Month: April 2013

This is from a section of the words spoken at the Benghazi hearing that contain the most famous quote from Hillary Clinton:

With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans.
Was it because of a protest, or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d go kill some Americans.
What difference at this point does it make?
It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator.
Now…

I’ve calculated most of the pitch tracking, but it needs some more work still.

Download or Play it here.

This run through has some nice frantic sections.

Download or Play it here.

Csound makes it possible to multiply an instrument times a function table. Here’s the function table for the pitch modification taken from the word “honestly” spoken by Hillary Clinton. This is a GEN06 function table, which allows you to specify a cubic polynomial through three points. It starts at 1.0000, and then goes up to 1.4419355 passing through 1.2209677. A sure sign of someone being nervous is pitch shifts like these.

f 761 0 257 -6 1.0000000 3 1.0000000 3 1.0000000 4 1.2209677 7 1.4419355 7 1.4935484 8 1.5451613 9 1.6384409 8 1.7317204 6 1.7204301 5 1.7091398 8 1.6978495
7 1.6865591 12 1.6865591 12 1.6865591 20 1.5935484 20 1.5005376 6 1.5567204 5 1.6129032 9 1.5884409 9 1.5639785 15 1.5411290 15 1.5182796 17 1.5182796 16 1.5182796 12 1.5182796 13 1.5182796

Which looks like this when graphed:

I then chose a pitch and Csound changes the pitch from that to follow the function table.

I found the spot at the end where Hillary speaks up.

Download or Play it here.

Nearing completion. I just need to figure out if and where I plan to insert the actual Clinton voice. It’s so dissonant that I’m tempted to leave it out. But it’s not as if the remaining music is idyllic.

Download or Play it here.

I’m beginning to think I may never finish this one. It’s tough to find anything remotely melodic in the material in the spoken word I’m using as source material. I’m starting to hear a few recurrent themes, but that may be only because I’ve been over the material so many times that what is meaningless gunk is sounding like thematic material. We’ll see.

Download or Play it here.

Today’s post is a much longer than I normally post. I set the algorithm up and let it run for 20 minutes, then listen back for what comes out. It’s still not music, but there are bits that make sense. Think of this as washing machine music. Put it on and listen to it as a slight improvement over an amplified washing machine with a dying motor. During a power fade. On Mars.

Download or Play it here.

Today I added some horns and modulation around the keys I plan to use for the melody:

• G+sup+D#sup C_min+G_sup
• E+min+C_min E-min+B-min
• B-min+F+neu B+neu+F+neu
• C_maj+G_maj Dbsup+A+sub
• G+sup+D#sup C_min+G_sup
• E+min+C_min E-min+B-min
• B-min+F+neu B+neu+F+neu
• C_maj+G_maj Dbsup+A+sub

In the codes for the modes:

• sub – subminor – the third is close to a 7/6
• min – minor – the third is close to a 6/5
• neu – third is between a 6/5 and a 5/4
• maj – third is close to a 5/4
• sup – third is greater than a 5/4

The fifths are either right on a 3/2 or not even close. For example in Dbsup the third is 77/60 and the fifth is 11/7. It’s combined with A+sub, with a third at 14/11 and a fifth at 35/24. Others are much closer to just major or minor third chords.

If I stay too long in a key, the changes sound like modal shifts. If I spend to little time, the changes are hard to follow. In this iteration, I spend six 7-beat measures in each mode.

Download or Play it here.

I know this is really all over the map lately, but I think I have a direction. Somewhere. This is a series of vamps on triads using the notes of Hillary’s Scale in different modes.

Download or Play it here.

This is a scale derived from the notes most commonly used in the remarks Hillary Clinton used in the small excerpt I’m working on. She says: “Honestly, I will do my best to answer your questions about this, but the the fact is that”. Her intonation is fascinating, at least to me. When I analyzed the pitches used in “honestly” and “answer” they were all over the place. I made a list of all the pitches and found 26 unique 72-EDO tones that spanned almost an octave from a low of F+ in the fourth octave to a high of E- in the fifth octave. I refined the list by averaging ones that were a few steps in 72-EDO away from one another. I ended up with these 12, and have been playing around with them to tease out their unique characteristics. This is a rich scale. There are many different pitch steps from one note to the next, from as few as 3 to as many as 9 72-EDO steps between notes. There are lots of major an minor triads, with a surprisingly frequent perfect fifth.

Here are some triads from the notes in the scale.

Download or Play it here.