Jonathon Hazen Scott McCullough - Squeeb

Notes:

First premiered at the Untwelve/WWU Microtonal Adventures Festival 2018, Squeeb is a fun ditty in 19edo whose main motive is built around that temperament's relatively close approximations of the greater tridecimal tritone (13:9) and the perfect fifth (3:2). Many chords throughout feature simultaneous use of 19edo's approximations of the tridecimal major third (13:10) and the 5:4 major third. While much of the harmony is diatonic in nature, the use of many neighboring tones give it an undeniably xenharmonic sound approached in a very palatable and accessible way. The majority of percussion sounds in this piece were created by precisely etching rhythms into the locked run-out groove of a vinyl record using a razor blade. Occasionally, these sounds are given pitch through extreme EQ'ing and are combined with each other to create polyrhythms. Squeeb is also a fairly rhythmically complex piece, featuring melodic sections in 6/4 and two distinct groupings of 11/8 time.

Tuning information:

19edo based on C4=261.625565Hz 0: 1/1 1 unison, perfect prime 1: 63.158 cents 2: 126.316 cents 3: 189.474 cents 4: 252.632 cents 5: 315.789 cents 6: 378.947 cents 7: 442.105 cents 8: 505.263 cents 9: 568.421 cents 10: 631.579 cents 11: 694.737 cents 12: 757.895 cents 13: 821.053 cents 14: 884.211 cents 15: 947.368 cents 16: 1010.526 cents 17: 1073.684 cents 18: 1136.842 cents 19: 2/1 2 octave

Composer bio:

Jonathon McCullough is a composer and recent graduate from Western Washington University, where he studied Music Composition with Jon Bash, Adam Haws, Lesley Sommer, and Bruce Hamilton. He has written music for a variety of chamber ensembles, and particularly enjoys writing music for flute ensemble, as well as a recently discovered passion for writing percussion music. His more recent electroacoustic works show influence from the sampling techniques of Nick Zammuto, Paul Lansky, and plunderphonics group The Avalanches. He currently serves as the WWU Electroacoustic Music Studio (WWEAMS) Assistant, and won prizes in the WWU Composition Competition in 2016 and 2018. When he's not working on music, Jonathon enjoys running, sewing, and retrocomputing.