January 20, 2013 in News
Since this past summer I have been helping to setup an experimental audio stream for works by artists from the University of Colorado at Boulder. It is currently up (although in beta for pardon any bugs). They also have a nice profile of me and the other artists currently featured. Take a listen sometime!
http://brakhagecenter.com/?page_id=83
October 8, 2012 in News
Today the website Composers Circle, which highlights a different composer each day, is featuring my piece .
http://composerscircle.com/cole-ingraham/
August 28, 2012 in Music, News
If you’ve heard me talk about anything at all in the last four years I have probably brought up the fact that I always write in A. Of course this is not entirely true – any feedback/noise music I write is not in anything. However when it comes to pitched music this is basically true. Before I get into my reasoning, I’ll start by saying how I came to it.
When I was doing my Masters at Mills College, I had a seminar with professor Chris Brown which focused on alternate tunings. We looked at Harry Partch’s Genesis of a Music, the Just Intonation Network’s Just Intonation Primer, went to meet Ellen Fullman and see her “Long String Instrument” while she was in residence at the Marin Headlands Center for the Arts. Additionally I was studying Javanese Gamelan with Daniel Schmidt, one of the pioneers in bring Gamelan music to the west, instrument builder, and a composer who works extensively with tunings. This perfect storm of influences propelled me into the world of alternate tunings.
My first real venture in Just Intonation was my thesis at Mills Pulses (an acoustic work even though my degree was in Electronic Music, which I still find funny) which was premiered on the Signal Flow concert series. Due to working with Daniel, I decided to use the Bonang from the Mills Gamelan as well as building an instrument of my own which I called the Pentachord: a 6′ long five stringed instrument for playing natural harmonics. The ensemble was filled out with electric guitar and contrabass which would also only play natural harmonics. In this instance the Bonang tuning happened to be based on A 440Hz so that decision was made for me (although given the choice I probably would have stuck with A anyway). The piece was a success and won me the Paul Merritt Henry Prize for new works for string instruments that year but, more importantly, gave me a taste of working in Just Intonation, and once you’ve had Just you don’t go back!
During that same Signal Flow, my friend Chuck Johnson was also having a work for strings and Gamelan instrument in Just Intonation called Meet me by the pleroma. His piece however was based on 60Hz and centered around amplifying the difference tones produced by various just intervals. This was fascinating because it not only automatically produced a bass voice but also informs the performers when they are tuned correctly. I found this so compelling that ever since then all of my pitched music has also focused on difference tones (but based on 55Hz of course).
So that’s how I got started down this road. Now for some theory:
Just Intonation is all about breaking down the octave into smaller and smaller pieces. Rather than there being an arbitrary 12 tones, there are an infinite number restricted only by how far you want to take it. There are of course practical limits such as how precisely one can tune by ear, how in tune a particular instrument can play, how precise a floating point number on a computer can be, but barring that the sky is the limit. The way I look at it, if I have so many choices available based on one pitch, why would I need to go elsewhere?
Just Intonation is also all about the overtone series (by definition actually), and thus so are its difference tones. Anytime you have a justly tuned interval, when you subtract the two pitches you produce a difference tone that always falls within the overtone series of those pitches. Take the just perfect fifth. If I base it on a the overtone series of 100Hz, the first fifth I get is between 200Hz and 300Hz. Since 300-200 = 100, you can see that they are all part of the same series.
Difference tones dictate which octave you need. If I take that same example but make it 300Hz – 290Hz, you get 10Hz as the difference. Although 300Hz and 200Hz are both justly in tune with a fundamental of 10Hz, since this is below the threshold of pitch (somewhere around 25Hz), most people would perceive this interval as just being out of tune. If you however take the same ratio (30:29) and move it up, say to 3000Hz and 2900Hz, the difference tone is then in a range we can hear as a pitch (100Hz) and it sounds in-tune. The exact same interval has a different in-tuneness (because I hate the outdated term dissonance) solely due to a change in register.
Putting this all together:
Since Just Intonation can produce basically an unlimited number of relationships (individual pitches and difference tones) all from a single fundamental pitch (in my case A 55Hz), I have no need to go elsewhere.
If I write something tuned to any other pitch what would I gain? Nothing that I couldn’t achieve by using higher register ratios.
Why don’t I ever modulate?
- that would make things far more difficult on performers since all tuning relationships would change
- I have more than enough pitches right here in A
- modulation is a device for tonality and I am not writing tonal music
Don’t I ever get tired of hearing A all the time? Not at all! Since difference tones centered around 55Hz tend to be pretty close to the lowest pitches we can perceive I always get some killer bass. Going much lower pushes things towards the out of tune threshold and higher is, well, not low enough for me.
So to sum up: 55Hz rocks!
July 25, 2012 in News
Enough progress has been made on one my my new works to let it see the light of day. Tarasque is a piece/system for based on the concept of a shared desktop. Basically there is a workspace where all users can add, move, delete various objects that do something specific. This is in the tradition of Glitch Lich’s other works Neuromedusae and Yig.
In the video there are three different colored circles being dragged from the panel on the right into the desktop area:
- Red are Colotomy (the term for the metric structures in Gamelan music) objects. They generate triggers at various subdivisions of the beat.
- Green are Patterns which use the triggers from the red objects to step through a sequence and ultimately generate varying rhythms.
- Blue are sound generators. When placed near a green object (provided the green is close enough to a red that is) they play their sound based on rhythm generated by the green.
This created a two dimensional sequencer that can be controlled by changing the positions of the various elements. Here I demonstrate this functionality (sadly alone but the networking is already there, trust me).
Tarasque Demo from Cole Ingraham on Vimeo.
On the to do list are sounds that do not require the Colotomy->Pattern structure (aka. they play on their own), and control objects for changing parameters of other objects, more sounds, and shaping it into something interesting.
May 28, 2012 in News
I am currently working on my DMA dissertation which ultimately consists of two parts: an hour long real-time multi-screen multi-channel network music performance, and the software I’m writing to make that happen. I decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to create something that I have been wanting for a while now: a unified framework for the creation and performance of many different audio/visual network pieces. My primary motivation for this is that, regardless of the unique characteristics of every new work I create for this medium, there are a number of features which are always present and thus are tedious to constantly re implement. To solve this, I decided to create MantiCORE:
“The manticore is a persian legendary creature similar to the Egyptian sphinx. It has the body of a red lion, a human head with three rows of sharp teeth (like a shark), and a trumpet-like voice. Other aspects of the creature vary from story to story. It may be horned, winged, or both. The tail is that of either a dragon or a scorpion, and it may shoot poisonous spines to either paralyze or kill its victims. It devours its prey whole and leaves no clothes, bones, or possessions of the prey behind.” -Wikipedia
… while my system will not (hopefully) devour you whole, it is ment to act as the primary (read: CORE) system for creating this type of work. The whole MantiCORE system actually consists of multiple programs that each handle a specific aspect of a performance but here I am introducing the primary interface for performers:
As you can see, the interface is divided into various sections:
Main Interface Area
This takes up the majority of the window and is where each specific piece’s interface will appear. One of the key features of MantiCORE is that it is designed so that every work created for it can be a plugin to the system.
Chat Window
The chat window is exactly what you would expect: an area for chats between performers to be displayed, and an area for you to enter a chat. Communication is a key aspect of performing with any group… especially those who you can’t see because they are hundreds (or thousands) of miles away.
Score Controls
Having an interface is great but knowing what to do with it is nice too. One of the fundamental concepts that Glitch Lich has decided on is that we will always have some sort of score for every piece. Generally this consists of a set of instructions for each section (which can be as specific or vague as necessary). Here the “<<" and ">>” buttons allow you to go to the previous or next section respectively and the big text area will display any instructions for a given section. The “R”, “>” and digital number looking stuff in the middle of the bottom is a clock (because one usually likes to know how long one has been performing). “R” will reset the clock and “>” will play (and alternately pause) it. Keep in mind that the look of all this will become MUCH nicer later).
User List
Every user logged into our network server will be listed here (along with what piece they are currently logged in to). This is handy to keep track of who is around and/or ready.
Object List
This lists all objects currently registered with our network server. These are things that some of all of the users in the system are using at any given point and can be helpful to see.
So that is a general overview of the MantiCORE GUI system. By itself it’s not much to look at but it sets up a framework for a modular performance interface for many different works using Glitch Lich’s standard performance practices. More about this and the other parts of the system soon!