Pages Menu
Categories Menu

Posted by on Oct 28, 2012 in Just Intonation, Recordings, The Lattice | 11 comments

Flying Dream on YouTube

This may have been the most intense art project of my life. Some time early in 2012, I got it into my head to create a stop-motion animation of my song Flying Dream, moving in harmonic space. I’ve spent the past five months working like crazy on it. The song is carefully arranged using the lattice of fifths and thirds, sung and played in just intonation, and animated using colored lenses, rice paper and a flashlight.

If it doesn’t play smoothly, don’t hesitate to lower the resolution. It survives scaling well, and the timing is crucial.

This video encompasses almost everything I’ve learned in the past couple of years. I will be writing much more about it. Meanwhile, here are a couple of external links about the basic subjects:

just intonation

lattice (music)

Next: Back Story

 

Read More

Posted by on Oct 28, 2012 in Background, Just Intonation | 0 comments

Untempered Music

For almost two years now, I’ve been exploring the nature of music almost full-time. I threw out everything I knew, started with the most basic thing I could think of, the number 1, the origin of the musical universe, and worked my way from there.

My explorations quickly led to the underpinnings of musical harmony, the natural notes that can be expressed as ratios of small whole numbers. These are the notes people generally played and sang, before twelve-tone equal temperament (12ET) came along. 12ET is a clever tuning system, a collection of 12 notes that are slightly retuned from the natural ones, mathematically fudged so that you can play fixed-pitch instruments in any key, and change keys without retuning.

Before 2011, I’d never seriously questioned those 12 notes. They are “The Notes,” after all. They’re the ones on the piano, and they’re what your guitar tuner tunes to. They’re right, right? Well, not really. In the past two years, I have met and made friends with a whole color palette of new, untempered notes, no two alike, each with its own function and personality. In the process, I’ve discovered new ways of thinking about and visualizing music that have greatly increased my enjoyment of it. I have even made friends with equal temperament again, after a long journey away. This website will tell about the journey. Welcome!

Gary Garrett

Next: Flying Dream on YouTube

Read More