everyone loves neo tokyo

While setting up the patch, though–loading samples, making some drum patterns, things like that– without any guitar, I found some different sorts of atmospheres that I felt like hitting the record button on because they sounded nice, and felt like they evoked some sort of location or place to me.

It turned out as a set of 3 tracks with dubby repetition and subtly shifting textures.  here they are:

1. reflection pool

2. false horizon

3. gnomadics

enjoy!

I’m going to start a new series here, where I post tracks and images together–music inspired by photos I’ve taken.  Here is the first.  This is a street about 2 blocks from where I live, that goes over the top of I-5.

the hill on 8th ave

and here is the track.  ”Up 8th.”

Mp3 audio for Up 8th

won't be looking out this window much longer

Anyhow, with that in mind, I made a nice little lazy Sunday jam.  A simple textural rhythmic drone kind of thing.  Hope you enjoy!

lazy sunday jam mp3

A diagram from Harry Partch's book, "Genesis of a Music" showing different ratios' correspondence to notes in an equal temperament scale

Here is the track:

Solar Flare MP3 Audio

I quite like how this track turned out–I will probably be including a longer, more structured version of this in an upcoming release.

Let me know if you like it, and enjoy!

I’ve talked to a lot of people and musicians who are intimidated by music theory.  I think there is a reason for this–western music theory doesn’t make any sense!  I consider all the words and ideas in old-school music theory to be the product of a centuries long cultural evolution that never gave a second thought to being clear or logical. 

Anyway, enough ranting.  Let’s get down to the numbers.  After familiarizing yourself with how musical frequencies are related, thinking about music from a mathematical standpoint is a lot more intuitive and direct.  There are two basic materials that everything in music is based on:  octaves, and the overtone series.

Musical notes are described numerically as frequencies, or in “cycles per second,” denoted by the term “hertz” or “hz.”  The wonderful thing about frequencies is that they are also used to describe the electromagnetic spectrum, including visible light, radio, micro, gamma, and x-rays, or, if you want, the rotation and orbits of planets, anything that repeats periodically.  The incredible thing about all of this, is that musical frequencies can be related to all kinds of phenomena–the light emitted by the sun, the resonances in minerals and atoms, with simple ratios.  This begins to explain why I’ve titled this series “the god chord.”  Because, I think, if God really exists somewhere, I think God is a frequency.  Or a melody. Or, most likely, a CHORD.

 If you need to catch up on your frequency theory, check WIKIPEDIA! 

So, as I mentioned before, I wanted to describe octaves, and overtones.  Let’s start with frequencies, and octaves.  

Musical frequencies are Logarithmic.  For instance, if we are in the key of A (440 hertz), the next octave up would be at 880 hz, and below, 220 hz, and so on.  All of these frequencies, that are powers of 2 of the original frequency, are considered the same note, but just at different locations.  This phenomenon is highly useful and fundamental to nearly all music in all cultures.  If you were to describe this in ratios, with 440 hz being 1/1, then 880hz would be 2/1, 1760hz (the next octave up) would be 4/1, and so on.  220 hz would be 1/2, 110hz would be 1/4, etc.    incidentally, 2/1 and 4/1 are both Overtones.  Any frequency you can imagine has duplicates of itself in octaves going toward infinity both above and below, beyond the range of human hearing, and the scale of human perception.

OK.  Now, let’s talk about the overtone series.  The overtone series is also described by mathematicians as the Harmonic Series.  Like the octaves I was just describing, the overtone series is infinite, only limited by the range of human hearing and the physical properties of whatever object is projecting the frequencies.  When analyzing a musical tone, you can clearly see the overtone series in its frequency components:

Let’s start with a frequency of 440 hertz.  

The overtone series is simply the original frequency, multiplied by every integer, starting with the number one.  so, 

440*1 = 440

440*2 = 880

440*3 = 1320

440*4 = 1760

440*5 = 2200

and so on, until infinity.  

In musical notation, the overtone series looks approximately like this, though most notes in the overtone series can’t be accurately represented in this kind of notation:

This very simple mathematical series is the root of all musical scales and harmonies.  

It sounds like this:

Harmonic Series Demo

It might sound vaguely familiar to you.  If you’ve ever played the harmonics up and down a guitar string, those are the same frequencies. Periodic (repeating) musical tones are all built from these frequencies. In fact, here is a simple recording of me playing the harmonics up a guitar string, until the 8th harmonic in the harmonic series. 

Guitar Harmonic Series Demo

You can count along with the notes, and each number will be the corresponding harmonic:  Just count:  

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.  

The first harmonic is the “fundamental” and that is just the sound of me playing an open string.  If you listen close, you can hear certain intervals.  For instance, the 3rd harmonic is a perfect fifth, the 5th harmonic is a major third (doesnt’ make sense, right?).  I personally love the sound of the seventh harmonic, which is a lot like a “minor seventh,” but is actually about 30% of a semitone flat from the interval you would play on a piano.

As opposed to an octave, this series is an Arithmetic Progression, not a logarithmic one.  the octaves of the fundamental frequency, are the fundamental multiplied by 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64…. So, you can see that, between each octave further up the overtone series, the overtones become more closely spaced.  At some point, the frequencies become so close together that it is difficult to for the human ear to distinguish them.

Allright.  I hope you’re still with me!  After these fundamentals, comes the interesting stuff.  Now, we can combine the concept of the octave and harmonics to make all kinds of scales and harmonies.  The trick is to take the frequencies in the overtone series and move them downwards (or upwards) with octave displacement to make the tones fit into a normal musical scale.  For instance:

As described above, the fifth overtone of A 440 is 2200 hz.  2200 divided by 4 (this moves the note down two octaves)  is 550 hertz.  That is the exact frequency of a harmonically pure major third (the note C# in the key of A).  On a well-tuned piano, the note would be about 554 hertz.  A small but noticeable difference.  And when you put more of these notes together in harmonies, you can really hear the beauty of the tones interlocking with their pure mathematical relationships!

Here is a demo I made just to show some very simple, overtone-based harmonies.  Hopefully you can hear the quality of the overtone series, that I showed in the previous audio examples here, but applied in a looser context.  Just a very simple improvisation, but I can’t get enough of those pure harmonies.

Overtone Chords Demo

Hope you made it all the way through, and I hope I grabbed your interest!  Check back, I will be writing more about this subject, with more illustrations and audio examples.

Rat's nest behind the lab

As always, these tracks are free to share and listen for noncommercial purposes, but please let me know if you’re using them. Enjoy!

Kenny G In the Panama  (dont’ ask)

Whispers 

Diversion 

Atonality Verge  - This is a track that I made with the Harmonic Ratio arpeggiator that you can find here on this blog.

Moses  - an experiment with making evolving melodies in Numerology

Let me know what you think :).

There are a lot of different features hidden away in the launchpad support, and I didn’t get to all of them.  But I hit on the main ones.   You can completely sequence and arrange a track all from the launchpad without even touching numerology, after setting up your numerology patch!  

For this track, I was using Reaktor for some sampling and effects, and my waldorf microwave and roland mks-70 for synthesis.  Everything was sequenced and mixed in real time, no edits or overdubs.

part of the GUI for the vosim synth

It does sound different, and, actually, I think it sounds better in Reaktor!  Part of the reason (geek speak here) is that the ramp oscillator in Reaktor allows more precision for syncing the waveforms and there are less jitter artifacts.  Also, reaktor just sounds good :).  I was also able to mess around with a couple tricks that are easier in reaktor than on the nord.

another snap of the GUI

The architecture of this synth:  It is a 3 OP VOSIM/FM hybrid.  The 3 oscillators can frequency modulate each other, and are all fed into the same VOSIM “burst envelope” which creates the fundamental frequency, and the 3 operator/oscillators are what create the formants.

I found that using a little frequency modulation can add a lot of texture to the vocal sound, or just help in creating a lot of crazy textures.

I’ve also included a fairly comprehensive modulation section.  There are only a few presets, but there is really a lot of possibilities in this synth, so enjoy!

I made a simple track to show some sounds from this Reaktor patch.  It was just a fun quick demo, but there’s some good textures in there, anyhow.  The pad/abstraction sounds are from the VOSIM synth.  The “techno” sounding synth and the drums are from the nord g2 modular.  

unsavory Associations Mp3 audio

and here is the reaktor patch:

golden vosim reaktor patch

floating ship!!!

MP3 Audio for “floating ship”

The technical details:  The synth bass sound was Roland MKS-70, Vocal sampling done in Reaktor, Drums done in the Nord G2, and I believe that digital sounding pad (if I remember right) was done with my waldorf microwave.  That crusty digital percussion sound in the background was G2 as well, I think.

Proto-Minotaurs Interrogate Tolteck Differentials

He’s a great artist and his writing will blow your mind.  Also expect more activity on the bagger288 front.  Stay tuned!  Above: a painting-collage of his, titled “Mobile Birthrights”