In 1739, the great mathematician Leonhard Euler published something he called a Tonnetz, German for “tone network.” It looked like this: Euler’s Tonnetz organizes the notes into a matrix, instead of a scale. Moving down and to the left represents motion by an interval of a fifth (V) in musical space. Down and to the right…
Notes are pitched sounds. A given note means little by itself. It could be the tonic of a key, or some member of a scale based on a different tonic. By itself, it generates no tension, resolution or sense of place on the harmonic map. So when I name a note in this blog, I’ll…
Over the next series of posts, I’m going to explain how the lattice in the Flying Dream video works. Before I do, I want to take time to mention a terrific book. I started investigating just intonation in earnest in early 2011. A couple of months in, my friend Kay Ashley loaned me her copy…
This may have been the most intense art project of my life. Some time early in 2012, I got it into my head to create a stop-motion animation of my song Flying Dream, moving in harmonic space. I’ve spent the past five months working like crazy on it. The song is carefully arranged using the…