Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Amazing Grace - up & down

Today's post uses a Csound function table to make trills and slides. At any given time, the notes can either be played straight, trilled up to the target, from the target to the next note, slid up to the target, or down to the target note. This makes for some frantic movements at first. This is just a few measures of one chord, and there are 35 in Amazing Grace.

Here's the code for a trill up 16 steps in 72 EDO, which is a good approximation of a 7:6. The trill is 8 times up and down.
f 457 0 256 -7 1 16 1 0 1.1665290 16 1.1665290 0 1 16 1 0 1.1665290 16 1.1665290
0 1 16 1 0 1.16652904 16 1.16652904 0 1 16 1 0 1.16652904 16 1.16652904
0 1 16 1 0 1.16652904 16 1.16652904 0 1 16 1 0 1.16652904 16 1.16652904
0 1 16 1 0 1.16652904 16 1.16652904 0 1 16 1 0 1.16652904 16 1.16652904
; 7:6 156 up & down .trl7:6 g156

Graphically it looks like this:

Play it here: or download this linkSubscribe here: to this RSS feed

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Amazing Grace - slip sliding away

Today's entry has each not choosing to either slide to the next note or not, and the duration before the slide starts varies from 1/3 to 1/10th the duration of the note. For example, if I need to slide up 6 72 EDO steps, I code the following in csound:

lf 315 0 256 -6 1 218 1.0000000 12 1.0000000 12 1.0297315 12 1.0594631 1 1.0594631 1 1.0594631 ; 14 up 6 a
lf 363 0 256 -6 1 110 1.0000000 48 1.0000000 48 1.0297315 48 1.0594631 1 1.0594631 1 1.0594631 ; 14 up 6 c

This gives me one function table that rises fast, and another that's slower.
The fast one:

The slow one:

The preprocessor chooses either one, or one that doesn't slide at all.

Play it here: or download this linkSubscribe here: to this RSS feed

Wednesday, June 02, 2010

Amazing Grace - sketches for a transformation

This is a work in progress. Today's sketches use my microtonal slide piano. The chords can slide from a 7:9:11 to 4:5:6, in various inversions. Csound allows for any function table to control the pitch, so I used several that are similar to this one:



The Csound code looks like this:

f 471 0 129 -6 1 4 1 4 1 16 1.0400 16 1.0801 4 1.0676 4 1.0551 4 1.0676 4 1.0801 4
1.0676 4 1.0551 4 1.0676 4 1.0801 4 1.0676 4 1.0551 4 1.0676 4 1.0801 4 1.0676 4
1.0551 4 1.0676 4 1.0801 4 1.0676 4 1.0551 4 1.0676 4 1.0801 4 1.0676 4 1.0551


The function starts at 1 and rises to 1.0801, which is 8 steps in 72 EDO, approximately a 13:12. I have a few dozen of these for the most common intervals. It falls by a single 72 EDO step and goes back up for 8 cycles or so. I think it sounds like a guitar whammy bar.

I'm not sure what this has to do with Amazing Grace, except that the first chord of the song is a G major. Just like Amazing Grace!

Play it here: or download this linkSubscribe here: to this RSS feed