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SNAKE MUSIC

Today we get to know that snakes can hear too - but not everything.

Snakes can only hear low frequencies, roughly below the 600Hz mark, whereas most of us can hear a much wider range. Snakes probably hear muffled versions of what we do.

So, can snakes hear us? The frequency of the human voice is about 100–250Hz, depending on sex. 

What do other animals hear? And what if we tailor compositions to that RANGE: what if mel cepstrum was distributed only between 20-600 Hz? what would happen to the upper range, and how can we approximate what melodies will sound like?

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i put “All I Want for Christmas is You” through a MIDI converter, and then back through an mp3 converter

the result is this garbage

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Ghazal display

I want to work on anything that will help ghazal become accessible. Anything mutlimodal that can help people who don’t speak Urdu access ghazal, better than translation, with some reference to themeandvariation visualization. Literally anything to make ghazal more accessible.

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Melodic Cadence and Modulation

 For all monodic music systems that do not do V - I style harmony, the question of whether there is a cadence, or is it possible to have one - does not have a simple answer. For the minor mode, the melodic minor has solved the problem of the leading tone and incumbent expectation, but when this system is moved to non-western tonal musics, what do we have at hand? I propose another system that is at work, that I want to call a melodic cadence. This is in accordance with the rules of ‘Nyas’ that is one of the 8 characteristics of a raga archetype. In ancient texts, one can also find references to other types of melodic punctuation. Some types are: graha, ansha, nyas, sanyas, vinyas and apanyas. Nyas is the full-stop, can be described as the cadence if cadence was done in the same way. But of course it is not.

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Composition ideas

Wednesday: Passage of breath through metaphors of different materials: pipes, diaphragm jelly, metallic vocal chords (wood somehow) I have been a bit drawn to loop machine ideas, but After yesterday have decided to NEVER work with them and sound like i was a trite singer from 1982, it hits a wall with the layers of voices, and contrast material, and that periodicity may not be the best way for me to find an outlet for creativity. Goods: Musicbox, pinkTrombone <whynot>, bhonga, wood, body, theremin, mogees, pencil, cracklebox

saglach wapraychi kahich garaj nahiye NewIdea: Why not use a myo or something as a kind of a charge accumulator. As it accumulates more and more charge, it reaches its charge potential and is likely to fire something. Like an NN but kind of by performance, so only by performance do you accumulate charge Air: whistle etc Diaphragm: Rubber Lungs: Bhaata Speech:  Vowel:  Resonators: 

Think: 1. tools, 2. concept of the whole piece itself -

pandhra minta wajwaycha tar kay wajawnaar?

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Metaphors for Vocal Pedagogy (That I have heard)

- The breath is like the tide

- The breath is like an IC engine where phases don’t have a definitive start and stop

- The diaphragm is like a jellyfish

- The vowel can be like sharply hitting a dart on a board

- Lungs are like balloons

- Lungs are like bottles, tanks, toothpaste tubes, bellows

- The vowel is like a golden thread that is central in the voice

- Breathe as though you are sipping thick milkshake through a straw

- Breathe as though you are smelling a rose from the nose - deeply, and abdominally

- Breath is like a flowing river

- Your respiratory apparatus is like a water hose - shouldn’t have kinks in it

- Support your voice like you are holding pee

- Find nasal resonance as if your head was stuck in a fish bowl

- Posture - as if you are a puppet hung to the ceiling

- Ground yourself as if you are a large tree

- Open your mouth as if you swallowed a whole orange

- Open your epiglottis as if it is the ceiling of a cathedral

- Open your mouth as if you are about to bite into an apple

- Open your mouth as if this phrase must come out like vomit - out of your control

- Your jaw is an idiot

- Your sound has shimmer

- Your sound is like a laser

- Your sound is like velvet

- Your sound is stretching on the long phrases like a rubber band

- Melodic phrases are shaped like rainbows

- Go through the tessitura like a giant truck would have to go through a narrow road

-  Don’t through the tessitura like jamming a piece of rope through a needle’s eye

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Ideas on new approaches in NICM

- Go from very fast taans to very slow alaaps

- Have a repository of phrases, for example typical Kaafi thumri phrases, or typical film phrases, and just move around them like a Finite State Automaton

- Effects on 1 performance based on cylinder, then tape, then radio, then cd, and then bad quality PA systems to mark the passing of time

- Formulating a piece as a script declare notes (as variables) declare functions (operation constraints) pass variables, increment loop while loops for phrasal orientation

- Use a neural network to write new meaningless Thumri

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Inspirational phenomena for music-piece structuring

- Magnets: attraction and repultion (of motifs for example)

- Plant growth (fractals, trees, etc)

- Calm clouds and violent rains bursting suddenly (crazy energy changes)

- Gathering, rounding up a flock of say, sheep, that disperses

- Pulling something that then becomes unstuck (that pop)

- Crunch, acidity, sweetness, bite as food textures

- Light rays bouncing between mirrors endlessly 

- Melting of ice

- Hatching of an egg (working away into the shell for a long time until that crack, and slow crumble of calcium carbonate)

- Using a motif as a character in a very trope-like story

- Liquification

- Electroplating electrolysis (ionization and gathering of small bits on a new element in the solution)

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Gymnopedie 2 arranged for the music box

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From Prosodic Chanting to Music

How little tonal material is required to make music? Spoken word poetry, hip hop and rap often flirt with these ideas, but there are other ancient systems that are familiar with these tropes very well. Prosodic singing does make for interesting musical material. A next step is to sing in tritonics, and then pentatonics, and then populate the spectrum with as many as 12 notes, and varieties of their intonations.

One very popular known abstracted musical scale is that of the pentatonic. This scale is found anywhere in the world, and we tend to know it more than we think we do - the universal appeal of this scale is displayed adequately by Bobby McFerrin in this humorous and charming example:

An illustration can be found in Ravi Shankar’s album for Vedic Chanting. In the earliest styles of Rig Vedic Chanting, there are only 3 notes - the Udatt, Anudatt and the Svarit notes. It sounds something like a tonic, a minor second and a minor seventh below. Of course in the example below, a flute is playing many more things, but I implore you to concentrate on the chanting.

So just 3 notes - qualifies as music? Could this be one of the smallest numbers enough for making a scale? Turns out there is some merit to this intuition.  The Maoris surveyed by Mervyn McLean were reported to be using almost half of all of their music as tri-tonic. There is tritonic music amongst the natives in the Andes in South America, that mostly concentrates on the notes of the major triad. Southern Peruvian carnival music is also often tritonic. Maori scales get into much more complexity. When there are few tones to hear, small differences make a huge impact to the scale. 

In the vedas, there is an explicitly stated difference between Chhanda and Naad - Chhanda is the prosody of the composition. This can be somewhat equated to the metric structures of western poetry - pentameters, hexameters, and their types - Iambic, Dactylic and so on. The difference between meters and chhanda however, is pretty much exactly like the difference between taal and hypermeter. In hypermeters, there is space for ornamental complexity, but in taal, there is an *insistence* on ornamental complexity.  The fun part is how closely chhandas mimic tabla prosody. There are two types: Akshar-vritta and Matra-vritta. Akshar vritta chhandas are divided according to the letters, and matra vrittas divided according to the rhythmic durations. This is exactly the same as akshar-kaal and matra-kaal of tabla counting. Poems also have ‘vrittas’, which are more composed than chhanda. Many of these chhandas are directly used in regional language poetry, and many are indigenous to reguinal poetry. Some examples are: anushtup, shardul vikridit, etc. I will do another separate series about chhandas and vrittas. 

Now these prosodic compositions lend themselves into specific taals only - because their own metric structure is so definite. They are also sung in tritonic scales. Despite the symmetry of octaves, tetrachords as scales aren’t really very popular, and pentatonics succeed tritonics in scale population.

What keeps music interesting, after all, is in a large part contributed by rhythmic complexity - and chhandas are a very interesting way to do that, as hip hop artists have discovered long ago :) *anachronism laugh*

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Whole-tone raga ‘Sahera’ The first mode of limited transpositions

In this series, I plan to take each of Messiaen’s modes of limited transposition one by one, and explore its identity as raga. The first is the whole tone scale. THIS IS THE EASIEST ONE I HAVE GOT i think. Many interesting discoveries. Sa, Re, Ga, M’a, dha, ni, Sa’ It’s similarity to Charukeshi is unmistakable until the Ga.

Sounds like this as a plain old mode or not:

https://researchweb.iiit.ac.in/~tejaswinee.k/Ar-Av-Wholetone.mp3 Sorry for the komal dha initiation.

Literature Survey: I found this useful blog http://rudiseitz.com/2013/01/12/charukeshi-gopriya/ where the composer has also dealt with the question of a whole tone raga. The approach taken is a Charukeshi descent and a whole tone ascent. Which is so more ear friendly, i realized after beginning to sing whole tone descents, which are immensely difficult.  Also found out that a whole tone scale is sung in Carnatic Music as Raga Gopriya. Fearless raga as it is, from the Rishabhapriya melakarta.  Some people have called the whole tone to be Lachari Todi in the Hindustani system, although the Lachari todi is popularly sung is very differently from the whole tone.

Lots of people have said this to be in a rare ‘Raga Sahera’ in Hindustani music. Ustad Sultan Khan and later Mehdi Hassan played with this raga. Ustad Sultan Khan’s work in this raga can be found here:  http://sarangi.info/2011/11/27/sultan-khan-1940-2011-raag-sehra/ In this, the stress is mainly on Charukeshi, with a lesser use of the teevra Ma. The overall descent from Sa is avoided, and a descent from Ma is usually expressed more. 

Mehdi Hassan’s Whole tone ghazal His chalan: SRnS, SRG MG, MGS, MGRS, SGMdS, nRnd M, GMG MGRS.   Aaroha for SGMdS is the way in which he avoids getting neck deep into the ni, and achieves a bit of lightness in the raga too.

Listening to Debussy’s Whole tone piece:

At this point, i just feel that i’m listening to the same tonal material. Which has never happened while switching between even the same tonal material and different musical styles, but this scale is very special!

Wayne Shorter’s JuJu

Problems: 

1. How to set the tanpura? Usually we set Tanpura to play Pa - Sa - Sa - Sa, The Pa string is set to a Shuddha Ni, in cases where Pa is absent. In cases where the Ni is komal, we set the first string to a Teevra Ma (M’a). Hmm. All three notes are absent in the Whole Tone scale. In the recording above, plus for primary thinking purposes, I decided to set one tanpura playing in Komal ni and one in Teevra Ma for the time being. It is interesting, but does not make listening / singing any easier. Here on I am going to stick to further explorations just playing a Sa. 

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Rousseau on harmony and its artificial? nature

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Idea to Suss - Modes of Limited Transposition as Ragas / Thaat Material

So!

Messiaen’s modes of limited transposition are extremely exciting and have been used to enhance the flavour of many a composition. I am thinking - what if they are sung as ragas? Sure, the Pa-Sa tanpura accompaniment will make no sense in this context. But - some innovative colours might come forth. 

Let’s explore the modes:

The whole tone scale: Sa, Re, Ga, M’a, dha, ni, Sa’

Octatonic: Sa, re, ga, Ga, M’a, Pa, Dha, ni, Sa’

Third Mode: Sa, Re, ga, Ga, M’a, Pa, dha, ni, Ni, Sa’

Fourth Mode: Sa, re, Re, ma, M’a, Pa, Ni, Sa’

Fifth Mode: Sa, re, ma, M’a, Pa, Ni, Sa’

Sixth Mode: Sa, Re, Ga, ma, M’a, dha, ni, Ni, Sa’

Seventh Mode: Sa, re, Re, ga, ma, M’a, Pa, dha, Dha, Ni, Sa’

In terms of symmetries, there exist no ragas I know, the moorchhana of which is itself. Which means, that if these can be pulled off as raga material, they will be the first ones to wind upon themselves. This is exciting to me because the moorchhana resulting in the same raga is a sort of a lapse of Avirbhaav.

Secondly, Some of these look like at least half of it is right out of a thaath. I am speaking to you - third, fourth and fifth modes. One thing to remember is that things get very skew around the ma- Pa area, the holy area for intonation, consonance and everything else. 

Chromatics: SO MANY. It is tricky to handle the same note of diferent qualities especially while singing raga. My way to get around it is going to be inspired from Carnatic music, where you treat it (like you would in Jog or Lalit), or to treat them like a melodic minors - just use different versions in ascent and descent. Upcoming weeks: I’m going to concentrate on one mode at a time, and post about the raga possibilities with it! :) Hope it is interesting to anyone!

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Moorchhana

Do you know about the concept of Moorchhana? If you keep the notes of a raga constant, and change the location of the Sa or the Shadaj, you land into a new, different raga! Check this out for more explanation: http://www.22shruti.com/research_topic_57.asp

To algorithmically create many many many more possibilities, we have this experiment where you can look at different ragas and check their moorchhanas in aaroha / avaroha / including all notes present! http://music.virtual-labs.ac.in/experiments/15

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So I made “color palettes” for some of my favorite composers based on colors their music reminds me of.

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Advice for any composer, young or old:

You shouldn’t let your music theory mind change what your heart wants to compose. Music theory is just a tool.

Emotion is what separates part writing exercises from symphonies.

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A musical puzzle

This musical puzzle came in the form of some numbers stuck on the back of some notes - written down as a disambiguation / a figuration / expansion starting with the idea of raga Kafi, which is, in terms of notes just like the Dorian mode. The question is simple - what could those numbers be? Subsequently, the question becomes simply - why these tone rows, and what is the logic behind picking these notes? I try.

The top half of the note row has two things. One is obviously the notes of the raga starting from Db and then from Eb. the row on the very top represents the notes “Sa, M’a, Pa, dha, Re’”, counting from Ab. This could be a pitch row tha the wanted to use? The bottom half represents a quartal triad, and some notes flowing off that start as Kafi (first 4 notes) and then change to include non raga tones such as #4, b6, b2, natural 7th. 

Intonation and Ratios: First i thought that the rows of numbers are ratios and tuning differences or tuning ratios for the notes on top. In which case they would represent tuning relative to the tonic (Db and Eb respectively). The numbers that are closest to these in tuning ratios even amongst 22 shrutis in Indian music are: 256, 243, 45, 7 and so on. But if we take the top and bottom numbers to mean ratios, we get something like 0.48 for Re, 0.09 for Pa, which seems to be a curious reconstruction for modifying 22 shruti ratios (both because of the non-linear method of incremental tuning for the pitch row, and also because of the haphazard nature of the ratios). It is at this point that i discarded ratios to be a factor. The calculations are as below:

The next choice was MIDI numbers / numerical codes. In this case too, it is impossible to find a pattern for the above and below numbers. Someone suggested something like ALTAIR 800 codes too. The only problem is that they don’t fit the linearity of the notes vs the random nature of the numbers. The straight lines and circles are another enigma.

Why Db and Eb? This seems to be a strange pairing interval, rather than a fifth, a third or a sixth. One thing though, to remember is that the dorian mode is the second ‘moorchhana’ (transposition) on the Ionion, which means that it starts with the major second of the major scale. Eb is the major second of a dorian Db, in which case diatonic Kafi from Eb should sound like a Phrygian with a raised 4th. Instead it is seen that a Dorian mode is maintained, but a #4 is introduced in the 5 notes flowing off of the first 4 Kafi notes.

Inherent patterns:  At this point, i notice that there are pairs of 2 numbers in both columns which are separated by 1. There are 3 such pairs for 6 derived notes in the bottom. On the top, there are 9 notes, 3 of which have been omitted at each carryover. The adjacent notes are in the same pattern in the left and right columns. I solved and rejected some other ideas such as presence and absence of notes in Db and Eb Kafis, and so on. 

The first 4 notes are shuffled this way: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 -> 2 1 4 3 8 9 7 5 6  In the carried notes, the fifth is substituted by the m6.  The adjacent pairs are the following out of 6: 1-4, 2-6, 3-5, and these adjacent pairs are the same in order for both the Db and Eb note patterns. Because of these adjacent pairs, it is hard for me to believe that these notes would represent anything linear in terms of computation - note input values or the like. The Sa - ma - ni at the beginning of both tone rows suggests a quartal triad built off of perfect fourths. More evidence for this on the next page:

On this second page, some things become clear: 

1. Quartal harmony: The columns on top mention 1st, 2nd, 3rd (and also mention ‘on bottom’). Below that, he also points out how Kaylan - Bilaval - Khamaj - Kafi - Asavari are a row of ragas that all have just one note changed between them and the next raga. The notes that are changed are: M’a, ma, ni, ga, dha. This quartal harmony theme is also present in the first page, where the Sa - Ma - Ni quartal triad is expressed in the beginning of the tone rows from which numbers are derived. It also makes sense to use jumping between fourths, as Indian music specifies the use of Shadaj pancham and shadaj madhyam bhava - which is the consonance of fourths.

2. Experimenting with tone rows to move between ragas: Each of the quartal triads can correspond to some of the thaats mentioned below (the writer looks at only 5 thaats). 

3. The text: Find and notice new relationships, but found place must be capable of receiving reciprocally the new relationship in the former place from the former place from ‘its own store’, initiatory intervals taken from individual lists fo each chord and their transpositional equivalents. If the initiatory intervals are the ones starting from thaats, the subsequent manipulations of notes should return to the sense of a thaath. Salient to this, are the three tone rows written below the three quartal sets.

Three tone rows: R g d P M D G r, G m n D r d N M g, D n g R M r G N d The second of these is just a +1 chromatic operation on the first, and the third row seems to be standalone.  A lot of these start leading into Todi (r, g, M), Marva (r, G, M, D), Poorvi (r, G, M, d), although the indication is to stay in Bilaval - Kalyan - Kafi - Asavari space. I think that the base raga overall only serves as one that gives a starting point, as mentioned in the text, and then the melody is designed to bring non-tonal ideas, and to svar-i-fy them (deliberately solfegize). I think this is an interesting way to transpose without moving from the tonic space (although that makes it incredibly hard to sing these rows to a tanpura). After this is the row titled khamaj: R G P D M N r’ g’. Here too, the first four notes are ‘inside’ the raga, and the intention is to slowly move into khamaj - bilaval - kalyan - (todi). It would ultimately matter a lot that this material was grounded in a drone One comment I would like to make is that it is evident that these tone rows are not meant to ‘belong’ to, or to reflect the raga in any way as would a traditional performance. These tone rows are designed to deliberately leave the tonal and hierarchical creation that is a raga space. 

I’m still trying to find more numerical relationships between the offshoots of the first four notes. 

Links to Erv Wilsons work:  It was suggested that his work might have some clues and hints on these numerical sketches and so I went through his work. As telling as it was for several reasons such as spatializing pitch clusters in different ways, formulating hexal / circular patterns that could set off tone rows, I don’t think I found much that could directly relate. I will still keep looking!