midi notes and frequencies

Here is a reference table listing all MIDI note numbers and names, complete with corresponding frequency values (in Hz), in 12-tone equal temperament.

contemplating quality

Sometimes I catch myself searching for the ultimate means of composing and practicing music.  I find myself looking for the answer to “What can I practice/compose in order to play great music?”  I go looking for the ultimate concepts and theories in order to discover a sound that I can call ‘my own’.  Experience has told me that this leads into a vicious circle, constantly searching for a means to an unidentifiable end.  In order to reap the fruits of a discovery, I mustn’t simply align myself with a chosen concept, theory or ideology, but instead cultivate a sense of humility towards these ideas.  Humility itself is the teacher, not the concept.  I now see practice itself as a means of cultivating humility.

I like to think that the more I learn, the less I know.  It’s mystic and beautiful.  If we are not humble then we are deaf to potential and possibility.  In fact, there is no concept that yields any music by itself.  It is true what they say: that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.  I’ll also add that beauty lies in the ears of the beholder as well.  We are far closer to the ultimate music than we think.  All we must do is nurture our subtle listening abilities, through humble practice.

∞
Questioning “how” quantifies, questioning “why” qualifies.

Creativity is a quantum leap.  It’s the moment of insight and breakthrough.
It’s the opening of possibilities, transformation and endless new beginnings.

∞

photo by Alan English

lo shu or ‘solfeggio’ tonality templates

Here are the template files I use in order to create the experimental tonal system using the 3-digit Lo Shu or “solfeggio” number series as illustrated in the above image (courtesy of Bob Philips).  For all related posts, click here.

Once again, these numbers are interpreted as frequencies in Hz, and are inspired by the following threads.  Although these numeric concepts are rather ancient, the frequencies themselves are not.

The 81 Lo Shu Tones within the 729 Fabric and;
The Sacred Solfeggio Megathread

I used Custom Scale Editor (CSE) for creating these scales.  The 81-tone and the 36-tone scales are mapped “chromatically”, that is, linearly across the keyboard.

CSE allows an export of a .txt file in order to use the scale within a Kontakt patch for tuning sample-based virtual instruments. It also generates an Absynth .gly file for tuning synth patches.  CSE comes with good documentation on how to import these files into the various virtual instruments.  You can also tell CSE to capture MIDI data live from a controller and route it to any sound source.  It is also possible to export a Scala .scl file with a .kbm keyboard map file so that you can work with these pitches directly in Scala. I’ve included all these mentioned file types in this download for your convenience.

If you are using Kontakt:
Kontakt outputs an error when a MIDI note is set to “OFF” in CSE, therefore I have only re-tuned the keyboard maps starting on MIDI note 24 for the 36-tone scale; and MIDI note 21 for the 81-tone scale. Therefore, I have left the notes above and below the scale ‘as is’ at 12-tone equal temperament in these scripts, so please know that you can still play these ‘extra’ notes, but they are not part of the Lo Shu pitch set.  Also, any release samples have not been scripted for re-tuning in Kontakt (see this thread), so you might need to mute those particular samples, if applicable in your patch.

After much experimentation, I have concluded that by using the DAW Reaper will greatly assist you in composing with this pitch set.  I say this primarily because Reaper allows users to input, import and export custom MIDI note names directly onto the piano roll, which adds a very useful visual reference.  In the download, I have also included a text file so you can import these values onto Reaper’s MIDI editor easily.

They are not perfect, but they do work!  And I hope it serves you well :) Enjoy.

Download: The Lo Shu Tonality Templates

class notes for creating sound and music

The following are notes for a lecture I gave to students at the Peabody Conservatory at John Hopkins University in Baltimore on February 17th, 2012.  These notes apply to aspiring composers, sound designers and musicians.  A very special thank you goes out to Jake K. Leckie who invited me to speak and share these ideas.

Take measures to ensure that your team members succeed.  For composers, this means supporting your musicians.  This also means that you want the director or producer you’re working with to succeed as well.  Ultimately, all composers want to inspire an audience, so practice by inspiring your co-workers and collaborators.  If you do, they will be with you for a lifetime of wonderful creation. Communicate concisely and effectively.  Be open, and present your demos with sincerity.

Everything lies in the quality of your source.  Composition does not lie in amassing a collection of software, it lies in the search sound: quality and purpose.  Plugins do not make any sound by themselves.

Think of everything you create as a demo, sketch or idea.  This way expectations are easily managed and you don’t feel pressured by delivering over “final” results from the beginning.  If you sketch out a truly good idea, others will resonate with it and you will want to take it to the next step, if needed.

Multitasking is a myth; it’s impossible.  You can only listen to one thing at a time: the whole piece of music, a part of the music, or the voice in your head.  You can’t really listen to the music if you’re listening to the voice in your head (or checking the installation status of that new plugin-bundle!)  Beauty lies in simplicity.

A talented audio engineer once told me that for him, the difference between fancy plugins and cheap plugins was that fancy plugins got the sound you wanted faster, cheap plugins you might have to work a little harder to get the results you want.  In the end, it’s all just digital number-crunching algorithms at play.  Okay, enough about that.

Get a field recorder.  I strongly recommend that every musician and composer own one of these, and they come in all sorts of sizes to fit all kinds of budgets.  Use this tool to record anything and everything available to you.  Strike objects and record the sound.  Build your own library of sound, sample it, mangle it, juxtapose it and layer it to your heart’s content.  Again, it’s the sound of your source that you’re after, so use your recordings as a tool to capture those sounds quickly and easily, without the need for any expensive gear.  Curate an archive of these recordings and you will find ways of re-purposing your recordings in both abstract and conventional ways across many different projects which will serve you for years to come.

Learn to edit audio gracefully.  Every DAW, regardless of price accommodates this.  A wise man once said that all composition lies in the editing, so play with your sounds.  If you are scoring and utilizing notation, don’t be “married” to the notes on the page and seek to continue the compositional process well into the post production stages.

Learn to edit MIDI gracefully.  Experiment with MIDI generators, processing and sampling, but be sure to use your own sounds.  Too many modern composers think they need a orchestral sample library in order to be a film score composer.  This is the wrong thinking.

A composer’s best resource are other musicians.  Utilize them fully, ask them to improvise freely and experiment with the ideas and material you give them.  Remember that you want them to succeed.  Record them in creative ways, in creative locations with your field recorder.

Collect and trade things like small percussion, toys, and other unique sound sources.  This will serve to build your library with original, organic sounds that you can call your own.  After archiving, you will want to find creative ways of using the sounds, much more than you would a commercially available sample library.  If you’re recording in a studio, have the engineer always be recording, even in between takes.  Often I find that the most interesting and unique sounds from sampling come from sound-checks, and tune-up noise.

Experiment with pitch and tonality.  As a composer and sound designer, the entire spectrum of color is at your disposal.  Using only 12 tones is like using only 12 RGB colors for web.

Don’t limit yourself to working in just one session file.  Developing sound and music happens across many files, folders and ideas.  Keep the momentum flowing and mix-down your work-in-progress often.  Don’t get caught up in trying to “fix” a session for endless hours if the original inspiration for it has left.  In one session, maybe there are 2 – 4 ideas to work with, so then start a new session for each good idea and take it from there.

Nick Zammuto:

Nick Zammuto is an inventive, resourceful  sound artist.  You may be familiar with him from his work in The Books.  The thing to notice here is that he doesn’t use any fancy software or plugins at all, instead he finds creative ways to record fascinating sounds for sampling and compiling with common materials and devices.  I highly recommend checking out his website for further ideas and inspiration.

Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross

An amazing trait about Trent & Atticus is that they are a seamless two-man operation.  Trent improvises, while Atticus records.  Then, Atticus edits, layers, adjusts the raw material to mock-up ideas.  The sound sources are vast and lush, thanks to Trent’s huge collection of analog and vintage synths, guitars and hardware effects.  This documentary is about the music of The Social Network.

Sound of Lord Of The Rings:

An amazing sound documentary on what it took to develop all the sound and music of the cinematic giant, The Lord Of The Rings.

Sound of WALL-E:

Ben Burtt is a legendary sound designer whose credits range from Star Wars to Indiana Jones to E.T.  This is an incredibly important and insightful documentary where here he explains in detail his process and gives us a history of sound design on film.

Wendy Carlos

Wendy was an early user and collaborator with Robert Moog, and pioneered synthesized sound on recording and film.  She did many Stanley Kubrick films such as  The Shining, Clockwork Orange and Disney’s original Tron.  Moreover, her album The Beauty In the Beast is a wonderfully original work combining  micro-tonality and analog synthesis.

Cliff Martinez

Formerly a Red Hot Chili Pepper member, Cliff Martinez is a film composer whose soundtracks have been heard on such momentous films such as Traffic and Solaris.  Above is a track he wrote, heavily utilizing the exotic pitched-percussion instrument, the Hang Drum.

hearing reality

“An average man can ‘grab’ the things of the world only with his hands, or his eyes, or his ears, but a sorcerer can grab them also with his nose, or his tongue, or his will, especially his will.  I cannot really describe how it is done, but you yourself, for instance, cannot describe to me how you hear.  It happens, that I am also capable of hearing, so we can talking about what we hear, but not about how we hear.  A sorcerer uses his will to perceive the world. The perceiving, however, is not like hearing.  When we look at the world or when we hear it, we have the impression that it is out there and that it is real.  When we perceive the world with our will we know that it is not ‘out there’ or ‘as real’ as we think.”

-don Juan Matus

From “A Separate Reality”
by Carlos Castaneda

Photo by Johannes G.

unheard sound

Photo by Joel Lee.

To me, trees seem like organic statues depicting a frozen electricity sculpted by the grace of magnetism.

Hearing is not just done with our ears.

The perfect music exists among the air that we breathe, just like static electricity.
And it is only experienced only when we realize and resonate its potential.

From the essay “Yoga and Music” by Sharron Gannon in Arcana V, edited by John Zorn:

“Anahata nadam means ‘unstruck’ sound–it is not heard by just the physical ears, no one can make this sound… Ahata nadam means ‘struck’ sound–it is music that we can hear with our physical sense; it refers to sound that is made by striking two things together, like when a musician strums an instrument or blows through a horn or hits a drum…  The nadam is the vibrational underlying stream that connects all of life; it is the eternal pulse of the universe…”

Hazrat Inayat Khan:

“In all the occupations of life where beauty has been the inspiration, where the divine wine has been poured out, there is music. But among all the different arts, the art of music has been especially considered divine, because it is the exact miniature of the law working through the whole universe.”