2010 composition competition notes and bios

winners and finalists:

Monroe Golden- Incongruity (1st prize)
Incongruity (for piano and fixed media) Refers to the meshing of seemingly incommensurate systems: Harmonic (or Extended Just Intonation), Represented by fixed media, And Equal-Tempered, Represented by the piano part. The sound file presents just-tuned common-tone chord progressions that, With each iteration, Shift higher in frequency by the interval of a Syntonic Comma. Thus, The resulting tonic chord at the end of the piece is about a minor third higher than the (functionally) Same chord at the beginning. Piano notes are proximate to harmonic relationships, up to the 96th partial. Divisions of time at phrase and section are proportional to underlying fundamental frequencies. Tools for computation and realization were custom PERL scripts, OpenOffice spreadsheets, Finale, Scala tuning files, Pianoteq Virtual Piano, And Adobe Audition -- With final mastering by Tucker Robison of Robison Productions. Incongruity was completed on December 8, 2010, written specifically for the UnTwelve 2010 Composition Competition.

Monroe Golden is a composer from rural Alabama whose works often explore microtonal systems. Critics have described his compositions as "delightfully disorienting," "Lovely, Sumptuous, Yet arcane," And "irresistible music, Full of wit and beauty." He graduated from the University of Montevallo and earned a doctorate in Music Composition from the University of Illinois, Where he studied with Ben Johnston and Aurel Stroé. There are two complete CDs of his music, A Still Subtler Spirit (Living Artist Recordings, 2003) and Alabama Places (Innova Recordings, 2007).

Soressa Gardner- Mayne at midnight (2nd prize)
This electronic composition utilizes the Balanese Gamelan tuning created by Soniccouture for Native Instruments Balanese Gamelan library.
The the same tuning is applied to the other electronic instruments used in this piece.
It was inspired by the intense quiet of Mayne Islands, BC. during a snowfall.

Soressa Gardner is a vocalist, improviser and electronic music composer who collaborates with authors (Dennis E, Bolen, Evie Christie), Dancers (BODAC) Visual artists (Birdwise, Ballesteros) And a range of musicians. Her work has been performed at Vancouver New Music Festival 2010, The Western Front and Rutgers University-Camden. She hold a music degree from Vancouver Community College.

Igliashon Jones- Persephone Descends (3rd prize)
"Persephone Descends" is a melancholic study in 20-EDO's Blackwood Decatonic scale, An MOS scale of 5 large and 5 small steps, Alternating. It begins in one chain of 5-EDO and phases one note at a time into another chain 180 cents apart, And then begins a unique "endlessly-resolving spiral" Chord progression possible only in the Blackwood scale. Eventually, A crescendo builds and the pretty bells are washed away by a sudden torrent of heavy distorted guitars playing a 5-EDO "doom-metal" Riff. After a guitar solo in 5-EDO, The tempo doubles, A string section enters playing dissonant 20-EDO cluster-chords, And the metal abruptly ends with a return to the opening bell-theme (though in variation). This piece was written December 12 to the 15th, 2010, Specifically for the Untwelve competition.

Igliashon Jones (legal name Jason Yerger) Is a microtonal guitarist and electronic music composer. He currently favors uncommon equal divisions of the octave, Like 16, 20, 18, 8, And 10. He is almost 28 years old, And has no formal musical training. He lives in Oakland, CA, Not far from the birthplace of the Alternative Tunings List from Mills College, But is sad to report a near-total lack of microtonal community in Oakland these days.

Shaahin Mohajeri- The battle of Ahuramazda and ahriman
An orchestral microtonal music for Strings, Brass, English horn, oboe, flute and percussion.
I wrote it specialy and only for the 2010 UnTwelve competition for the first time.

Shaahin Mohajeri (born 26 july 1971 in Tehran, Iran) is a Tombak player, Tombak Researcher and microtonal composer.
As a microtonalist , he works on different tuning systems such as :
*** Equal divisions of length( EDL)
*** Arithmetic irrational divisions of octave AIDO(or nonoctave,interval)
***Equal divisions of octave(EDO
***Arithmetic rational divisions of octave ARDO(or nonoctave,interval)
***Arithmetic divisions of length (ADL)
He believes that 96-EDO is a good system for intervallic structure of persian music.

David Snow- Etudes for imaginary harp
This piece was composed for the 2010 UnTwelve competition and completed on December 13, 2010. The 3-movement work is based upon a scale that divides the octave into 13 equal steps of 92.3077 cents. The decision to employ that tuning was based upon a desire to investigate the properties of an arbitrary, Mathematically-based system (i.e. One that ignores the harmonic series) That could be easily implemented upon conventional keyboard-based electronic instruments. If it were to be built, The imaginary harp referred to in the title would differ in construction from a conventional pedal harp only in the detuning range of its pedals; Otherwise these etudes are playable by a human performer.

The compositions of David Jason Snow have been performed in concert by the the Ensemble Intercontemporain, New Juilliard Ensemble, The American Brass Quintet, The Harvard Wind Ensemble, The Yale University Band, The Eastman Percussion Ensemble, And other artists throughout the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa. Snow has been the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Maryland State Arts Council, The ASCAP Foundation, BMI, Musician magazine and Keyboard magazine, And has been an artist resident at Yaddo and the Millay Colony for the Arts. He holds degrees in music composition from the Eastman School of Music and Yale University where his principle teachers were Joseph Schwantner, Warren Benson, Samuel Adler, and Jacob Druckman.

James Wyness- a dissolving view
a dissolving view [8:18]

This piece was composed for the 2010 UnTwelve competition

In 2001 I built a small orchestra of microtonal instruments: zithers, psalteries, steel tube marimbas, gongs, to which I added glass bowls, slit drums and other tuned and found percussion.

a dissolving view uses the sounds of two 8-course zithers and a pair of 17-string bowed psalteries. The zithers, an 'octave' apart, are tuned to a simple just pentatonic 1/1 7/6 4/3 3/2 7/4 2/1, the psalteries to the same pentatonic on one side and to Lou Harrison's 'Nature's Own' 1/1, 13/12, 7/6, 17/12, 3/2, 19/12, 7/4, 2/1. (Partials 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 21) on the other.

Each tone was articulated in two ways: struck individually using a variety of beaters, and activated using an ebow (a hand held device which sets the strings in motion electromagnetically). These were recorded and spread over several octaves. A rigorous score was constructed in which dyads (two tone combinations) of each pentatonic scale moved together in a sequence of parallel and contrary motions. Density, dynamic structures and all other musical parameters were micromanaged at every level.

The score was 'assembled' digitally; versions of each tone at + and - 20 cents, around the threshold of (my) perception, were also created digitally. Panning, crossfading and dynamic balance were all adjusted in the digital domain. No other sounds or digital effects were added to the recorded instrumental sounds. In order to afford textural variety digitally reversed versions of sub-sections of the work were offset with the originals, similar to a retrograde canon in several voices.

This is the second of a projected series of works using dense layers of sound created from recordings of justly intoned hand-made instruments. The first, music born of solitude (2010), which makes use of a quartet of hand-made bowed zithers tuned to the 1/3/5/7/9/11 Eikosany, is to be released in late 2010.

James Wyness is a freelance composer, sound artist and improvising musician living in Southern Scotland.

His installation work focuses primarily on conceptual sonic art which investigates close listening by means of multi-channel sound installation.

He is involved with a range of ongoing projects, both solo and collaborative. Outside of his current practice which focuses on conceptually driven installations for instrumental sounds and loudspeakers, collaborations include the large scale sonic documentation of Seville's Holy Week processions and an investigation into new forms of digital animated literature.

As a composer he works primarily in the digital domain, making use of instrumental, electronic and environmental sound in order to produce compositions for fixed media.
He is currently working on two long term projects: creating new music for an orchestra of hand built microtonal instruments, both notated compositions for performance and digital music for general release on various formats. In the field of soundscape composition he continues to develop and exploit a personal digital archive of environmental sounds taken from the Scottish Borders and North Northumberland..

As an performing and recording improviser he plays prepared nylon strung guitar and hand made acoustic and electronic instruments.

His work has been performed, presented and recognised nationally and internationally.

He holds a Masters degree in French and a PhD in electroacoustic composition from the University of Aberdeen.

Donald Craig- Study in 31
Study in 31 uses 31 equal steps to the octave. In this piece, I am using symmetrical chord progressions. Each chord is a short stack of a particular interval, Like a minor third or a perfect fifth. Some intervals are particular to 31 like the 2 flavors of the tritone. The pieces were composed using Finale and then exported as midi files. Using the software package SuperCollider, I processed the midi files to generate the audio.

Donald Craig has recently completed is Doctorate in Music Composition at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. He has studied with Joel Durand, Kenneth Benshoof and Richard Karpen, and most recently with Juan Pampin. He also plays guitar and has studied with Steven Novacek. His dissertation was a large visual music work, for which he developed his own software. He has a strong interest in equal temperaments and plans to use them in his ongoing visual music projects.

Joseph Post- US Gold
This piece was written specifically for the UnTwelve 2010 composition competition! It has not been published anywhere else, and is not available for streaming or downloading.

Tuned to a seven note scale: 1/1, 8/7, 9/7, 10/7, 11/7, 12/7, 13/7. Eventually it modulates to 12/7. Treating this as 1/1, the mode used in this section is 1/1, 13/12, 7/6, 4/3, 3/2, 5/3, 11/6.

This piece was inspired by both my obsession with just intonation and my experience working as a rap producer.

Oh, and I created the email account when I was studying serialism in college, don't be fooled by it!

Joseph Post earned a B.M. From University of Central Missouri and studied composition with Eric Honour from January 2006 to May 2007. Since then he has been a mixing engineer on hundreds of commercial recordings, Produced songwriters, Made beats for rappers in the NFL and composed works for television. Works have been performed at several conferences, Including: SCI Region VI 2007-10, SCI Region VIII 2008, SCI National Conference 2009, UCM New Music Fest 2008-09.

As a guitarist he performed in the St. Louis premier of Glenn Branca's Symphony No. 13 For 100 electric guitars. He also formed and composed for the experimental rock group Monitors, Which included US tours and international releases.

Joseph is currently a caretaker for his grandmother in rural Missouri while on sabbatical.

Martin Loridan- brume, Espace, Temps...
This work is based on the confrontation of two ideas: A neum (short melodic cell) and the so-called Fibonacci sequence: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55…

Martin Loridan is a young French Composer, Recently graduated from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris. He studied Harmony, Orchestration, Composition, With international French renowned composer Thierry Escaich, And former Olivier Messiaen’s students Alain Mabit and Denis Cohen. His work includes chamber and orchestral music, As well as settings of texts and poems and voice-including arrangements.

Ann Cantelow- Lu Dong Bin's Dream
The man who was to become Daoist sage Lu Dong Bin slept on a magic pillow and dreamed an entire lifetime in one night, as if it had really happened. There were many triumphs and joys in the dream, but at the end there was tragedy and exile.
This piece is a fantasia whose purpose is to depict Lu Dong Bin's magical dream. It is a paean to samsara, our ordinary everyday striving life, that ends with a lament for the pain of it all.
All sounds in the piece were performed by Ann Cantelow on theremin.
This piece was composed specifically for the 2010 UnTwelve competition.

Ann Cantelow studied composition at the University of California at Davis, during a time when John Cage, Larry Austin and Richard Swift were teaching and growing the body of contemporary American music. Ann has had works performed in parts of the Vox Novus 60x60 project in 2006, 2007-8, and 2010, and in the 60x60 UnTwelve mix in 2010. She is a theremin player and composer who lives in Boulder, Colorado.

non-finalists:

judsoN -- Moe's Art Re-Tempered
This piece was generated with a program written specifically to create the recorded music here. It takes a recording of a street musician playing Mozart and calculates new frequencies. Essentially, the laws of physics are obeyed to retain the octaves, but each 8ve is divided into 10 segments, rather than the arguably arbitrary value of 12. The frequencies are then reassembled as sines to create the complex waves heard.

This is an extension of experiments (see Pierce, 2001) where listeners mentally restructure their listening organization (and assume the "music" is somehow organized/tuned externally. This extension is part of my ongoing research in how computers (and empirical systems) can "borrow" subjective creative qualities without necessarily implicitly resembling them.

The brain utilizes vast resources to process music. But to do so is "expensive" and first it must distinguish between random stimuli and potentially communicative ones. Ie. music is hardly exclusively about the sensory aspect, but also about how the brain discerns noise from intelligent design.

judsoN completed a Faculty Fellowship at ITP (Interactive Telecommunications [MPA] Program) in 2007, graduated from Brown University in 1992, majoring in Visual Art. In 1996, he programmed interactive multimedia with one of the first online galleries, Ädaweb. Recently, his work has been featured in the Armory Show (New York), the 809 Art District (China), IMEB (l'Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges), the Smithsonian International Gallery (Washington DC), with the Brooklyn Philharmonic and composer Eve Beglarian. A chapter he wrote appears in The Handbook on Computational Arts and Creative Informatics as well as papers published in several (mostly music) journals around the world.

http://pump.org.in

Thomas Taxus Beck- Ritual I
Ritual I
for Cello and electronic sounds

Percussive rhythms and tossed bow sounds on the cello flow like physical elements through the composition. One sound, growing up to a ritual rhythm, reflecting itself.

In my compositions I always try to develop variations, characteristic sounds from only a few sound-cells: Any sound that appear in my composition is developed from only three actions of a cello: Throwing the bow onto the strings, tremolo and long tones. The appearing rhythm reminds to an old drum-structure from Mali, although there were no drums. In long passages there seem to appear singing voices, although there were no singer. And sometimes the intervals of the Cello`s part seem to be nearly the semitones, although there were no well known intervalls The tonal pitch system architecture of Ritual I is based on a tonal unit of 48 cent, a little less than a tempered semitone.

Ritual I does exist in tow versions: The first one for Live-Cello and electronic sounds, the second one is the recorded version with the sound of the cello.

1962 Born in Solingen, Germany

1987-1990 Studies of Musicology, Art history and German at the University of Cologne

1990-1994 Studies of composition by Bojidar Dimov at the RMS, Cologne

1996-2003 Studies of Electronic composition by Prof. Hans Ulrich Humpert at the University of music, Cologne

2001 Cursus de composition et d`informatique musicale, IRCAM , Paris, France

Since 2001 Lecturer in composition und musical theorie at the RMS, Cologne


Prizes, grants and scholarships (selection):

1990-1994 Scholarship of the RMS, Cologne.
2001 Scholarship of the der Foundation Kulturfonds Berlin; Artists House Lukas, Ahrenshoop, Germany.
Scholarship of the State of Nordrhein-Westfalen; travelling scholarship for Paris, France.
2003 1. Prize of the International Competition "Prix Ars Acustica", Germany.
Scholarship of the STUDIOS INTERNATIONAL, Interdisziplinary Centre for Arts and Media Technology; Denkmalschmiede Höfgen, Germany.
1. Prize of the 9. International Competition of the des Vienna Summer-Seminar for Temporary Music (Composition und Interpretation), Austria.
2004 Globusklänge, Competition of the inmb, the Initiative Neue Musik Berlin.
2005 Scholarship of the International Institut for Music, Darmstadt, the IMD and the Media College, Darmstadt, Germany.
2007 1. Place Mobius Award, New York
2008 German-Soundart-Prize, the "Deutscher Klangkunstpreis" of the West-German-Radio and the Museum for Sulptures, Marl
2009 Scholarship of the ZKM, Centre for Arts and Media Technology, Karlsruhe
Scholarship of the onomato foundation and the City of Düsseldorf, Germany
2010 Scholarship of the Artist`s House Vorpommern "Heinrichsruh"
Honorable Mention Award of the National Academy of Music, Thessaloniki, Greece
2011 Scholarship of the Visby International Centre for Composers, Gotland, Sweden

Andrew Bernstein- Not Every Boy Wants To Be A Soldier
This piece was made with Alto Saxophone and a patch that I made in the programming environment Pure Data. I am playing overtones on a low Bb on the saxophone and controlling sine tone chords tuned to various overtones of Bb going up the 46th partial. The interplay of the saxophone partials and sine tone chords creates difference dramatic difference tones and audible acoustic beating, Both of which are explored throughout the piece.

Andrew Bernstein is a musician who currently resides in Baltimore, MD. He composes acoustic and electronic music that is driven by exploration of acoustic phenomena, poly-rhythmic textures, just intonation tuning systems, and the limitless possibilities of DIY computer music. In group improvisational settings he mostly plays saxophone and clarinets as well as custom built electronic instruments. As well as performing solo electro-acoustic music, Bernstein has played with the groups Teeth Mountain, The Dan Deacon Ensemble, has composed and arranged music for dance by Linda Garofalo, Mathew Heggem, Lily Susskind, Claire Cote, and The Effervescent Collective and since 2010 has been a member of the Red Room Collective and co-organizer of the annual High Zero Festival. He walks dogs for sustenance.

Cameron Bobro- A Little Romance
Although the tuning structure itself is strictly "bronze-punk", consisting of inlterlocking tetrachords (17 tones total) which would all be familiar to ancient Greek theorists as soft diatonics and soft chromatics, and the intonation is very non-western, being based on partials 2:3:7:13 and deliberately skipping the 5th partial altogether, the piece stylistically seems to me to have a definite taste of the 1930's.

Perhaps it is something from a kind of alternative reality, but in the sense of prototyping, not escaping, and linked more to feelings or impressions than ideas.

Cameron Bobro is a musician working in Maribor, Slovenia. He has performed microtonal music live in a dozen different countries from Portugal to China, as singer (basso) and composer, and is the musical director of the annual Festival DaNes in Maribor, Slovenia.

giovanni damiani- sintonia di spettri
Composition upon variable equal temperaments and their direct comparison (5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 19, 22, 24, 31 degree for octave).
It use additive synthesis (and vocoding) with harmonics tuned according each temperament, realised in real time by Csound, controlled by master keyboard MIDI by the composer. This piece was composed for the 2010 UnTwelve competition.
Also avalaible in quadraphony.

Among others, He studied with Aldo Clementi in Rome, And attended courses by Luigi Nono, S.Bussotti, H.Lachenmann. At the fourth Conferenza Mediterranea, A musical meeting of 12 composers from 12 nations (12 soloists and 3 orchestras) He represented the italian composers, With live broadcasting on National and foreign Radios. He won a grant in Poland in 1993-94, He was invited to the Ferienkurse of Darmstadt in 1994, And is a member of Nuova Consonanza and of the Archivio Nono. He organizes cultural events as the congress _Idea di una musica_, With conferences and many concerts also with world premiere, Or italian premiere of Cage, Ustvolskaia and others. He works often with Virgilio Sieni, One of the greatest italian choreographers. In '98 his drama 'Salve follie precise' Is performed at the Festival sul Novecento.From 1993 he is chair of Score Reading at the Conservatorio of Palermo.His works have been performed at the greater festivals in Europe.

Jacques Delaguerre- UnTwelve 2010 Cadenza
I present a contrabass cadenza (solo) as if it occurred in an imaginary symphony. The "tuning system" is what I call "bent pitch", that is, "wrong" and overly subdivided intervals that appeal to my ear.

I've had to rehearse a lot of very cheerful and greeting-card-mystical sort of carols and folk songs as the symphony performs over this holiday season. The tune submitted is my musical mind experiencing something like an immunoreaction to all the conventional sentiment :)

As far as all tuning systems theory and debate thereunto, I can only quote what Omar Khayyam wrote and Fitzgerald translated:

When I was young I did eagerly frequent /
Saint and sage, and heard great argument /
Around and around, until through the door /
Wherein I came, out I went

That's more or less the composer's take on various systems.

Aged folk/jazz/pop hack and symphony performer, Assistant Principal for Boulder Symphony, bassist for the Clam Daddys, both easily findable on the web.

Jacques DUDON- Parallel Worlds
(feel free to edit and do english corrections thanks !)
"Parallel Worlds" is played entirely with the photosonic disk, an instrument invented in 1972 by the composer in which sounds are generated optically and controlled by moving small lights and optical filters in response to the patterns printed on rotating semi-transparent interchangeable disks, pulsating the light at audible frequencies.
It uses two of these disks specially designed for the 2010 UnTwelve competition, played for the first time and recorded each on a single take in my studio at Le Thoronet (France) on the 10th of December 2010.
Though the two disks were played separately without hearing each other, their recordings were then mixed together to give this result.
I choose to work that way also because in order to experiment a simpler version of this music in my live concerts by making one single disk in this system, I had to know what would come of these two first disks, and of their interaction. It turned out that, even considering them as in a experimental state, I felt an equal pleasure to play them one after the other, during almost one hour each.
We may think the title Parallel Worlds refers to the different palettes of sounds that were printed on the two disks, and the hazardous mixing technique. It is partly true, but even more it is inspired by my interpretation of the two disks, in which the melodies, with the help optic filters, come mostly from the overtones of each sound in a similar way to "harmonic" or "diphonic" singing.
As it happens, the overtones may take us into some"parallel worlds" from the fundamentals and I like to compare this effect to the soft and slippery moment we may experience when feeling sleepy, as we leave our ordinary consciousness to enter the dream reality.
This effect is only accentuated here with the tuning, based on a very circular concept, where the tonic continually changes in a kaleidoscopic way.
The tuning is also a premiere and explores a rare coincidence I discovered this year 2010, between the Zinith recurrent sequence (where each note is related with the two precedent by the differential coherence algorithm x^2 = x + 1/2, with a convergence point attained with x = (sqrt(3) +1)/2), and a variation of Orwell temperament achieved with a slightly lower generator of around 270 cents, half of the Zinith generator. It can be described as a linear temperament using half of the Zinith generator as generator, which by chance was accomplished here by a "ribbon temperament" made of two Zinith recurrent sequences one pure major third apart, which allowed the same geometrical waveform resolution for both.
Thus the complex timbres issued from Zinith are in perfect spectral adequation with many Orwell scales, while the Orwell canvas suggests in return practical harmonic extensions for several Zinith sequences.
The first disk here (the more noisy sound) uses the Zinith fractal waveform developped along the two sequences ; the second disk uses a semi-periodic variation of another fractal waveform (Ours de Clar) optimally rich in odd harmonics, transposed into a different subset of the same scale.
Octave-reduced this leads to the Just-Intonation scale 1, 35, 75-153, 41, 11, 3, 205-209, 7, 15, which is similar to an unequal division of octave in nine, a subset of 31 steps per octave dispatched this way : 4 3 4 3 4 3 4 3 3, where the 3 steps semitone interval is well approximated by 15/14 and the 4 steps one is between 12/11 and 35/32.
The 9 notes scale is here extended to 11, adding more microtonal vatiations with the two additional large commas of 150:153 and 205:209 often heard in the piece, and of course extended, with the overtones used as fundamentals, to a higher number of notes.
The system is of course well suited for all kinds of Pelog variations, among some more exotic blues explorations that can be heard as well, but no special form of music was searched here apart from what was suggested by the harmonic exploration of the two disks and their expected connexions.

Jacques Dudon
Born 23 rd of april 1951 in France.
Fondation member (1983) and directeur of the"Atelier d’Exploration Harmonique" (AEH), new instruments and microtonal research center, Le Thoronet (Var).
Just-intonation composer, researcher, luthier, multi-instrumentist, he is the inventor of near to 500 new instruments, using water, wind, strings, light, in which he attempts to bring into listening situations the acoustical qualities proper to each material.

(more to be translated on request, such as) :
"Pour Jacques Dudon les systèmes à la base des traditions musicales du monde sont le fait de coïncidences microtonales remarquables, faisant intervenir des lois acoustiques bien précises, dont il s’applique à démonter les mécanismes et à en extraire les modèles mathématiques.
La sauvegarde de ces modèles naturels l’a inspiré, depuis des années, à créer des instruments harmoniques, et des musiques pluriculturelles, basées sur de nouvelles écologies sonores."

Craig Evans- Hymn of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Hymn to the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a microtonal odyssey featuring 17, 18, 28 34 and 43 tone equally divided octaves in an attempt to harness the diverse atmospheres of these collections of pitch, and the tension created by modulating between them.

It begins with a 17-tone introduction, proceeding to a 34-edo guitar section, then a 28-edo 11/5 against 11/4 polyrhythmic jumble, an 18-edo section and a 43-tone fugal finale. Though a portion of the content is diatonic in nature, the distinctive sound of the tunings are the better to be contrasted with the stale feel of 12-edo (rather like wolves in grandmotherly clothing).


...Over all the structure, theme and sound of the piece is reminiscent of a monstrous spaghetti, suitable to praise his deliciousness and win a competition.

I'm a student from SUNY Albany currently writing an album. I like to study composition and philosophy.

Larry Gaab- In Places Finished and Separated
Sound in space. The work examines sound images
and their acoustic shadows. Sounds were created
with separate pitch foundations and complementary rhythms. Elongated phrases comb through evaporating harmonies. Undulating textures twist and combine. Interlocking timbres join each other at various points
of alignment. Each sound's rhythmic markings measure the changing aural distances and positions. The piece was composed December 2010 specifically for the un-twelve competition.

Larry Matthew Gaab (b. 1950) is a native of the United States where he creates music at his studio in Chico, California. His body of works are for tape alone and
for mixed acoustic and electronic instruments. The pieces utilize improvisation, composition, and computer generation. His musical language focuses on various
abstractions of sound, especially transformational aspects. His works have been selected at electro-acoustic festivals and concerts in the United States
and in Europe.

William Greenhalgh - Spreolee
Written for a hundred flutes, Each tuned a centile out from each other (so, A hundred possible notes per semitone). Played back on computer (I'm not convinced it's playing more than 64 channels however, And some of the channels are using the default piano sound despite my pleading). The music simply starts from a G4 on all the instruments, But then compositionally plays with the resulting resonances and harmonics. This is a very brief section, Written just to hear what would happen. Then an eight-part canon begins, Each group of eight starting at one-bar intervals. Rhythms are generated using starling flocks' Flight equations - The flutes become a quasi flock, A natural monster. The full range of tuning is used throughout (since each instrument is treated equally), Though I quite like the idea that this hundredth-tone tuning system can encompass within it pretty much any tuning you would like, And I look forward now to exploring it. Completed on 11 Dec 2010. This piece was written for the 2010 Untwelve Competition.

Born 03/03/1983 Self-taught. Works include an eighthtone string quartet, several unperformed chamber pieces, and a lot of vocal music.

David Hamill- Cool My Head
This piece is based on an original unaccompanied vocal by Susannah Kelly, who merits the title of co-composer and lyricist. Her song, originally in conventional tuning, has been retuned note-by-note to an 11-EDO tuning (where the octave is divided into 11 equal steps). The accompaniment, scored for harp, violin section, double bass, flute, tenor saxophone and drums, has a 13/8 time signature.

This piece was composed specifically for the 2010 UnTwelve competition.

David Hamill is a retired electronics engineer based near Guildford, England. Although he plays several instruments, mostly badly, his main music tool is the computer. David's compositions range from rock and classical to jazz and experimental. His virtual band, Focal Chords, is an international musical collaboration.
www.focalchords.com

Susannah Kelly is an English teacher and singer-songwriter who lives in Limerick, Ireland.
www.sckelly.com

Joel Hickman- Fall 2010
Composed, performed and recorded for 2 auto-harps in J.I., 2 electric guitars- 1 electric guitar in 6tet- the other electric guitar in 31tet, violin in J.I., viola in J.I., cello in J.I., quarter-tone (24tet) classical guitar and 2 trombones in J.I.

Joel David Hickman was born in Valparaiso, Indiana and currently lives in Hebron, Indiana. Joel has many years of composing, performing, and recording in various classical and rock ensembles. He has written many compositions for solo guitar and piano as well as compositions for various acoustic and electric ensembles. He is currently composing for micro-tonal instruments and has been working/studying in different temperaments for various string and keyboard instruments. Joel has a Bachelor’s Degree in Musical Performance (Classical Guitar) from Chicago Musical College of Roosevelt University and a certificate in recording engineering from The Recording Workshop in Chillicothe, Ohio.

Chuckk Hubbard- The World Is Ours
The World Is Ours' uses 13-limit just intonation. It is not based on any particular scale, but on various kinds of movement among related tones; these tones change depending on the tonal center at any given moment. Some of the related tones are used and some aren't. There is an overall emphasis on a 1:1 Otonality and a 7:4 Utonality, both transposed at certain points.
This piece is not meant to portray any specific idea, but it was inspired by the human race and its tireless efforts to understand everything it encounters. It was created in 2010 using Rationale and Csound.
This piece was composed for the 2010 UnTwelve competition.

Chuckk Hubbard is from Pennsylvania, USA, and has been living in Romania since 2007. He plays 5-string banjo and creates microtonal music on computer, using his own software Rationale together with Csound. He has a Bachelor of Music degree in Composition from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

Ryan Ingebritsen- Reparametrization 5: The Music of Erich Zann
This piece is an interactive work for baritone violin (or violin) and live electronic manipulation.

It is loosely based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft of the same title and the music is somewhat theatrical as it makes reference to the story in the instructions for the placement of the performer and the sound design. The tuning system is one I am devising and is actually reflected mostly in the electronics as the piece is an interactive work in which the amplitude of the actual live instrument is measured in real-time and then maps on to a number of synth generators who's maximum and minimum pitch (frequency) are determined by how loud or soft the instrument is playing causing a "glissandi" effect that relates to volume. At certain times the maximuim and minimum pitches are static and at other times, are mapped on to the actual pitch of the instrument. The instrumentalist themselves alternates between a traditional modal tuning system (playing essentially Hungarian folk tunes) and an alternate tuning system which correlates structurally to the tuning system I am creating for the synth modules. At various times, the max and min pitches of each module change randomly but are mapped onto an equal division of the scale type tuning which itself alternates between these various systems. In addition, compositionally, the traditional modal melody is mapped onto a "reparametrized" by being mapped on to a randomized glissandi pattern based on randomly generated increments of the 7 equal division system. It is as if the melody is being de-tuned with a pitch bender who's increments correlate to the 7 equal division of the octave scale. This relationship is written out for the performer and then further skewed by the max effects applied to it.

This piece This piece was composed for the 2010 UnTwelve competition.

Ryan Ingebritsen is a composer, sound designer, and electronic performer whose music and sound art focus on the multi-dimensional aspects of sound. He spent many years studying composition, electronic music and live improvisation in Eastern Europe where he was influenced by composers such as Krzystof Penderecki, Boguslaw Scheffer, and studied under the tutelage of composer Zbigniew Bujarski and audio artist Marek Choloniewski on a Fulbright Scholarship in 2000. Since then he has appeared on international festivals and created music for various mediums in Chicago and abroad as well as having collaborated as a sound designer and composer with new music groups such as International Contemporary Ensemble, eighth blackbird, and MaVerick Ensemble, We Can and We Must as well as creating sound and music for dance. He was recently awarded the Illinois Arts Councils Composer Fellowship as well as a McKnight Visiting Composers Fellowship for a residency in the Minnesota State Parks.

Seales John- Out of the subway ... into the sound
This piece was composed specifically for the 2010 UnTwelve Composition Competition.

Five connected etudes from Seoul subway sounds.

We hear the whoosh of doors opening, beeps to get passengers' attention, and footsteps of people leaving the train. As the doors whoosh closed, we go into the sound, (via spectral resynthesis) zooming in on a frozen moment in time.
From the partial structure of the unique inharmonic timbre, I develop a tuning system, the characteristic intervals of which are ratios between the values of the partials. Tuning systems are created with an optimization algorithm that maximizes the presence desired intervals – ratios between the partials of the sound.
On the tuning system I write an etude that uses structural features of the tuning as inspiration for melodic and harmonic material. The instrumental sound is either the frozen sound itself (with effects modestly applied) or the sound of a physical instrument with its partials altered to match the frozen sound.
Melodic and harmonic material is derived from the structure of the tuning.

Software:
Alchemy for additive and spectral synthesis.
Sonic Visualizer for spectral analysis.
Audacity for arrangement.
My own code in Python for tuning system creation, and developing melodic and harmonic material from the structure of tuning systems.

John Seales is a D.M.A. candidate at UCSC in Santa Cruz, California. He is currently in Seoul, South Korea, finishing his dissertation (an opera "The Strangler Fig") and studying Korean traditional music.

Part of his work involves creating new tuning systems via an optimization algorithm. With a set of target intervals (usually related to the partials of a sound) the algorithm finds (often surprising) ways to fit the intervals into a tuning system.

Recent works include pieces for Korean and Western instruments, like "Imaginary Changdan" for haegeum and cello, "Byeoksa" for Korean gagok singer, flute, trombone, and viola, and "Nakseongchangdan" for two gayageums.

Olga Krashenko- Memento mori
"Memento mori" was written in reaction to the unexpected death of the German musician Jens Röhm (1967 - 2010). Four vocalizing recorder players express a state of shock through different glissandi and also by singing, growling and with special recorder effects... And they pronounce in Latin which is a dead language: Memento mori (Remember about Death) and Dixi et animam levavi (All is said and I've unburdened my soul)...

Olga Krashenko graduated from the Saint-Petersburg Conservatory in 2008, having followed the classes of composition of Professors B.Tischenko and V.Citovich. Currently, she completed this June 2010 her advanced studies in composition ("niveau supérieur") at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris, class of Professor E. Lejet.

She was awarded a scholarship to attend the courses of the Ensemble Academy Freiburg (2007) and interpretation courses with regard to works by Luigi Nono with live electronics and with magnetic tapes given by the Experimental Studio for Acoustic Art (2007). She was also
awarded scholarships to attend the Stockhausen Summer Courses in 2008 and in 2009. Another scholarship was awarded to her in order to attend the workshops of the Biennale of Venice 2008, including the Laboratory "Sensitive Space" with B. Furrer.

In 2009 Olga Krashenko was awarded a fully expense paid residency to compose a new work for flute and electronics at the Studio Varèse in Paris. In April 2010, she presented a new ensemble piece in the master-class of the Paris based Ensemble Alternance. She was winner of the competition "Call for Scores" of the organization Sound Plasticity (Moscow, 2009) and finalist of the International Composer Competition IIC Melbourne 2010. She is currently a composer/performer member of the computer music ensemble "CLSI" in Paris.

Her compositions were performed at 8 festivals in Saint-Petersburg in Moscow and Kiev. At concerts in Europe in 2009, her pieces were given their world premiere by such world reknown soloists such as Dimitri Vassilakis (Ensemble Intercontemporain), Cecile Daroux
(Ensemble Itinéraire), Pierre-Stephane Meugé, Jacqueline Mefano (Ensemble 2e2m), Daniel Kientzy and Maurizio Barbetti.

Domina Catrina Lee (Johann E Lee)- Eidolon
First movement in a planned suite for varied ensemble. A rondo in 4/4 with sections in 7/8+ 9/8. Scored for (all sampled) shakuhachi, violin, cello, synthesizer bass, indian and asian percussion, piano, toy piano, and electronically manipulated sampled voices. Eidolon was entirely conceived and composed in Logic Express 8.

Singapore born and self-tutored in composition, Domina Catrina Lee (the transgendered and core-authentic identity of legally named Johann E Lee), has studied jazz guitar briefly far back in her personal past, and still considers it a primary instrument (and stylistic influence) of sorts, but she feels she is called to composition.
She presently freely experiments in virtual instrumentation exclusively, due to social, economic, and musical constraints. She enjoys rendering her works in a variety of tunings, including 12tet hermode, 7 limit JI, Gamelan, and Chinese 4th Century. She is very new to the universe of non-12et tunings, but wish to learn by doing.

Inspired by the 'music that inspires', or the music that descends from the invisible and provokes in listeners the impulse to ascend out of limitation and conventional restraints, Domina Catrina Lee has interest in all things real, in other words, all things metaphysical, including the manner in which her transgendered name came to be (by way of Numerology). To be and to create "Beauty, Truth, and Goodness" is her personal artistic ideal, as it was Plato's.

Kathy McTavish- bent / hOwl
The uploaded piece "bent / hOwl" was written specifically for the UnTwelve 2010 composition competition. It is for solo cello with electronic delay.

As a cellist I live in a fretless world - on 4 strings - the infinite between. As a composer I write primarily for stringed instruments and found sound - tonal textures that stray from an equal temperament grid. The pitch landscape for me is a fluid continuum. I often use one or more pitch centers but think of them as gravitational forces instead of components in a scale. I work with the tension / release kinetics caused by moving near or far - by the geometry of movement within these gravitational fields. On my instrument the 4 strings (tuned in perfect fifths from my third string) form a natural lattice for much of my work.

I studied Theoretical Ecology (Mathematical Modeling) in graduate school. I have always leaned towards continuous rather than discrete models of the world. Continuous modeling is the language of water - in music it represents the bendability of life. Energy pools and disperses, probabilistic clouds form, tone clusters emerge, a system becomes dense or sparse, steady states arise or the world frays into chaos and disintegration. As a composer and player I love to use the harmonic richness of the cello - the confluence of pitch and tone possible through friction of bow and fingers pressed firmly or ghostlike against wood and wire.

Kathy McTavish is a composer/free-style cellist. She uses chance and generative/organic forms to create everything from sparse, minimalist spaces to dense, orchestral landscapes and performs in venues ranging from streetscapes to concert halls. Her work has been used behind spoken word, theater, visual art/sound installations, and film.

In 2009 she was awarded an American Composers Forum / Jerome Foundation commission and an Arrowhead Regional Arts Council / McKnight Foundation grant to compose, record and perform a work for electrified solo cello called: "river icarus: rusted bridge / deep water". In 2010 she received an Arts and Cultural Heritage Individual Artist Fellowship from the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council for work blending sound and film.

Nicola Monopoli- Obbligo Ontologico del Fragile Essere Umano
The piece is dedicated to the fragility of Modern Men, often victims of unjustice, contradictions and exploitation, victims of themselves or victims of their fragility.
Fragility that often, due to internal or external manipulation, turns into tragedy (ontological obligation).
The piece is a funeral march for piano solo and electronics (in the last part); the electronic part consists in the electronic elaboration of the human voice.
The Title of the piece means 'Ontological Obligation of the Fragile Human'.
This piece was written specifically for the UnTwelve 2010 composition competition.
The work will be mentioned as being written for this competition; and that no audio file will be made public until after the competition results are announced.

Born in 1991 in Barletta, he started to play piano and compose very young.
He studies Experimental Composition, Electronic Music and Piano at N. Piccinni Conservatory in Bari (Italy).
He is interested in the application of Mathematical and Computer Techniques to Music.
He composes Classical and Electroacoustic Music using complex algorithms.

Joshua Musikantow- Tonos
"Tonos" Was written for the 2010 UnTwelve Composition Competition, And has not been used for any other purpose. The work uses a mixture of just-intonation-based tuning strategies, Including taking fragments of the harmonic spectrum, Taking non-octave-repeating chains of minor whole tones (10:9), And product sets (in some cases using signals for the multipliers rather than integers or floats, And not necessarily using 1 as one of the multipliers). There is an emphasis on whole tone scales, Where the term "whole tone scale" Has been broadened to include any scale built from intervals that are smaller than 300 cents and bigger than 100 cents. I came up with a computationally inexpensive way of synthesizing a virtual free reed aerophone, Which sounded nice with the tunings employed.

Joshua Musikantow is a currently-Minneapolis-based microtonal composer (of both electronic and acoustic music), frame drummer, and poet. He anticipates receiving his PhD from the University of Minnesota in May, in the studio of James Dillon. He holds an MA in Composition from the University at Buffalo and both a BA in English and BM in Composition from Lawrence University. Prior to his studies with Dillon, he also studied Composition and Electronic music with Cort Lippe and Douglass Geers, and Composition with Joanne Metcalf, Jeff Stadelman, Philippe Bodin, and Jason Hoogerhyde. His composition, "Cutting Moon" received an Honorable Mention from the Minnesota Orchestra Composers Institute, and he was a runner up for the Hicks Prize in poetry. He has developed his own style of drumming, whereby beeswax-coated instruments are played simultaneously as both percussion and friction idiophone instruments. His music has been featured in events across America and in Prague.

Lee Noyes- August Moon
"August Moon" is a composition for solo inside-piano and was recorded specifically for the UnTwelve 2010 composition competition.

With the aid of an antique monochord, sections of the piano have been re-tuned to various equal-tempered scales based on my early exploration of the work of Kathleen Schlesinger (1862–1953) and her research into the modes of Ancient Greece, published in her book "The Greek Aulos" (London: Methuen, 1939).

This piece uses a narrow section of strings tuned to correspond to 14 equal divisions of the monochord, resulting in a scale that Schlesinger attributed to the Moon (or Mixolydian) Mode of the Ancient Greek musical system.

Lee Noyes (b.1977) is an improvising musician, teacher and composer of electroacoustic music, based in Dunedin, New Zealand.

Dan Senn- Cycling China
Cycling China is written for the 2010 UnTwelve Competition and for the found micro-tonalities of twelve IKEA bowls. It may also be performed on any twelve porcelain bowls of the same proportion each with distinctly different pitches (say, more than 10 cents). The bowls used while composing this piece were the cheapest 7-5/8” (19.5 cm) IKEA bowls which are available world-wide. These were especially useful because they lacked the quality control standards which limit pitch variability. The work developed out of a kinetic sound sculpture installation in 2010 at the Nightingale Gallery in La Grande, Oregon.

The piece may be heard and viewed at: http://newsense-intermedium.com/SCORES/CyclingChina10/

Dan Senn is a composer of experimental classical music, electronic and acoustic, a sculptor of kinetic instruments for exhibition and performance, an experimental video artist for installation and proscenium play, and a documentary filmmaker. He performs and exhibits world-wide and has produced ephemeral public art projects which bring experimental work to alternative audiences.

Michael Sheiman- Dimension
The idea of this song is to have something for everyone by combining musical "opposites" peacefully and consonantly using microtonality to "part the sea" for it.
I'd say this is a combination of ambient break-beat and new age and shred-rock style solos with synths and huge jazzy modulating chord progressions...it honestly really doesn't fit too cleanly into any genre.
It attempts to combine speed/playfulness and relaxation, rotating beats and steady tempo feel, melodic (11+ limit) and harmonic (lower limit) flexibility and consonance.
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This song uses my own 10-tone Dimension scale to enable clustered and exotic 11-limit harmonies and chords along with very clear low-limit traditional harmonies.

On a more technical level:
The 10-tone "Dimension" scale used is
1 0 cents
1.12 196.198 cents
1.2222 347.405 cents
1.25 386.313 cents
1.338 504.094 cents
1.5 701.955 cents
1.674 891.959 cents
1.792 1009.885 cents
1.83 1046.212 cents
2/1 1200 cents (period)

The desired result is the ability to, on one hand, do not only complex 11-limit melodies but also Arabic-like clustered chords like 10:11:12 and diminished 5ths. While one the other hand, being able do traditional low-limit harmonies with 1/4 comma meantone-like purity.

Michael Sheiman is one of the most controversial microtonal composers around, often using opposing scale styles, theories, and genres together as a challenge.

He favors optimizing his scales along dyadic critical band dissonance (ALA Sethares) and not just the favored theory of Harmonic Entropy to gain consonance. He also believes there is are missing ratios in Harmonic Entropy, such as 11/9, 11/6, 12/11, and 22/15, that, along with Middle Eastern and Ptolemy's Homalon scale-based music, hint of not just additional melodic but also harmonic potential. But, all said and done, once he's calculated a scale he composes completely by ear and hopes his musical efforts are good enough to get superior composers to him to recognize and popularize new tonal possibilities. He also hopes, through this, to ultimately give microtonality a good name in popular music around the world.

Jon Lyle Smith- Dithyramb
"Dithyramb" was inspired by ancient Grecian music, though here interpreted by my own peculiar Muse.

Drums, chorus, pipe and aulos, citharas and strings are all employed. The tuning on G uses rational intervals that include neutral seconds and septimal thirds, making for some rather exotic harmonies:

1/1 - 12/11 - 9/8 - 7/6 - 11/9 - 4/3 - 11/8 - 3/2 - 44/27 - 5/3 - 11/6 - 28/15 - 2/1

"Dithyramb" was composed specifically for the 2010 UnTwelve competition.

Jon Lyle Smith is no one in particular. His hobbies include breathing and paying bills, sometimes.

He and his wife live in the American Southwest with a dog, five cats and a bi-polar parakeet.

Gene Smith- Pianodactyl
Pianodactyl is rhythmically complex, with lots of irregular starts and stops, and the name of the piece refers to Rodan. Strangely enough, however, it has nothing whatever to do with math rock; it is a classical genre microtonal piece specifically written for the UnTwelve competition.

The name refers to Rodan temperament, the 26-note MOS of which is used for the scale. The tuning is 87edo. I was tempted to switch tunings when Jacques Dudon posted his own 26-note tuning for Rodan, but equal temperaments are so convenient when using Scala, and 87 has the amazing property that it's exactly the same as the 13-limit Tenney-Euclidean pure-octaves (POTE) tuning (well, the 8/7 generator is 0.00062 cents sharper: if you can comprehend that difference, my hat is off to you.)

The name Rodan is the name of the temperament, one of the Japanese movie monster class which all have 8/7 (7/4) as generator. Rodan the Flying Monster is allegedly some sort of savage mutant pterodactyl, but the temperament is nicely behaved and wonderful if you like lots of 3 and 7 and slightly sharp fifths.

I used Dimitri Tymoczko's amazing dancing orbifolds to help me compose this, but he is in no way to blame for any defects in the result.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Ward_Smith

"Gene Ward Smith (born 1947) is an American mathematician and music theorist. In mathematics he has worked in the areas of Galois theory and Moonshine theory. In music theory, he is noted for a number of innovations in the theory of musical tuning, such as the introduction of multilinear algebra and for being the first to write music in a number of exotic intonation systems." Blah blah blah.

Christian Theil- Preludes Behind the Scene
The "Preludes" involve -to speak of the material- three different pitch systems: a 13 equal-distant per 8va for a trio of Grand piano, Fender and Marimba; an 11 per octave for another trio of Wurlitzer e.p., Vibraphone and Harp. These are sampled ones. The third is a dynamic system of harmonic overtones, which are to build chords of different structures, sometimes gliding through the spectre. It is generated from sine waves.
Christian Theil was born in 1969 & studied composition in Berlin/Germany

aart uunivers- deployeé
This piece was composed for the 2010 UnTwelve competition

deployeé

is a piece of several microtonal tunings on several layers of experimental instruments such as voice, bow, noise.

all of the instruments are used on at least two layers with different tunings for each layer.

the internal meta-particles of the piece can be seen as an abandonend arch, filled by the voices of non-subjects. coherence. formerly known as species, voices. or as shadows. merely a play of those. one ghostly choir in a deserted structure.

aart uunivers is a cologne / germany based composer. linked on a loose but steady basis to the 90's-cologne experimental & electronica scene, emerging as an independant entity with output under many pseudonyms.

between 2004 and 2009 he managed to banish any public or personal noise floor, wiping out boundaries and formulas in his gestalt-apparat.

he remigrated as aart uunivers - reinventing multi-layered, narrated sound-shapes - stylistically labeled scenic (in his own words: "head noise iident", which could be translated into: sound of clustered, deployed mind spheres).

Chris Vaisvil- Godzareh Depression
This is a composition for solo piano using Gene Ward Smith's 17 note Semimarvelous dwarf tuning which is an equal beating dwarf(<17 27 40

) Tuning. I have been exploring this tuning for a few months and have found it very rich and very playable on a regular piano keyboard. The piece was realized by using Pianoteq 3.6 with the 17 note Semimarvelous Dwarf tuning loaded in Sonar 8.5 played on an M-Audio Keystation 88es. This piece was written 12/14/2010 specifically for this competition.

The title of the piece comes from the lowest point in the Sistan Basin which is an endorheic basin and encompasses a complex system of rivers, Shallow lakes, Marshes and wetlands as its watershed, Draining into the Hamun Lakes in southeastern Iran.

Alexey Vandrik- Dream of the Prophet
The sketch-impression

Student of Novosibirsk State Conservatoire, author more than 40 pieces in various genres and styles.

Praveen Venkataramana- The Sammamish Reverie
"The Sammamish Reverie" Is an improvisation that I created specifically for the 2010 UnTwelve microtonal competition in my system Chusad*-27, A set of 27 ratios that I consider to be the most basic microtonal tuning. Chusad-27 is simply the tonality diamond [1 3 5 7 9 15 21], And it is the foundation on which I build more complex microtonal scales, Such as Chusad-40, Which I have used in many of my microtonal pieces. There is something special about 7-limit scales: 7 is the largest prime p for which there exists a p-smooth number Q > P such that the set {x <= Q, X is p-smooth} Is a union of "chords" Of the form {(2k+1)n, K=0,1,...,(p-1)/2}. Ideally, Chusad-27 should be perfectly just, But experimental error is inevitable, Especially in the event of an acoustic realization. RATIOS IN CHUSAD-27: 1/1 21/20 16/15 15/14 10/9 9/8 8/7 7/6 6/5 5/4 9/7 21/16 4/3 7/5 10/7 3/2 32/21 14/9 8/5 5/3 12/7 7/4 16/9 9/5 28/15 15/8 40/21 (2/1) I realize this tuning through an adaptation of a hammered dulcimer, As I consider it more resonant, Harmonious and amenable to just intonation than the cello. Splitting each course into two individual strings, Tuned to two different pitches, Facilitate the tuning of an entire [1 3 5 7] Tonality diamond on one bridge. I have arrived at the tonic of 1/1 = 219 Hz for this piece purely by accident. I have also chosen to use plectrums to pluck the strings so as to enhance fine motor coordination. I have received inspiration to create this music from my frequent walks on the Sammamish River Trail. I always imagine the variety of colors I explore in this improvisation as a metaphor for the environment of the river and the trails, Tranquil yet teeming with life and natural beauty. * "Chusad" Is the word for "star" In Lushootseed, The language of the Native Americans ancestral to where Seattle is today.

Praveen S. Venkataramana is a homeschooled student and self-taught cellist who currently lives in Redmond, WA. His passion for mathematics as well as music led him to microtonal music, and he started cello primarily influenced by the work of Harry Partch and Ivor Darreg, two 20th-century pioneers in microtonal music, and whose experiments with tuning also involved the cello. Praveen believes that tuning systems based on just intervals beyond the 5 limit provide a wide range of tonal colors from pure harmonies to wildly beating dissonances. One of his early microtonal cello pieces, called "Reflections", was inspired by ancient Greek music, and he performed it at the Seattle Composers' Salon in Soundbridge. His composition "Intricacy" for microtonally tuned dulcimer (in Euler-Fokker genus 335777) was a finalist in the 2009 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards.