Coming Soon

A Screenshot of a work in progess animation based on Stravinsky's 'rotational arrays' (the row from 'The Flood' in this instance.)

Apologies for not posting anything recently, I have been busy sorting out my computer (installing new programs, DVD burner, fixing stuff), playing at FES (Birmingham University) and reading (library scores and books like Arom's)

Coming fairly soon will be (hopefully) an animated video (possibly with 'narration') describing/explaining (see Nietzsche for the difference/s) Stravinsky's 'rotational arrays' (from his later 'serial' period.)

You can use the method for structuring any group/sets of pitches, it's not just a 12-tone serial thing.

Also i'll be posting in the next day or two with a sort of 'Top of the Un-Pops' composer list, I won't spoil the surprise by saying any more about that.

So, that's it for now then.

P.S. you can read a bit about rotational arrays in this PDF (courtesy of The University of Houston.), and/or buy the Cambridge Companion to Stravinsky (a USA Amazon complement.inversion.etc. link here.)

Free Stuff!!!: Two Interviews, Ferneyhough and Xenakis.

Brian Ferneyhough Time and Motion Study III 1974 16 mixed voices, percussion, live electronics (detail of the score) [image and text via this James Wagner blog entry]

That's right, some extracts of interviews* with Ferneyhough here and here, courtesy of UNT again, both from Ferneyhough's 'Collected Writings', and here is an interview with Xenakis from 1993 (with James Harley).

Also, there is a good interview with Ferneyhough on Wiki-talk, here.

*well ok, part one of the Ferneyhough extract is a questionnaire on 'complexity'.

Free Stuff, Again!: Flute Multiphonics and Non-12ET Fingerings etc

Here is a Deposit Files link an appendix from a book on flute fingering and extended techniques.

I assume that's what the book is about although I can't be sure as the appendix is all I have and I can't trace the origin of it even though I sent my people out amongst the woodwind community to try and find out (no luck.)

It seems fairly obscure and is probably out of print so I think it's fair to share it here as a PDF. If you know what book it's from and can show me it's still in print and/or perhaps you own the rights to it or something then let me know and i'll take it down (and apologise in a sheepish eyes-cast-downwards-shuffling-feet sort of a way.)

The appendix contains various fingerings, normal, trills, quarter tones (24ET), 31-tone, and loads and loads of mulitphonics (over one hundred pages infact), most requiring an open hole/french flute (which I need to get, foolishly opting for a closed hole body when I started playing flute 'properly' last year).

EDIT: Thanks to Daniel M in the comments below for alerting me to the fact that this file/link is now dead. I've uploaded it again HERE.

EDIT (22/08/2010): Thanks again to someone in the comments section for noticing the link is down again. It's back up here on Dropio..

Also a tinyurl link for twitter etc.. http://tinyurl.com/y4lfbhq

Enjoy, if that's the right word for how you'd feel about a large appendix of flute fingerings. Please let me know if this or other links are dead and I'll upload them again. Cheers, ta, etc. Ed 17/04/2010.

Free Stuff!: Quarter Tones For Saxophone Book, More or Less

The Saxophone Family

Here is a free PDF download of a 1975 masters thesis on quarter tones for saxophone by John William Paulson. It's in two parts (80 pages in total) and features general discussion on the topic, fingering charts for various sizes of saxophone and some exercises and etudes.

Also there are some mp3 examples, six different takes of the first etude, for some reason (UPDATE: it's a 1975 recording of three saxophone students playing the first etude, then they play it again a week later after some practice, 'improvement in performance is ... easily perceived')

Hosted by The University Of Rochester.

As it's Oscars season, I would like to the thank Mr Paulson and the various institutions which support his work and its distribution.

Music: A Mathematical Offering

A really good book about maths and music by David J. Benson, available as a free pdf, or in a more old fashioned form.

'In real life, as in group theory, operations seldom satisfy the commutative law. For example, if we put on our socks and then put on our shoes, we get a very different effect from doing it the other way round. The associative law is much more commonly satisfied'.

pg325.