source file: mills2.txt Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 14:42:50 -0800 From: "John H. Chalmers" From: mclaren Subject: Xenharmonics on a broken shoestring --- While it's easy to gripe about the lack of this or that sophisticated synthesis algorithm on today's MIDI synths, it's sobering to realize how far we've come. In many ways we live in the golden age of xenharmonics. A whole lot of dirt cheap fully retunable MIDI synthesizers are available used--and most of 'em for a pittance. For example, the prospective microtonalist can today grab a used TX81Z for about $250, or a used VFX for about $600. These are both excellent synthesizers. Add an antique DOS 286 machine, used, for another $200 or so, tack on a DOS sequencing program like Cakewalk or Texture, a cheap MIDI interface, and you can do an astounding amount of sophisticated microtonal composition. Move up to a Windows 386 machine (for about $100 more) and a program like Finale, and you've got the ability to score and perform compositions of a complexity unthinkable a few years ago. You can record xenharmonic scores that world-class ensembles would have had to practice for 6 months to perform! None of this was possible just 10 years ago. So much inexpensive high-quality equipment has washed up in the USED section of the classified ads today and in the backs of cheapo guitar shops that it's mind-boggling. A look at a 1986 issue of "Keyboard" puts the situation in focus--back then, analog MIDI synths were the state of the art. 2,000 note sequencers running on the Commodore 64 were considered "powerful." The only affordable sampler was the Mirage, and to detwelvulate *that*, you had to buy an alternative operating system from Dick Lord in New Hampshire. Recently, US Snail brought me the latest tapes by Warren Burt and Gary Morrison. While both of these composers have asked me not to review their work in public, they probably wouldn't mind my saying that their latest work is excellent. And in both cases what's especially impressive is how much they were able to do with modest resources. Gary Morrison, for instance, has an obsolete 68030-vintage Macintosh with a DAT machine, a two-track Sound Tools setup, and an Ensoniq ASR-10. Yet he's been able to simulate a very convincing orchestral wind and percussion ensemble. Warren Burt has an equally modest set-up. An "obsolete" 286 DOS laptop, a MIDI interface, a little A/D-D/A box that hooks into the computer's parallel port (cost $150, maximum stereo output rate 22.05 khz), the public-domain program US from the U of Illinois, a commercial DOS sample editor, the Buchla Lightning MIDI controller, a Proteus I, a Roland SCC-1 Sound Canvas sound card, and a couple of reverb and delay boxes, along with an obsolete 13-bit EPS sampler. (Still an *extremely* useful synth-- as I can testify, since I still use one myself!) Yet with this modest setup--which wouldn't even rate a sneer from a Keyboard or Electronic Musician reviewer--Warren manages to tease a kaleidoscope of interesting music. His latest work ranges from digital musique concrete, to algorithmic music which uses William Sethares' idea of matching partials to the microtonal tuning, to pastiches which employ public-domain algorithmic composition programs processing musical material from neoclassical composers in a 19-tone extension of serialism. This kind of fine work done with so-called "obsolete" MIDI equipment should tell us something important. In the end, you don't really need a DigiDesign TDM 48-track Power Mac system. You don't really need NeXTStep-486 running on an 80686 machine. You don't really need a monster 16-bit sampler with 64 or 128 megs or RAM. This kind of bleeding-edge technology is nice-- but it's not *necessary* to produce good microtonal music. In the end, what matters most is imagination and ingenuity. My own computer music never uses a sampling rate higher than 20 khz; and you can do a surprising amount with a 20 or 30 khz sampling rate on a 13-bit 1 megaword sampler like the EPS. Moreover, vintage synths like the 1986 TX81Z or the 1989 VFX have so many features that it's difficult to believe *anyone* has come close to exhausting their sonic potential, even though they've been in use for years and years. Beyond that, there remains the largely unexplored option of combining live acoustic home-built xenharmonic instruments with digital synths in live and recorded performances. For some reason, microtonalists have long faced off into oposing groups: the "acoustic only!" camp and the "digital only!" camp. But why not mix and match instruments of both kinds? Why not combine *both* sound-worlds? This is a direction we in the Southern California micorotnal group have been pursuing for years, and it has so far proven fruitful. Recently I finished building my own copy of a Harry Partch-style harmonic canon I. Essentially a monochord multiplied times 44, with movable bridges for each string, the instrument turned out to be much simpler to construct than my forebodings indicated. Best of all, it cost less than $100. Yet with a harmonic canon you can tune up all the tetrachords listed in John Chalmers magnum opus "Divisions of the Tetrachord"-- four or five at a time, simultaneously. Or you can tune up a single tetrachord with a variety of harmonizations. You can also get Partch's 29-note, 37-note, 39-note, 41-note and 43-note just scales, or 43-tone or 41-tone equal temperament. Not to mention multiple courses of strings with lesser divisions of the octave. The harmonic canon is an endlessly useful instrument--it sounds splendid, yet it's easy to maintain (run emory cloth along teh strings to get rid of rust once a week, and dust and oil the wood) and almost trivial to build. Building my own megalyra has proven even easier, and cost considerably less than $100. These instruments require no special carpentry skills--even a duffer like myself can cut and plane maple and pine planks, drill holes, and screw in 44 piano pins. Making a megalyra is literally no more complex than drilling 11 pairs of holes, sinking 11 pairs of piano pins, and winding tight 11 pairs of piano strings across a piezoelectric pickup. That's essentially all there is. (Hint: get used rusted piano pins from a piano repair shop. You can emory-cloth the rust off the pins, and they work just fine. The only real expense is the piezo pickup, the 11 piano strings, and the piano tuning hammer. Once again, rusted used piano pins work fine.) Anyone can build these simple xenharmonic instruments, yet the resulting music sounds impressive in live performance-- especially when combined with digital MIDI synths and/or playback of computer-generated soundfiles. When I see the latest issue of Computer Music Journal, I have to wonder: Why aren't these people talking about "more is less" in computer music? As Warren Burt has pointed out, in the age of downsizing, most of our incomes are dropping even more rapidly than the price of computer hardware--so getting the mostest out of the leastest is a matter of real concern. It's also a fun challenge. So every time that latest, greatest new synth beckons to me from the music shop window, a little voice in the back of head whispers: You still haven't used more than 1/10 of the capabilities of the equipment you've already got! Frankly, both Gary and Warren would do us a favor if they'd post more about getting "the mostest from the leastest." Like Ivor Darreg's, their work has produced impressive results with very modest resources, and we could all learn a thing or two from these fine composers. --mclaren Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sun, 4 Feb 1996 19:47 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id KAA23868; Sun, 4 Feb 1996 10:47:46 -0800 Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 10:47:46 -0800 Message-Id: <9602041045.aa27022@cyber.cyber.net> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu