Techniques of Polytempic Polymicrotonal Composition

  A Few Thoughts On Spectral Techniques for Polytempic, Polymicrotonal Music For the sake of discussion, let's imagine that we have a perfect ability to realize or perform any sounds that we can imagine. We can create any sound and in any tuning or temperament, laid out in time in any fashion that we desire. We can shape the timbre and texture of our music in such a way as to cause people to hear voices where there are none, to transform the sound of rain into a percussion trio, into a crowd of people shouting. This can be done today with computers using a plethora of techniques. It can also be done with acoustic instruments by using “instrumental synthesis” techniques, with the help of computer-aided audio analysis and composition tools. In instrumental synthesis, the composer uses the computer to aid the composing process. She does a spectral analysis of a recording of a stretch of sound, and asks the computer to produce a score to simulate that, using a set of acoustic instrumen...

     There are many precedents in music history regarding multiple versions of one piece of music. First of all, there is the case of different interpretations by different performers of a piece of music. Yes, it is the same score, but there are subtle differences in various parameters of the musical mechanics and phrasing. No two performers will ever perform the same piece the same way. In fact, there is no single performer who will perform the same piece the same way over time. There will always be differences in length, tempo, dynamics, articulations, phrasing, and even intonation. However, we know it is the same piece of music because of its most basic and inherent qualities, such as melody, harmony, and rhythm.  Take Glenn Gould's renderings of Bach. They are so idiosyncratic that they may be considered Gould's pieces. This goes for conductors, such as von Karajan conducting Beethoven's Third Symphony versus Klemperer's interpretation: fast and brilliant versus ...

  Controlled Organization of Microchroma within Polymicrotonal Systems For me, pitch organization is either atonal , tonal , or centric . One can use any approach one wishes in polytempic polymicrotonality . I prefer to be somewhere in between. Although I have not used twelve-tone procedures for my compositions, I have used cells, tetrachords , centric quasi-tonal areas , and even jazz harmony .  Again, I refrain from "laying down" a law or system, and I am only trying to cover an array of topics related to all things poly. I know that Joseph Straus 's book Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory  is NOT everyone's favorite textbook, as it resembles a math class, but it has crystallized some basic atonal concepts for me in my undergrad and graduate years.  I know I rail against the new simplicity of microtonal music adopting minimalism and drones , but there really needs to be an alternative to this. It is good that a simpler approach is pertinent today, as this period...

 More about Meter Poetic Meter , for me, is essentially music. Song. The art of songwriting . Although different, the art of poetic meter has a built-in logic that suits musical construction. Most of the time, songwriters, or composers of Lieder , or Art Songs , simply use the rhythms of the composition itself. Or the words of the poem may dictate the rhythms to the composer in a type of durch-komponiert style of writing, like Wagner or Schubert have done. As a matter of fact, prosody is a poetic analysis, much akin to musical analysis. Yet, there is a compositional system dormant and employable in this analytical system. Much like atonal analysis using set theory , or intervallic cell analysis , these types of techniques can also lend themselves to creation by working backwards. I have frequently composed music backwards, or even started in the middle of a piece.  Figure 1. As said earlier in this blog, poetic forms themselves are just as numerous and organic as musical...

  Continuation of part XIIIa: Trisyllabic and Tetrasyllabic feet for intervallic cells As a continuation of part XIIIa, I will provide more notes and examples of prosody as applied to voice leading , intervallic cells, and a type of loose pitch organization as applicable to any microtonal system used in polymicrotonality . The most important aspect of this technique is the specific use of the ultrachromatic cell , prescribed as the unstressed unit "U." According to which smallest intervallic unit your microtonal system is using, for example, the 92.3 cent microchromatic interval of 13tet , becomes arsis U. (All this is presented in part XIIIa) Thesis "—" then contains the remaining group of intervals still within the microtonal system, but are larger than a microchromatic step. Therefore, the third microtonal scale degree , or larger, will be considered as skips, leaps, and jumps to other pitches. The reader may interpret these other larger intervals in the fr...

History of My Altered Polymicrotonal Staff System   in Pictures. My little notebook holds my treasure trove of poly ideas. Landing in grad school in 2004-7 lit a fire inside me that sought a new approach to composition through my polytempic polymicrotonal approach .  Wiggly staff , may be a silly idea, but I am envisioning an interactive computer notation program that could eventually widen and narrow the staves, such as my fat staves idea, to encompass microtonal tunings vertically without semiotics interrupting the horizontal flow of dense polyrhythmic activity. My little notebook shows the progression of ideas about fattening up, or altering the staff for microtones, without the hassle of semiotics and semaphores cluttering the horizontal scansion of rhythms.  The idea of holographic sheet music occurred to me as a possible solution to microtonal notation problems, and amazingly, I believe I had heard recently, in 2025, that someone was in the process of inventing t...

 Applying Prosody to a Microtonal System What is Prosody, and what the Heck does it have to do with Microtones?   Although Leonard Meyer created a musical analysis approach using simple prosodic elements from the analysis of poetic syllabic feet, I have always been interested in prosody and its close relationship to song and music in general. This morning, as my cat Maximus attacked my face while I was trying to sleep, I had an idea concerning the use of prosody with regard to microtonal systems.  Fig. 1. Disyllabic permutations as applied to microtonal voice leading and pitch cell organization In prosody, poems are written syllabically in a meter, such as in iambic pentameter .  Most English classical poetry is written in iambic pentameter. Take Milton's Paradise Lost , for instance. This epic poem is entirely written in a foot resembling: ∪ — where "∪" is the unstressed syllable, and "—" is the stressed syllable. There are three categories of syllabic feet: ...