Ratio Treader by joel taylor

These are the first two pieces I've produced with a new, Max8 based patch that supports Just Intonation and Arbitrary Ratio pitch worlds, and polyrhythmic, polytempic rhythm worlds. They are, essentially, test pieces for the instrumentation, put together to get a first look/listen at what the new design can do. And to provide me with a musical reward for all the programming I've had to do to create this tool.

The first piece, Octet-Variable Tempo Cycles, is a synthetic chamber orchesta work consisting of eight melodic cycles, performed by sixteen instruments. There are two tempo relationship groups notated in the score, specifically, one group is notated at 27 beats/minute, or double that time, and the second group is notated at 20.5 beats/minute, or double that time. But the entire score complex is performed at a variable global tempo, that can be as fast as 88 times the notated tempo, to as slow as 0.2 times the notated tempo.
This means that the tempo maximum is 2376 beats/minute, or 39.6 beats/second, and the tempo minimum is 4.1 beats/minute. This global tempo variation is controlled by the performer, and would vary from one performance to another. The melodic and pitch world of this piece is formed around descending notes in various otonal series. For example, the first line performs a descending otonal series of pitches relative to A 110Hz, of 17/13, 16/13, 15/13, 14/13...9/13. The second line descends through a tonal series of pitches relative to C= 6/5 X 110 Hz, of 31/17, 30/17, 29/17...21/17. To clarify, 17/13 times 440 Hz(A) = 575.4 Hz, which would be close to a 12tET C#5. 9/13 times 440 Hz = 304.6 Hz, which is close to 12tET D4. So that first descending line listed above descends a span of a Major Seventh, approximately.
Other lines are freer in their contours: 17/7, 11/7, 3/7, 23/7, etc., but descending otonal lines with denominators of 17, 19, 13 and 7, form the pitch world of the work, and provide it with a harmonic character that is mysterious, lyrical, and perhaps pensive, or melancholy.

The second piece, Quintet- The Test, really is a test piece, it was literally used to debug a problem with the patch, where loud knocking would occur when an instrument change took place in a line. There are five lines, and ten instruments, in this piece.
Its character is more sedate, and its style closer to what I would call normal contemporary classical.

The sound synthesis method used in this instrumentation is a poor man's variation of universal additive synthesis, called wavetable cross-fade synthesis. In an instrument designed with this patch, the composer specifies two waveforms, by specifying the amplitudes and phases of the first 64 harmonics in the sound. An envelope is used to mix, or crossfade, between these two timbres, which produces a sound that evolves in time, and is considerably more dynamic than that produced by the usual sin, sawtooth, triangle, and pulse waveforms that we are all familiar with.

Joel Taylor is a composer/improvisor/programmer who works with a wide variety of electronic and acoustic media. He performs on analog synths, computers, keyboards, shakuhachi, suling, flute, and percussion, and has composed concert music for orchestra, gamelan, and various chamber ensembles.

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