XPSC 2012 Resources

General Resources, Readings for Students

Simple free software for drilling intervals: Jim Altieri's Interval Calculator

For JI Praxis Choir: Is What You See What You See

Frank Denyer, "Some Thoughts on Linear Microtonality"

Jules Siegel, "Emancipation of the Higher Harmonic"

This paper contains a list of intervals tuneable by ear: http://adagio.calarts.edu/~msabat/ms/pdfs/tuneable-brass.pdf

"No Promises" Call for Porcupine/22EDO Scores!

In response to much enthusiasm for Porcupine Temperament and the lack of music written in it, Xenharmonic Praxis Summer Camp 2012 is challenging YOU to compose for our ad-hoc Porcupine Party Pop Band! The Porcupine Party Pop Band will meet during summer camp (August 3-11) in order to "get deep" into a single tuning system, i.e. get our groove on. To do this, we need people, especially porcupine-passionate people to write music that we can try.

Our ensemble is flexible and ad-hoc, but we will have something resembling a rhythm/chord section, a wind section, and vocalist(s). A score with 2-5 staves is ideal. We recommend using our provisional notation, detailed below.

We will be tuning our porcupine to the flavor of 22EDO. In your composition, you can take advantage of other features of 22EDO, but we are interested primarily in exploring what it means to play in porcupine.

No promises! You don't have to come to camp to submit a score, and we don't have to do squat unless we dig your song. To submit, link a PDF of your score, and any helpful mockup audio files you might make, at the bottom of this wiki page. If you become a member of the wiki, you can host your file(s) here. Deadline is August 7th, 2012!

Preparing to Play in Porcupine Party Pop Band

Read up on porcupine and 22EDO. We will use A-440 as our reference pitch.

In contrast with the pythagorean-based notation on the 22edo page, here is a provisional porcupine-based notation system:

This system uses porcupine[7] as the basic scale, which has six smaller steps (3/22 of an octave, about 164¢) and one big step (4/22-oct, ~218¢). We will repurpose the letters A-G, such that the distance between any two consecutive letters is that small step, and G-A is the one large step. The accidentals used are the same as the standard 22 sagittal notation.

degrees of 22EDO:

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22(0)

sharpenings:

A/|

A||\

B/|

B||\

C/|

C||\

D/|

D||\

E/|

E||\

F/|

F||\

G/|

G||\

G#

naturals:

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

A

flattenings:

B!!/

B\!

C!!/

C\!

D!!/

D\!

E!!/

E\!

F!!/

F\!

G!!/

G\!

Ab

A!!/

A\!

This Mus2 file can be opened as a template: 22 porcupine template.mus2

Audio version of the Mus2 file, a cycle of Porcupine steps:

Porcupine Party Pop Band Songs

PorcupineScherzo22edo 2012-08-15.pdfsupposed to sound like this: