72 equal temperament in old-school MIDI

I've been composing my music the same way I did when I started writing piano pieces in the mid-90s, using a cheap old scorewriter that allows pitch bends.

I started out using basic 12-tone tuning, then experimented with quarter tones (for non-piano instruments, of course), then spent years trying to figure out what tuning system I wanted to use (I was stuck on 53-equal for a while).

Then, after discovering miracle temperament, and the wonders of 72 equal temperament, and the glaring fact that 12 × 6 = 72, I decided to go with that. With a typical orchestral work, using 16 or more channels (I can load multiple instances of ARIA Engine for Garritan if I need more), I insert in-line pitch bends when needed. It's not perfect, since the pitch bends do affect release and reverb, but it gets the job done, and I can play it all back the way I want it recorded.

Also, ARIA uses Scala tuning files for tuning individual pitches, e.g. if you want all Es, Bs and F-sharps to be 50 cents flat, or you want quarter-comma meantone or Werckmeister well-temperament, and so on.

I haven't been entirely consistent on notation for 72 equal. If I want exact pitches specified, then I use a full system of regular accidentals, a de facto standard quarter tone notation, and arrows for morion (16.67 cent) adjustments:

Note: arrows alone can be used; these adjust pitch without canceling an existing natural, sharp or flat.

Also, I don't use the same notation as Maneri-Sims. I base mine on Tartini-Couper, and for a while, I called it Tartini-Couper-Bartók (TCB, which, of course, also stands for something else).

I also have a simplified system, which uses only the quarter tone symbols, and the regular accidentals with arrows for sixth tones (for example, the flat symbol with an arrow up is a third tone or 66.67 cents flat; a natural with an arrow up is 33.33 cents sharp). Most of the time, I just need to mark semitones, quarter tones and third tones.

For the harmonic series, with the fundamental on C, the seventh harmonic is a B two-thirds-tone flat, the eleventh is an F quarter-tone sharp, and the thirteenth is an A third-tone flat.

If the default pitch bend range of 2 semitones is used, microtuning would be 683 units for a twelfth-tone (1 morion), 1365 for a sixth-tone (2 moria) and 2048 for a quarter-tone (3 moria), and so on Naturally, I needed to have these numbers memorized.

Ultimately though, the main reason I'd rather composer in 72 tones per octave instead of 12, is the same reason you'd rather see an image in 16,777,216 colors instead of 256.

(Another reason I use 72: the ANS synthesizer, and Edward Artemiev.)

The Legend of Muhammad Lee (Symphony No. 3)

"May you live in interesting times." --a reputed Chinese curse, which probably isn't real

Years ago, I decided to write a story about a person with the most common first and last name, an "everyman", set in part historical fiction, part fantasy/sci-fi, part philosophical novel. Another influence is classic novel Journey to the West (西游记 Xī Yóu Jì).

A short summary of the story follows.

Sometime during the Tang Dynasty in China (618-907), in the old capital of Chang'an (now called Xi'an), a man named Lee (李, Lǐ, meaning "plum") was born. He lived an unremarkable but virtuous life as a civil servant, husband and father.

For many years, he had an envious rival who hated him for some reason. He secretly sought dark magical powers with the plan of ruining Lee. He would eventually succeed.

When Lee was forty years old, his rival, named Wang (王 Wáng, "king"), put a curse on Lee. It was an ironic curse: he would be unable to die, either by disease, old age or violence, and never rest in peace. He would also gain knowledge of all things, but also suffer profound sadness and despair because of it. He would wander the world, forced to witness history in all its brutality.

Wang also murdered Lee's wife and children, and set it up so that Lee had committed the crime himself. Lee would be forced to flee China and wander in the Gobi for centuries. Not long after the incident, in 907, the Tang Dynasty fell and China was divided.

Sometime around the year 1200, a few years before Genghis Khan began to build his vast empire, Lee had a dream of a great ruler of a far away nation. It was Harun al-Rashid, the Abbasid caliph. He was told that he would need to go to Baghdad and settle there.

He would gain even greater wisdom through his studies at the House of Wisdom, living in a peaceful and prosperous city. That all ended in 1258, as Hulagu Khan and his forces destroyed the library and sacked the city. Before then, Lee, who had been following Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, became a Muslim and took the name Muhammad. He would fight, to no avail, in defense of his adopted home city.

(I chose the name because either Lee or Wang is the most common surname in the world, and Muhammad is the most common given name.)

After the conquest of Iraq, Lee fled to the city of Konya and Anatolia (now Turkey) and met a poet and mystic named Jalal al-Din Rumi. The two became friends and traveled together, once to Damascus, and Lee learned the teachings of Sufism. He believed that the Three Teachings he followed before, and the monotheistic faith of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, were all facets of the same truth, seeing all as one as God is one. He also learned, through another dream, that he would be allowed to rest in peace, but not until after the second coming of Christ, whom he would meet along with the Mahdi.

He remained with Rumi in the Mevlevi community until his death in 1273. Lee would continue his travels through Asia along the Silk Road. One day, in modern-day Kazakhstan, he met a man from Venice, another adventurer, named Marco Polo. They traveled together for a time, sharing what they learned. He also may have fought in the Crusades, though he hated war; he had witnessed enough already.

In the 14th century, he witnessed the rise of a new empire: that of the Seljuk Turks. A new empire, of the Ottomans, replaced the Seljuks, and in 1453, Constantiople was conquered. Lee would soon settle in the city now known as Istanbul.

In 1536, the Turks became allies with another great nation to the west: France. Lee would travel through Europe. He witnessed wars with other states, and the invasions of Vienna. He witnessed the rise of the West, and the revoltuions of the 18th and 19th centuries.

He learned of a young and distant nation: America. He was told in another dream that he was to go there. After traveling to India and Southeast Asia, he crossed the Pacific and settled in San Francisco in 1849. It was the beginning of the Gold Rush. He witnessed the greed and decadence associated with it. Meanwhile, he worked and lived among the laborers on the Transcontinental Railroad. (He was still physically forty years old.)

During his life in the United States, California became a state in 1850, the Civil War was fought and won by the Union, and vast industrial and technological advances were made.

He had renounced war, but would support the effort against the Japanese after learning what was done to Nanjing in 1937-38. After bearing decades of anti-Chinese discrimination, he finally became an American citizen soon in 1945, a few months after the end of World War II.

Also during his time in America, he fell in love for the first time after losing his wife over a thousand years before. They never married, however. He kept his curse a secret from all, including his beloved.

Though he would continue to work and travel throughout the world, it would be years before he would finally return to China in the early 21st century, when his company sent him to Beijing. He learned that his old rival Wang had also become immortal, and a very powerful wizard (a necromancer), who had planned on conquering China and the world. He was soon to face his enemy.

(Lee also wrote a diary, in many volumes, in his own language: a mixture of languages, mostly of Middle Chinese and Arabic.)

What I do with my life

This is an intro to microtonal/xenharmonic music.

The only problem I have with this video is that it makes no mention of the maqam music of the Arab world, Turkey, the Caucasus, Central Asia etc. Nor does it mention Charles Ives and his quarter tone piano pieces. (Or my use of 72 equal temperament.)

But it does bring up Indonesian gamelan and Indian Carnatic music.

Bonne anniversaire!

Born on this day in 1803: French composer Hector Berlioz.

He, of course, is best known for his revolutionary Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14. (I chose to use French titles in most of the movements of my still-unfinished First Symphony in his honor.)

He also wrote an important work on orchestration (en français). I still need to study this, as well as Rimsky-Korsakov's.

Japanese and "Sino-English"

The Japanese language calls itself 日本語 nihongo. The Chinese characters (漢字 kanji) each mean "sun root language", thus "Rising-Sun [Nation] Language". (The Tang-era Middle Chinese pronunciation of the characters is something like *nyit-pón-ngyú. In modern Mandarin, it is rìběnyǔ.)

Japanese itself, however, is not related to Chinese. Its family affiliation is unknown, and may be an isolate (unless the Okinawan languages are considered separate, then there would be a Japonic language family), but some linguists have argued it is related to Korean, and others claim both are Altaic, and thus distantly related to Mongolian and the Turkic languages. It does have a similar grammar to these, having a subject-object-verb word order, agglutinative typology with suffixes and possibly remnants of vowel harmony. However, genetic relation is established through regular sound correspondences in cognates, and few have been found, especially in comparison to Indo-European languages.

The words of Chinese origin, usually written using kanji, are called Sino-Japanese. Most kanji have two pronunciations, called 音読み on'yomi and 訓読み kun'yomi, meaning "sound reading" and "meaning reading" respectively. The on'yomi is the reading derived from Middle Chinese, but conforming to Japanese phonetics (tones are lost, as Japanese is non-tonal). The kun'yomi is the native Japanese word. An example is the word for "sword", 刀. In on'yomi, it is called tō, from MC *tau. In kun'yomi, it is the well-known name for the "sword", katana. In isolation, kun'yomi are generally used; in compounds, on'yomi, e.g. 日本刀 nihontō "Japanese sword".

(Korean too contains words of Chinese origin, but Chinese characters, called hanja in that language, are no longer commonly used. The phonetic hangul alphabet is generally used instead. Japanese uses two syllabries for phonetic writing when needed, called kana: hiragana for native words and suffixes; katakana for foreign words and onomatopoeia. Vietnamese, which too has many words of Chinese origin, once used Chinese characters, called chữ nôm, but now exclusively uses a Latin-based alphabet.)

Chinese words began to be inherited into Japanese because of the influence of Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism on the island nation. (This also resulted in Shintoism, the originally shamanistic indigenous faith, becoming syncretic.) A similar phenomenon is the inclusion of Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin words in European languages, due to Christianity. However, English, Spanish, French, German and Russian do not use Hebrew or Greek letters to write Biblical words (though both Latin and Cyrillic are alphabets derived from Greek).

To get a better idea, imagine if many words, and word roots, used Chinese characters. For example, Chinese could be written "漢ese", and either pronounced "Chinese" or "Hanese". The word for "car" (automobile) in Japanese is 自動車 jidōsha (literally "self-moving cart"); in Sino-English, it could be pronounced "jidungcha" or "automobile" (or just "car").

And this leads to my idea of using Chinese characters with English (or any given language) as a "shorthand" in communications using a limited number of characters, such as Twitter with its 140-character limit.

This is actually related to the story of my planned Third Symphony, only it is about a Chinese person, whose native language is 9th century (Tang Dynasty) Middle Chinese, but after being cursed with immortality and forced to wander the world, his language gradually adopted words and even grammar from diverse languages until his return to China in the 21st century.

Some notes on orchestration

I'm reading Rimsky-Korsakov's Principles of Orchestration again. (Russian original, PDF, 2 parts) I've gotten my own ideas about orchestration as well.

Some points about individual instruments and groups:

• Flute: the lowest register should only be used when the orchestra is pian(issim)o. The middle and higher octaves get gradually louder and brighter. I like a combination of flute with trumpet (especially when muted) and oboe, with the flute(s) an octave higher than the others.
• Piccolo: the top note is usually listed as C, but I've written notes as high as D. A skilled player should be able to hit that high. In contrast, I like the notes of the often-ignored lowest octave, down to the low D (not many instruments reach C). They mix well with a solo flute in unison, but these should only be used when the rest of the orchestra is quiet.
• Alto/Bass flute: useful mostly in the lowest register, so again, should only be used in a very quiet environment. I use this when I want a "creepy" sound, like I do bass clarinet.
• Oboe: Even with the orchestra playing forte/fortissimo, this instrument can give some added edge to brass parts. It is not as delicate an instrument as it's often made out to be; its bright timbre can be quite penetrating. Unlike the flute, its sound is strong to the lowest notes. However, oboes (and double reeds in general) are the instruments I would least likely give quarter tones and other microtones (and I use these a lot, as you should know already).
• Oboe d'amore (in A): Will I ever use an oboe d'amore? Maybe I should just once...
• English horn (and bass oboe/heckelphone): like alto and bass flute, bass clarinet and contrabassoon, it's useful mostly for its low notes. It's use for pastoral-sounding or plaintive passages, best in a softer environment, is really cliché, so it should be used with more originality.
• Clarinet: It's really two instruments in one. The chalumeau register is ideal up to mezzo-forte. The clarion register really should be used as a kind of wooden trumpet. I like to beef up horn and trumpet parts in unison, maybe an octave higher. One should bear in mind the instrument's distinctive timbre--it's made up of odd-numbered harmonics. In atonal and highly chromatic music, I'd consider having the first clarinet in B flat and the second in A. This is also the best woodwind instrument for microtones, as the famous glissando in Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue shows. For these, the Albert (Simple) system, as used in Turkish, Balkan and klezmer bands, may be a better choice than Boehm or Oehler. (This would apply to open-holed instruments, not so much the plateau-keyed bass clarinet.)
• E-flat clarinet: often called a "small clarinet", this instrument has a sort of "wobbly" intontation and a bit of a mocking sound (c.f. the fifth movement of Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique). I like to double piccolo parts an octave lower with it. Also, I like to use notes in the altissimo register, but these can sound strident and there can be intonation problems.
• Basset horn (in F), basset clarinet (in A): I wish these were used more often. We usually only hear the basset clarinet in performances of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, K.622. Both these instruments have extensions to a written low C. Since these ultra-low notes use many ledger lines in treble clef, I may use a bass clef for these (basset horn sounding a fourth higher; basset clarinet a major sixth).
• Bass clarinet (and contrabass): Professional-level instruments have a low C extension, so I write parts down that low. Again, I may recommend bass clef for the lowest notes, and since modern instruments are always in B flat, they would sound a major second lower than written in bass clef. Though its distinctive sound comes through better when the orchestra is playing less loudly, it can beef up the sound of the bassoons and trombones/tuba. I like to combine it with contrabasson an octave or a fifth higher. (In the latter case, I use parallel fifths in the same way a "resultant" stop would be used on organ, or a power fifth on guitar in rock.)
• Bassoon: As Stravinsky proved to us all (with difficulty at first), the altissimo register can sound impressive. I may never really need a bass oboe or heckelphone in that case. As for the lower notes, this is where the instrument is strongest. I have bassoons playing in unison with trombones and/or tubas all the time for a nice timbral blend, like I have oboes add brightness to trumpets or horns. One more thing: I rarely use tenor clef. I prefer to use treble clef an octave lower. (C clefs are for violas, if you want my honest opinion.)
• Contrabasson: the lowest-pitched of all the commonly-used woodwinds. (If only there were such a thing as a "triple bassoon", a subcontra.) But I don't just use it for the first octave. It has a distinctive sound, a little like a baritone saxophone, in its middle range, and I like to exploit that. I probably wouldn't use notes above the high G though.
• Saxophones: the last-chair oboe and bassoon I'll usually have doubling alto/soprano and tenor saxes, respectively. Baritone or bass sax, and contrabass sarrusophone, may be used in lieu of contrabassoon. I combine alto and tenor saxes with strings in one of the movements of my Symphony No. 2 for a romantic sound (got that idea from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet)
• Horn: one of the most challenging instruments of all to play. And I like to challenge performers. I use horns in melodic passages far more than I do trumpet or trombone; I tend to emphasize the harmonic series more for the latter two. Because intonation and timbre is governed so much by the position of the hand within the bell, I write quarter tones and other microtones for horns very frequently. I also tend to use higher notes (since I assume double horns, F plus high B flat, are being used), as high as the D above the staff or so. As for the low pedal notes, I try not to overuse these, but I may use the fourth horn as a "second tuba" on occasion.
• Trumpet: I use B flat trumpets unless otherwise specified. The seventh harmonic, usually ignored, is going to be used frequently by me. I treat these as a B two-thirds tone flat or A third-tone sharp, which I write as B flat with arrow down or A sharp with arrow down. The eleventh harmonic is treated as a fourth a quarter tone sharp or a tritone a quarter tone flat (so backwards flats and single-vertical sharps are used). The highest harmonic I will likely use for trumpets and trombones is the twelfth, a high G above the staff for trumpet. Also, I may be using the third valve slide as a microtuning device.
• Trombone: As a matter of habit, I use two tenors and a bass (or maybe an alto, tenor and bass). The bass trombone may use a few pedal tones sometimes, doubling the tuba in unison as well as an octave or fifth higher (again, making power chords in the latter case). Naturally, trombones, like the violin family, are perfect microtonal instruments, but with limited technical speed.
• Tuba: I assume an E flat / low B flat four-valve bass tuba by default. Pedal tones, possibly well into the zeroth octave, may have to be played. I always use bass clef, non-transposing.
• Timpani: Four to six, one or two players. For a full set, and in a tonal/modal/maqamic situation, I like to tune them to a pentatonic scale in an octave range. For atonal pieces, things may get weird.
• Piano: I recommend using a Bösendorfer Imperial if possible, for the low C extension. (I know they're expensive.) Also, a second upright piano tuned a quarter tone (50 cents) flat should be placed nearby. I got the idea from Charles Ives, naturally. And one more thing: a piano also doubles as a percussion instrument. I got that idea from Edgard Varèse.
• Harp: I usually only use one, but two will obviously be needed if I need a full chromatic scale. (I don't like using any more instruments than is necessary.)
• Strings: the usual five-part ensemble. Since I'll often have the parts divisi, as I do the winds, that means as many as ten string parts (actually, probably only nine, since I may never divide the basses). Cellos and basses will often play power fifths. Obviously, these fretless instruments will be covering the lion's share of microtonal notes.

I'll make changes to this list over time.

The world sucks. That's why it needs us.

We are the damned, it seems.

I've been talking about this a lot. I've become a lot more pessimistic lately. Among the great philosophers, you won't find any greater pessimist than Schopenhauer.

It turns out he had a lot of say about aesthetics(see also here). His writings on the arts were read by Wagner,  He was also an influence on Nietzsche, who once said that without music, life would be a mistake.

To summarize the points Schopenhauer made, and I make:

• Life is a prison of suffering. It is so because of will: urges, desires, passions. We always want something. We want too much. We want what we cannot or should not have. Wealth, power, pleasure, it's never enough. And it's all irrational. There are things better for us, and better, but they don't attract us.
• Life is also full of illusion and delusion. It's all a big lie. Nothing is ever as it seems. People and things get judged too much by their outward appearances. We're always deceiving ourselves about something. Those we love and trust betray us. We get sick and our bodies and minds betray us. The world, which we hope will have good things for us, betrays us. Our faith and hope betrays us. Our perceptions definitely betray us.
• Yet we choose to live, most of us. We don't want to die. So what makes life bearable? Beauty. Art. Sometime from beyond this world. And among the forms of art, music is the highest, since it is the most abstract. It is an idea in its purest form, the most mathematical.

I think of a quote by Frank Zappa, from the Joe's Garage album: "Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the best…"

I also think of the great musical geniuses, and how miserable their lives were. Most of all, Beethoven, who suffered long bouts of depression and was at least once suicidal. He suffered a host of painful health problems, especially later in life. He had little success in romance and never married; his family relationships were always chaotic, and he could be a bit paranoid. His father was an abusive, tyrannical drunk. He had frightening fits of rage and drank a bit himself. Worst of all, he went deaf. A composer, never able to hear his greatest works.

I could name many other composers from days past, and modern musical geniuses who had their own problems. It seems a disproportionate number of them may have had bipolar disorder (manic depression), when your own moods, the ways you feel about the world and yourself, betray you. Sometimes your thoughts and perceptions betray you (you find that in another mental illness, schizophrenia).

I can speak for myself, at least, when I say that the main reason I make music is because it's a healthy distraction. It's a lot better than drinking myself stupid all the time, I guess. And I'm sure I'm not alone. It seems to help people who listen to music, and that's almost everyone. I just want to do it better than even Beethoven did.