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This is a work in progress. As the heading says, I added more trills. They had been dummied before, defaulting to no movement. I finally calculated the new distance and the appropriate Csound table for the new trills. Here’s what one looks like in Csound:

f 568 0 256 -7 1 16 1 0 1.14428343 16 1.14428343 0 1 16 1 0 1.14428343 16 1.14428343 0 1 192 1

and here’s what it looks like in graphic form:

Note that it goes up and down, up and down, then stays down. Not really a trill, more of an ornamental. I have real trills too, but these are different. They sound kind of like moving your fingers over the holds on a real thumb piano to get vibrato. But they modulate the pitch instead of the amplitude.

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This is a work in progress.
I saw a very nice thumb piano at the Goodwill Store in Seattle, and played it for a minute or two. It was terribly out of tune, but it had a nice sound. I went home and wrote this song and used a more carefully selected tuning system and finger piano samples. Play it here

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This is a work in progress. I tracked down that stack overflow bug, but not before spending several hours trying to figure out what was causing it. Then I found it:

@ here's your stack overflow. fool.
.fin1-42-a01 &fin1-42-a01*.
.bdr1-42-a01 &bdr1-42-a01*.
.bdr2-42-a01 &bdr2-42-a01*.
.bdr3-42-a01 &bdr3-42-a01*.
.bdr4-42-a01 &bdr4-42-a01*.
.bdr5-42-a01 &bdr5-42-a01*.

Of course every time I asked for a resolution of &fin1-42-a01*. it would return &fin1-42-a01*. until the stack overflowed. Amazing. I’m back on track now.
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This is a work in progress. And the progress has been slowed by a bug in my pre-possessor where Turbo Pascal posts a run time error indicating a stack overflow. It works find as long as the randomizer is limited to very random, and fails when I ask for less random choices. Weird. Ernie is not happy.Play it here

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This is a work in progress. I am working on the distant modes in the scale. Some are quite challenging. I worked on this as the Amtrak train was heading north from Portland to Seattle, and as we passed over the Toutle River Bridge where that sad mad man was killed by a freight train yesterday.

1. scale degrees – bass note – character of the mode
2. 482615 1 harsh
3. 594826 6 harsh
4. 615948 1 harsh
5. 716A58 1 weird
6. 826149 8 sweet
7. 948269 9 sweet
8. A59482 5 challenge

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This is a work in progress. Added a melody and variations using multi-octave unison oboe, bassoon, and french horn samples. It’s all based on the single six note chord on scale degrees 1 6 9 4 8 & 2 out of the ten note pallette. Modulation to other six note scales come next.Play it here

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This is a work in progress. I made some samples of a set of Ernie Ball Super Slinky guitar strings and used them in this piece. The scale is based on the overtones in the tonality diamond starting on the 8:5, but with the 1:1 in the bass. So that makes the following ratios:

1:1 21:20 11:10 6:5 13:10 7:5 3:2 8:5 9:5 28:15 2:1


Then I derive some six note scales from that scale. The first one I tried uses scale degrees 1 6 9 4 8 2, which is two fourth chords stacked up. The ratios are:

1:1 7:5 9:5 6:5 8:5 21:20.


Here’s the whole matrix of the ten notes from which the six at a time are chosen.

There are nine other 6 note chords to go, but I started with this one because it has so many low numbered ratios. And it sounded sweet on my keyboard with an electric piano sound. With these close mic’ed string sounds, the character is quite different.

I’ve scored the piece so far for the Ernie Ball Super Slinky strings, finger piano, balloon drums and tube drums. I will have to add a melody instrument at some point. Consider this the vamp for now, waiting for the lead singer to start. It has a kind of Devo vibe to it now.

The rhythm is combinations of 2 & 3 to make seven. For example: 2 + 2 + 3 or 2 + 3 + 2 or 3 + 2 + 2. These measures are combined into groups to make a five measure unit. I change the randomization for each of those units from highly repetitive to not repetitive. Kind of like: repeat a phrase 5 times, then go crazy, then repeat a phrase 5 times, then go crazy.

Lots more to do, but it sounded good enough for now to post.

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This is a final version of this piece. It steps through eight 5 & 6 note combinations of the ten note scale, about two minutes for each. There’s a vamp, then a melody, then some variations for each one. The character of each is quite different. I also change the bass note twice. It starts on the 1:1, then goes up to the 8:7, back to the 1:1 then later down to the 12:7. When on the 8:7 and 12:7, the bass reinforces the other notes in a harmonic series, for the most part, so they are more consonant. The other scales are more challenging. Think of it as a sushi bar where you get some California Roll mixed in with omakase (literally “trust the chef”). Is that squid moving? See 8:30 for the 716A48 chord.

Here’s a matrix of the ten notes and the ratios one to the other:

The ten note scale is from top to bottom on the left: 1:1, 15:13 8:7 26:21 9:7 10:7 3:2 12:7 13:7 27:14 and 2:1. This set can also be thought of as 14:14 15:14 16:14 26:21 18:14 20:14 21:14 24:14 26:14 27:14 28:14, almost all a part of the overtone series. The key difference is that the root of the scale, 14:14, is the seventh overtone of the other notes in the scale, instead of the first. Putting that 7th in the base shakes things up a bit. And I can move it around to reinforce the harmonic series for contrast.

The piece starts out with a mode made up of stacked fourths, and proceeds to change them. Here’s the list, with the number indicating the scale degree out of the ten in the matrix.

• A58371
• 26A583
• 371615
• 483716
• 583716
• 615837
• 716A48
• 83726A
• A58371

For the second one, 26A583, I move the bass down to the 12:7, so it’s consonant with the other notes in the series. 26A583 is made up of the ratios 15:14 10:7 27:14 9:7 12:7 8:7. But if you assume the 12:7 is in the bass, then the ratios relative to that 8:7 become 5:4 5:3 9:8 3:2 1:1 4:3. Those are all in the harmonic series relative to the A at scale degree 8, except for the 4:3, which is not. But it sounds so sweet I had to leave it in. All these five or six note scales, derived from the ten, were chosen because they sound good in stacked fourth chords. I just couldn’t resist the 4:3 relative to the root on A. It’s not too removed from the overtone series after all.

The bass moves back to the 1:1 for a while, until about 3/4 of the way through when it shifts to 615837, when I use the 8:7 in the bass. The ratios relative to the 8:7 for that set of six notes are 5:4 7:4 9:8 3:2 1:1 21:16. That 21:16 is not in the overtone series. And it’s a 64:63 away from a 4:3 above the 1:1 in the scale. But it’s close enough to fake it in this context as part of the melodic flow.

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This is a work in progress. Today I added some trills and slides to the melody section. The modes are made of different 5 or 6 note scales derived from the 10 note scale shown here:

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This is a work in progress. So there will be frequent updates.
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