Floating the Lower Hoh Take 5

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This version includes several mirror functions. Where earlier sections used predominantly the utonality triad 5/(4:5:6), which is a standard just minor chord in A, there are now complementary sections that use 10/(7:9:11), higher up the utonality diamond.

The overtone series can be thought of as overtones 4:5:6 making up a major chord, and higher up overtones 7:9:11 extending that out. The undertone series is the opposite of overtone series. Other mirror functions have the choice of notes to play proceed sequentially, then backwards.

The piece is scored for sine waves. This is the first time I haven't used orchestral samples in a piece. No more jokes about fake but accurate. The intonation is 53 tone equal divisions of the octave approximating just.

Source Code

Csound Score
Macro Preprocessor Source Code
Pascal Source code

Floating the Lower Hoh Take 2

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The lower reaches of the Hoh have dense vegetation on both sides of the river. This section gets upwards of 240 inches of rain a year. Every storm that hits the Northwest passes over this region, dropping moisture by the bucketful. Cool, damp, quiet, and relentlessly moving towards the ocean to start the cycle again.

Floating the Lower Hoh

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45 seconds into the work, we have some changes on the way.

Sines

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Tobiah wrote on the Csound mailing list a challenge to write a score for a very simple Csound orchestra file.

I have an idea for a brief informal contest. Given a simple,
one-oscillator orchestra, provide a score which produces the
most beautiful piece.

I offer an orchestra that I crafted for the purpose
of this event. One can make use of very limited
envelope an pan controls. Obviously, the craft will
be in the score generation program (although one is
welcome to hand edit her entry!).

If there is interest, I suggest a seven day window
for this challenge. Only the scores should be
submitted at first. We can look at source code
later. For large scores, a URL might be best. I can host
scores if you send them to me in an archive format.

Thanks,

Toby


sr = 44100
ksmps = 1
nchnls = 2

giSineFunc ftgen 1, 0, 65536, 10, 1

instr 1

;***** INIT SECTION *****
iDur init p3
iVol init p4
iStartPitch init p5
iEndPitch init p6

iAttack init p7
iDecay init iDur - iAttack

iPanStart init p8
iPanEnd init p9

;***** SYNTH SECTION *****
kEnv linseg 0, iAttack, iVol, iDecay, 0
kPitch expseg iStartPitch, iDur, iEndPitch
aSig oscili kEnv, kPitch, giSineFunc

kPan linseg iPanStart, iDur, iPanEnd

aLeft = aSig * kPan
aRight = aSig * (1 - kPan)

outs aLeft, aRight

endin

Never one to shirk a contest, I made some modifications to my Csound preprocessor to write the fields that his orchestra expects, and the results sounded kind of like all my other music made with my Csound preprocessor. The input to the preprocessor is here, and the Csound score is here. There are lots of debugging messages in the score as comments. When I've had more time to work on it, I'll remove them. I had to make one modification to the sine wave generator function. I replaced giSineFunc ftgen 1, 0, 65536, 10, 1 with an equivalent ftable entry f1 0 65536 10 1 .

My version of Csound is 4.19, which is many levels back from the current version. It doesn't support giSineFunc. But since I wrote the preprocessor in Turbo Pascal, which is still running today with a last touched date of May 2, 1989, I can't complain. Software currency is for losers.

Slow Dance #2

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There was an earlier Slow Dance that took two otonality triads and slid them in opposite directions, so I thought it would be useful to do the same with two utonality triads. The original took a chord of 8:10:12 and slid it up to 9:11:14, while sliding a 9:11:14 triad down to 8:10:12. This one takes the 12:(12,10,8) up to 12:(11,9,14) and visa versa. There is a point in the middle of the slide when a minor chord can be heard, midway between the two. The utonality triads are much less settled than the otonality ones.

Rafting the Middle Fork - Take 11

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It sometimes takes the guys a few tries before they get it right. And no, there really isn't a middle fork of the Hoh River in Washington. There's a south fork, but that doesn't sound right for a song title.

Rafting the Middle Fork

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This piece rapidly changes pace from fast to slow, alternative the finger piano, marmiba, and slide vibraphone parts from sixteenth notes to eighth notes, with several 3 against 4 against 6 against 8 rhythms. The tempo also shifts, very gradually, from one tempo to another, by about 30% up and down. It ends about 60% slower than it started.

The pitch also shifts. It starts in the key of A minor, but drops by one 53-TET step every 30-60 seconds. The shifts are difficult to perceive. It's as if you suddenly notice that you are not where you thought you were. Over the course of the ten minutes the tonality drops by 22 steps, to a fourth below A, ending at E.

The tonality is the utonality to the 15 limit. In ratios, they are 24/(16,20,24,14,15,18).

The vibraphone, marimba, and finger pianos play repetitive rhythmic patterns,
while the french horn, clarinet, and oboe play a descending melody, answered by a inverse melody later in the piece.

The overall theme is of descending a river, with fast and slow sections, some complex, some serene, but always moving downhill.

Sketch for Rafting the Middle Fork

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I've added a marimba part and modified the vibraphone a bit. More to come later.

Sketch for "Rafting"

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Just finger piano and vibraphone for now.

The Music of the Hoh River Valley - MP3 versions

I finished the CD for the RPM challenge on Sunday. Here are the pieces all in one place for those interested, in MP3 format. Liner notes here.

1. Approaching the Bergschrund at Night
2. Walking Down Blue Glacier
3. At the Terminus of the Blue
4. The Rocks of Glacier Creek
5. Elk Lake Dancing
6. Slow Dance

The Music of the Hoh River Valley - FLAC versions

I finished the CD for the RPM challenge on Sunday. Here are the pieces all in one place for those interested, in FLAC format. I'll only be able to keep these up for a short while because of the size. Liner notes here.

1. Approaching the Bergschrund at Night
2. Walking Down Blue Glacier
3. At the Terminus of the Blue
4. The Rocks of Glacier Creek
5. Elk Lake Dancing
6. Slow Dance
7. Elk Lake Dancing - take two

All the FLAC's can be downloaded by right mouse clicking and choosing "save as", or some such browser specific command. They all end in the extension of .FLA, so they may need to be renamed as .FLAC once they are downloaded.

Elk Lake Dancing

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This is the final piece I was able to finish for the RPM Challenge. Written for the same instruments as the others: clarinet, oboe, cello, finger piano, harp, marimba, vibraphone. I would have liked to include some Elk calls, but I ran out of time. The harmony is based on the otonolity to the 15 limit, modulating down a scale derived from the utonality series. It's the same set of changes as my 2002 piece Mirror Walk.

16:9
8:5
16:11
4:3
8:7
1:1
16:9

This is a descending scale, but the voicings from one chord to the next are done so that it sounds like it's going up, when it actually goes down.

The rhythm is based on dividing 30 beats into one of two general ways: either 5 6 beat quarter notes or 7 4 beat quarter notes and a 2 beat eighth note, with the latter quarter notes slower than the former. 5 * 6 = 30 and 7 * 4 + 2 = 30. It's kind of like a 3 against 4, except the 3 has a 5:4 feel to it, and the 4 has a lopsided samba feel.

Dancing around Elk Lake

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Trying out some material for a dance piece. This is just the mallet instruments for now. I'm finding ways to divide up 30 beats. More later.

Elk Lake is a small alpine lake above Glacier Creek, before it empties into the Hoh River, with a nice small campground.

The Rocks of Glacier Creek

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This is another take of this piece. It's scored for environmental sounds and a small ensemble of skilled microtonalists. The environmental sounds are recordings of a gentle waterfall and some birds typically found at the confluence of Glacier Creek and the Hoh River or thereabouts. The birds are the Hermit Thrush, the Black Throated Blue Warbler, the Stellar's Jay, the Hairy Woodpecker, the Pileated Woodpecker, and the Warbling Vireo.

The small ensemble of skilled microtonalists include clarinet, oboe, vibraphone, marimba, finger piano, cello, and harp. They are asked to accurately play the 53 TET scale, and also carefully slide up a set number of steps, for example, by 8 or 10 steps (approximating the ratios of 11:10 or 8:7 respectively). These guys are amazing in their flexibility and accuracy. I ask them to pick the chord inversion they want, and then slide up or down by a predetermined amount. My vibraphone player has perfected the art of bending his aluminum bars just the right amount to descend by a 6:7 (12 steps in 53-TET).

As always, this music is fake but accurate. Here is some of the coding for the sliding chords. The following is put through my Csound preprocessor to generate the necessary Csound code.

.slid-min3-u-a135 t+0&gls11:10. t+14&gls10:9. t+17&gls8:7.
.slid-min3-u-a351 o-1t+14&gls10:9. t+17&gls8:7. t+22&gls11:10.
.slid-min3-u-a513 o-1t+31&gls8:7. t+22&gls11:10. t+14&gls10:9.
.slid-min3-d-a531 o+1t+31&gls8:9. t-17&gls10:11. t-14&gls6:7.
.slid-min3-d-a153 o+1t+0&gls6:7. t-22&gls8:9. t-17&gls10:11.
.slid-min3-d-a315 t+14&gls10:11. t-14&gls6:7. t-22&gls8:9.
.slid-min3-u-b247 t+7&gls11:10. t+15&gls9:8. t+19&gls7:6.
.slid-min3-u-b472 o-1t+22&gls9:8. t+19&gls7:6. t+19&gls11:10.
.slid-min3-u-b724 o-1t+41&gls7:6. t+19&gls11:10. t+15&gls9:8.
.slid-min3-d-b274 o+1t+7&gls10:11. t-19&gls7:8. t-19&gls9:10.
.slid-min3-d-b427 o+1t+22&gls9:10. t-15&gls10:11. t-19&gls7:8.
.slid-min3-d-b742 t+41&gls7:8. t-19&gls9:10. t-15&gls10:11.

To call the chord, I just have to write code for each instrument, like this:

.mari-16-min-1f &mari.&key.e16w0d0h17&slid-min3-d-a*.d16
.mari-16-min-1g &mari.&key.e16w0d0h17&slid-min3-d-b*.d16

Then I call it when I want it to play like this:

&mari-16-min-1*.

The asterisk is a "don't care" character. This way, I can create several different note strings and let the computer pick the one it wants him to play at any given moment. Notice that the -a chords are the utonality triad to the 5 limit, and the -b are the higher overtones to the 11 limit. The chord slides from one to the other.

The &gls11:10. variables invoke a Csound function table that slides a note up or down over its duration by a very specific amount and timing. I basically multiply a note by a table of 256 values from 1 to a number larger or smaller than 1. Here is the relevant Csound code for a function table that slides a note to which it is applied by an 8:7. 8 divided by 7 is 1.14285714.

;f# step start at 1, stay there for 48 of the 256 steps
; move to 1.14285714 over 128 steps
; stay there for 80 of the 256 steps.
f324 0 256 -7 1 48 1 128 1.14285714 80 1.14285714 ; 8:7 g23 up 10


The Rocks at Glacier Creek

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The water moves quickly as it descends from the higher elevations. It tends to form eddies where the rocks block the flow. The water swirls to fill the gaps. Later, the rocks fall away and the water flows unimpeded down the valley. Soon, the rocks pile up and slow the water again.

Rocks at Glacier Creek

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This one is in 9: 5/4 + 4/4. There is a later section that shifts to some other combinations. This is a sketch for now.

At the Terminus of the Blue - Take 2

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I was able to get the crew to come in early for one more take. We went out to the headwaters of Glacier Creek, where it moves down slope past a forest of high pines. Omar couldn't lug his tuba up this high, and the vibes player said no, but the clarinet, oboe, marimba, finger piano, and harp were included. Celebrate the otonality with triademonium to the 11 limit.

Note: I had to load a second copy due to a name conflict. Sorry!

At the Terminus of the Blue

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This is the first take of the day, and it's a keeper.

At the Terminus of the Blue - more sketches

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I'm trying to work out a contrasting theme, but I'm stuck on a chord that doesn't sound right. More later.

The picture at the right is from a slide show at Carlton College's Illustrated Guide to a Glacier.

Walking Down Blue Glacier

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I was able to convince the gang to stick around for a few more takes of the piece. Thanks to Omar the tuba player for helping me revoice the winds to lower octaves. We spent all day Sunday running new takes, but something seemed to get in the way with each one. Finally we were able to get a good run through on the 17th try Monday morning. This one includes clarinet, oboe, tuba, marimba, vibes, finger piano, harp, and cello, plus the opening notch filtered wind tunnel sound recorded at the NASA Ames Research Center. As always, fake but accurate is my motto. Blue Glacier starts near the top of Mount Olympus, and terminates into Glacier Creek, which eventually flows into the Hoh River.