- A devout Catholic loses his job, his family, his home and his health through no fault of his own (and partly though the malice of others). Feeling abandoned and betrayed by God, he plots to kidnap and murder the Pope to get God's attention. (Obviously a philosophical story, something Dostoevskian.)
- A young metal bass player/vocalist in Texas just had yet another band break up, and his musical career seems a failure. He leaves Austin and returns to his small East Texas hometown, and begins to dabble in contemporary classical. He befriends a composer in Turkey, and falls in love with a Russian pianist who's become a YouTube celebrity. He ends up being invited to Istanbul to stay with his friend, who unbeknownst to him has also invited the pianist. The next two weeks will be the adventure of his life. (Music from Symphony No. 2 may be used.)
- A sociopath is terrorizing New Orleans, kidnapping young women and men, locking them in a secret dungeon, and raping, torturing and killing them ritualistically, as human sacrifices, while playing a recording of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. A veteran police investigator is assigned the case, with only the maimed corpses of victims as evidence.
- (Part of the plot to my Symphony No. 1.) In modern-day Lebanon in the year 9600 BC, a civilization is in ruins, destroyed by hostile neighbors and betrayal from within. The story is how a people, the Hria (meaning "[the] free, noble [people]" in the ancient Hrith language--حريا in Arabic script), evolve from hunter-gatherer level through agriculture and pastoralism, form a city-state, develop technology rivaling that of modern industrialized nations, then quickly falls under tyranny and collapses. The only evidence of their existence is in mystical writings randomly appearing through different times and places, particularly in a book written in Baghdad shortly before being sacked by the Mongols in 1258, and another found in Saint Petersburg, allegedly by Rasputin near the end of his life.
- (The plot to Symphony No. 3, which I've only just begun to start writing). The most common surname in the world is 李 Lǐ, often written "Lee" in English. The most popular given name is Muhammad, from Arabic. So I created an "everyman"-type character named Muhammad Lee, who would naturally be a Chinese Muslim. This character was born during in Xi'an (formerly Chang'an) during the Tang Dynasty, around AD 900. Lee was of noble birth and noble character, but was betrayed by a rival who cursed him with immortality. Lee would spend the centuries wandering the earth--to Baghdad, Venice, San Francisco, Beijing in the future--witnessing and documenting historical events. He was to only rest in peace after the Second Coming.
30 June 2014
Ideas for novels, screenplays, video games and the Symphonies
I've never written anything that's been published, but I've had ideas. If only I weren't so busy...
19 June 2014
The beginning of an autobiography, or "musical manifesto"
I began my career in music around my fifth birthday, when I learned how to play my brother's old upright piano. I wrote the names of all the notes on the white keys (much to his chagrin) and taught myself the basics before I began lessons in kindergarten.
There was music playing in the house non-stop. Beethoven, Beatles, Bacharach, Bee Gees... you name it. That's how I was able to learn tunes by ear, and gain the (supposedly) rare gift of perfect pitch. I've had a lot of practice. I lucked out in life.
I was discovered John Williams and his film scores for Jaws and Star Wars--but the composition that had the greatest impact on my life: Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, which we know caused a riot upon its 1913 Paris premiere.
In future years, I picked up other instruments: guitar, bass, clarinet, saxophone, flute--but bass and piano are my favorite two. (I'm a lot better on bass; I've always naturally gravitated toward low pitches.)
I'm amazed I didn't become a serious composer until much later. I played bass in bands (that never went anywhere), and wrote a few piano pieces here and there (most lost), but I never felt like I could be anything but an imitator. I needed to find my own voice.
I had also been a music major at the university in my East Texas hometown, but only attended for about a year before dropping out due to mental health-related issues. Much of what I know I've taught myself, especially concerning modern and postmodern musical trends.
I had heard quarter-tone music before, mostly the work of Charles Ives (such as his three Quarter-Tone Pieces), but until I began to embrace modernist music, I didn't take it seriously. I entered the world of microtonality (or xenharmonia) via a more traditional route: Middle Eastern music.
It turns out that the Arabs, Turks and Iranians have been using quarter tones and even smaller intervals for many centuries, and literally hundreds of scales and modes called maqams. I listened to various popular songs, either as MIDI arrangements or downloaded via P2P (Napster et al), to acclimate myself to this exotic 24-tone scale.
Around the same time, I discovered another American composer: Harry Partch, remembered for using a 43-tone just intonation scale. I started listening to his music and bought his book, Genesis of a Music, and studied it (I still have yet to read all of it).
But it took me a long time to decide which tuning system I wanted to use myself. Eventually, I settled on 72 equal temperament. Not only is a multiple of twelve (dividing the equal-temperament semitone into six equal parts), but it very precisely approximates 11-limit just intonation, which Partch advocated. I started making experimental MIDI files using pitch bend messages at points when appropriate.
Eventually, in 2008, I wrote my first full 72-tone composition: "The Waterloo Rag", a type of stride/novelty/blues/boogie-woogie piece for six player pianos, each tuned 16 2/3 cents apart in a range of -50 to +33 1/3 cents from A=440 Hz tuning. (Waterloo is the former name of Austin, Texas, where I've been living for over a decade.)
I also have had an agenda. While composers like Chopin, Liszt, Dvořák, Sibelius, Copland and the Russian Five sought to promote a nationalistic musical style for their nations, my goal is musical internationalism and eclecticism--a marriage of Eastern and Western styles, forms and techniques (including tunings), past and present, art music and popular and traditional music.
The first one, if I ever finish it, may be four to six hours long. (Mahler's Third, the longest among works of the common repertoire, is a relatively brief 90 minutes; Havergal Brian's Symphony No. 1, the "Gothic", the world record holder overall, is around two hours.) The theme of my First: the Apocalypse more or less. It's a story I've been developing in my head since around the time I started making up the music.
The second would be a more merciful two hours in length approximately, with fifty-two movements: one for each US State plus the District of Columbia and the territory of Puerto Rico (with a larger population than 22 States). Its main inspiration is Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, and like the "Promenade" in the Russian composer's magnum opus, there is a main theme introduced in the first movement, "Maine: Light, Hope". (Another inspiration is the Beach Boys' SMiLE project, itself intended to be a musical trip across America, with eclectic influences.) The grand finale will be titled "California: The Great Gate of San Francisco". All twenty-four major and minor keys are to be used along with atonal movements, and various non-conventional instruments will be used, including banjo, accordion and Benjamin Franklin's glass armonica.
There are also plans for a third and fourth symphony in the more distant future, but I need to work on the first two first. (I have to write things non-linearly, as inspiration comes to me. I can go through long bouts of writer's block.)
The other thing I'm doing currently is familiarizing myself more with the music of India (Hindustani/North and Carnatic/South), as I've studied Middle Eastern music so extensively.
I also may finally finish school someday. I'm really wanting to go to Berklee College of Music in Boston, where there's a nice microtonal scene that also specializes in 72-tone. Still, I probably write more music in conventional twelve-tone, and I do use serialism as a technique (and microtonal rows) on occasion.
There was music playing in the house non-stop. Beethoven, Beatles, Bacharach, Bee Gees... you name it. That's how I was able to learn tunes by ear, and gain the (supposedly) rare gift of perfect pitch. I've had a lot of practice. I lucked out in life.
I was discovered John Williams and his film scores for Jaws and Star Wars--but the composition that had the greatest impact on my life: Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, which we know caused a riot upon its 1913 Paris premiere.
In future years, I picked up other instruments: guitar, bass, clarinet, saxophone, flute--but bass and piano are my favorite two. (I'm a lot better on bass; I've always naturally gravitated toward low pitches.)
I'm amazed I didn't become a serious composer until much later. I played bass in bands (that never went anywhere), and wrote a few piano pieces here and there (most lost), but I never felt like I could be anything but an imitator. I needed to find my own voice.
I had also been a music major at the university in my East Texas hometown, but only attended for about a year before dropping out due to mental health-related issues. Much of what I know I've taught myself, especially concerning modern and postmodern musical trends.
The "gimmick"
Around 2000, I decided I needed to start "painting with more colors", as I like to call it. Being tired of using only twelve notes in the octave, I wanted to expand.
I had heard quarter-tone music before, mostly the work of Charles Ives (such as his three Quarter-Tone Pieces), but until I began to embrace modernist music, I didn't take it seriously. I entered the world of microtonality (or xenharmonia) via a more traditional route: Middle Eastern music.
It turns out that the Arabs, Turks and Iranians have been using quarter tones and even smaller intervals for many centuries, and literally hundreds of scales and modes called maqams. I listened to various popular songs, either as MIDI arrangements or downloaded via P2P (Napster et al), to acclimate myself to this exotic 24-tone scale.
Around the same time, I discovered another American composer: Harry Partch, remembered for using a 43-tone just intonation scale. I started listening to his music and bought his book, Genesis of a Music, and studied it (I still have yet to read all of it).
But it took me a long time to decide which tuning system I wanted to use myself. Eventually, I settled on 72 equal temperament. Not only is a multiple of twelve (dividing the equal-temperament semitone into six equal parts), but it very precisely approximates 11-limit just intonation, which Partch advocated. I started making experimental MIDI files using pitch bend messages at points when appropriate.
Eventually, in 2008, I wrote my first full 72-tone composition: "The Waterloo Rag", a type of stride/novelty/blues/boogie-woogie piece for six player pianos, each tuned 16 2/3 cents apart in a range of -50 to +33 1/3 cents from A=440 Hz tuning. (Waterloo is the former name of Austin, Texas, where I've been living for over a decade.)
I also have had an agenda. While composers like Chopin, Liszt, Dvořák, Sibelius, Copland and the Russian Five sought to promote a nationalistic musical style for their nations, my goal is musical internationalism and eclecticism--a marriage of Eastern and Western styles, forms and techniques (including tunings), past and present, art music and popular and traditional music.
American Mahler
I had an idea for a symphony in my head since my pre-teen years, but I only fairly recently started writing it. Using an old shareware composition program (which I did eventually have registered), I started composing and recording, using old-fashioned SoundFont tech at first but eventually using better instruments when I could afford to do so. Currently, I'm writing two symphonies.
The first one, if I ever finish it, may be four to six hours long. (Mahler's Third, the longest among works of the common repertoire, is a relatively brief 90 minutes; Havergal Brian's Symphony No. 1, the "Gothic", the world record holder overall, is around two hours.) The theme of my First: the Apocalypse more or less. It's a story I've been developing in my head since around the time I started making up the music.
The second would be a more merciful two hours in length approximately, with fifty-two movements: one for each US State plus the District of Columbia and the territory of Puerto Rico (with a larger population than 22 States). Its main inspiration is Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, and like the "Promenade" in the Russian composer's magnum opus, there is a main theme introduced in the first movement, "Maine: Light, Hope". (Another inspiration is the Beach Boys' SMiLE project, itself intended to be a musical trip across America, with eclectic influences.) The grand finale will be titled "California: The Great Gate of San Francisco". All twenty-four major and minor keys are to be used along with atonal movements, and various non-conventional instruments will be used, including banjo, accordion and Benjamin Franklin's glass armonica.
There are also plans for a third and fourth symphony in the more distant future, but I need to work on the first two first. (I have to write things non-linearly, as inspiration comes to me. I can go through long bouts of writer's block.)
The other thing I'm doing currently is familiarizing myself more with the music of India (Hindustani/North and Carnatic/South), as I've studied Middle Eastern music so extensively.
I also may finally finish school someday. I'm really wanting to go to Berklee College of Music in Boston, where there's a nice microtonal scene that also specializes in 72-tone. Still, I probably write more music in conventional twelve-tone, and I do use serialism as a technique (and microtonal rows) on occasion.
13 June 2014
Partch Plus in my 72edo notation (rough draft)
The ratios of Partch's 43-tone just scale, plus some ratios I added (marked with asterisks), notated in my 72 equal temperament notation (quarter tone accidentals plus arrows for morion adjustments).
- 1/1 (0) G (392 Hz)
- 81/80 (1) G↑
- 64/63* (2) G‡↓
- 33/32 (3) G‡
- 28/27* (4) G‡↑
- 21/20 (5) G#↓
- 16/15 (7) Ab↑
- 12/11 (9) Ad
- 11/10 (10) Ad↑
- 10/9 (11) A↓
- 9/8 (12) A
- 8/7 (14) A‡↓
- 7/6 (16) A‡↑
- 32/27 (18) Bb
- 6/5 (19) Bb↑
- 11/9 (21) Bd
- 5/4 (23) B↓
- 14/11 (25) B↑
- 9/7 (26) Cd↓
- 21/16 (28) Cd↑
- 4/3 (30) C
- 27/20 (31) C↑
- 15/11* (32) C‡↓
- 11/8 (33) C‡
- 7/5 (35) C#↓
- 10/7 (37) Db↑
- 16/11 (39) Dd
- 22/15* (40) Dd↑
- 40/27 (41) D↓
- 3/2 (42) D
- 32/21 (44) D‡↓
- 14/9 (46) D‡↑
- 11/7 (47) D#↓
- 8/5 (49) Eb↑
- 18/11 (51) Ed
- 5/3 (53) E↓
- 27/16 (54) E
- 12/7 (56) Fd↓
- 7/4 (58) Fd↑
- 16/9 (60) F
- 9/5 (61) F↑
- 20/11 (62) F‡↓
- 11/6 (63) F‡
- 15/8 (65) F#↓
- 40/21 (67) Gb↑
- 27/14* (68) Gd↓
- 64/33 (69) Gd
- 63/32* (70) Gd↑
- 160/81 (71) G↓
- 2/1 (72) G
11 March 2014
Symphony No. 2, or, A 19th Century Russian Composer in 21st Century America
That composer would be Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839-1881), my personal favorite of the Five. And it is his piano suite, Pictures at an Exhibition, famously orchestrated by Maurice Ravel, which inspired one of my works-in-progress, the second of my “epic symphonies” (in E flat major).
Mussorgsky himself was inspired to write “Pictures” when his friend, artist Victor Hartmann, died suddenly. He imagined his sketches as part of an exhibit: a ten-movement work, each preceded by a leitmotif he called “Promenade”. I’m doing something similar for my Symphony, only with fifty-two movements, for the fifty American States plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, each individual piece inspired by photographs from each state.
While Mussorgsky imagined a trip to a museum, I chose to subtitle my opus “Great American Road Trip”. (The movements for Puerto Rico, Alaska and Hawai’i would require a different means of transportation, of course.) I’m expecting the finished work to be over two hours long, most movements taking up two to three minutes each, but a few as much as five.
Some features of the work:
Mussorgsky himself was inspired to write “Pictures” when his friend, artist Victor Hartmann, died suddenly. He imagined his sketches as part of an exhibit: a ten-movement work, each preceded by a leitmotif he called “Promenade”. I’m doing something similar for my Symphony, only with fifty-two movements, for the fifty American States plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, each individual piece inspired by photographs from each state.
While Mussorgsky imagined a trip to a museum, I chose to subtitle my opus “Great American Road Trip”. (The movements for Puerto Rico, Alaska and Hawai’i would require a different means of transportation, of course.) I’m expecting the finished work to be over two hours long, most movements taking up two to three minutes each, but a few as much as five.
Some features of the work:
- Since each movement could be considered a “prelude” of sorts, I’m using all twenty-four major and minor keys, with the remainder of the movements repeating a key, or being atonal. At least one of the movements will use a tonality based on a quarter tone, or an Arabic maqam (including a taqsim on Maqam Bastanigar for clarinet in the Michigan movement). Since the key is constantly changing, this would almost be an example of the progressive tonality of Mahler’s symphonies, except the first and final movements will both be in E flat major, the overall key of the work.
- Soloists will be featured at various times. For the middle movements, this will be piano, so the work will sound a bit like a piano concerto. Other instruments to be used: harpsichord, guitar, banjo, accordion, Latin percussion and church organ.
- Various popular styles will be used, such as bluegrass for Kentucky and Tennessee, jazz for Louisiana and Missouri, polka and Irish reel for Illinois, tejano for Texas.
- The fifty-two movements are organized into five parts:
Part One (1-12): Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia.
Part Two (13-22): Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Puerto Rico.
Part Three (23-33): Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota.
Part Four (34-42): North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas.
Part Five (43-52): New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, California. - For the Nevada movement, I want to use Harry Partch’s 43-microtone scale, but probably approximated in 72 equal temperament for convenience.
One more thing: I’ll be ripping off another Mussorgsky opus, A Night on the Bare Mountain, for the Texas and Hawaii movements. Some more inspiration will come from other multi-epic symphonic works: Holst’s The Planets, Stravinsky’s early ballets, Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces, and from a fellow American composer, Charles Ives’ Three Places in New England. Also, of course, all those great symphonies (though what I’m writing is as much a symphonic suite as symphony).
To get you started, here’s the first movement, Maine.
To get you started, here’s the first movement, Maine.
06 March 2014
Instead of cents, why not degrees?
In contemporary usage, precise tuning measurements are measured in cents, or hundredths of an equal-tempered semitone. An octave is thus measured as 1200 cents, so one cent, as a difference in frequency, is the 1200th root of two, as an ET semitone is the twelfth root of two.
Alternative scale measurements propose include the SI/metric-inspired millioctave (the thousandth root of two), the savart (which uses base-10 logarithms instead of base-2), and my preferred measurement: the arc degree. Here, I think of the octave (the 2:1 ratio of frequencies) as a circle, with each note of the scale repeating for each octave, and one degree being 1/360 of an octave, 3 1/3 cents each. For finer measurements, minutes and seconds could be used, or merely degrees with decimal fractions.
But why divide the octave into 360 degrees? Answer: 360 is a multiple of 72, and 72 equal temperament is an excellent ET approximation of just intonation, especially 11-limit, that just happens to be a multiple of twelve. It is also a multiple of twenty-four, as used in modern Arabic quarter-tone tuning, and thirty-six, used in some Iranian systems. Also, the ET whole tone is divided into sixty equal parts, and sixty is the smallest natural number divisible by all integers from one through six.
Some measurements in degrees:
Alternative scale measurements propose include the SI/metric-inspired millioctave (the thousandth root of two), the savart (which uses base-10 logarithms instead of base-2), and my preferred measurement: the arc degree. Here, I think of the octave (the 2:1 ratio of frequencies) as a circle, with each note of the scale repeating for each octave, and one degree being 1/360 of an octave, 3 1/3 cents each. For finer measurements, minutes and seconds could be used, or merely degrees with decimal fractions.
But why divide the octave into 360 degrees? Answer: 360 is a multiple of 72, and 72 equal temperament is an excellent ET approximation of just intonation, especially 11-limit, that just happens to be a multiple of twelve. It is also a multiple of twenty-four, as used in modern Arabic quarter-tone tuning, and thirty-six, used in some Iranian systems. Also, the ET whole tone is divided into sixty equal parts, and sixty is the smallest natural number divisible by all integers from one through six.
Some measurements in degrees:
- octave (2/1): 360°
- equal whole tone: 60°
- equal semitone: 30°
- equal quarter tone: 15°
- just perfect fifth (3/2): 210° 35′ 11″ or 210.59° (12et 210°)
- just perfect fourth (4/3): 124° 24′ 49″ or 149.41° (12et 150°)
- just major third (5/4): 115° 53′ 39″ or 115.89° (12et 120°, 72et 115°)
- just minor third (6/5): 94° 41′ 33″ or 94.69° (12et 90°, 72et 95°)
- just blues minor third (7/6): 80° 3′ 41″ or 80.06° (72et 80°)
05 March 2014
An official name for “Language P”
The international language for the story in Symphony No. 1 is officially called Dunia Lengua, meaning “World Language”. (The Chinese name for Esperanto is 世界语 Shìjièyǔ, meaning the same thing.)
The first word is of Arabic origin: دنيا, borrowed into Hindustani, Bengali and Malay. The second is from Latin via Spanish and Portuguese, meaning “language” and “tongue”, with cognates in English and French.
Also, it will also be based on the twelve most spoken languages, L1 and L2 combined, according to Ethnologue, weighted accordingly:
The first word is of Arabic origin: دنيا, borrowed into Hindustani, Bengali and Malay. The second is from Latin via Spanish and Portuguese, meaning “language” and “tongue”, with cognates in English and French.
Also, it will also be based on the twelve most spoken languages, L1 and L2 combined, according to Ethnologue, weighted accordingly:
- Chinese (Mandarin) 9
- English 7
- Hindi-Urdu 4
- Spanish 4
- Arabic 4
- Russian 3
- Portuguese 2
- Bengali 2
- Malay-Indonesian 2
- Japanese 1
- French 1
- German 1
08 February 2014
Symphony No. 2 in E flat major (work in progress)
Well short of finishing my First Symphony (Symphonie apocalyptique, alias “Dies Irae”, in C minor), I’ve decided to begin a second, nicknamed “The Great American Road Trip”, in E flat major. (These are Mahlerian works indeed, both very progressive in tonality and very long.)
The Second Symphony is to have fifty-two movements—one for each American State plus the District of Columbia, where the national capital Washington is located, and Puerto Rico, the largest of the Territories, which could someday be State. These movements would be inspired in some way by each state, ordered geographically and grouped into five parts:
Unlike the Brian’s or Mahler’s Eighth, the instrumentation of my Second is going to be a lot simpler, more Classical-to-early Romantic, at least for now. Some of the features of a Baroque concerto grosso will be used, with the ripieno as such:
Inspiration comes from all my favorite symphonies and symphonic suites, particularly late Romantic and early Modern, but with Baroque counterpoint, Classical forms and Modern atonality, serialism and microtonality. At tiimes, jazz and pregressive rock influences could be heard.
I’ve already started on the project; some of it can be heard at SoundCloud. Be sure to check back for updates both to this blog entry and the music.
The Second Symphony is to have fifty-two movements—one for each American State plus the District of Columbia, where the national capital Washington is located, and Puerto Rico, the largest of the Territories, which could someday be State. These movements would be inspired in some way by each state, ordered geographically and grouped into five parts:
- Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia (1-12)
- Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Puerto Rico (13-22)
- Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota (23-33)
- North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas (34-42)
- New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, California (43-52)
Unlike the Brian’s or Mahler’s Eighth, the instrumentation of my Second is going to be a lot simpler, more Classical-to-early Romantic, at least for now. Some of the features of a Baroque concerto grosso will be used, with the ripieno as such:
- two flutes, second (or both?) doubling piccolo
- two oboes, second doubling cor anglais
- two clarinets in Bb or A, second doubling bass clarinet
- two bassoons, second doubling contrabassoon
- four horns in F
- two trumpets in Bb
- three trombones, two tenor and one bass, the last doubling tuba
- three or four timpani plus other percussion including Latin
- one harp
- twelve first violins
- ten second violins
- eight violas
- six violoncellos
- four contrabasses
Number of strings may vary.
Inspiration comes from all my favorite symphonies and symphonic suites, particularly late Romantic and early Modern, but with Baroque counterpoint, Classical forms and Modern atonality, serialism and microtonality. At tiimes, jazz and pregressive rock influences could be heard.
I’ve already started on the project; some of it can be heard at SoundCloud. Be sure to check back for updates both to this blog entry and the music.
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