Products. Download mp3 page. Rojqoq.mp3 (audio/mpeg Object) WhenEverything.mp3 (audio/mpeg Object) ImmanentSphere.mp3 (audio/mpeg Object) Localanomaly.mp3 (audio/mpeg Object) Speculative Exomusicology. XENTONALITY. Every sound has an internal structure that determines its tone quality or timbre.
When the larger structure of the music (the musical scale) reflects this internal structure, then the timbre and the tuning are related in a fundamental way. Music made with such related timbres and tunings is called xentonal. You can find out more about how this works by clicking here, or you can check out my book Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale. My newest CD, Exomusicology is also available. XENTONALITY contains the following musical pieces, several of which are available for download in mp3 format - just follow the links... Ten Fingers 3:13 Demonstrates the kind of consonance effects achievable in 10-tet. Circle of Thirds 3:36 There is an interesting and beautiful chord pattern in 10-tet that is analogous to (but very different from) the traditional circle of fifths. Three Ears 4:19 Seventeen Strings 3:35 A sampled Celtic harp is transformed for compatibility with 17-tet.
Unlucky Flutes 3:49 Glass Lake 3:03. Table of Contents TTSS. By William A.
Sethares Here is the complete table of contents for Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale. Click for a quick rundown of the central ideas, here for a brief overview or here to read the first chapter. The book also includes a set of sound examples on CD. The Octave is Dead... Introducing a dissonant octave--almost any interval can be made consonant or dissonant by proper choice of timbre. A Challenge A Dissonance Meter New Perspectives Nonwestern Musics New Scales New Sounds New `Music Theories' The Science of Sound "Sound" as a physical phenomenon and "sound" as a perceptual phenomena are not the same thing. What is Sound? Sound on Sound All is clear when dealing with a single sine wave of reasonable amplitude and duration.
Pairs of Sine Waves Interference Beats Critical Band and JND Sensory Dissonance Counting Beats Ear vs. Musical Scales People have been organizing, codifying, and systematizing musical scales with numerological zeal since antiquity. Why Use Scales? TTSS prelude. Several years ago I purchased a musical synthesizer with an intriguing feature - each note of the keyboard could be assigned to any desired pitch.
This freedom to arbitrarily specify the tuning removed a constraint from my music that I had never noticed or questioned - playing in twelve tone equal temperament. (This is the way modern pianos are tuned. The seven white keys form the major scale and the five black keys fill in the missing tones so that the perceived distance between adjacent notes is (roughly) equal.) Suddenly, new musical worlds opened and I eagerly explored some of the possibilities: unequal divisions of the octave, n equal divisions, and even some tunings not based on the octave at all.
Interestingly, it was much easier to play in some tunings than in others. The more I experimented with alternative tunings, the more it appeared that certain kinds of scales sound good with some timbres and not with others. Relating Tuning and Timbre. This is the full text of the article (more or less) as it first appeared in Experimental Musical Instruments.
It was the catalyst for much of the work that resulted in Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale, and it contains links to computer programs that will make it easy for you to draw dissonance curves yourself. James Forrest has recently created a Java applet for interactive exploration of dissonance curves. Introduction If you've ever attempted to play music in weird tunings (where "weird" means anything other than 12 tone equal temperament), then you've probably noticed that certain timbres (or tones) sound good in some scales and not in others. 17 and 19 tone equal temperament are easy to play in, for instance, because many of the standard timbres in synthesizers sound fine in these tunings. I remember when I first played in 16 tone. Of course, this measure of consonance can also be applied to other (non-harmonic) timbres, and the succeeding sections show how to design timbres and scales. Tuning and Timbre. Java is NOT enabled for your browser.
Cannot run JSyn without Java! What it is: This applet contains a software based FM synthesizer, and in the first screen you can specify details of the sound that you will play. The spectrum of the sound is calculated, and this spectrum is used to draw the dissonance curve, which plots the amount of sensory dissonance as a function of the interval. The dissonance curve appears in an interactive window. How it works: Decide on parameters for FM Synthesis by entering them in the fields below. When you have finished entering in the parameters, hit submit and two windows will be launched. Click on the dissonance curve to hear the sound played at various intervals (indicated by numbers on the x axis).