The situation is thus: a few years ago, the Arts Council England merged all the constituent parts of the ‘New Music’ scene into one organisation which covered everything from jazz, rock, and pop to contemporary composition. Previously these constituent organisations were principally responsible for the welfare and upkeep of contemporary composition. Society for the Promotion of New Music for contemporary (classical) composition, the British Music Information Centre for scores and recordings of the British contemporary (classical) scene, Sonic Arts Network for sound art (acousmatic composition, electronic music, musique concrete), and the Contemporary Music Network for the members of the above scenes. You might be forgiven for thinking these organisations were rather narrowly focused, but they had all existed for quite a substantial length of time, and represented the interests of a generation which still considered classical music and pop music as distinct, separate strains of development. They set out to provide mainly emerging classical composers with opportunities to have their (mainly scored) works performed by (at that time) healthy and well-supported contemporary classical music ensembles and orchestras.

Cue Sound and Music, and its shakeup of the music scene in Britain. In 2008 Sound and Music set out to support the British contemporary music scene from a different angle, not one centred directly on contemporary (classical) composition. They changed their focus from providing opportunities for emerging composers to supporting performing musicians, becoming a ‘producer’, as Norman Lebrecht terms it. I wholeheartedly, with the rest of the composition fraternity, jumped on this bandwagon, and Sound and Music kept up promoting opportunities for composers, as well as now making more of highlighting concerts outside London (which was always a huge beef for ‘regional’), and they supported the leading acts of the moment (as they saw fit), stalwart composers of the old school, and championed emerging composers. Unfortunately, what got lost in the meantime was the SPNM Shortlist, and the New Voices and Contemporary Voices schemes, replaced by the in-house Embedded scheme. However, you could say these opportunities were too contemporary (classical) composer specific, and given the new Sound and Music remit, only providing opportunities for a niche doesn’t particularly seem fair. So they were cut altogether.

A quick look over the Sound and Music website shows that there are plenty of opportunities for composers, and the composers I do know haven’t rested on their laurels waiting for the SPNM Shortlist to reappear. I, personally, don’t think it’s right to ask Sound and Music to reinstate an outdated, atavistic call for scores or apprenticeship programs. They need to be supporting both a range of contemporary schemes, most of which are already out there, and schemes across all of the musics which Sound and Music supports: ‘Electronic and Improvised; Noise and Art Rock; Notated and Modern Composition; Sonic Art; Multimedia and Cross Art Form; Jazz, World and Folk; and Alternative Rock & Dance’. So, I say ACE should ignore the Open Letter, as I have made clear in my explanation above that the people representing Notated and Modern Composition should have come to terms with the fact that they would get a smaller slice of the pie, both in these austere times and with the new Sound and Music remit.

Sound and Music got going at a particularly tricky economic time, and the funding cuts hit last year, with the government announcing it would cut ACE’s subsidy by 29.6%, and they passed on 15% of this to arts organisations, promising to taper the remaining deficit over the coming years. It subsequently announced it would be cutting core funding (arts organisations with 100% ACE funding) to 206 organisations. The Stage newspaper, as reported by the BBC, carried out a study on those organisations, finding that of the 206, 24 had closed or were in the process of doing so. This isn’t the whole picture, though. ACE subsequently funded 110 new organisations, and 182 of those who lost 100% of their funding are still surviving. Overall that’s an increase of 86 arts organisations in the UK who received support from ACE. Surely that’s something to be lauded?

This brings us back to Sound and Music. They’re advertising for a new Chief Executive, salary £50,000-£60,000. That seems a reasonable salary, considering the ACE Chief Executive is on £150,000+. With the current cuts going through, Sound and Music are likely to end up with a bunch of administrators minding the website, and not much more.

What this group of composers are lobbying for is precisely a website, as the ‘Provision for new music’ study, written by Eve O’Kelly and commissioned by the Holst Foundation, states. They want something that links together all the composers’, performers’, and organisations’ websites, and acts as the ‘first point of contact on everything to do with new British music. Online directories are a thing of the past, as Yahoo can testify, and Sound and Music is precisely there to provide a portal for new British music.

I don’t intend to provide an exhaustive analysis of the full debate that is going on, nor have I commented on the contentious issue of the composers wanting a venue in central London for performances and meeting, a view which is not shared by performers or organisations. Composers can discover their own opportunities, even without an umbrella body such as Sound and Music, and it is increasingly becoming the responsibility of the individual to make decisions for himself regarding a ‘career’ in new music. Help is still at hand, and Britain is still undoubtedly in one of the most privileged positions in the world with regards to support for the arts.

Arts Journal article on the Open Letter to Sound and Music and Arts Council England http://goo.gl/uwhTG
BBC article on the Stage newspaper’s report on arts funding cuts http://goo.gl/GI7Xw
Vacancy for Chief Executive of Sound and Music (deadline passed) http://goo.gl/2Wn1o
Holst Foundation commissioned studies on the Provision for New Music http://goo.gl/M2zxJ

The film was a journey through the lives of eight different experimental musicians in the Tokyo scene. However, that doesn’t even come close to doing justice to what the film, and the music itself was. It took you on a journey through each of their mentalities, giving you an insight into what made each musician tick (or grind), but not simply from one perspective. Each musician had a chance to explain their philosophy, eloquently and in discussion, to play their music, in intimate, personal surroundings and on stage in wild abandon. At the same time the film examined the sound-world of Tokyo itself, interlacing common scenes of urban life, drawing attention to the very things which the musicians obviously incorporate into their performance, both rejecting, assimilating and regurgitating it at the same time.

It was an inspiring film, and I challenge anyone not to be moved by its eloquence and transparency. The music is at times lyrical, abrasive, shocking, powerful, quiet and funny, but above all the reason for all of it is intertwined into the narrative of the film. Trí Minh’s post-film performance almost seemed unnecessary, but he’s showing us that in Hanoi they know what’s going on, and although the scene is a world away from Tokyo, it knows where it’s going, and it has a voice.

It’s screening tonight and tomorrow night again in Hanoi at ATK Cama bar, 73A Mai Hắc Đế, and in HCMC/Saigon on Friday. Get down and see it, and hear the music.

Learnability:
Beginner to Advanced – There has to be a learning curve in the instrument, tending towards virtuosity. By this I mean anyone should be able to pick it up and make a sound out of it, but it should also provide reward for someone playing it. The Eigenharp provides this, something which, arguably, the Monome doesn’t.

Intuition:
Did I just play that? – Both beginners and professionals use intuition every time they play an instrument. Violinists ‘just know’ where their hands are, they don’t need to look, but there’s no restive state for a rotary encoder, it’s in the position you left it last… which was? Eigenharp has a restive state, which makes it easy to be intuitive, but it has a shortcoming, which I’ll come to later.

Repeatability:
Where’s that note? – You have to be able to repeat that sound that you made earlier. Simple, but it’s amazing on how many new digital instruments that’s (near) impossible. Take hacked wiimotes, for example. Try playing a tune, it’s more difficult than on an Ondes Martenot. The Eigenharp solves this by having individual keys for each ‘note’.

Stage presence:
Get ready to rock! – Most digital instruments aren’t pretty. Check out the Buchla Series IIe. Looks like a working station from a 1970s nuclear power station. Is that really what you want to look like on stage? Keytars nearly solved this problem, but you’re… a keyboardist who wants so desperately to be a guitarist. Eigenharp is an instrument in its own right, looking a bit like a bassoon shafted on to an electric upright bass, with a number pad glued on the front, but a bit sexier.

Ensemble playing:
Collaboration for geeks – You have to be able to play with other people, and them know what you’re doing. It’s often the case that a so-called ‘laptop performer’ has no place being on stage, since he has zero interaction with the audience, as in this example. You might be mistaken for thinking the laptop performer on the right was booking his return flights. With the Eigenharp you can see everything the player is doing. The performer action—sound connection is immediately apparent, and makes it a viable and flexible ensemble instrument.

Criticism:
You might be wondering why I’ve just praised the Eigenharp so far, when I stated at the beginning that I was going to criticise it. That’s because it goes so much further than other attempts at performer interaction, and it’s a valiant attempt at creating a new way at expressing your musical intentions that has never existed before. Also, the possibilities of sound control and manipulation are ten-fold what you’d have in a key-knob-slider configuration, without losing the repeatability discussed above.

The major shortcoming is the grid-style keypad. If I close my eyes, how do I know where I am without looking at the lights on the keyboard? I don’t! What acoustic instrument has a regular grid-like arrangement of keys? Shape is everything on a tactile instrument, like the width of a guitar neck is subtly different the further up you get. The piano has a distinct arrangement of black and white keys so you know what note your hand’s on before you play. You should be able to play a real instrument blind-folded, and this is where the Eigenharp is not worth its $4000 price tag.

True, this isn’t a major shortcoming, and I expect to see virtuoso Eigenharp players very soon. I truly respect and admire the desire to create a genuine musical heritage for digital music performance, and this development really expands the possibilities for live music performance. However, this isn’t the holy grail of New Interfaces for Musical Expression, but it is a very large stepping stone on the way.

Eigenlabs page for the Eigenharp Alpha
New Interfaces for Music Expression

There will be scores and other media available there soon.

The first from the Economist on the necessity of doctorates. Being a doctoral student myself, many of the points of the article ring true. Read it here.

The second is a speech by Tom Service (of the Guardian) at the Sound festival, regarding the necessity of ‘contemporary classical music’. Being uncomfortably wedged into a spot that one might (with some clenching of teeth) call ‘contemporary classical’, this also rang particularly true for me. Read it here, plus a quick quote below:

“The problem I’m dealing with is that there are still some composers, institutions, and ideologies out there who are labouring under the misapprehension that what they’re doing is the single true path, the way of the future, the sole route to enlightenment, and the real reflection of our times – and I think that those ways of thinking can perniciously permeate contemporary classical musical culture.”

Comments on how the two articles may give a clue to the future of extended research into ‘new music’ are welcome.

A writeup of methods for calculating dissonance.

I wrote, as part of my Masters, an extended essay on the subject of dissonance. The proposal was that dissonance could be objectified, and subsequently used as a musical parameter. At the time I did not have at my disposal the means to be able to investigate this further, and as a result the findings were more theoretical in nature.

Rationale

I have always felt that dissonance was as strong a musical parameter as timbre, register or even harmony. However, it has always been approached from a traditional point of view, that is to say, subjectively: with precedence given to the ear (hegemony of the ear). “The introduction of polyphony was regarded as dissonant a millennium ago”, clearly suggesting that the boundaries for what is considered dissonant have moved considerably in the intervening years. Dissonance, from composition to the appraisal of music, has been subjectively assessed; other areas of music have been heavily academicised, harmony being the obvious example, and subjected to heavy scrutiny and intellectual rigor from the outset of musical notation. So why not dissonance?

The problem begins with what to define as dissonance (and conversely, consonance), and how to separate it from the the discrete, black and white attitude that leads to merely quantifying chords as dissonant or consonant. What if dissonance were able to be classified and quantified?

Method

Tone Interaction

In order to model the interaction of two tones, I took a model of a vibrating string:

Simplest model: a sine curve



A model of the interaction of a single tone, up to the 12th harmonic. This model tends towards a square wave. I have calculated this as absolute values, for visual ease. On the graph is labelled (as circles on the higher blue line) the point at which each equal tempered semitone occurs. You can see that the seventh semitone from the left (a perfect fifth; [0,7] ) occurs at almost the halfway point (a doubling of frequency), and the octave occurs at exactly the doubling of frequency ( [0,12] ). The next lowest point is that of the fourth ( [0,5] ). I used this formula to determine a value for how intervals would react on a theoretical (perfect) equal-tempered instrument with an even distribution of harmonics for every tone.

formula 1

I could then compare basic intervals, for example even just from this graph we can see that an octave has a lower index

than a fifth, meaning comparatively speaking the octave is less ‘dissonant’ than the fifth. In order to get meaningful, useful information from this function I had to automate the process, passing each interval in turn through the formula and recording the index. Whilst this is simple enough for two note chords, and can be done by hand, the situation becomes increasingly complex for three note chords and above.

For example, the number of combinations of two notes in a twelve note span is calculated with the combinatorial formula

otherwise notated:

This only gives the total number of different possibilities, and not a description of each combination, so I had to generate a list of every chord possible. I started to program this initially in Javascript, for ease of writing and cross-platform compatibility, however Ruby eventually provided the necessary built-in functions for dealing with arrays and reordering large amounts of data.

Programming the code

The following code takes an input of an array of the complete set of notes in numeric format (our tessitura, labelled n in the above formula) in the form of an array i.e. [0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11] as the variable combin, passed to the function; and a integer of the size of chord to select from the tessitura – (r in the formula above) as the variable num.

It then returns an array of arrays containing every possible chord.

def combinate(combin, num, inputarray)
# initialisation
if inputarray.nil? then
inputarray = []
$result = []
$finalarraysize = num.to_i
end
# recursively generate combinations
combin.each_index do |xx|
a = inputarray + [ combin[xx] ]
combcopy = combin + []  # create copy
combcopy.slice!(0,(xx + 1))
if ((num - 1) <= combcopy.length) and num >= 0  then
combinate(combcopy, (num - 1), a)
if num == 1 then
$result.push(a)
end
end
end
return $result
end

I then wrote a function which would calculate the above formula (formula 1) for each combination of intervals in the chord as demonstrated below with the example of a C major root position triad.

It then computes the dissonance index for each set of intervals and combines them, returning them at the end of the function. Function below:

def compdissonance(this, that)

# function to compare the dissonances
# this and that are two arrays of frequencies for the two notes to compare within each chord
dissonance = 0.0
#total combinations this.length

0.upto(this.length - 1) do |nn|
ntoe = nn
0.upto(that.length - 1) do |nnn|
importance = 0.0

unless that[nnn].nil? or this[nn].nil?
if (this[nn] < that[nnn]) then
#function to assess weighting
dissweighting = 0.0

end

The following formula illustrates how to derive an equal tempered frequency hz from a note index i, with 0 = A 440hz

The next function is an intermediary which calculates the frequencies of each note from the note ‘number’ (0 being concert pitch A 400hz, decided arbitrarily as a central reference point). It then adds these to the master array ($masterfreqarray) and passes each set of intervals for each chord to the compdissonance function, described above. It then takes the complete array of chords and sorts it by the dissonance index, producing a list of chords with dissonance index from low to high.

def calculatefrequencies(combcopy)
puts "Calculating frequencies"
counter = Array.new
counter[0] = 0
$pbar = ProgressBar.new("progress", 100)
$masterfreqarray = combcopy.clone
combcopy.each_index do |j|
percentage = ((j / ( combcopy.length - 1.0 )) * 100.0).round.to_i
$pbar.set(percentage)
tempmasterfreqarray = Array.new(combcopy[j])
tempmasterfreqarray.each_index do |jj|
tempfreqarray = Array.new
tempfreqarray[0] = 440.0 * (2.0 ** (($masterfreqarray[j][jj].to_f + 1.0) / 12.0 ))
1.upto($numfreqs) do |lll|
tempfreqarray[lll] = tempfreqarray[0] * (lll + 1)
end
$masterfreqarray[j][jj] = Array.new(tempfreqarray)
$masterfreqarray[j][jj] = $masterfreqarray[j][jj];
end
# begin comparison algorithm
$chordnotescomb = Array.new
tempmasterfreqarray.each_index do |ll|
$chordnotescomb[ll] = ll
end
# chooses all the combinations of two places in the tempmasterfreqarray in the particular chord
notescomb = combinate($chordnotescomb,2,nil)
comparisonplace = Array.new
comparisonplace[0] = 0.0
notescomb.each_index do |mm|
# gets the position in the array of the two notes to compare
psuedojj1 = notescomb[mm][0]
psuedojj2 = notescomb[mm][1]
# retrieves the array of frequencies for the two notes to compare
$tempcompare1 = Array.new($masterfreqarray[j][psuedojj1])
$tempcompare2 = Array.new($masterfreqarray[j][psuedojj2])
# compares the two sets of frequencies and adds it to a dissonance dump comparisonplace
comparisonplace[0] = comparisonplace[0] + compdissonance($tempcompare1,$tempcompare2)
end
# end comparison algorithm
$masterfreqarray[j] = $savecomb[j] + $masterfreqarray[j]
$masterfreqarray[j] = comparisonplace + $masterfreqarray[j]
end
$masterfreqarray = $masterfreqarray.sort_by { |e| e.nil? ? 0 : e[0] }
$pbar.finish
return $masterfreqarray
end

The final function calls all these above functions separately from a user defined input, and passes them to a final set of functions for output. The two input variables k (the number of notes in the chord) and n (the tessitura) can be defined at runtime, when the script is run in the terminal.

def dissonance(k, n)
# n is The size of the set (totalnotes)
$totalnotes = n
# k is The size of the subsets (chordnotes)
$chordnotes = k
# comb[i] is the index of the i-th element in the combination
comb = Array.new
# Setup comb for the initial combination
0.upto(n) do |x|
comb[x] = x
end
# generate all combinations of k number of notes from the initialised 'comb' array.
newcomb = combinate(comb,k,nil)
# save a copy of the array for future use - special function for non-shallow copy
$savecomb = Marshal.load(Marshal.dump(newcomb))
# calls main frequency calculation
output = calculatefrequencies(newcomb)
#sticks the original chords at the beginning
output.insert(0,$savecomb)
writetofile(output)
writetomusicxml(output)
end

The final two functions writetofile and writetomusicxml produce lilypond and musicxml files respectively. Lilypond files can be directly rendered as pdfs, and the software is free and ‘Open Source’; musicxml files can be imported into many mainstream music notation packages, such as Finale and Sibelius.

I ran a number of trials with this algorithm, producing lists of chords within the tessitura of 24 notes (two octaves). I produced series of two note, three note, four note and five note chords. The time required to compute the algorithm increased exponentially with each set, and it became impractical to run the algorithm for larger chords.

The results were unusual to say the least. It depended heavily on the weighting I had used for the compdissonance function, and the degree to which the script iterated the vibrating string model. This led me to question the methodology upon which I was going to adjust the weighting.

Empirical evidence and intuition had to guide my reasoning. Chords with predominantly octaves and fifths had to come first and those with semitones last. I adjusted the weighting till they were at their present levels, and once they were producing chords at the extremes that I thought intuitively seemed rational, I left each set of chords and exported them to musicxml format and produced Sibelius files of each of the chord sets.

Usage

These chords were the starting point for my large-scale work Tyrrhenia. I chose sets of chords from the lists and used them as the harmonic basis for the work. They inevitably guided form and the orchestration of the work, also.

Postscript

I discovered recently whilst rereading information on Kameoka and Kuriyagawa’s research into sensory dissonance and performing searches on the internet that there is a computer-based music analysis toolkit called Humdrum

developed at Stanford University, originally by David Huron. In fact it does far more than just analysis, and in some ways it is the inverse of the AC Toolbox

(developed at The Institute of Sonology by Paul Berg). Humdrum implements the findings of Kameoka and Kuriyagawa in an object known as diss, which provides an index of sensory dissonance. To quote from the Humdrum user guide:

Sensory dissonance is a low-level auditory phenomenon that is considered distinct from culturally-mediated and contextual experiences of consonance or dissonance (Greenwood, 1961; Plomp and Levelt, 1965)

Whilst this is ostensibly true, I believe the two to be inextricably linked (sensory dissonance and aesthetic dissonance) and does not negate the tool as a compositional device or aide for analysis.

It strikes me this is not the best climate to be a composer, and his bleak picture of the future of the arts over the next few years compares well with what I have read elsewhere. He talks of a “discouragement of innovation”, things which Britain has been particularly good at, especially in sustaining the smaller art entities that actually contribute to a thriving scene. With the Arts Council taking massive cuts (possibly up to 30%) it may be time to either put away the score paper or do something radically different.

The Monk’s Lesson by joshkopecek

There will be, at some point, a post on the method used to generate some of the pitches for this piece. For this I used an (shock, horror) algorithm.

The instrumentation is:
string quartet
brass quintet
piano, laptop, soprano, electric guitar, and drum kit