Friday, June 16, 2006

My Ex-Wife Wouldn't Have Allowed This

I moved my small venue rig into the livingroom for a few days to fine tune the sounds for the fretted Glissentar.

"But honey, it's the largest room in the house, and I need the space to work the sounds out!"

Nope. That would never fly.



Of course, she wouldn't have let me hang my classic 1970's Damon Howatt Hunter recurve bow on the wall either.

I wasn't cut out for marriage. That was a liberating revelation when it first occurred to me.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, of course, I was married at the time. LOL!

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It turns out that only the major mode triple time syncopated Reductios work on the guitar vis-a-vis fingering: I was afraid of that. I could change the duple time major mode versions' syncopation chains to follow the pattern of the triple time ones, but it kind of wastes the entire idea if I do that, and all of the minor mode versions are still out of bounds. So, I'm just going to stick with the four basic versions and forget about all of the versions with the syncope chains for the time being. Pity: They sound very nice in the sequencer. But, I learned something about four-voice contrapuntal writing for the guitar in the process: The fingering limitations are nearly crippling, which makes the challenge all the more alluring. I'll let this experience ripen in my subconscious, and return to it at a later date.

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I had a major breakthrough with the fretted Glissentar's MPX-G2 programs: By adding a little more stereo detune chorus I was able to significantly broaden the sound, and it smoothed out the touchy dynamics to boot. It's kind of bass-akwards to be dealing with too much dynamic response, but such a thing is possible with the Carlos CP-1A. One thing I did not want to do was to have to resort to any compression or limiting: I took years to expunge all of that from my sound, and I ain't goin' back.

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John: If I were to recommend just one counterpoint book, it would be Kent Kennan's Counterpoint, ISBN 0-13-184235-8. That being said, I have almost every counterpoint book that exists in the English language, and I've studied them all. Not only do each of them have some nugget or other to contribute, but counterpoint is a subject that requires three things to master: Repetition, repetition, and repetition.

Remember that there are two generas: Modal or Strict Style Counterpoint, and Tonal or Free Style Counterpoint (Also called seventeenth and eighteent century counterpoint, respectively). Kennan is free style. Mann's translation of Fux is indespensible for the historical perspective on modal counterpoint (Alfred Mann The Study of Counterpoint, ISBN 0-393-00277-2), and Benjamin has good books on each style.

Try to go for a variety of sources. That helped me a lot. Good luck.

*****

Nice 3-D effect on this Mandelbrot image.



*****



So profoundly true.

1 Comments:

Blogger solitudex said...

Kent Kennan's Counterpoint seems to have the best reviews around. I think I might be getting that. I still don't quite understand the terms Tonal and Free Style Counterpoint. Is it possible give some examples of pieces which falls into either of the styles?

I'm probably getting two books on Counterpoint at this point of time, so I would be scouting for the best around, which can allow me to start from scratch all the way to the advanced levels.

=)

4:40 AM  

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