THE TOMORROW OCHESTRA
Uncle Howie
I envision the orchestra of tomorrow will not comprise any human appearances save a host to introduce the musical selections.
The visuals will be three-dimensional extravaganzas produced by lasers and other lighting innovations.
Sound and video will be keyed to move from place to place within the auditorium or from everywhere, both above and below the audience.
Seats will be raised and lowered incrementally to accentuate the music's desired dramatic effects...
Scents (aroma therapy) will be released into the air to heighten pleasures including mild and filtered drug smoke and quickly evacuated between visuals.
Does anyone have anything to add?
Uncle Howie
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.
\js
On 09/13/15 10:44, 'Uncle Howie' via LevNet wrote:
> Does anyone have anything to add?
resources of the planet.
just yesterday, riding the subway, i thought it was a delight to listen
to. so many variations in the tones as the wheels of the train go round
and round- the brakes are applied, the indecipherable yells of the other
passengers to each other punctuated by the various electronic beeps and
dings of their devices, culminating in the recorded voice and it's
barely decipherable announcements of the coming stations.
so you see, i don't hate the sound of machines.
but given the musical future like the one you present, i'll head out to
the hills and play my plastic recorder [an instrument that has hardly
changed in design at all for hundreds of years] with all my heart until
my breath is gone.
despite what our technological overlords would have you think: one size
does not fit all.
Gordon Charlton
Enjoy...
mpic...@earthlink.net
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lpka...@lpkaster.com
Except the voices of the Dead. That can be pretty thrilling sometimes. LPK
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lpka...@lpkaster.com
| I'll watch the podcast. LPK
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mpic...@earthlink.net
a.e.c...@freenet.de
this kind of music does not fulfill my musical desires at all. Music is much more than generating vibrations. Without the player's soul it's only Ahriman making music!
Kind regards,
Arno
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: Gordon Charlton
> Gesendet: So. 13.09.2015 19:56
> An: LevNet ,
> Betreff: [levnet] THE TOMORROW OCHESTRA
> Uncle Howie, it's here already.
>
> Enjoy...
>
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Peter Pringle
The music of Ahriman has far more fire and soul that this stuff! If Ahriman were really this dull, he would be far easier to resist.
RIchard Kram
Peter Pringle
The late Glenn Gould, arguably one of the finest pianists of the 20th century, predicted the disappearance of the live concert many years ago. Unfortunately, if artists are reduced to audio and video recordings of their performances, given the speed and ease of duplication and distribution, they are not going to be able to make a living in the digital age. Today, revenue from the sale of music is only a fraction of what it was 40 years ago.
“What is a life without concerts?” Clara Rockmore
lpka...@lpkaster.com
| How is that fraction described? Is it the portion of profit to the big recording companies, or is it even possible to accurately track the sales of individual artists who sell their own recordings. Yesterday I caught the end of a market report with a representative of a big beer company bemoaning the fact that they seem unable to even assess the microbrew profits, and they can't yet buy up enough of them to challenge them. Hmmmm. LPK Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android
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Peter Pringle
As far as the theremin is concerned, it has never been possible for someone to be a full-time professional thereminist because there is simply not enough public interest in the instrument to support a musician who has no other source of income. Players who have been able to travel and tour fairly widely (like Lucie Rosen) have either had private fortunes to support their activities, or have had corporate or government sponsorship.
What launches public interest in a musical instrument is not the instrument itself. It is the love of the music that has been written for it. Audiences, over several centuries, have come to love the violin because of the great music that brilliant composers have created for it. The problem in regard to the theremin is twofold: the original music that exists for it is of little or no interest to the general public, and the skill with which it is played is usually at a level that would be unacceptable on a traditional instrument.
Uncle Howie is probably correct in assuming that the orchestra of tomorrow will be entirely electronic. IMO, Sarah Rice is also correct when she points out that nothing will replace the human voice - either live or recorded. There is a powerful sexual component to the human voice that cannot be denied whether it’s Bieber, Pavarotti, Callas, or Old Blue Eyes.
…….as Marie Dressler said to Jean Harlow in DINNER AT EIGHT (1933)
RIchard Kram
On Sunday, September 13, 2015 at 10:44:15 AM UTC-4, mossmanhoward wrote:
RIchard Kram
On Sunday, September 13, 2015 at 10:44:15 AM UTC-4, mossmanhoward wrote:
Peter Pringle
Computerized voice synthesis has been around for years. There was a researcher back in the mid 1990’s who came up with software that was capable of emulating famous singers but you couldn’t just sing into it and have Streisand come out the other end. It required a lot of sophisticated programming to do its thing, and the results were not entirely convincing, but I remember thinking at the time that in twenty years the technology would have been improved tremendously and would blow us all away!
Still, no matter how sophisticated the technology becomes, it will never replace Old Blue Eyes because it doesn’t have blue eyes.
Never forget, at the most basic level popular music is not about music. It’s about sex.
William Brohinsky
The Animusic videos are marvelous, but they are also 100%
human-created, much of it in non-real time. Yes, as computers get
faster, some parts of that will become more real-time capable, but the
important part is that humans are at the base of the music. The CGI
instruments are programmed to respond to the midi files created by the
originators.
We already have auto-tune being applied in the studio, and have for
decades, and most of you (in some cases, all of you) wouldn't be able
to tell. The stuff you know is auto-tuned is made garishly-obviously
autotuned so that you _know_ they are using it, usually to impress
step-motion on human-voice continuous-motion melody, usually tuned to
be almost bagpipe-articulation-sounding at the steps. A constant diet
of that will make you mad for real voices. In one case, it's
technology being applied by engineers 'behind the scenes' to
accomplish an improvement in the result, just like all the things that
are done in live concerts with aural enhancers and amplifiers and
filters and modifiers. Used carefully by people who straddle the
supposed line between engineering and music, they result in a pretty
good product. Used indiscriminately, they eradicate the element of
music that keeps people wanting more, which is one reason there aren't
wall-to-wall 24-7 live Yes concerts.
As for boxes that you can sing into where someone else's voice comes
out, utterly perfect and characteristic, like every other really neat
toy, someone is bound to make some use of them, in which they will add
all the theatric and probably-humorous aspects that good performers
do, and eventually, even that will die out and people will go back to
groups like Glad and PTX, dying for the sound of a human being human.
(Well, PTX. Super human, really, but still just a bunch of kids doing
what their talent lets them do, and doing it really well.)
Peter's final statement (well, before I wrote this) is painfully true.
If you're squeamish about admitting the connection, maybe you'll be
happier with "about humanity". Even the Bible identifies humans as the
originators of instruments and singing, and never (if you bother with
original languages) claims that Angels sing.
As for 'orchestra of the future', I suspect that the orchestra may
eventually outlive its usefulness in its current design and operation,
but remind y'all that this is essentially what the Opera guys thought
their infusion of emotion to music would do to the entire corpus of
music that preceded it...but consort playing is having quite a
revival, and has for the last century.
So maybe the 'orchestra of the future' will look like Uncle suggests,
but the orchestra of _their_ future might well look an awful lot like
it does now, and that might just be the same for a lot of other
musical genres. Now that we have the ability to record how it is done
with agonizing preciseness, it is quite likely that no
currently-existing genre, nor any reconstructed near-beer
previously-assumed-to-have-been-existing form of musical performance
will disappear forever.
Gordon Charlton
Gordon
Peter Pringle
I was contacted last January by the NAMM Museum Of Making Music, in California, asking for permission to use one of my videos as part of a permanent exhibition in the institution. I immediately assumed that they wanted one of my theremin performances (probably on Hoffman’s RCA) but that was not the case.
In my reply, I told them I was very flattered that they were interested in any of my work, and told them I would send them a HD copy of the piece involved since they were planning on presenting the thing on a loop which would play endlessly.
To my surprise, they were not interested in the theremin at all. What they wanted was a performance I played on a lyre that is a replica of an instrument from about 1000 BC, discovered during excavations at Har Megiddo (aka Armageddon) in Israel, during the 1960’s. The instrument itself was never found, but an exquisite illustration of it had been drawn onto a plaque made from a hippopotamus tooth and discovered in the ruins of a palace (the entire trove is known as The Megiddo Ivories).
In any case, as an enthusiast of archaeomusicology, what I found interesting is that one of the goals of NAMM is to interest young visitors to their museum in the creation of music from the simplest of instruments. This is something I support wholeheartedly, and consequently I lent the museum not only the video but the instrument itself, which according to our loan agreement they can have for as long as it is kept on public display.
We normally associate NAMM with cutting-edge musical technology, but musicians should ask themselves: “What can I offer muscially if there is a power outage?”
mpic...@earthlink.net
Uncle Howie
You, my dear nephew, are generous to a fault. The fault with your generosity is embodied in the proviso you stipulated to the museum.
How do you know the lyre will be forever on display and not stored in some moldy basement until needed for a special program on instruments of its kind.
Please remember the sad fate of the RCA theremin that was on loan to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Its burned out transformer and scarred cabinet languished in storage in an old schoolhouse for years until recently when Andy Baron restored it to full operation and physical beauty. It still is not on display, or being played!
Is the Lyre insured against loss or damage? Is it available to be played by responsible musicians in a public venue?
Please don't misunderstand me as to your gift giving largess. It is just that so much love and research went into constructing this beautiful instrument that assurances must be guaranteed as to its proper care.
Could you get it back in the future if you are dissatisfied in any way?
Uncle Howie
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William Brohinsky
First, there may be mechanical efforts as early as the first
keyboard-operated instruments. Documents have been found describing
such instruments in Egypt, Greece and the Near-East, the oldest being
1000BCE. The Arabs are credited with using drums with pins to
'program' music, with the oldest of their instruments being ascribed
to the 9th Century. In the 13th century, a chime was brought back from
China with melodies activated by a pinned cylinder: the oldest
European chime of this variety was the chime of the Cathedral of
Strasbourg (ca. 1353). The oldest pinned organ dates from 1502.
The invention of the music box is pinned to 1796. The various methods
for actuating the combs in them (largely disk) called for large
quantities of music, and it is certain that the more successful
manufacturers of them employed (mostly anonymous) musicians of high
calibre to write and arrange music for them.
Handel may have been first of the recognizable names to leave us with
attributed compositions for mechanical organs and clockworks: His
first is dated 1738, an Allegro in C Major for a clock-organ. The
latest, also for clock-organ and also in C-major, is a Sonata,
including arrangements of some of his more famous works for mechanical
reproduction.
Mozart left to us four pieces (one a fragment) intended for mechanical
organ, written between 1790 and 1791.
Joseph Haydn, at the court of Esterhazy, had a friend and student in
Primitivus Niemertz, librarian and gifted tinkerer. Niemertz made many
mechanical instruments, mechanical clocks, as they are generally
characterized. Some of these mechanisms were simply mechanical and
played by a human, such as the Lire Organizzato for which Haydn
composed a set of three Divertimenti (winded by a hand crank, played
with a keyboard). Others were fully-automatic mechanisms. As of 1932,
"some thirty" compositions for these instruments were known (Musical
Times, June 1 1932, page 510). A more recent accounting is:
32 andantes, marches, prestos, allegrettos, menuets, fugues and
other compositions, most of them are composed between 1792 - 1793,
some of them are composed in
1789, others in 1796.
[http://www.mcs.csueastbay.edu/~malek/Musician/Haydn.html]
Mechanical (usually drum) approaches were often applied to Carillons
or Organs of various sizes and designs from the 18th century on. Some
of these still exist, whether their composers are acknowledged or not.
Throughout the period and up to living memory, 'organ grinders' with
portable or wheeled drum-and-pin, book or card format were a common
sight in parks and on streets around the world. Yes, some of them had
monkeys. Much of this music was written by composers, and many of them
were big name composers, who chose to remain anonymous, sold their
works into other hands, or rarely, are identifiable.
The player piano was an obvious, but delayed addition to the ranks of
mechanical musical instruments, and produced miles of rolled paper
with arrangements and compositions. George Gershwin was one of many
who wrote or arranged for player pianos. It is worth noting that for
much of the early history of players, mechanisms differed. The
duo-Arte design which attracted Gershwin had automated and
simultaneous control of loudness and tempos as well as automated
control of multiple levels of impulse strength for each key.
Nancarro makes use of players a bit different than most: instead of
recording by playing on a piano, he cuts the rolls by hand. His music
is polyrhythmic, and, he has said, the only way to hear his
compositions (which might pit septuplets against quintuplets) is by
punching piano rolls himself.
Peter Pringle
Uncle Howie asked: “….How do you know the lyre will be forever on display…”
Uncle, the museum is obliged, according to the terms of the loan agreement, to return the instrument to me when it is no longer on public display. How do I know they will respect the contract (which is legal and binding)? I don’t. How do you know the lovely bride who just swore to love you “until death do you part” isn’t going to want to poison your coffee in a couple of years? You don’t. So you keep an eye on the coffeemaker.
The lyre in question is certainly an exotic rarity but it is of no particular value (give me a week and I'll make you ten of them). In fact, what the museum originally wanted to put on display was not the physical instrument at all. It was only the video of ‘yers trooly’ playing the damn thing! The idea of lending them the instrument came from me. After I made the lyre I played it only one time (for the video) before hanging it on the wall and moving on to my next building project. I have played harps and lyres for over 50 years and there was nothing to distinguish this particular “kinnor” from any other instrument of the same family, other than its distinctive shape.
No, the instrument will not be handled by visitors to the museum. A lyre of this sort, like a guitar or violin, requires constant tuning and hands-on maintenance, and it would only be a matter of time before someone dropped it, or knocked it over. I used to know someone who worked at the Ontario Science Center in Toronto, and she told me that the Center has an army of repair people whose only job is to fix the hands-on exhibits that are broken DAILY by visitors. Many of the displays are deliberately vandalized by bored kids who think its fun to break things. That’s just one of the facts of life when you are dealing with adolescent and pre-adolescent primates.
A funny thing happened recently. I am currently involved in the construction of a fairly sophisticated Roman instrument that has never been replicated before. I needed some very specific historical/archaeological background information about it, so I contacted the world expert on the particular excavation in which the instrument was discovered. The gentleman in question is a famous professor at a famous university and I was surprised that he answered my email very promptly and turned out to be a fairly jolly sort. He explained that archaeomusicology was not something he knew much about, but that he would inquire on my behalf among some of his colleagues. A few days later I got an email telling me that one professor he questioned who knows a good deal about such things, suggested that he get in touch with someone in Canada called Peter Pringle! LOL
Bluddy’ell !
I have had fascinating email discussions about various things with several world renowned experts on a variety of subjects, and I have always found them responsive, obliging and forthcoming with their ideas, up until the fateful moment when I have disagreed with them about something. You will never hear from them again! 😃
RIchard Kram
On Sunday, September 13, 2015 at 10:44:15 AM UTC-4, mossmanhoward wrote:
Pierce Krouse
So, we may not know what tunes they played, but we know what notes were.
William Brohinsky
> Way back when I was in music school this was the earliest known example of
> an extended notated song - though it's not long at all. Not sure if anything
> new has been discovered.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seikilos_epitaph
>
> I guess you could go back and look at some writing of Pythagoras and others
> related to the monochord and other such things. But in reality, no one will
> ever know what really early music sounded like. One of the true mysteries of
> music.
>
challenged on another.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurrian_songs
notes that one of the Hurrian songs is present in its entirety,
contrary to the Seikilos Epitaph claim that all previous notation is
'in fragments'.
Hurrian songs are placed around 1400BC, in the Ammorite area of
Canaan. It is written on a clay tablet in Cunieform, and provides
lyrics, notation, instrumentation and directions for tuning. This is
the sort of thing Diderot did in the 18th century: write down stuff
that was so obvious that no one bothered to write it down. The
anonymous Ugarite preceded him by a mere 3200 years or so.
RIchard Kram
RIchard Kram
William Brohinsky
lpka...@lpkaster.com
If such a thing we're useful, you can download Spook Keys: http://www.vst4free.com/free_vst.php?id=312 But I swear to you, it's a dead end. Better left alone.
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Peter Pringle
We have no idea what ancient music sounded like, but we do know a good deal about the instruments on which it was played. The Chinese, the Egyptians, the Sumerians and the Greeks were highly literate and went to great lengths to write down detailed descriptions of their instruments, how they were constructed, and what they sounded like.
As far as the NAMM museum is concerned, I think what they are trying to do is inspire young people and ignite their imaginations, in the hope that perhaps some of them will perhaps discover the wonder and the joy of what can be created musically with the simplest of tools that do not have to be plugged in.
The wonderful Piers Partridge makes music on his oil can lyre.
RIchard Kram
I think it's great that you gave them the instrument. With all the old Medieval and ancient themed shows today perhaps kids will get sparked by seeing older instruments as you suggest. I just hope they show your video while displaying the instrument as it will give it more meaning.
As for a theremin sample set, how can it be useful? As a composer I can easily write theremin music that is more difficult than I can play but I'd still like to get a good idea of what it sounds like so a theremin sample set is a great tool when writing for theremin – and other composers that don’t play at all might find a really great sample set (none current exists) even more valuable. And of course if there was a really good set, it would be used in video games and movies on small budgets. Video game composers do not typically use orchestras. Everything is sampled. Most TV scores now days as well contain many if not all sampled instruments. The orchestra of the future has been around for some time now in video games.
I like the SampleMoog Etherwave patches better than SpookyKeys. SampleMoog samples all kinds of Moog instruments and they included a theremin. This is an example I posted on ThereminWorld of the “Charlie Patch” from the SampleMoog Etherwave set. This example uses quite a large range to give you the idea of the sounds. Yea, it’s not right, but if I want to get the feel of how a piece might sound, this can be useful vs. taking a day or more practicing to try and play things in when I don’t want to break the flow of composing.
https://soundcloud.com/rk53-1/the-death-of-ase-samplemoog
By the way, that’s another reason why I sometimes use the Theremini. As a composer still with very limited theremin chops, sometimes it lets me test things quicker than using my Etherwave. So it’s kind of like a sample set to me in some ways.
https://soundcloud.com/rk53-1/the-death-of-ase-theremin-strings
Though I just got a Wavefront Classic and I’m pretty much playing nothing but that now (it’s night and day different than playing the Etherwave).
IMHO, the number one thing that keeps the theremin from gaining more popularity (it's never going to be a guitar) is that it has virtually no “usable” literature of its own. Think if John Williams had used it for the Harry Potter theme? Everyone would be buying them (until they realize how hard it is to play). Moog Etherwave and Burns Theremins are actually quite inexpensive instruments. Access to them is not the problem. Public awareness and an interesting and exciting literature is the problem (and of course the issue that it can't play fast music). And composers that write very complicated things for Theremin do absolutely nothing to fix this. The theremin needs a literature that people can relate to – I think movies and TV is the likely place to get it from. When I tell people I play the theremin – most times they ask “Can you play Star Trek” – and that was originally sung on the TV show – and we all know not at all an easy theremin piece. This is why I write most of my theremin music in a very accessible style. But it will always remain a fringe instrument - then again so will the Lyre.
Now as for the Orchestra of the Future in relation to using instruments of the past – a wonderful sample set is Eduardo Tarilonte’s Medieval Legends that samples a slew of Medieval and ancient instruments. This is used in all kinds of video games. Many millions of kids have heard these sampled instruments and likely have no idea they are sampled. I’d venture 90+% of adults would fall into that category as well.
http://www.bestservice.de/en/era_ii_medieval_legends.html
Another interesting and inexpensive set is Garritan's World Orchestra that contains an absolute plethora of ethnic instruments (though not as well sampled as the above set).
http://www.garritan.com/products/world-instruments
Sampling is the Orchestra of the Future - here today. And as control of samples gets better (and astounding advances have been made in the past 5 years or so), so will the orchestra of the future.
Peter Pringle
The lyre, as we see it today, is archaic but it is still with us in the form of the modern guitar. Sometime around 500 B.C., during the so-called “Golden Age”, the Greeks began to develop the “kithara” (whence cometh the word “guitarra” or guitar) which was a highly sophisticated version of the traditional lyre, capable of playing vibrato, portamento, and all the notes of the chromatic octave.
The next step in the natural development of the kithara was the addition of a fingerboard and VOILA! The kithara became the guitar.
The ancient lyre is to the modern guitar, what the theremin, and its heterodyne sister the ondes, are to the modern synthesizer.
Like the lyre, the theremin will never be accepted as a full member of the modern family of musical instruments because, like the lyre, it is too limited in regard to what can be played on it. Add to that the fact that the theremin is impossibly difficult to play, and it is not hard to understand why it will forever remain a novelty “fringe” instrument.
I have never understood why thereminists seem to think this is a bad thing.
Here is an interesting little diagram from archaeomusicologist Richard Dumbrill, showing the evolution of the primitive harp into the lute.
http://www.peterpringle.com/lute/harplute.jpg
RIchard Kram
RIchard Kram
Peter Pringle
Richard wrote: “……..with popularity comes advancement and more instrument choices and options and better repertoire and more players”
I certainly have nothing against popularity, but it is not always accompanied by advancement. In fact, sometimes it is quite the opposite. Things get dumbed down and made easier in order to generate wider public interest and greater accessibility. You start out with a theremin and end up with a “matryomin”.
In order to create the matryomin, and attract armies of dedicated players, the developers of the instrument had to eliminate the very qualities that make the theremin the unique and exquisitely sensitive device that it is.
RIchard Kram
Uncle Howie
An interesting effect. I kinda like it.
Does your Wavefront have the pitch preview and/or the pitch linearity cabinet coil installed?
A word of caution for you. If you have an early model, DO NOT store the heavy power supply module inside of the cabinet. I did and the floor of the cabinet fell out and down to the ground pulling wires out of the front panel and also damaging the circuit board.
I sent the board back to Gene and he repaired it gratis. I had the pitch preview added at that time also.
I assume that later instruments affixed the cabinet bottom with better bracing.
The Wavefront is a marvelous instrument and sounds very similar to my RCA theremins when adjusted to do so.
Uncle Howie
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
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