source file: mills2.txt Date: Sun, 1 Dec 1996 12:43:36 -0800 Subject: i sort of lurk From: Denis.Atadan@mvs.udel.edu happy thanksgiving guys, and i sort of lurk. i've written to this page a couple of times trying to get some information about various problems i've run into in microtonalland but i've never taken the time to introduce myself. I'm a composer. i studied at the peabody conservatory in baltimore in the 80's. previous to that i studied briefly with k. stockhausen in holland. i wrote mainly atonal music at this time using boulez and webern as theoretical models. before this i played alot of jazz and rock on guitar. i have recently been writing alot of songs in a more popular vein. it was back at peabody where i first found interest in 19-tone music. i read a fascinating dissertation my mayer joel mandelbaum. i forget what it was precisely called. i've got a copy of it somewhere still. in anycase, my first piece at school was a 19-tone piece for soprano and electronics. the school btw had this awesome old huge moog synthesizer. that baby was sweet! unfortunately much time passed before i could compose more 19-tone music because of financial restraints and lack of musical instruments. this was remedied by getting credit cards and cruising the internet where i found a cd by some dude that played 19-tone guitar in a rock style by the name of neil haverstick. well good ole neil turned me onto several guitar builders (john starret being one of them) and i then had a guitar and bass converted over to 19-tone et. i also play and compose on keyboards. i was absolutely delighted that john loffink, the senior hardware developer for kurzweil, logged on the other week. i own a kurzweil and for a kurzweil owner this loffink character is god. i mean this boy designs my instrument. and as far as i'm concerned kurzeils have got the best sound of any commercial synth on the market. i hope more people than i have personally corresponded with this gentleman as the microtonal world desperately needs more beautiful sounding instruments. sound is what it is all about in the end and heres a guy who can do us much good. please take advantage of his willingness to listen to us. getting back... i am now writing a fair amount of 19-tone music. i hope to put out a self produced cd sometime in the next 6 months. as far as the things i would like to see are 1) a velocity sensitive keyboard for 19-tones to the octave. 2) some recordings from fellow 19-tone composers. it would be nice if several of us could begin to trade our tapes. all this talk on this page is without a doubt vital for microtonalists but wouldn't a little bit of music be even nicer? 3) there is a 3rd thing i just can't remember what it is. in any case i feel the time is ripe for new tunings. i find alot of young musicians are very excited about the prospects of having more fretts on their guitars. and whether people in general know it or not i think the general populus is bored of 12tet. i do not say this to simply sound egalitarian. the regular guy is ready for this. i am almost sure. we need to keep on coming together and continue to present not our musical experiments but our most musical works. we need to take our culture at hand, embrace it and work within it. this in practical terms means taking those forms wich are musically popular and working with them in a fashion that will present microtonality palatably . let's not make the mistake that the "serious"composers of this century had of locking ourselves up in towers and writing with no others in mind than themselves. well, i'll stop here. thanks fellas, denis atadan 615 halstead rd. wilmington, de. 19803 Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Mon, 2 Dec 1996 01:33 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA13935; Mon, 2 Dec 1996 01:34:56 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA14050 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id QAA02167; Sun, 1 Dec 1996 16:34:54 -0800 Date: Sun, 1 Dec 1996 16:34:54 -0800 Message-Id: <9612020132.AA35515@luxor.latrobe.edu.au> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu