Music

Here are some complete works illustrating several different tunings. These are big files, and all together, there's almost an hour of music here. Of course, these are copyright, so please don't post them elsewhere or sell them on street corners or put them on CDs for other people without written permission. You can download them and listen to them, and if you like them, you can point other people here. Unless you have enlightened neighbors, it might be best to listen to these with headphones.

Four Ballet Scenes. (24:40, 23MB) This piece is entirely in a 15-tone equal tuning. This yields a lot of very different melodic possibilities with some unusual chord structures as well. It is realized directly in the digital domain with a software synthesizer called Rhino (by BigTick), using my own patches. The percussion section consists mainly of sampled household objects. Each of the four movements is intended as a basis for abstract dance.

The Girl in the Cellophane Sarong. (10:02, 9.4MB) Some years ago I visited Bali, and since then have often used gongs and other metallic instruments. The outer two movements of this short work are for gongs and winds tuned in a Balinese scale of five tones, with occasional use of another two tones. The middle movement is for plucked strings and percussion, and tuned in a harmonic scale. (The harmonic scale is a form of just intonation, consisting of twelve tones which are all harmonics of a given root. This piece again is realized directly in the digital domain with Rhino.)

Cathedral Music. (21:42, 20.3MB) In the summer of 2003 during a rainy spell in California, I took a trip to a hot spring in the Sierra Foothills. It rained off and on the entire weekend. This piece was conceived in an afternoon spent sitting on a covered porch watching the clouds, the pine trees, and the damp fields of grass. In the distance, someone was chopping wood for a while. This piece again is realized with Rhino (by BigTick), to which has been added some reverberation to simulate a large space. The tuning of this work is again a harmonic scale. The third movement has a different root tone from the first two movements.

Morsel 3. (3:31, 3.3MB) This is one piece from a set of several short keyboard works. I re-tuned this in four different harmonic scales and put them back to back in one file as an illustration of the radical effect that tuning can have on a piece.

And then there's improvisational music, such as this jazz album by Six Guys from Saturn. It comes complete with a CD cover, so you can rip and enjoy, and even stick it on your shelf to fool your friends and neighbors into thinking that you're eclectic and sophisticated. Someday maybe I'll post their Renaissance album. Meanwhile, Beware the Ides of Jazz!

See also my Music page for other samples (not complete works).

[Click me home again Kathleen]