Auld Lang Syne 2020 — on the Kite Guitar

All this year, I've had a note on my task list to write about how I've been continuing lessons with video chat (so far sticking to the free/libre/open tool Jitsi Meet instead of Zoom or other proprietary options). I have a lot I could (and will later) say about this whole situation. It's been working out surprisingly well, continuing with most of my students and adding new students who are local, out of state, and even overseas.

Of the many reasons I haven't gotten around to writing articles about video lessons, one issue is the time and energy I've been putting into the Kite Guitar! This new system of guitar fretting and tuning fulfills a dream I've had for 20 years to be able to play more harmonious chords and expressive melodies in a flexible-enough, practical way. I will be publishing much more about that soon.

In honor of the New Year (and played extra slowly so that astute listeners might notice the special qualities of the tuning):

I'm resisting the urge to go on about the guitar, the tuning, the arrangement, my process of updated video production (using all free/libre/open software), and more. It will all come in due time. Looking forward to a productive and prosperous 2021, and sending my love and well-wishes to everyone in the world! Happy New Year!

Featured on the Now&Xen podcast playing the Kite Guitar

I was featured on the Now&Xen podcast! Full link: https://nowandxen.libsyn.com/29268-cents-kite-giedraitis-aaron-wolf-spencer-hargraves-jacob-collier

Here's an embedded player:

The "xen" in the podcast name refers to the prefix that means "strange" or "foreign" (so xenophobia is fear of foreign people or things, xenophilia is love of them). In this case, it refers to xenharmonic, a term for musical tunings that feel foreign.

In the podcast, I'm playing on and discussing the amazing Kite Guitar, named for my friend Kite Giedraitis who discovered the tuning and invented a practical language around it.

Copying Is Not Theft: Barbershop Arrangement pt2

see part 1 to check out the original song and the context that inspired my version

Announcing my first published barbershop arrangement:

Copying Is Not Theft by Nina Paley

The song is licensed Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 (as is my entire website). This means I have full legal right to do anything I want with it as long as I credit Nina and I license my version the same way. Lots of people have already made tons of variations of the song from jazz to punk rock versions.

I made my barbershop arrangement using the free open-source music notation software Musescore. This software not only produces great looking results, but it supports fine tuning of pitch. I adjusted all the pitches to match just intonation tuning to 1-cent accuracy. If you play the file in Musescore, the harmonies are all well tuned to get nice pure barbershop harmonies (though the sound is a saxophone sample). [side note: to play back with swing rhythm in Musescore, go to the menu display>Play Panel]

Download the Musescore file. Or Download a PDF.

I made a quick audio recording by overdubbing my own singing and created fast-paced and slightly slower versions, an old-timey mix with virtual vinyl record crackles and such, and dedicated learning tracks for each part (with select part on one side of stereo and the other three on the other side).

Here's an embedded audio player:

All the files are available to download at the best free, non-profit media sharing website: archive.org/details/CopyingIsNotTheftForBarbershopQuartet

Archive.org automatically creates many file formats, so you can download any format you like of the audio and do whatever you want with it (just include the CC-BY-SA license and credit both me and Nina if you release any modified version).

I really hope some talented animator is up for creating an old-timey cartoon, maybe inspired by Nina's original cartoon but with a quartet singing… And I hope barbershop quartets out there choose to learn the song and perform it and perhaps make new recordings.

Whether for a video version or for live performance, I have some ideas about choreography. The way I arranged the song, the idea is: the lead sings the first phrase alone, but the baritone jumps in and cuts off the lead for the second phrase. Then they copy each other and sing the third phrase together, splitting into harmony at the end, and then the whole quartet joins in.

Overall, the arrangement follows very traditional barbershop harmony, full of all the little embellishments and with a new tag at the end. I added a decent amount of complexity that makes it more advanced than the most basic arrangement might have been, but in the end I stuck with mostly accessible stuff.

So go copy this! Have fun! Change it! Perform it! Whatever! I'd love to be notified when anyone does something with this, but there's no legal requirement to do so.

In harmony,
Aaron

P.S. I added just the "Copying Is Fun" tag to the wonderful barbershop tag collection at barbershoptags.com.

Review: How Music Works by John Powell

Since I first learned about things like tuning and temperament, the cognitive processing of rhythm, and the perception of timbre, I have had thoughts of writing some sort of universal how-music-works book. Music is usually taught through cultural context (sometimes without revealing this angle), and little to no mention of universal perceptual and cognitive facts. Clearly, however, I am not alone in having this idea of writing some universal music book. John Powell's 2010 book How Music Works: The Science and Psychology of Beautiful Sounds, from Beethoven to the Beatles and Beyond has a same main title that is included in the subtitle of the book I previously reviewed by Philip Ball from just earlier in 2010. These two books are far from alone in this burgeoning arena of authors hoping to enlighten the world to their grand universal insights on the nature of music. Unfortunately, these attempts all fall short of what I would like to see. If I had the same standards as John Powell, I would probably have already written my submission to the field. But I'm trying to learn from the attempts of others first and/or to find existing books I can truly recommend without qualification (Music and Memory: An Introduction by Bob Snyder being among the best I've yet found).

Tonal Plexus microtonal keyboard: 3 videos

In 2008, I became one of the first owners of a Tonal Plexus keyboard from H-Pi Instruments (a mostly one-man production of owner Aaron Hunt, who hand-builds the keyboards and creates the supporting software).

I had already deeply studied pitch in music through barbershop harmony, alternatively tuning my guitars, listening to software tone generators, listening to a wide variety of music from around the world and from composers who explored pitch (such as Lou Harrison, Harry Partch, Toby Twining, Jon Catler, and many others), and through extensive reading (including Hermann Helmholtz, Easley Blackwood, Bill Sethares, and many more).

At one time, I had hoped to find some simple scale or guitar tuning or guitar fretting system that would achieve the sounds I was seeking; but no optimal system seemed possible. If I wanted one chord tuning, it interfered with tuning another chord. Frets would have to be so close together, that I might as well have no frets. No frets allows any pitch, but then it is much harder to avoid errors in tuning. Violinists and barbershop singers work hard enough to get one pitch tuned just so. Achieving consistent accuracy (to the degree that I want) with multiple notes and complex chords all on a single stringed instrument is unrealistic.

With the Tonal Plexus (TPX) keyboard, a whole new flexibility is possible without sacrificing accuracy. The sheer number of pitches approximates a complete pitch continuum. In other words, the very low-bit digital system of the traditional keyboard or fretted instruments is rough and blocky, like an old eight or sixteen color computer screen, whereas the Tonal Plexus is still digital but is more like 8-bit or 16-bit color (meaning hundreds to thousands of colors) on a computer monitor which can much better approximate the full color spectrum. Full analog devices are completely continuous, but being digital offers more accessible accuracy. I can press a specific button and get a specific predetermined pitch.

On the downside, the TPX cannot achieve the natural fluidity of analog instruments like fretless strings or the human voice. Also, the lack of touch sensitivity further limits the keyboard's expressive potential. Of course, adding touch sensitivity for so many buttons would make the instrument prohibitively expensive, if it were even possible. At least there is a randomization option for velocity as well as a whole-keyboard option for volume and velocity control via footpedals. It is worth noting that harpsichords and organs have still been used to make effective music despite their lack of touch sensitivity.

While I learned much upon initially playing with the keyboard, I found it frustrating that it still could not achieve quite what I wanted. The stretches seemed awkward. I wondered about all sorts of other alternatives. I decided to finally get a fretless guitar (see my 2009 video). The guitar's nuances and fluidity were thrilling, but it wasn't the full answer either. I've come to accept that my imagined complete instrument may simply be practically impossible (even though simultaneous fluid melodic motion, precise harmony, harmonic deviance, and control of touch sensitive nuance is — in principle — possible). Maybe touch-sensitive multi-touch computer screens along with some complex algorithmic tuning will get closer, but we're not there yet.

In the end, I have realized that what matters more is the human context: the cultural and psychological experience of music over the details of the objective form. And yet, I am convinced that much of the pitch subtlety available on the TPX is psychologically relevant. I have much more to study and hope to get more involved in that sort of research, but that's a subject for another time.

In an effort to be less idealistic and perfectionist, I have gone back to the TPX to show off its unique capabilities. It certainly can do particular expressive things that no other musical instrument has ever achieved. It is worth appreciating that without worrying about the compromises. All instruments bring different insights and potential, and exploring the Tonal Plexus for what it offers has been very enriching.

With help from my friend Doug Jones doing the camera-work and providing some direction and feedback, I have made an initial set of videos on my TPX. The first is an introductory explanation:



Next, a melodic improvisation over a drone:



Finally, a barbershop tag in just intonation:



[note: click the links to YouTube to read the specific descriptions I wrote of each video]

More videos will come soon. I hope these first ones highlight just a little of the enormous potential here. My future with this could include more careful practice, maybe detailed compositions, additional controllers for more timbrel and dynamic (and even additional pitch) nuance, and coordination with other instruments and musicians.

I welcome any comments or questions, though I suggest that anyone interested in the theory explore the H-Pi website first. There, Mr. Hunt has included everything from history to theory about much of the ideas behind this keyboard. He also offers software including a FREE virtual version of the keyboard (which is also used by owners to create alternate tunings or other adjustments). H-Pi also offers software for ear-training, an alternate-tuning device for standard keyboards, and much more.

Octave equivalence? Not so fast...

Sometimes I just feel like such an iconoclast in the world of music theory and pedagogy. Today I was inspired to make a video that attacks one of the most basic precepts of Western music theory: the idea of octave equivalence. To be sure, I'm far from the first to question the nature of octaves. I was inspired because today during a break I was practicing and came up with a very straightforward and accessible way to present one angle on the subject... read on and see the video below:

There are so many problems with the generic idea of octaves as taught in Western music that I can't get into them all here. The question of why do we treat octaves as equivalent has to be qualified by questions of when. In Bill Sethares' notable book Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale (the link includes summary and samples), he describes and provides audio examples of how the idea of equivalence and blend is related to the particular vibrations in a sound's spectrum. Among the simplest examples, as piano tuners know, the inharmonicity of hammered (or plucked) strings can lead to stretched octaves. Bill goes on to discuss harmony for completely inharmonic sounds as well, which is a whole further (and very interesting) issue.

There have been many attempts to explain why the octave is so significant, some based on carefully controlled scientific experiments. What we know about octaves is that they are, at the most basic, a doubling (or halving) of vibration speed (or close). Because of that, they blend very well and fit into the same overall periodicity. Men and women have likely been singing octaves since prehistoric times. The vast majority of all the world's music treats the octave specially, usually with equivalency, giving the same note name to pitches at an octave.

While the significance of octaves must be acknowledged, there is more than enough evidence to disprove any claim that octaves are absolutely universally equivalent. Octaves are not fully equivalent. They sound different. Harmony does not work the same way at all octaves. A close position major chord sounds great in middle to high ranges, but move it down some octaves into bass ranges and it sounds muddy even if the tuning is not tempered. The vast majority of all guitar methods teach that octaves are equivalent and so any combination of C, E, and G makes a C chord; but the very same books near-universally teach students not to play the low E when holding a C chord. That E doesn't fit as well the harmonic series of the rest of the C chord, so it sounds rougher. If they explain at all, most books and teachers just say that while E is technically part of the chord, we just don't play it because it sounds bad. Some books say it is because the lowest note should be C for a C chord. And yet there is widespread acceptance of the same chord with a low G bass note (which fits the harmonic series in that octave better than the E). Explaining all this is simple once we drop the idea that octaves are totally equivalent.

Another great example is Diana Deutch's Mysterious Melody. She shows how if the octaves are mixed up in a melody it is unrecognizable. Significantly, however, once the melody is known by hearing it normally, then one can still hear it within the mixed-up-octaves version! So octaves have some equivalence: they can substitute for one another if our expectations are clear. But they aren't fully equivalent; it is based on expectations and context.

A common question says, "if octaves are equivalent because they fit into the same periodicity and are a simple 1:2 ratio and part of the harmonic series, wouldn't the 1:3 ratio be comparable and therefore also be equivalent?"

Maybe octaves are more significant because of cultural reinforcement. Maybe it's because men and women don't have such different ranges that they would sing at an even further 1:3 ratio. Maybe it's because 1:3 can be divided by 1:2, thus making 1:1.5 which is not as simple and thus 1:2 is more absolutely basic... but maybe we shouldn't even assume that 1:3 can't be equivalent. Maybe it can be.

I was playing around with this today and decided to make a video showing how effective it is to play at a set 1:3 ratio (called a twelfth in standard Western music theory terms counting letters; also called a tritave in harmonic terms because it's a multiple of 3)

Notice how the final note in the video sounds fully resolved (it does to me anyway). Both the low and high notes each feel not just like part of a tonic harmony but actually feel like the main tonal center, even though one is E and the other is B. But this isn't bitonality to me, though it might be arguably similar. I think this is more like twelfths/tritave equivalency and feels about the same as octave equivalency, just lacking the life-long cultural reinforcement. Maybe in a 12ths/tritave-based theory the E and B would actually get the same name, like we usually do with octaves (for example, the Bohlen-Pierce tuning is tritave-based). Sure, 12ths/tritaves don't sound really identical, but remember that octaves don't either...

EDIT update 11/15/10:
I should mention that the technique I used (playing some music and then checking whether an isolated tone seems to fit) has technical terms. The preparation listening is called "priming" and the isolated tone is called a "probe tone." These are some of the standard methods used in empirical studies of music cognition. My simple demonstration could easily be repeated in controlled testing administered to a number of listeners from different backgrounds. Different priming and different probe tones could be used. The results could better clarify my hypotheses about the potential for listeners to learn 12ths-equivalence (or other alternate equivalences), though additional varieties of tests would be needed to truly be conclusive.

First Day With Fretless Guitar (re-post from old site)

I have made a total of one YouTube video so far. Nearly a year and a half ago I got a fretless guitar, and I recorded my very first experiments in the first hour of trying it and edited a quick video.

I am now consolidating my web content into this updated blog, so here's this now-old video.