlos Gamma after Adagio Gamma (see it for explanations about this tuning system and the related mode I use) and Gammalan. This piece is written for strings and uses the same Omnisphere timbre I already used for Adagio Gamma. This time I have added a movie of the scrolling score to show what is going on (the score is simply a working version of it not meant to look nice on paper). The audio of the movie is 44.1 kHz, 16bit, mono and the video is recorded at 10 frames per second to keep the file relatively small (32.9 Mb). The score only makes sense if you think that IT DOES NOT SHOW THE ACTUAL PITCHES BEING PLAYED, so, for example if you look at the first bar of the image below (bottom staff, bass clef), the interval between C1 and C2 is actually a perfect fifth and the interval between C2 and Ab2 is almost a perfect fourth (491.4 cents), so the interval between C1 and Ab2 is almost an octave (1193.3 cents) and I consider it as such. Throughout the piece you hear "octave doublings" that all sound "perfectly flat" for this reason. Carlos Gamma is a non-octave tuning system after all! ...The bridge starting at bar 85 is a fifth above the key of the theme. ...The last repetition of the initial theme, starting at bar 149, has been modified to create a final cadence (V - I). This tuning system is capable of so many poignant and evocative melodic/harmonic relationships that it certainly deserves further studies!

Ribbon Flute

Carlo Serafini — 2009-06-27T00:22:26+02:00

Listen to Ribbon Flute Today I have received a Doepfer R2M ribbon controller I ordered a few days ago. This is the first sample I recorded playing with it. Is'a bit crude but I am just posting it to let you know how much I am enjoying it. The ethnic flavor is enhanced by the microtonal tuning I am using!

Today I received 2 CDs...

Carlo Serafini — 2009-06-25T21:44:29+02:00

Today I found these 2 CDs in the mailbox. Both feature my musical contributions: One is Audiomachie / Logomachie by Vincent Bergeron where I “added some textures on #4 and #6 (like a wind of digital data).” The other one is the un.twelve 2009 compilation where I contributed one piece, thanks to Aaron Krister Johnson who proposed my participation. It’s a pleasure and an honor to get associated with these musical projects!

Will I ever bid farewell to Halberstadt?

Carlo Serafini — 2009-06-20T23:20:17+02:00

This blog entry refers to a previous one called “Goodbye Halberstadt” While waiting to start experimenting with alternative musical user interfaces I keep playing an Halberstadt keyboard. Listen to my piano interpretation of Gershwin’s “Someone to watch over me”. I am presenting this piano arrangement neither because I think it shows a novel approach to a famous song nor because I want to show off my skill as piano player but simply because I think it represents quite clearly who I am. This song and the others included on the “Halberstadt” collection show, in musical terms, one side of me. Hope you enjoy!

Tim's Flutes

Carlo Serafini — 2009-06-11T11:59:56+02:00

Listen to Tim's Flutes (in memory of Tim Conrardy) While auditioning Camel Audio Alchemy's sounds I stumbled upon this nice patch by Tim Conrardy. He recently passed away. I had exchanged a few email messages with him on the KVR forum and on Tim's Atari Midi World. He sounded like a nice guy so I decided to dedicate this little piece to him. It features only 3 instances of his low flute, each with slightly different settings. It also features the same tuning system used for my previous piece "Two At Once" (Wishnegradsky's Chromatic Neutral)

Two At Once

Carlo Serafini — 2009-06-01T16:12:49+02:00

Two At Once is simply a recording of myself at the piano improvising freely on a jazzy modal mood. Listening back to it it sounds as a mix of chromatic harmony and diatonic melody around a tonal center. All the other parts have been extracted from the original piano improvisation. The flute sound and the synthetic pad have then been retuned to a different tuning system. That's why the piece is titled "Two at once". The end result is a 12tET tune with a microtonal twist! You are free to guess which one is the other tuning system I use. ...Hint 2: it's a mode of 48tET!! ...Camel Audio Alchemy (2 instances: flute and synthetic pad) ...Logic's Ultrabeat (2 instances: drums and percussions)

Gammalan

Carlo Serafini — 2009-05-01T13:33:46+02:00

Listen to Gammalan Gammalan, as the title implies, is a composition based on Carlos Gamma tuning system (the same I used for Adagio Gamma) using a gamelan inspired virtual orchestra. The sound sources are Spectrasonics Omnisphere and Logic Pro 8 Ultrabeat. An interesting feature of Omnisphere is its stack mode where it is possible to set up velocity activated layers of sounds adding variety to an otherwise static timbre. A very CPU intensive feature but worth it!

Adagio Gamma

Carlo Serafini — 2009-04-19T11:13:48+02:00

This piece is called Adagio Gamma because it is a slow piece using Carlos Gamma tuning system. Actually this piece is based on a dodecatonic mode of Carlos Gamma devised by X.J.Scott. It means that the piece uses 12 of the available 20 equal divisions of a just perfect fifth following the pattern: 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2. This arrangement looks good on a standard piano keyboard because an octave span equals an interval of a just perfect fifth with steps of 35.098 and 70.196 cents. ...I started out with a single melody that gets repeated a few times transposed by 12 midi steps, that in this case means up or down a just perfect fifth! ..."Gamma is also slightly smoother than Alpha or Beta, having no palpable difference from Just tuning in harmonies, which is saying a lot. You really have to go further, up to 53-step E.T., to find another nearly perfect equal division, yet Gamma is noticeably freer of beats than even that venerable tuning. ... You guessed it, it's not symmetrical about the octave, and so was excluded a priori from everybody's search." Gamma is a nonoctave scale: its repeat ratio is a just perfect fifth, not an octave. ...I plan to compose more music using Gamma once I will get the right tool to play it....

Let's get our hands dirty with JND!

Carlo Serafini — 2009-04-03T23:27:52+02:00

This is the third installment (and last, for the time being) of this series of blog entries relative to tuning systems (the previous two were about Pythagorean commas and wolf intervals). JND stands for Just Noticeable Difference, a concept that can be applied to any kind of measurement. ...I am neither a scientist nor a physiologist so, what I can do is only trying to figure out what is the smallest pitch interval detectable by my ears (and your ears if you are reading this) through some simple experiments. I stated, on the first of these three articles, that “ JND (is) set at around 5 cents, and can be perceived only under very special circumstances as a slow "beating" between the 2 frequencies, depending on many different factors such as timbre, loudness, register and duration”. ...Each example starts with a steady bass note, then we hear a second voice starting 100 cents (a tempered semitone) above it and moving down 5 cents at a time until both voices play the same pitch (unison). On the first example both voices are played by the same “harmonium” sound, on the second one the descending line is played by a “metallophone”. Do the different timbres of the second example make any difference on the pitch discrimination of the intervals? ...The perception of pitch variations does not depend only on the factors stated above but also on the context (melodic, harmonic) where these variations appear. Whatever the results of these simple examples it is important to remember that even very small pitch variations, seemingly not relevant and unnoticeable, can make a big difference (as I stated on the first of these three articles). (I recorded the audio of these 2 short movies as uncompressed 16 bit mono files because any compression would deteriorate the quality of the examples)

Spirals and Wolves

Carlo Serafini — 2009-04-01T09:36:30+02:00

Because doing so we have 3 white notes on each side of the chain before encountering black notes (I refer to the black and white notes of a piano keyboard) ...Traditionally the idea has always been to give tuning priority to keys based on white notes so, starting on [D] we make sure that those fifths close to the starting point will be justly tuned and if we have to make some adjustments, those will appear on seldom used ones (on black keys). We have already seen that if we keep stacking justly tuned perfect fifths and we want to fit them inside one octave, after 11 of them, the 12th will not match the starting point (by one Pythagorean comma): a tempered fifth measures 700 cents, a just one 701.955 cents. If we multiply the difference between the 2 fifths times 12 (as the notes of a chromatic scale) we get: 1.955*12=23.46 (the size of a Pythagorean comma). So the 12th fifth (in order to fit within an octave) will have to be: ...This flat fifth is often called a “wolf fifth” (because it reminds of the howling of a wolf). ...We move along the above mentioned chain of justly tuned perfect fifths (and relative inversions, just perfect fourths, 498.045 cents). ...because it is the inversion of the wolf fifth (521.505 + 678.495 = 1200 cents = 1 octave!) ...Same progression but with double notes (simultaneous justly tuned perfect fourths and fifths except for the wolf fifth G#-Eb, that should be called diminished sixth) ...Same progression but lower inversion, with double notes (simultaneous justly tuned perfect fourths and fifths except for the wolf fourth Eb-G#)

The Spiral of Fifths

Carlo Serafini — 2009-03-27T08:28:41+01:00

I am preparing for an upcoming lecture, at NYU in Florence, about the "Evolution of Tuning Systems", so, I am trying to figure out a way to demonstrate some tuning techniques in a comprehensible and "entertaining" manner. I am convinced nothing beats a good tutorial video and this is an example introducing the Pythagorean tuning system and the, so called, spiral of fifths. If the only way to build intervals is stacking perfect fifths, as in the Pythagorean system, this is what happens: ...This "micro" interval is below what is generally considered the threshold of JND (just noticeable difference) set at around 5 cents, and can be perceived only under very special circumstances as a slow "beating" between the 2 frequencies, depending on many different factors such as timbre, loudness, register and duration. Many would conclude that such a small interval is not relevant and unnoticeable but this experiment shows the opposite because small and "insignificant" differences quickly add up to major ones such as the famous "Pythagorean comma". The circle of fifths, that all music students are required to learn (maybe), is "a geometrical representation of relationships" among the 12 notes of equal temperament system, but what happens when we try the same with "just" fifths? Every consecutive fifth introduces a difference of 1.955 cents and after 12 of them we do not get back to our starting point (as in equal temperament) but to a pitch that is 23.46 cents higher than that (this small interval is called Pythagorean comma) and clearly noticeable! This is why we talk about a spiral of fifths, because, given a starting point (usually called root or fundamental note), pitches populate a ever expanding world of notes that get further and further away from its center (a mind boggling problem that has fascinated music theorists, musicians and instrument builders for thousands of years). ...We start on C and move along the spiral of justly tuned perfect fifths until we get to B#, that in equal temperament is enharmonically the same of C but not here. It is easy to hear the difference between B# and C (B# is 23.46 cents sharper than C).

Apple loops, Logic Pro 8 and MOTU 828MK3

Carlo Serafini — 2009-02-13T20:33:07+01:00

how to preview Apple loops with Logic Pro 8 and a MOTU 828 MK3 As far as I know the preview of Apple loops with Logic Pro 8 and a MOTU 828 MK3 is automatically sent to outputs 1 and 2 of this audio interface. The problem is that its main outputs are seen by Logic as outputs 9 and 10 where I have connected my audio monitors. So, how to preview them? I solved the problem this way: I connected outputs 1 and 2 to an audio patch bay and from there I can send the signals to a couple of free inputs of my audio interface. It is a convoluted solution but it works. If someone knows of a better solution let me know (see forum). UPDATE: I sold it and got an Apogee Ensemble whose integration with Apple computers is much better!

Underwater Dreaming

Carlo Serafini — 2009-02-01T19:11:19+01:00

Listen to Underwater Dreaming Underwater Dreaming started out as an experiment while browsing the new sounds of Spectrasonics Omnisphere 1.0.3 update. I created an 8 patches "multi" following the idea that the title for the upcoming song would be "Wrongdoings in the Dark" (don't ask me why). So I chose some mysterious sound/noise but I ended up with something completely different from what I had originally thought, so the title of the piece changed to "Watery Dreams" and then to the final one. Omnisphere is the only sound source for this piece. It is basically an improvisation in C minor (or sea minor, if you will). I recorded it in sections, switching from one channel to the other, making sure not to use more than 4 sounds simultaneously to avoid choking the CPU. I am amazed my MacBook Pro could handle everything in real time. There is only one instance of the "multi" with recordings divided by midi channel. After assembling the recordings I adjusted their levels and a few notes but basically what you hear is what I did at first.

Neutral Steel

Carlo Serafini — 2009-01-25T17:42:37+01:00

Listen to Neutral Steel Neutral Steel is a song for lap steel guitar and drums. It reminds me of the style of Ry Cooder or Bill Frisell but with a twist: the tuning of the guitar is based on the Wyshnegradsky's scale with neutral thirds (a neutral third is an interval that is half way between a tempered minor third, 300 cents, and tempered major third, 400 cents). Joel Mandelbaum talks extensively about him on his "Multiple Division of the Octave and the Tonal resources of 19-tone Temperament" (page 148 and following ones). I had already used this scale for the "Wyshnegradsky's neutral vocoder" song. Wyshnegradsky's heptatonic scale is based on 24 EDO (the equal division of the octave into 24 steps with steps of 100 and 150 cents). My version is a dodecatonic mode of 48EDO (with steps of 75, 100 and 150 cents). It uses steps number 0, 4, 8, 11, 14, 20, 24, 28, 31, 34, 38, 42 and 48 of the 48 available units (25 cents each).

88 Jingle Bells

Carlo Serafini — 2008-12-20T21:52:19+01:00

Listen to 88 Jingle Bells I have arranged this version of Jingle Bells in 88cET just in time for the Holidays! It uses the same choir sound and tuning of my previous piece '88 Bulgarians' I have also attached the score as a .pdf file. Remember that it makes sense only if you consider that this piece is written in 88cET (equal division of the perfect fifth into 8 equal parts). Happy Xenharmonic Season's Greetings!

Carlos Glass 1

Carlo Serafini — 2008-12-11T10:41:53+01:00

It means live modulation changes during performance transposing the anchor to the pitch and key of a note in the original scale. The scale used for this piece is the so called Carlos Harmonic (1/1, 17/16, 9/8, 19/16, 5/4, 21/16, 11/8, 3/2, 13/8, 27/16, 7/4, 15/8). The scale is some sort of Just Intonation scale so it is not symmetrical and that means that once you start shifting anchor note you get all kinds of unusual intervals. ...Watch the above movie: from bar 2 to bar 14 and from bar 22 to the end, I play the same C major arpeggio but what we hear is something else depending on the selected anchor note that is visible on the lowest staff (the bass notes, played by the left hand, are there simply to accentuate the 'whirling' effect). If I were an organ player maybe I could manage to play everything in real time, using a pedalboard to modulate, but I am not. ...(click on the image to watch the movie at high quality or click here to see the video of the scrolling score on YouTube) Watch the above movie looking at the scrolling score and LMSO IAC1 box, you will see that (having Dynamic modulation enabled, see below) once a note is played on the selected range, that one is used to modulate the anchor note. Notes are sent to and played by 4 monophonic instances of EXS24 (Logic Pro's sampler). ...I use 'alias' objects to keep the original ones on the 'mixer' page (see below). ...(this short movie is mono, to hear dynamic panning listen to the .mp3 file)

88 Bulgarians

Carlo Serafini — 2008-12-04T11:20:19+01:00

Listen to 88 Bulgarians While fooling around with Spectrasonics Omnisphere I stumbled on this choir sound that I tweaked a bit. It reminded me of those famous recordings of the 'Bulgarian State Radio and Television Female Vocal Choir'. Anyway, I don't really know why I decided to try out 88cET tuning (equal division of the perfect fifth into 8 equal parts) with this sound but all of a sudden I was catapulted on some imaginary Eastern Europe country surrounded by a female choir, a fascinating prospect! So I started composing for it and this is the result. Hope you enjoy! The included scrolling score makes sense only if you consider that it is played by a retuned softsynth. As you can see I did not quantize anything nor I bothered cleaning up the score. I kept the quality of the movie quite low to make a smaller file. Listen to the audio file for better quality.

Goodbye Halberstadt

Carlo Serafini — 2008-11-01T22:32:00+01:00

The reason to present this collection of tunes is to show my skill as piano player and arranger in the environment of 12 tone equal tempered (12tET) tuning system using an "Halberstadt keyboard". ...Sometimes using a bit of quantization (always trying to preserve a human feeling), sometimes playing with a click but without quantization, sometimes playing "rubato", sometimes adding a few notes I had missed or deleting some wrong ones, speeding up or slowing down the tempo and, in general, using all the techniques available to a seasoned MIDI engineer. ...Of course, on this web site it is possible to catch many other facets of my musical personality but I consider this one a very intimate one. ...My performance is far from memorable but excellent for a "nonprofessional" piano player like myself (if someone asks me which instrument I play I reluctantly reply: "the piano" and then add: "...keyboards, computers et cetera"). Nonetheless, being a "Halberstadt keyboard player" is a big part of my own identity, of my self-image (I think I have invested more time in playing/practicing the piano than in any other single activity in my entire life). ...He wasn't classically trained but was a good teacher and I learned a lot (after a few years he asked me to teach him some of those tricky jazz voicings I had learned by myself!). ...I started questioning the use of the Halberstadt music interface many years later, when I began studying tuning systems other than the ubiquitous 12tET. A soon as I started experimenting with less or more than 12 notes per "repeat ratio" (being it an octave or any other interval), the usual layout of 7 white and 5 black keys started looking more as an inconvenience than a help. I am writing all this because I am about to jump to a new musical dimension and before leaving the beaten path I wanted to stop a moment to take a snapshot of my musical being before this technological "leap of faith". I am not saying that this coming endeavor will force me to quit playing the piano but I am trying to detach myself from this image of "piano player" that I created a long time ago, a reassuring but exhausting and incomplete image of myself.

X.J.Scott and CC #90

Carlo Serafini — 2008-09-29T14:28:14+02:00

"The Tuning Latch controller can be set to sustain or other pedal controllers. Tuning latch enables you to tune notes in real time using your ear. This is the same idea as being able to move the frets on an instrument during play, which is a technique used in many ethnic musics. ...When you press and release the pedal chosen (the release point is the point where things happen), the current tuning of all sounding notes that have been changed with pitch bend is latched as the current pitch which is used in the tuning." (from LMSO's user's manual). I was trying it out with my main controller, a Clavia Nord Stage 88. This keyboard has 2 pedal inputs hardwired to continuous controller #64 (sustain) and #90 (usually undefined but assigned to "rotor speed" by the manufacturer). I was wondering if I could use CC #90 for LMSO's Tuning Latch Controller function but it was not supported by LMSO. CC #64 to #69 are the official MIDI pedal controllers and those are the available options supported by LMSO. ...He added CC #90 among the available pedals, on the following update. ...This is the kind of support usually customers can only dream of!

MoonSuite

Carlo Serafini — 2008-10-01T14:53:25+02:00

"Moonsuite" is an experiment using an "empirical" tuning I made up while studying LMSO's new tuning latch function. “Tuning latch enables you to tune notes in real time using your ear. This is the same idea as being able to move the frets on an instrument during play, which is a technique used in many ethnic musics.” (from LMSO's user's manual). I created it going through a circle of fifths by ear without caring much about being close to a 3/2 ratio (the fact that LMSO "octave-reduces" intervals is way cool) . I ended up with 12 pitches within an octave that do not follow any possible theory. ...0., 71.825, 169.67, 293.563, 422.097, 530.203, 572.019, 689.753, 763.106, 857.565, 1021.418, 1096.835 ...71.825, 97.845, 123.893, 128.534, 108.106, 41.816, 117.734, 73.353, 94.459, 163.853, 75.417, 103.165 I think all these irregularities give a more natural and organic sound to electronic instruments. ...All of them have a similar structure: a lead sound, a pad sound and some background noise. ...The 3 pieces have then been chained together crossfading from one to the other.

7EDO Dance

Carlo Serafini — 2008-09-01T15:40:13+02:00

Listen to 7EDO Dance 7EDO Dance is a simple study of "7 steps Equal Division of the Octave" tuning system (each step is 171.429 cents ). After spending some time with 7EDO it started sounding so "normal" that I had to go back to 12tET to make sure it was really different! For the difference between EDO and tET see here. I tried simulating a chord progression "IV V I" and I think it works even if those steps are 514 and 686 cents from the root note (the interval from 1/1 of the just fourth, 4/3, is 498c and of the just fifth, 3/2, is 702c), so they are symmetrically 16 cents away from the just interval (+16c, -16c). Another interesting feature of 7EDO is that an octave (1200c) fits in a fifth (7 keys) of a regular keyboard so octaves are a fifth apart. It may sounds silly but that's how it is. The sound source is Propellerhead Reason using an NN-XT program retuned with LMSO. The sequencing environment is provided by Apple's Logic Pro.

Qablitum

Carlo Serafini — 2008-08-01T19:16:44+02:00

Qablitum is a piece inspired by listening to this lecture of February 1971 by Lou Harrison: The Tuning of the Babylonian Harp, see also this thread at nonoctave.com I chose a scale called "Qablitum" (filed under Ancient Mesopotamian Scales, from LMSO scale library) an heptatonic scale, repeating at the octave, whose interval ratios from the fundamental note are: 1/1,256/243,32/27,4/3,1024/729,128/81,16/9 (a mode of the more common scale: 1/1,9/8,81/64,4/3,3/2,27/16,16/9). Each large step is 9/8 and each small one is 256/243, a pythagorean scale more than 1000 years older than Pythagoras himself!!!. He simply brought the Babylonian knowledge to the Greek world. I set up an 8 note polyphonic instrument (using an harp sound) with Reason and started improvising, recording everything with Logic Pro (thru ReWire). I extracted a melody, from what I had previously played, assigning it to an ethnic violin sound (from MOTU Ethno library). I edited and doubled, it with a Clavia G2 pad sound. ...The picture of the Sumerian tablet, on the top of this page, comes from Marcelle Duchesne-Guillemin's "The Discovery of Mesopotamian Music". Lou Harrison mentions her studies as the source of his talk.

Carlo for President

Carlo Serafini — 2008-07-05T16:10:53+02:00

Seriously, I am running for President of the U.S.A. You don't believe me? Watch the movie clicking on the image!

Alphadesert

Carlo Serafini — 2008-07-01T22:21:35+02:00

Alphadesert is again a piece featuring Carlos Alpha, a non-octave scale based on the division of a perfect fifth into 9 equal parts (each step 77.995 cents). As Wendy Carlos says: "If you try to play through a one octave scale of Alpha, you'd find there are 4 steps to the minor third, 5 steps to the major third, and 9 steps to the perfect (no kidding) fifth, but, or course, no octave" ...1) dividing a minor third (315.641 cents) into 4 equal steps each one measures 78.911 cents 2) dividing a major third (386.313 cents) into 5 equal steps each one measures 77.263 cents 3) dividing a perfect fifth (701.955 cents) into 9 equal steps each one measures 77.995 cents. The version I use (3/2 divided by 9) has remarkably good minor thirds (311.98 cents) and major thirds (389.975 cents) but a pseudo-octave of only 1169.925 cents (very far from an octave of 1200 cents). To sum it up I can report what my wife said after listening to it: "it's more listenable than many other pieces you have composed lately. ...X.J.Scott provides one of the infinite number of timbres that could be devised starting from a given tuning. The idea is to load the spectrally matched waveform (saved as an AIFF tuned to A440) into a sampler, adjust the root to A if necessary, and then set up filters and envelopes to make an analog style sound with the waveform. ..."I'll caution that this whole matching timbres and tunings thing is a fairly subtle thing like the difference between 12 and meantone, something most people wouldn't notice.

Alphapanther

Carlo Serafini — 2008-06-01T22:44:21+02:00

Listen to Alphapanther Alphapanther is an electronic rendition of the famous "Pink Panther Theme" by Henry Mancini. It uses a non-octave scale based on the division of a perfect fifth into 9 equal parts (each step 77.995 cents). This scale is usually attributed to Wendy Carlos and named Carlos Alpha. One day I was experimenting with this scale when I played fifths chromatically and it reminded me of the beginning of the Pink Panther Theme. Years ago I had done an arrangement of this theme using Reason, so I thought to recreate it using Carlos Alpha instead of the usual equal temperament. The first time the theme is played using Carlos Alpha only, the second time with Carlos Alpha and 12tET simultaneously (each on one side of the stereo field).

Hijaz the Charmer

Carlo Serafini — 2008-05-01T14:05:06+02:00

Listen to Hijaz the Charmer The picture above shows the 12 steps of the scale (starting on D) used for my piece Hijaz the Charmer. This scale is a mode of 53 EDO using steps 0, 3, 5, 17, 20, 22, 26, 31, 34, 36, 44, 48, 53. It is based on the traditional Arabic mode called Maqam Hijaz. This picture shows Reason set up for microtonal music. The song was played in real time and recorded with Logic Pro 8. Its output sent to LMSO input, retuned and sent to Reason thru LMSO IAC1. Reason is receiving on channels 1 to 8 and each channel assigned to a monophonic instance of NN-XT. The percussion track goes straight from Logic to Reason because it does not need to be retuned. ...This video is also featured on the Propellerhead YouTube channel on the Playlist: Made with Reason.

Switching from iWeb to RapidWeaver

Carlo Serafini — 2008-04-11T22:16:48+02:00

I have been using iWeb for a couple of years to maintain my site and a few others. I had had a web site for a long time maintained by a friend of mine. Maybe someone remembers it (Flash animation etc.) but I was not able to change anything without his help, so, in the summer of 2006, in the process of changing web hosting provider I decided to start from scratch and do everything myself. Thanks to iWeb I succeeded in putting together a web site. A simple but functional one. When, recently, I started thinking about adding a blog to my web site I discovered that a few important functions were not available without publishing to mac.com. It makes sense, in a way, because iWeb and mac.com are both Apple products but it turned me off and decided to rebuild the site once more. I have cut and pasted a lot of contents from one to the other but still, it took me a good amount of time to transfer all the things I decided to keep from the old one. The site you are looking at is a simple one because I do not have the necessary skills to customize RW's themes and because I prefer to spend my time playing and composing music rather than programming, but, nevertheless, it looks "professional" to me. So I am an happy customer and hope you enjoy this site too!

Bohlen-Pierce minus 1

Carlo Serafini — 2008-04-01T11:42:25+02:00

This post refers to my song “Bohl-en Roll”, a piece based on a dodecatonic scale which repeats every 1901.955 cents (3/1 ratio). In order to fit a BP scale into an octave of a standard keyboard I chose to eliminate one of the usual 13 steps of it and I based this decision on the Bohlen-Pierce Scale Research Paper by Elaine Walker (the pattern of my scale is 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13). This arrangement makes it possible to play all but one of the “diatonic” modes presented on the above mentioned paper. The missing step is ratio 75/49 (736.93 cents) used only on the “Delta” mode. On my ET version the missing step is 731.521 cents. The top picture shows my pitch assignment arrangement for the octave C3 - C4. An octave span on a regular keyboard equals an octave plus a fifth (a twelfth) pitch-wise. The regular BP pitch assignment, on a standard keyboard, would be the one showed on the bottom picture. A twelfth would span 13 keys from C3 to C#4 making everything, in my opinion, much more difficult. My reasoning is that in 12tET tonal music very seldom all twelve available pitches are used, so that should “equally” apply to BP music.

Retuning Logic Videos

Carlo Serafini — 2008-03-31T10:25:21+02:00

(click on the images to see the movies) The top video shows the environment page of Logic Pro 8 configured for retuning incoming midi data thru LMSO. The data enters Logic’s midi input from port 5 of my midi interface (connected to my master keyboard), it is sent to LMSO input where it is retuned then sent back to Logic from LMSO IAC 1. The retuned data go to the channel splitter that sends data, on midi channels 1 and 2, connected to 2 monophonic instances of EXS24. The second video shows the same thing (I played twice, live, the same music fragment and with my left hand because I broke my right elbow!), but this time with LMSO in the foreground to see what is going on. So you can see the scale being used for this experiment, the same of Bohl-en Roll!

A Snow Airport and a Leopard

Carlo Serafini — 2008-03-30T10:06:55+02:00

I have had this Airport base for a few years and, since upgrading to Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard), the included Airport Utility has never recognize my base. I had tried whatever I could think of to no avail. At last I have tried googling stuff like "airport base Leopard" and finally have found the solution on this Apple forum. This brilliant guy came up with this smart suggestion for installing the old version of Airport Utility called Airport Admin Utility that recognizes my base so that I can administer it from my MacBookPro. As someone else says on that thread: "It's times like these I really love the internet. Thank you, Larry! ... ...on the other hand a snow leopard is a completely different story. UPDATE: I sold it and got an Aiport Extreme.

The positive side of bad things

Carlo Serafini — 2008-03-27T23:03:53+01:00

My accident of few days ago, when I broke my right elbow, reminded me of the teachings of Roberto Assagioli that I have studied for years. Look at this video, btw, the city showed on the movie is my hometown: Florence, Italy. Not being able to use my right arm (being right-handed) is not necessarily a bad thing, if temporarily. First it makes it easy to appreciate how nice is to have two fully functional arms and, second, forces me to think how things work normally and how I can overcome simple problems like washing my teeth, typing on a computer keyboard etc. more links: Roberto Assagioli Psychosynthesis

The day I broke my elbow

Carlo Serafini — 2008-03-12T22:48:05+01:00

Today I have fallen down some stairs hitting each of the 9 steps with my right elbow and have broken it (coronoid fracture of the ulna). I'll have to keep this plaster cast for 3 weeks (I'm typing with my left hand). It doesn’t hurt but it can be very itchy as you can see here: