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Today I made some additions to the oboe part – more notes, and to the finger piano bass – the use of an exponential envelope with a fast bass line. Clipped and sharp.

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The balloon drum is a 3″ sewer pipe with a balloon membrane head. The head is struck with a short rubber covered mallett. This version is a single 48″ model, sampled and manipulated with Csound. Also on the track are finger piano, flutes, oboe, and guitar. The notes are the otonality on C. 8:9:10:11:12:13:14:15:16. More later.

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Liner Notes

“For the Downwinders” is based on a scale derived from the ratios of the otonality, starting at 10. Another way to think of it is the rations of 10:11:12:13:14:15:16:18:20. This mode gives me a minor feel when I stress the triad E G B.

I started this off when Christopher Bailey talked about trying to compose something for his least favorite chord, the C-G-C# triad. He asked if there is a tuning that could be based on this, and several microtonal theoreticians came up with some ideas. I explored how the Partch Tonality Diamond, taken to the 15 limit, has many instances that approach this triad.

For example, the following three notes chords are variations on his triad:

Ratio    - Note names & ratios
9: 14:20 - D 9/8 - B 7/4 - E 5/4
10:15:22 - E 5/4 - B 15/8 - F 11/8
11:16:24 - F 11/8 - C 1/1 - G 3/2
12:18:26 - G 3/2 - D 9/8 - A 13/8
13:20:28 - A 13/8 - E 5/4 - B 7/4
14:22:32 - B 7/4 - F 11/8 - C 1/1
15:22:32 - B 15/8 - F 11/8 - C 1/1
8: 12:18 - C 1/1 - G 3/2 - D 9/8

They all have a different feel, but they all include close approximations of the chord.

The title is taken from the recent trial in Spokane, WA, in which those who lived downwind of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and sought compensation for thyroid cancer. They won a Phyrric victory, when the damages awarded were far smaller than their legal costs.

Starting in 1944, the Hanford Reservation in central Washington produced Plutonium for nuclear weapons, including producing the components for the legendary “Big Boy” atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, to hasten the surrender of the Japanese and end World War II. It continued to do this for many years to support the cold war arms race.

Because of the war-time rush, the Hanford plutonium plants processed the irradiated fuel without allowing the radioactivity enough time to decay. For still unknown reasons, Hanford kept processing this very radioactive fuel even after Japan surrendered. As a result, vast quantities of pollution, especially iodine-131, were discharged into the air. In 1945 alone, more than a half million curies of Iodine-131 were released. The accident at Three Mile Island was estimated to have released about 20 curies. People were exposed to the airborne radiation by breathing the air and consuming certain foods, especially milk from goats or cows that grazed on contaminated vegetation.

Those who lived “downwind” of the plant have been seeking compensation for their losses, including cancers and related injuries. Those who claim harm have taken their case to court, and won a partial victory. They won several counts, but their monetary damages were far less than their legal costs.

I have enormous sympathy for the victims of this tragedy. The contractors were caught between their drive to quickly produce components for a weapon that could end the war and save the thousands of lives that an invasion of the island of Japan would cause, and safety. Safety lost.

Prent Rodgers

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Today’s excerpt takes the retrograde of a counter theme and appends on the primary theme played by the guitar. The ending is a spring glissando up and down simultaneously. Here’s a picture of the spring. It’s made of .080″ piano wire (very thick tempered steel wire), which is bent with a pair of plyers and a blow torch into interesting shapes. The wires are then brazed onto a steel plate, and magnetic transducers are attached to pick up the vibrations. Csound is used to glissando up and down. Here’s the function table that goes up, and the one that goes down:

f312 0 256 -7 1 256 1.3; a table of values sloping from 1 to 1.3 - up slowly
f313 0 256 -7 1 256 .80; sloping from 1 to .8 - down slowly

Then in the orchestra, the following code moves the pitch of the sampling synthesizer:

kcpsm oscili 1, 1/p3, i10 ; create an set of shift multiplicands from table - glissandi
kcps2 = kcps * kcpsm ; shift the frequency by values in glissando table
a3,a4 loscil 1, kcps2, ifno, ibascps,0,1,2 ;

There is more in the Csound code on my web site if you’re interested. loscil is the key to a sampling synthesizer using Csound.

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Today’s contribution is the retrograde of the original melody.

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This is a work in progress… Listen to what I did yesterday.

Welcome to the Carnival of Music. Thanks to John for letting me play host this week. Welcome to Bumper Music. I’m a composer seduced into capitalism, and this site is where I post each day’s work as a podcast, usually about 30 seconds at a time. Ten minutes a day, four pieces a year.

On to the Carnival of Music #7!

Fred Himebaugh found a disk jocky at a classical radio station with an impossibly impressive resume.

The HeadGirl made an investment in the clearance aisle at WalMart, and has benefited from it ever since.

John Lanius has discovered a great site for lovers of vintage synthesizers by EMS. Click the pix to enlarge.

Scott Spiegelberg nominated a series of posts on teaching music theory: Kyle Gann’s at PostClassic, Marcus Maroney’s blog, and his own at Musical Perceptions.

He also recommends two posts by Hucbald on composing fugues here and here.

And a post at Utopian TurtleTop about Ringo’s drumming and Sheryl Crow as inheritor of Beatle-glow.

All over the map today!

With so few submissions to the Carnival this week, here are a few links to sites that I think other musicians might find interesting:

On my blog today, I point to some work that Richard Boulanger and his team at Berklee and csounds.com are doing. They assembled an enormous archive of electronic music compositions that were created using Csound. For those who like electronic music, hand crafted with the software descendent of Music V, I suggest a few hundred hours of uninterrupted listening.

Richard Friedman points to a nice interview with Kyle Gann recorded last week at WNYC on John Schaefer’s program. It’s available as an MP3 file.

MoistWorks is an MP3 blog, which you can turn it into a podcast with this feed. Then every MP3 they post will show up on your MP3 player or iPod automatically. I wonder why they didn’t think of that before? They have an Atom feed, but that doesn’t support podcasting. Feedburner turns it into an RSS 2.0 feed required for podcasting.

Alex Ross, music critic for the New Yorker is on holiday, and recommended the following music blogs to read in his absence. Here’s his list:

Vilaine fille Marion Lignana Rosenberg ionarts ionarts Sasha Frere-Jones Kyle Gann The renegade harpist Helen Radice Operablogging Trrill, Sieglinde’s Diaries, La Cieca, NYC Opera Fanatic, Prima la musica, All About Opera, Unamplified Voice The view from SF: The Standing Room, Bay Buzz …Houston I Am Sitting in a Room …Boston The Laurel Letters …Chicago Bryant Manning …the UK On An Overgrown Path Composers Sequenza 21, The Fredösphere, Forrest Covington, Marcus Maroney, Paul Bailey, Renewable Music, Brendan McNamara, Adam Baratz Critics Greg Sandow, Jessica Duchen, Steve Hicken, Lisa Hirsch, Zachary Lewis, Mwanji Ezana And Carl Wilson, Douglas Wolk, Eppy, Philip Sherburne, Aaron Wherry, Simon Reynolds, Julianne Shepherd, Christopher Porter, M. Matos, Brazilian Muse, Jessica Hopper, J. D. Considine, Thomas Bartlett, Jeff Chang, Franklin Bruno Piano Jeremy Denk, Heather, Well-Tempered Theory Tim Johnson, Scott Spiegelberg Orchestra Drew McManus Sax Brian Sacawa Oboe Patrica Mitchell, Brendon Bushman, Dominican Oboist Singing Anne-Carolyn Bird, Tom Meglioranza, Mezzo Gregory, Silverblog Make it new aworks, rchrd Guitar Paul Viapiano Listening What I Like About… Beyond category uTopianTurtleTop Dylan Eyolf Ostrem MP3s Moistworks, Fingertips, Largehearted Boy, Fluxblog, Said the Gramophone

Few!

Richard Boulanger and his team at Berklee and csounds.com have created a terrific archive of electronic music compositions created using Csound. For those who like electronic music, hand crafted with the software descendent of Music V, listen to M3U streams of the concerts here:

• Concert 1 with Eduardo Miranda – Olive Trees, Dennis Miller – Csound Etude, Barry Threw – Escape, Arran Lowe – Ghosts, Bill Alves – Hiway 70
• Concert 2 with Chris Velez – 6Hours 16Bit – Csound Catalog Piece, Jess Hewitt – Dead End – Csound Catalog Piece, Kim Cascone – bluecube, Paris Smaragdis – SlingPling, Richard Boulanger – Two Movements in C, Theresa Silver – Silver Garden – Csound Catalog Piece.
• Concert 3 duplicates Concert 1
• Concert 4 with Dave Bax – Three, Barry Threw – Insomnia, Amaro Borges – Sonatina, Barry Threw – Inner Light, Andreas Bjorck – Moving Grey Part I
• Concert 5 with with Derek Pierce – Invade Areas Where Nothing’s Definite, Flavio Gaete – Lullaby, David Hingoraney – Tired of this Noise in my Head, Flavio Gaete – Cancion de Cuna, Eloy Anzola – g draft 1
• Concert 6 with John ffitch – Collage, Grant Chu Covell – Csound Texture Study 1998, John ffitch – Unbounded Space
• Concert 7 with James Dashow – In Winter Shine, Hans Mikelson – Halloween, Joe Ciarcia – Final3, Jake Joaquin – Electronic Bubbles, Robert Cooper – Perks
• Concert 8 with Gabriel Maldonado – QuantumTantra, John ffitch – Stalacitite
• Concert 9 with Freddy Sheinfeld – Main, Hans Mikelson – Temple, Hans Mikelson – Valentine, & Terrain, Magda Klapper – Adeson TN
• Concert 10 with Nate Jenkins – What is this doing to me, Mike Berry – Voices=Wind
• Concert 11 with Luca Pavan – Planet, Michael Clarke – Malarsang
• Concert 12 with Derek Pierce – Invade Areas Where Nothing’s Definite, Joe Kung – Xanadu, Flavio Gaete – Lullaby, Steven Yi – On the Sensations of Tone, David Akbari – Syntax Context – Note List Piece, Richard Boulanger – Trapped in Convert, John ffitch – Drums and Different Cannons 1(b) – Distance, John ffitch – Drums and Different Cannons 1(c) – Gruneberg, John ffitch – Drums and Different Cannons 1(d) – Henon, John ffitch – Drums and Different Cannons 1(e) – Postlude, John ffitch – Drums and Different Cannons 1(a) – Prelude, Gabriel Maldonado – PhysMod, Matt Ingalls – Garage1, Michael Gogins – Chaotic Squares, Tobias Enhus – Electric Priest, Danny Patterson – Fluff or Die – Csound Catalog Piece, Robert Cooper – Cymbolic
• Concert 13 with Jon Christopher Nelson – Csound Etude, Lou Cohen – Circles 2004
• Concert 14 with Prent Rodgers – MajorMinor and Elkhorn Slough
• Concert 15 with Pete Moss – Additiv, Noise, Descent, Chant, and Etude1
• Concert 16 with Tim Barrass – The Swarm, Sal Sofia – Reptilas, Sean Costello – Space, Tom Huber – Night, Sean Costello – Otis, Severine Baron – Unwanted Flight
• Concert 17 with Robert Elkins – Final, Yuan Liu – In Valencia, Yuan Liu – Did Anyone Notice, Sal Sofia – Mir
• Concert 18 with Ryan Gilbert – Time Out – Csound Catalog Piece, Christopher Noel – Give Me More Time – Csound Catalog Piece, Zak Kramer – Reading from the Catalog – Csound Catalog Piece, Laura Tjoelker – Six – Hour – Bounce – Csound Catalog Piece, Enrique Lastra – Filter Flux – Csound Catalog Piece, Diego Quiros – Catalog Comp – Csound Catalog Piece, David Akbari – In Your House – DSP SoundMap Project, Ryan Gilbert – Cecilia – Cecilia Piece
• Concert 19 with Andreas Bjorck – Hibernia, Anthony Kozar – Dorian Gray, Art Hunkins – Gifts, Alan Rosenblith – Movement3, Bobby Pietrusko – Hunger Artist, Brian Baughn – Maple 7, Blake Williams – First, Alan Rosenblith – Movement1, Art Hunkins – Via Creativa,
  Anthony Pedar – PK Sweep, Art Hunkins – Lux Hominum, Art Hunkins – Et Vitam, Alan Rosenblith – Movement2
• Concert 20 with Dave Linnenbank – Windchimes in AC, Frank Pablo – Opus1, Eloy Anzola – Nightbeat 1, Elaine Walker – Microtonal Study 1, Freddy Sheinfeld – Natural Reflections, David Marsh – cSoundScape1, Eun Suk Choi – Supressed Memory, David Hanft – Conditions, Dave Seidel – Resonant Palindrome, Daniel Birczynski – Time Variations
• Concert 21 with Greg Rippin – Elegy, Hans Mikelson – Halloween, Greg Thompson – Necessary Evil, Glenn Ianaro – Turbulance, Glenn Ianaro – Rice Bowl, Jake Joaquin – Message from Another Planet, James Forrest – cklez4, Jean Piche – Incantation, Jake Joaquin – Nuclear Energy, Glenn Ianaro – Phases, Hans Mikelson – New Age Bull, Ignacio Longo – Bartok Variations, Jahwan Koo – Asymetric Symetry
• Concert 22 with Matt Ingalls – f(Ear), CrusT UH, Garage1, violinNoise, NlogN
• Concert 23 with Victor Lazzarini – Timelines1a, Michael Gogins – 03 38 19 python, Michael Gogins – Chaotic Squares, Michael Gogins – Cloud Strata
• Concert 24 with Jean-Luc Cohen – Monolith, Jeff Harrington – Acid Bach 0, Acid Bach 1, Deserted, A Wash, How Can It Be, Acid Bach 2, Acid Bach 3, Acid Bach 4
• Concert 25 with Kim Cascone – bluecube, Karlheinz Stockhausen – Study 2, Julie Friedman – Heartbeat 1, Kenji Ichiyanagi – The Fall of Time, Joo Won Park – Fragments of Forest, Joo Won Park – Escala 3, John Saylor – Rhythmicon, John Chen – Polyrhythm, John Ramsdell – You Know I Know
• Concert 26 with Michael Gogins – Lindenmayer Music 21 & Messier Catalog 3, J L Diaz – Bay and Bay at Night
• Concert 27 with David Akbari – SoundByte1, So Young Kim – Fantasy1, Chris Dale – Reach, Giovanni Damiani – Omaggio a Giuseppe Ganduscio, Michael Bechard – Adelle, David Akbari – SoundByte2
• Csound Marathon – Too numerous to mention
• Internet Groovy – As you might expect
• Internet Groovy 2 – More and more
• Csound Internet Pop – More and more
• To learn about new ones, subscribe here to the RSS feed.

This is a magnificent collection for anyone who has every touched a synthesizer, tape machine, microphone, or seen someone do it. Listen and learn from the experts. Most of the pieces have source code you can hunt for on the web to show how the masters work. Richard’s book The Csound Book is all you need to know to get started. From his bio we learn:

Richard Boulanger rboulanger@berklee.edu was born in 1956 and holds a Ph.D. in Computer Music from the University of California, San Diego where he worked at the Center for Music Experiment’s Computer Audio Research Lab. He has continued his computer music research at Bell Labs, CCRMA, the MIT Media Lab, Interval Research, and IBM and worked closely for many years with Max Mathews and Barry Vercoe. Boulanger has premiered his original interactive works at the Kennedy Center, and appeared on stage performing his Radio Baton and MIDI PowerGlove Concerto with the Krakow and Moscow Symphonies. His music is recorded on the NEUMA label.

Currently, Dr. Boulanger is a Professor of Music Synthesis at the Berklee College of Music where he has been honored with both the Faculty of the Year Award and the President’sAward. He has published articles on computer music education and composition in all the major electronic music and music technology magazines. Most recently, Boulanger edited a definitive textbook on computer music that was published by The MIT Press entitled: The Csound Book

Great work Richard!

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This is a work in progress…

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This is a work in progress…

The flutes and clarinets go up while the guitar and finger piano bass go down. The 15 limit just on the otonality of C. Melody in the finger piano octaves. Need to create a simple to implement roll on the finger piano.
Next time