My Little Grundgestalts

Here I describe the algorithmic music I call “Grundgestalts” and other compositions

Yesterday I was at the concert that Focus, the mighty progressive rock band of the Netherlands headed by Thijs van Leer, gave in Belgium.

It's been a magic experience from the very beginning: I arrived at the venue two hours before the concert, and was kindly admitted to the hall 1,5h before the official opening of the doors

I was the only one in the empty hall. Thijs' Hammond Organ, with his flute and baritone flute were there; the six-string bass of Udo Pannekeet laid there abandoned, and so Peter van der Linden's drumkit and Menno Gootjes' effects. Spectral, and fascinating at the same time, as if a Time Witch had stopped the course of time...

Then, people started to show up. They did not question my presence there, luckily, so I safely kept my position right in front of Thijs' organ.

And then, Peter passed by. OMG I was quite shocked and uttered “Hello Mr. Peter!”, to which the drummer replied with a questioning face and just left.

After a few minutes, it happened! Thijs van Leer, Himself, did appear! And I could address him as I had done with Peter. Mr. van Leer was incredibly kind, and we could speak for a few precious moments. In the end I asked him if he could sign the case of my flute. He was surprised, though kindly obliged. He asked me about the brand of my flute, among other things.

And then he went away. Though returned with his wife, I was kindly introduced to. It all seemed as if we were old friends! I could not believe it, and already realized that the concert that was about to begin would be something utterly special.

And then, the concert began. My Gods, “Hocus Pocus”, “Eruption”, and so many lovely gems were produced in front of me with an energy and a passion that were unique.

Every player was outstanding —

Menno on his Les Paul played fantastically and masterfully, with a serious of outstanding techniques, among which tapping combined with the hand-controlled use of the volume, which created right in front of me the same sound miracles that one could hear from Steve Hackett's guitar in early Genesis.

Udo, a unique bass player, created incredible sounds mastering all styles, from pure rock to jazz and blues as if it was nothing. I will forever remember his wonderful solo moment, with the masterly use of harmonics magically produced on his 6-string.

Peter, master of the drums, performed divinely, culminating with a 15m solo that created an incredible, polyrythmical heaven for all of us in the audience.

And Master Thijs... Oh, my God, He really was the Wizard that spelled It all out. His flutes, his organ, his voice... they evoked All-that-is-beautiful, from Bach to Focus. And while doing all this, he conducted the other, appraising them in their best moments, and addressing the audience with the class and elegance of the finest Master of the House... always noble and amable. When watching him, I could not but think how young this great Man truly is, despite whatever his passport might state.

Truly great moments, some of which I have recorded. The volume is inevitably distorted, unfortunately, but I'm so happy to have been the retainer of such a monumental prog-rock Act!

(At 11m01s—11m09s, after the dreadful scream, you can hear my voice in opera-like mode XD)

(The Maestro even makes an “Okay” sign with his hand, not to me of course but ahahaha XD)

Focus! by Eidon (Eidon.Bandcamp.com) is licensed under CC BY-ND 4.0

A permutation of the string “Domenico Scarlatti” is “accorDamento Stili”, which sounds like archaic Italian for «An Accordance of Styles».

(https://eidon.bandcamp.com/track/accordamento-stili-an-accordance-of-styles)

A hybrid-generative track for Piano, Pianet T, Mellotron MkII (Flute), Percussion and, at the very end, Cembalo, dedicated to Domenico Scarlatti.

«Though Scarlatti wrote over 500 sonatas, there is a wide variety in his works. Some are deeply serious, others are light and almost humorous. Some sound like courtly dances, others like street songs. This ability to cover a wide range of styles and moods is one of the hallmarks of Scarlatti's work. Another stylistic trait of this composer is the ability to mix “different forms or levels of discourse”.» (Wikipedia: Domenico Scarlatti)

«Sutcliffe’s description of Scarlatti’s style (borrowed from Bakhtinian terminology) [it] exhibits heteroglossia—the practice of mixing different forms or levels of discourse.» (The Keyboard Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti and Eighteenth-Century Musical Style by W. Dean Sutcliffe)

«Heteroglossia is the coexistence of distinct linguistic varieties, styles of discourse, or points of view within a single language (in Greek: hetero- “different” and glōssa “tongue, language”). The term translates the Russian разноречие [raznorechie: literally, “varied-speechedness”], which was introduced by the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin in his 1934 paper [...]» (Wikipedia:Heteroglossia)

Quadraphonic version available on demand.

https://eidon.bandcamp.com/track/accordamento-stili-an-accordance-of-styles

So happy to see my Why Not? album featured on The Other Rock Show,

“a weekly radio broadcast featuring music with 'other' time signatures and adventurous song structures. Math rock, avant prog, electronica, weird pop and the undefinable, all connected by having something less ordinary going on 'under the hood' The ORS is broadcast every Sunday on London's Resonance 104.4 FM“

Here's the programme:

Whatever object you create, you have to understand that it is deployed in a world that produces an extremely high number of objects of the same or similar category; for instance, “music.”

Moreover, the object creation is but the latest local orbit of a dynamical system that has started its action literally thousands of years ago. In other words, for the new object to have a sense — even temporarily, — it has to include elements of originality and appeal such that a significant amount of people express an interest for the new object rather than for any other past and present objects of the same category.

It is certainly a scary situation! And yet, it can be regarded from a different viewpoint, which would perhaps make it less scary or disheartening:

You have to consider that, even when there is only a very limited amount of people who “choose” the new objects you create, those people still express an interest precisely for what you do, despite the nearly infinite offer of alternatives old and new that are available to them.

So this is to express my deepest thanks to those who take the time to “taste” my music.

And among those, to all the people who decided to listen more,

And in particular to all those who — incredibly — asked to be informed when I create a new piece of music.

To you I want to say that I feel you as kin. And I'm happy that music gave me a means to identify you as my music kin. Thanks to you, I now write music but not for me alone. It is for me and my kin. You. People that share with me a certain mental model of what music is or can be. To you, my kin, I say “It's nice to meet you, friend. Thank you, and thank music.”

https://eidon.bandcamp.com/follow_me

Published May 9, 2015

I'd like to begin with Frank Zappa's words of introduction to his “Be-bop Tango (Of The Old Jazzmen's Church)”, from the beautiful “Roxy and Elsewhere” album”

“... We have this very special highly evolved permutated tango. It's actually a perverted tango...”

One of the things that strikes me with Frank is that you never know whether he's serious or not. A second before he was joking about Nixon, and now this. “Highly evolved, permutated tango”. That's it, permutated. Here and there Frank casually brings in the discussion some clue about his vision, models, and concepts. Here we are lucky because Frank goes on and explains a little further:

“Now, as you might have noticed, Some of you with a musical education Can tell that the notes that George just sang when he went: << This is Be-Bop, even though you think it doesn't sound like that>>, Is actually A SORT OF A TWISTED FORM OF THE THEME OF THE TANGO ITSELF Which will get even more depraved as the number goes on. George will now attempt to dismember that melody, Play it and sing it at the same time while...”

Permutations — recombinations of a given set of elements — are a key tool in Zappa. Sometimes this is so important that the “mix” is even more important than what's in the mixture. It's the EMERGENCE that really counts — the quality of the Whole emerging from a set of parts. In this case, musical parts, though Frank was always interested in this concept even before music entered his life (see e.g. his chemical experiments, or his experimental movies). He considers compossibles (things that may be mixed together; see Leibniz's philosophy); chooses some of them; mixes them; hears; selects; and sorts. And this was done also with ABSTRACT CODES representing music, even before those codes had any sense to him.

He is a demiurge. Leibniz's God, if you wish. A scheduler, an ordinateur. I think it's this the foundation of what is known as Zappa's Conceptual Continuity. The true Composition is not (just) the development, the object; it is the process — the COMBINATORIAL process — that brings from the Parts to the Whole and from the Whole to a new Unity, a new Concept, which is all contained in the original Combinatorial Seed — the Theme. Something that we can find also in Schoenberg's writings:

Please find herewith my latest rêverie:

https://eidon.bandcamp.com/track/r-verie

This piece exhibits elements of both the East and the West; both ancient and modern sounds.

A first part is based on chitara, violin, vibraphone, percussion, harp, with a very brief piano conclusion.

There follows a part that overlaps a pattern based on percussion and contrabass with one based on violin and Mellotron MkII (Flute).

Despite being so different, the two parts are very much one and the same. At least, they appear so to me. They both are the same...

Rêverie.

The logo I have chosen shows two goddesses — one in metal, from India, the other seemingly from Europe, in plaster of Paris.

Despite being so different in origin and material, I find their expression to be very similar — that's right, one of

Rêverie.

First of all, I need to clarify that this is not AI music. There is a deterministic process that generates music “events”. The process is derived from the mathematical model of the Beggar My Neighbour game (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beggar-my-neighbour). That's a card game, which is usually played with packs of 52 or 40 cards. The states of the game are represented by the cards owned by the players at each given step of the game, and by the cards that pile up on “the table” — these are cards not yet owned by any player. Cards in the hands of players and on the table are converted into notes and played.

So there is a human decision, which is a pack and a distribution of cards from that pack (a match); and then there's a “mechanical” production of notes corresponding to the states of the match selected by the user. The “composer” listens to the result and changes the pack according to its degree satisfaction. This is possible because changes in the structure of the match result in corresponding “musical changes” in the resulting notes generated by the process. In particular, structural changes affect the duration and the selection of notes. This allows a feedback loop between composer and process to be established. That's why I refer to the overall scheme as hybrid-generative.

You probably heard of “The Dark Side of the Rainbow” — the pairing of “Dark Side of the Moon” with 'The Wizard of Oz”.

Well, I have been experimenting with pairings of that type, and have found that, unexpectedly, pairings that “work” are not as rare as one may think.

Consider for instance this case:

I took a famous short movie, “Ballet Mécanique”, and I played it in reverse — from its last frame to its first. Then I paired with my composition “GoHachi”. In order to match the video with the audio, I sped up the former: the reversed “Ballet Mécanique” was played at 64.58 frames per second instead of 25.

I found the result surprising: the music, “magically,” matched closely the action on the video.

Which was confirmed by other experiments! I'll tell you more, if you're interested.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballet_M%C3%A9canique

https://fb.watch/hxLZynE3A3/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVU9cuTjP5w