Upsampling

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Upsampling is the deliberate munchinization of a sample. In this excerpt, I've upsampled the bent wire instrument and it sounds more like a steel drum.

Add the Balloon Drum Chorus

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This version adds the balloon drums and a very wet spring modified by a slow glissando, up or down or both. The drums are samples from a 4' long 4" sewer pipe with a balloon membrane. I take the sample up a few octaves, add five or six hits for every note at different octaves, separate the hits by a few milliseconds, and change the amplitude in different ways. The balloon drum is the only tuned instrument in the piece so far. I had to dump the oboe.

Oh boy the Oboe

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Need something very high for the melody. Not set on the Oboe, maybe a piccolo.

Squeaker

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Add the squeakers.

Down the well

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Increasing the audio location spread, the pitch climb, and the space between the notes.

Around in 13 steps

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13 beats to a measure that is. Rising each measure by the 53rd root of 2.

Spring at hand

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Samples of an instrument made from bent piano wire, plucked with the fingers, amplified with a hand wound guitar type pickup. Sounds a bit like a steel drum in this version.

Source Code for Csounders

For those who like to peer behind the curtain:

• Preprocessor Source Code: sing53.mac
• which creates the input to Csound: sing53.csd
• which is reprocessed by Csound to add crescendo and decrescendo effects: sing53.csd
• Finally, it is convolved by Csound with an impulse response file of Teatro Alcorcon in Madrid from Angelo Farina: convolv.csd
• Converted to MP3: version 1 slower version 2
  

Enjoy.

Whisper Song in 53 EDO - now 5.26% slower!

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Some of my friends at the Make Microtonal Music Yahoo Group have suggested that perhaps the piece was a bit too relentless. Today I slowed it down by the 53rd root of 2 times four, or 5.26%. Perhaps it's a bit easier to absorb. I'm not sure.

Whisper Song in 53 EDO

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I think this one is finished for now. This is a piece for Finger Piano, Bass Flute, Cello, and Dry Spring. The Dry Spring is an amplified percussion instrument I made back in the 1970's for live performance. All the sounds are made with Csound as a sample based synthesizer. Tuning is 53 tone to the octave equal divisions of octave (53-EDO)

The structure is kind of like a theme in C major, with a bridge in E minor, A minor, D minor, G minor. The E is a 5:4 above the C at 1:1, so a circle of fourths ends up on a G that is slightly flat. I solve that one by sliding up a step from 30 to 31. See the notes in Sagittal notation in the chart on the right. Each is moved around by the 53rd root of 2, the single step of 53 EDO, a ratio of 77:76. These steps are so small that it is hard to notice that the key has modulated by one, two, or three steps, and then back down.

One section at the end includes a longer bridge that includes the keys shown on the left. They start at kind of an A flat, and move up by fourths until they hit the G a 3:2 above the C at 1:1.

The finger piano samples are from an instrument I made in the 1970's also, when I was playing more live. It has a nice solid base and piano like middle, and harp like highs. By truncating the envelope, I can make it sound more like a Fender Jazz Bass with plastic strings. This envelope is shown below.

The end includes arpeggios of the finger piano with an envelope like the chart at the bottom.

Changing the volume levels

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There is an arpeggio melody that Flute, Finger Piano, and Cello play. Each instrument can choose how loud to play each three note portion of the melody. It lets the melody float from one to another.

A Short Round About

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Up and down and around about.

Round and Round

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The circle of fourths starts with G flat, and ends with G
14 36 05 27 49 18 40 09 31

Repeatability variations

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The first 30 seconds have repeatability set high: 18 out of 32 for the finger piano, and flute. Then in the middle I set it low: 2 out of 32 for three measures. Then it's back to 18 for the last 30 seconds.

Drift

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This one is about testing the crescendo and decrescendo technique, and also drifting up by the 53rd root of 2 (one step in 53 tone equal temperament). Actual from 0, to 1, to 2, to 1, back to 0 for each measure. So three steps.

Arpeggios in Opposite Directions

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I changed the finger piano envelope to something like that chart, and then fed each note of some opposite direction arpeggios through it.

More Variations in the Variability

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The piece offers each part a variety of measures to choose from. Sometimes I push one of the instruments to keep choosing the same measure, sometimes to try very hard not to choose the same one. Or it can sequence through them in a series. Variability is set for each instrument to a number from 0 (never pick the same thing again) to 32 (always pick the same thing again). The higher the number, the more likely it will pick the same measure twice in a row. In this section I vary the variability a bit.

Simplify the Repetitions

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Fixed an octave misplacement in the finger piano arpeggio

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The bridge

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At the end of the bridge, we hear G, then a 53rd tone step up, then another, and back down again. I can't even hear the change.