2025-01-31 SEVISH PRESENTS... ____ __ _ ____ __ __ _ _____ _ _ _____ _ _ ____ / () \| \| || ===| \ \/\/ /| ||_ _|| |_| | |_ _|| |_| || ===| \____/|_|\__||____| \_/\_/ |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_||____| ___________ ______ | |`````````, .'. .~ ~.`````|````` .'. | |______|'''|''''' .''```. | | .''```. | | | `. .' `. | | .' `. | | | `..' `.`.______.' |.' `.|_______ While I could use these liner notes to talk about what these tracks mean to me on a personal and emotional level, I think the music should stand by itself and in that regard it is self-documentary. I want you to have your own meanings and interpretations of this music, so that you make it your own. That's why I tend to use the liner notes to discuss more technical aspects of music making, in particular the things I am known for i.e. rhythm and tuning. Some have told me that they find the written focus on such technical aspects to be off-putting. For a different kind of person, this level of geekery is absolutely the best thing ever. Whichever camp you may fall into, I want you to simply enjoy the music, and for best enjoyment give it a full listen through at least once before reading any further. Lastly I want to share a big thanks to everybody checking out my work. I just make whatever I want to make and I'm grateful to be so lucky to share it with you. ___ __ ___ __ __ | |__| | /__` | |__) /\ / ` |__/ | | | | .__/ | | \ /~~\ \__, | \ Tuning: Rational - 9/8, 6/5, 4/3, 3/2, 27/16, 15/8, 33/16, 9/4, 81/32, 21/8, 3/1, 27/8 I usually like to start an album with an uptempo one. This is one of those tracks which started with a tuning design. I was paying attention to how some traditions use scales where a tetrachord is stacked on a pentachord. I started to imagine what it would be like to take different qualities of pentachord and stack them up so that you overshoot the octave and repeat at 9/4 instead. Then I considered stacking three pentachords for a scale that repeats at 27/8. I came up with a few examples and auditioned them. One particular example was the scale I used for This Track. The pentachords are: 1/1, 9/8, 6/5, 4/3, 3/2 (minor) 1/1, 9/8, 5/4, 11/8, 3/2 (harmonics 8:9:10:11:12) 1/1, 9/8, 7/6, 4/3, 3/2 (subminor) So each pentachord starts on 1/1 where the previous one finished on 3/2. As you climb stepwise up the scale you cycle through these three pentachords. It's another example of non-octave just intonation that I'm fond of. While there is a 7/6 subminor third in one of the pentachords, the real intention of that note was to be 7/4 above the 1/1 of the pentachord below. There are a couple of examples of rhythmic tempering in This Track. One before the first downtempo section and one after it. This Track started off as a fast tempo tune but I much prefer the downtempo sections that were added later. The bass sound is a sampled 808 bass layered with a high-passed LinnDrum kick. Love that combo. Sometimes an FM slap bass joins in unison for bass bliss. ___ ___ __ __ ___ ___ __ | |__| |__ | \ |__) |__ /\ |\/| |__ |__) | | | |___ |__/ | \ |___ /~~\ | | |___ | \ Tuning: Rational - 9/8, 6/5, 4/3, 3/2, 27/16, 15/8, 33/16, 9/4, 81/32, 21/8, 3/1, 27/8 Reused the same scale from the first track. For me it's all about that 2nd half that feels like it could roll on forever. Things were feeling very dreamy that day when I was making it. I guess a lot of my tracks are about dreaming. __ ___ __ __ __ ___ | \ /\ \ / |__ / \ |__) |\ | | / _` |__| | |__/ /~~\ | | \__/ | \ | \| | \__> | | | Tuning: Rational - 6/5, 4/3, 3/2, 5/3, 9/5, 2/1, 12/5, 8/3, 3/1, 10/3, 18/5, 4/1, 9/2, 5/1 Variplaning is a technique where you move the same chord shape across an unequal tuning, resulting in a variety of different chord qualities being heard. As long as a suitable tuning is selected in the first place, this technique allows musical ideas to be quickly created with no difficulty to the composer. I used this technique on several tracks already and this track is another to add to the list. The bell sound here is of interest as it's an example of timbral variplaning. The synth patch is little more than a percussive sine tone. A chord shape with wide voicing is played on this patch and the multiple resultant sine tones blend, being perceived as part of the same note. Consider it like a cheap additive synthesis, where all the partials are guaranteed to line up exactly with the tuning. As this same chord shape moves across different root notes, the timbre gets a subtly different quality (like real bells) but always in alignment with the main tuning. The drums here are sampled from another of my tracks (Streaming). It's nice to be able to sample your own stuff. I enjoy listening to other people's work and recognising for example a string patch or a processed breakbeat that they used in more than one track. It creates a unique sound world for each electronic musician and binds their individual works together. It also saves a lot of time when the inspiration strikes to write some music and not get bogged down in the details of some minor element of the production. The tuning came about as yet another experiment in non-octave just intonation scales. In this case the first intention was to use 5/1 as a repeat interval. The next decision was to fill the space between 1/1 and 4/1 with a 6-note subset of the 5-limit minor scale. Then went from there. This style of tuning continues to be very easy to work with, which is why I keep coming back to it. __ __ . ___ __ __ __ ___ __ __ | \ / \ |\ | ' | | | / \ |__) |__) \ / | / \ / \ |__/ \__/ | \| | |/\| \__/ | \ | \ | | \__/ \__/ __ __ __ ___ ___ |\/| | | / ` |__| /\ |__) / \ | | | | | | | \__/ \__, | | /~~\ |__) \__/ \__/ | | | Tuning: 31ed2 - 38.709677c When I was getting started making beats, my mates would always ask me to do hip hop instrumentals. I was never any good at it. This track is a return to the exercise. Still don't know what I'm doing. My only clear intention was to make the music sound normal. This is not xen. The approach to getting this kind of feel in the groove, which here is completely sequenced and not played live, is to move the snares early and the hihats late, then dial in shuffle amount around 30%. __ __ __ __ __ __ __ ___ ___ / _` / \ / \ | \ | / \ / \ |__/ | |\ | / _` /\ |__ | \__> \__/ \__/ |__/ |___ \__/ \__/ | \ | | \| \__> /~~\ | | Tuning: 22ed2 - 54.545454c I took apart a MIDI keyboard and put it back together with the keys laid out suitably for playing 22-tone (and 11-tone) music. This short recording let me put it to use. __ __ __ __ /__` / \ | | |\ | | \ | | /\ \ / /__` .__/ \__/ \__/ | \| |__/ |/\| /~~\ | .__/ Tuning: 26ed2 - 46.153846c The intention was to do a track with only 4 instruments: drum kit, bass synth, lead synth and electric piano. While I did eventually add keyboard and additional layers of percussion in here, I think those 4 instruments remain the core of what this track is about. In fact, I wanted to do an entire EP in this style but then gave up the idea while half way through making this track. It's part of the reason this album is so varied in terms of style. I have just been pulled in so many stylistic directions while making it. I got it started by working on the sound designs and a groove. Because I hadn't tuned the instruments yet, they were in 12ed2 and I recorded in some placeholder while tweaking the sound designs. However eventually I wanted to develop that placeholder further, so I set about finding a new tuning that complimented and elevated the material. In this case it was extremely difficult to find because what I wrote is something that only really works in 12. I tried 12 note unequal scales without success. I rewrote the whole thing in 22ed2 but structurally it didn't hold together and it sounded way worse. I finally tried 26ed2 and found that it made the material delightfully wonky while shifting between dark and light variants of what was already there in 12ed2. Now I couldn't imagine Soundways any other way. Rhythmically I wanted something that wouldn't be quite possible to execute on a drum kit for real. (Then again, people are amazing and surprise me). For the piano I think most piano players would absolutely blow me out of the water. For this kind of music it really helps to have a band that all know their stuff and contribute that to the whole. I'm very limited in what I can achieve working alone and recording into the computer. It came out ok and it satisfied what I needed from it. ___ __ ___ __ ___ __ |__ | | /__` | | | | |__ | / ` /\ | | / \ |\ | | \__/ .__/ | |___ |___ | | | \__, /~~\ | | \__/ | \| Tuning: 5ed2 - 240c Another experiment in gliding pitch. ___ ___ | | /\ | | | | |__| /\ | |/\| /~~\ | | |/\| | | /~~\ | Tuning: Rational - 17/16, 9/8, 19/16, 5/4, 21/16, 11/8, 3/2, 25/16, 13/8, 7/4, 15/8, 2/1 The starting point for this track was an attempt to tune the key of the music to the BPM. If you take a BPM and multiply it by 2 several times you can get an audible pitch to use as a root note of your scale. Then if you take from the harmonic series to fill in your scale intervals, all frequencies will be integer multiples of the tempo. With sufficiently pitch-accurate (i.e. digital) oscillators you can hear an audible periodicity buzz in chords that pulse in synchrony with the tempo. It's as if an LFO was used in the sound design, but the effect was achieved with tuning alone. It's a cool trick which deserves more exploration but, in practice, doesn't work out too well. Here are some things to think about. The periodicity is only clearly audible with very plain sounding pure synth tones from a digital synth. The effect disappears as soon as any pleasing chorusing is applied. This limits your choices for sound design. (In this track I do have one instance of such plain digital sound, and to create some interest without completely destroying the periodicity effect all I could get away with was to apply a notch filter with modulating cutoff frequency). When under the constraint that the root pitch must be some number of octaves above the BPM, you find that the range of danceable BPMs mostly doesn't overlap with the sweet spot of subwoofers in reproducing the root pitch. The resulting pitch is either too high or low to make a pleasing root (depends on your opinion but might reasonably be around F-A). For this track, I chose 174BPM as it resulted in a root of 46Hz (around F♯). That tempo is on the very high end of danceable and that pitch is on the low side. Something fun to think about is that if you had a collection of tracks where their root pitch was tuned to be some number of octaves above the BPM, then the process of matching their BPM would also match their root pitch. They would all be in the same key. I am a noob to psytrance but if you've ever seen these psytrance producer guys work you will notice that they are anal about phase and watching their waveforms with fancy BPM-synced oscilloscopes. If anybody could get some use out of this BPM-is-the-key periodicity trick then I think it's them. As for me, I'm just having a try. __ __ ___ __ __ ___ | \ | | |__) /\ | | / \ |\ | |__) | |__ \_/ |__/ \__/ | \ /~~\ | | \__/ | \| | |___ |___ / \ Tuning: Golden ratio based - non-repeating scale of intervals 196.7c and 318.2c Durationplex is another take on goldmaxxing, in the spirit of John Chowning's Stria and my own Star Nursery. This is the truest expression of golden ratio music that I've been able to achieve yet. The polyrhythms are all based on phi. The timbres of all the pitched instruments feature phi prominently. The tuning is of course full of phi. In fact the tuning has been calculated all the way down to frequencies so low that they are perceived as tempi, so the tempi and pitches here are coming from the same structure. The delay lines are timed to coincide with those tempi, with cross-feedback so that the smattering of echoes also coincide with the tempi in the scale. This will need a bit of explanation... A while back I wrote an article about the golden ratio as a musical interval. https://sevish.com/2017/golden-ratio-music-interval/ In that article I gave an example of a scale that uses the golden ratio as a repeat interval (i.e. the scale repeats at a ratio of ~1.618). This repeat interval was then divided up in golden sections, starting from the largest available interval, then repeating until the scale had only 2 step sizes. At the time, this was my best approach to making a tuning that's derived only from the golden ratio. It would result in a scale like this: https://sevish.com/scaleworkshop/?n=Sevish%20Golden%202017&l=3d.6yxqwy10_5g.8hxg9z6c_8u.2ph10exk_c7.9oerxcyk_ea.b7ehae3x_ho.5ey20tv5_jr.6xxrdv0h_n5.015hc4arp&d=17&w=s&t=9w&b=kn&g=co&version=2.5.7 121.546236174916 196.665941335636 318.212177510552 439.758413685468 514.878118846189 636.424355021105 711.544060181825 833.090296356741 I used this scale to write Star Nursery, which was my previous attempt at making music with massive amounts of golden proportions in it. While this scale was based on a process that could be repeated as many times as needed to get smaller and smaller intervals that were part of this non-repeating maximally weird structure, the fact remained that the repeat interval was ~1.618 (~833 cents), therefore any intervals larger than this ratio would be found in the scale at predictable and repeated places. Taking this to the next level, eventually I realised a way to include larger intervals in the chaos. The new version of the scale is non-repeating. This scale is what I used here in Durationplex. This new scale results from an iterative process that could be repeated as many times as needed to produce more and more pitches. The non-repeating pattern extends into the infrasonic and supersonic ranges. So here's what I had to do in order to calculate it. I start with the golden ratio ~1.618, then I took that value to the power of ~1.618 iteratively until I had a ratio that was wider than the range of human perception of frequency (i.e. the combined range, from the bottom end of perception of tempi, right through to the top end of perception of pitch). For the purposes of writing a piece of music, there was no need to go any further than that, but in theory of course you could go on forever. So I had this huge ratio that became my starting point, and I used the process outlined earlier where you divide it into golden proportions, then take the largest available interval and divide again into golden proportions, then again and again until the pitches become close enough that they can be used to play melodies and harmonies. This was achieved by writing a script which calculates and outputs the values. The Scale Workshop link for this scale is massive, because as a non-repeating pattern I had to specify the frequency value of all 128 MIDI notes. If you play it, be careful not to blow out your speakers by playing infrasonic notes. https://sevish.com/scaleworkshop/?n=Untempered%20Gold%20Light%200.15Hz&l=8u.r2qa45bn_ea.3420svx31_n5.0bitd6zov_vz.3uyd4pp9_11f.3fku62wrw_1aa.n1mqdzdr_1fq.300x95r55_1ol.02p3j8xr_1xf.ykg3kz2o_22v.3bjqmcqu1_2bq.1wgbgs57_2kk.1a39gryrm_2q1.03gm9qnt6_2yv.ujcjut4q_34b.37in2mkw3_3d6.5e72hvi_3m0.47ezpdok_3rg.cpcfzcux_40b.qi904n6t_45r.b5cr38p1_4em.013flx5ct_4ng.3swmxkad_4sw.3f0cw3en3_51r.83alqt9_5al.4ydz1v22_5g2.0ox95byn_5ow.c8mm6af_5uc.bwbqfq2j_637.1uel9mqb_6c1.4jvma1nx_6hi.0aewdikg_6qc.ase4zr0_6z6.5pcyecfl_74n.1fw8htc5_7dh.45d9i89q_7ix.cnaps7g2_7rs.9c5nt7l_80m.5aulmj1f_863.011dvpzxy_8ex.3quwqevk_8kd.c8sd0e1v_8t8.26v7uapn_922.4wc8upn8_97j.0mviy6js_9gd.c19725c_9p7.61tkz0ex_9uo.1scv2hbg_a3i.4htw2w92_a8z.08d66d5l_aht.2xu76s35_aqn.5nb8770q_aw4.1duianxa_b4y.43bjb2uv_bae.cl8zl217_bj9.94s8p2i_bs3.58svfdml_bxk.0zc5iuj5_c6e.da494jo_cf8.6ea7joea_ckp.7ojrij3_ctj.4uaink8h_cz0.022z9wii_d7u.3aatrg2k_dgo.5zrurv07_dm5.1qb4vbwr_duz.4fs5vqua_e3t.7596w5ru_e9a.adnargu_ei4.5l9i01m1_enl.1bss3iik_ewf.419t3xg4_f59.6qqu4cdn_faq.8xetkxf_fjk.56r5887q_fp1.0xafbp4a_fxv.d2qu0el_g6p.6c8hcizh_gc6.qx18n0_gl0.h82ufvr_gtu.7hptgtr3_gzb.bmictv6_h85.5xq4kpla_hdm.60xv7ul_hmg.frud9cc_hva.737gp0d0_i0r.2tqqsh9k_i9l.5j7rsw74_iif.88ostb4n_inw.eblw2sx_iwq.6op3x6yu_j27.vejg2u_jb1.54pf12sx_jjv.7u6g1hqh_jpc.cvdew9i_jy6.mm9wxr9_k3n.20q18uh3_kch.h0pfbqo_klb.7fo39oca_kqs.bf4xpq3_kzm.l61fr7u_l8g.8l5fdz3x_ldx.fkgy579_lmr.715qhuy4_ls8.zw1nio_m12.jpsykof_m9w.86n2m5pq_mfd.3x6cpmma_mo7.6mndq1jx_mto.8inzcn9_n2i.i9khe50_nbc.7s4pucbn_ngt.cnzzs4f_npn.6850y85q_nyh.8xm1yn3a_o3y.gtc07ll_ocs.7dmd2ixh_oi9.14djuyi_or3.5tmo6erk_ozx.8j3p6tp7_p5e.49mzaalr_pe8.6z40apja_pn2.yuwj41o_psj.jifjgjc_q1d.t9c1i13_q6u.dwv1uir_qfo.6klniw54_qoi.xeo1xi9_qtz.i2729zx_r2t.rt3kbho_r8a.4hi7fu_rh4.m7j2ph3_rpy.371k2p3_rvf.glyl3gi_s49.7bkmvdio_sd3.103rl6g0_sik.kralixo_sre.ui73kff_swv.f5q3wx3_t5p.6x2a3k4h_tej.ynj3zwl_tk0.jb24ce9_tsu.t1ymdw0_tyb.1dck9u6&f=0.5eeeeeeeeeh&m=0&d=17&w=s&t=9w&b=kn&g=co&version=2.3.3 Durationplex features bass, pad and bell sounds which use FM synthesis and oscillators that are tuned apart by the golden ratio, in order to produce sidebands that also contain the golden ratio. Each individual drum sound plays at a regular interval which aligns with a tempo from the tuning. To achieve this, I loaded up a wavetable synth and set up an impulse in the wavetable. With the synth tuned to my scale, I would play one of the low notes and then catch these impulses with a transient detector that would trigger a drum sound to play by MIDI. The lowest note in the scale is assigned to one of the cymbals. The kick and snare are both triggered by the same frequency, but are out of phase with each other so that they alternate in a way that sounds familiar. Various other percussions are assigned to different tempi from the scale, so the whole rhythm section is on some big polyrhythm. Again, that polyrhythm extends far up into the range of pitch perception, so the drums and melody are all on the same structure. Finally, I free improvised the tempo changes in the hihats by playing the sequence with a keyboard into the wavetable synth that was triggering the hihat. Melodies in this track were free improvised. The whole thing just sounds very alien to me. The world doesn't have much music that sounds like this. ___ __ __ ___ ___ __ __ __ ___ | |__) | |__) | |__ | |__) / \ | | |__) | |__ | | \ | | |___ |___ | | \ \__/ \__/ |__) |___ |___ Tuning: Rational - 25/21, 9/7, 7/5, 5/3, 9/5, 15/7, 7/3, 25/9, 3/1 My previous uses of the Bohlen-Pierce scale usually come with some statement about the purity of my approach. Whenever I transpose instruments by octaves, or use bends to get at additional pitches, or use specific voicings to achieve even numbered harmonics, you could consider that approach not authentic to what Bohlen-Pierce is supposed to achieve. This time we're going a lot more pure. All instruments here are in the same tuning of the lambda mode of Bohlen-Pierce using rational intervals instead of 13ed3 'chromatic'. This music is more an expression of how you should expect Bohlen-Pierce tonality to sound. How this music is "supposed" to fit into some narrowly defined category of musical tuning is not remotely important though, compared to just making something sound good. But in BP's case I think it's right to have made an exception, because I've worked so frequently with the 13ed3 chromatic scale without ever sticking to one of the BP 'diatonic' modes. For what it's worth, that's something I can now check off my bucket list, plus I got this music as a result. ___ __ ___ __ /\ | | | / \ |\/| /\ | / \ |\ | /~~\ \__/ | \__/ | | /~~\ | \__/ | \| Tuning: 22ed2 - 54.545454c This track also uses lambda, however here it is merely used as tonal framework, and the tuning is 22ed2, which opened up different possibilities than 13ed3. Yes, 22ed2 supports lambda! It has recognisable BP feels but it is quite warped due to its low accuracy, and even contains intervals of perfect fifth, octave and 600 cent tritone which lambda isn't really supposed to have. I made sure to use much of what 22ed2 has to offer, while suggesting towards lambda only enough to impart its distinct tonality feels on the track. Some instruments, like the strings and one lead, are locked into this 9 note scale which repeats at 35 steps of 22ed2. The rest of the instruments have access to the full tuning. Usually I would use 13ed3 as the tuning for Bohlen-Pierce scale things, yet on this album I have two tracks of Bohlen-Pierce things and neither of them are tuned to 13ed3. So that gave me new perspectives on an old favourite. Rhythmically this track is about quintuplets. I set the session up as 15/8 but each kick drum hits every 5/8, so the resulting pulse feels more like 1/4 with quintuplet subdivisions. Depending on how you listen to it, you might hear each section as 3 bars of 4/4 or 2 bars of 6/4. I don't perceive it as being very clear either way. Other sections switch to 20/8 but with the main pulse being 5/8 it feels like a straightforward 4/4 with quintuplet groove. This is probably saying too much detail but shows how what it says in the DAW is not necessarily how someone is going to count the beat purely from listening to it. What I like to do is set up a weird number on the DAW and then intuitively find a way to make it all work out. ___ __ ___ ___ __ |__ /\ | /__` |__ /\ | | /\ |__/ |__ |\ | | |\ | / _` | /~~\ |___ .__/ |___ /~~\ |/\| /~~\ | \ |___ | \| | | \| \__> Tuning: Rational - 11/9, 7/5, 13/7, 2/1 This is an attempt to simulate guitars electronically by running Pianoteq into Guitarix. Better results come from using an electric piano model rather than an acoustic one. I've also heard kalimbas run into guitar amps and liked it. Maybe that's something I'll try for myself in future. The drum kit is a freebie from Drumgizmo, in fact I am required to make a specific attribution here -- Drum samples provided by DrumGizmo.org. I swapped out the kick and snare with other freebies found online but I have to admit I have no idea how this kind of kit should sound. In the authentic spirit of fake music, some of the drum patterns might require more than 2 arms to play on a real kit. The tuning was selected as a challenge to myself. I have heard somewhere that pentatonic (5-note) music is the minimum number of notes required to do convincing tonal music. Any less than 5 might be considered more of a chord than a scale. But is it really true? Could we do tonal music with 4 pitches? One of my fave aspects of tonal music is a chord progression that takes you somewhere. To go on that musical journey, you need enough chords available. So let's say a chord has 3 notes. How many 3-note chords are possible with 4 total notes? The answer is 4 chords. And with so many of those notes shared between the other chords, they wouldn't provide enough contrast for compelling musical drama. But what if we considered dyads (2-note chords) as the basic kind of chord for writing tonal music? How many dyads are possible in a 4-note scale? Turns out it's 6. The trick, then, is to make sure that the 4 intervals in the scale are distinct enough so that the resulting 6 dyads are also distinct. So I set out to create a scale with 4 distinct intervals. I auditioned this one particular scale and thought it would work, then found a chord progression using all 6 dyads that gave me a satisfying journey. That's the chord progression which loops throughout this track. The melodies were then played on top. __ __ __ __ __ ___ ___ / ` / \ /__` |\/| | / ` |__) | /\ \ / | | |\/| |__ \__, \__/ .__/ | | | \__, | |___ /~~\ | | | | | |___ Tuning: 26ed2 - 46.153846c I can't remember what my intention was when I started this track but to me it sounds as spacy as a Bomberman level select screen and feels like a fitting way to finish off this collection of tracks, especially with the long ending that could just continue cycling through infinity as it slowly fades out... Thanks for listening! Sevish