V3.04 Northwest CyberArtist Newsletter May 1995

The Northwest CyberArtist 1 Volume Three, Number Four May, 1995 The Color Of Music By Candace Bullard Kelly: OK, so green is B flat. And what is red-violet? Chuck: Red-violet is B. Kelly: So they’re right next to each other; you can see how the colors complimeen each other. These two have a relationnshi to each other. I even use this in the grocery store; the more the colors are in relationship, the healthier the fruit or vegetable. Chuck: It’s hard for musicians to really get their ear attuned to chromatic intervaals We’re so tuned into diatonic intervaal which are a whole step or two halfsteeps It’s very difficult to get tuned to that final level of finesse which is a halfsttep The same with colors. We’re used to thinking of six primaries but there are six other colors that are in between those. Most colors are a mixture of light. Using a spectrogram,, you can see that most reds are all kinds of different colors. Green is really the example. Green will quite typically peak at green but * LOCATION * * NOTICE! * Here We Go Again! May Meeting: Monday, May 1st The Black Citroen 513 N. 36th (In Fremont) 7:30pm May’s Guest: Chuck Metcalf & Kelly Kerr Chuck uses a Kawai K1 keyboard and MIDI interface to the lights. The Chat Chuck: The Lyric /Chromatic Analogy is an analogy between tones and colors. It works by superimposing the color wheel and the cycle of fifths or cycle of fourths. I chose C, since C is in the center of the musical rainbow, to be coherent with yelloow which is in the center of the visual rainbow. The result is that all the sharps are warm colors and the flat tones are all the cool colors. There’s a Miles Davis song called “So What?” that is one of the first modal jazz pieces. It’s entirely in one mode -all in the white keys in the first part of the tune and in the middle of the tune it goes all into the black keys. If I performed that tune with the lyric/chromatic analogy, you would see a striking contrast between the colors. To develop absolute pitch, you can get an association going with a color and a particular tone. When I have a hard time really zeroing in on some particular tone on my bass, I’ll use the color analogy as a tool. Kelly: You can play a landscape. You can take a walk and see the color of mustard greens -B Flat and F, aren’t they? Chuck: Yes, yellow-green and green. Kelly: Oh no, then it’s B and F sharp. Chuck: B and F sharp would be purple and red-purple. Kelly: Red-purple, then what’s bluegreeen Chuck: Blue-green -that’s E flat. The Characters Kelly Kerr: singer, vocal coach, writer, & teacher. Her work synthesizes the teachinng of radiant performance, Italian Bel Canto singing, and the physics of sound into a unified & simplified technique. This technique opens and trains the body to its innate sound design abilities. Kelly calls this method the Body Instrument. Chuck Metcalf: jazz bassist, architect, & environmentalist. He’s lived and worked in New York, San Francisco, and Amsterdam and has played with jazz greats ranging from Dexter Gordon & Joe Venuti to David Murray. Chuck is also a compoose and has two CDs available on the bopware label. Both CDs have won the Earshot album of the year award and Chuck is a member of the Earshot Hall of Fame. The Concept As an evironmentalist, Chuck has a keen interest in focusing the musical communnit on ecological issues. His work uses the harmonies of color, tones, and rhythm to learn how to dance on the earth with grace. The Lyric/Chromatic Analogy is a template for how to live and create harmony with the planet, reflecting the earth and our sacred trust to her using the physical laws of harmonics. The Lyric/Chromatic Analogy is a work that is fed by spiritual and artistic streams. The Body Instrument gives a student an additional set of tools to conceptualize and use the vibrations contained within the body.2 The Northwest CyberArtist Corporate Sponsorship Provided By: The Northwest CyberArtist is free for those who ask to be added to the mailing list. The Northwest CyberArtist is published monthly by Northwest CyberArtists. First class postage paid at Seattle, WA The Northwest CyberArtist ISSN 1068-9850 Vol. 3/No.3 April 1995 10802 47th Avenue West Mukilteo, WA 98275-5098 Voice: (206)355-6000 Fax: (206)347-7757 Published by volunteers. Could be you next! The Color Of Music From 1 logically connects. Perception is light reflecting off an object. Objects are held in shape by harmonics or they couldn’t be held or survive their form. It has to be a sound structure, so to speak, in order to be a medium as an ‘is-ness.’ Chuck: And you can quote her on that. Kelly: There’s a natural system of measurable order that makes something be able to have durability, sustainability, and longevity. That ‘is-ness’ is a natural grace of proportion in their already existiin space, their ‘givens.’ For instance, you have a paper bag that has an angle that goes dink-a-dink-a-dink. You put things, that are already working with their certain proportions, into the bag. If the bag is out of its bag proportion, it will break. Chuck: Everything exists in some proportions, space or time, and the characterristic of all those elements of existennc are what is responsible for the phenommena world. And now I’m just as far out there as you are. Kelly: And when physics gets too complicated we have to go to a simpler order. That’s how sound works. If you get too many notes going on, what are you going to do? You bring it back down to the bass line, the root of what you are doing. Going from noise to music. Chaos to order. will then go down. And in orange you’ll have another big peak. The color will look like a bright, pure green but it actually has a lot of other light in it. Leaves are like that; the greens of nature are very like that. This system could have a sliding ‘Do’. In other words, the yellow could be any of the other eleven keys. And then in thinking in terms of specific notes, you think in terms of specific intervals away from the central tone--the flat second, the second, the minor third, the third, etc. I wrote a book in 1978, 350 pages thick, that is a compilation of all possible tonal combinations using the 12-tone equal tempeere scale. In the course of doing that I came across a lot of different sounding, different shaped combinations of tones that didn’t fir into regular harmony. I experimented with finding chord symbols to exprres these tones and that’s where the idea for the color analogy occurred. And light waves and sound waves move at different speeds. There’s 40 octaves of differennc between light vibrations and sound vibrations. We could use lasers, if they were tunable, and take this show to Las Vegas. Kelly: That’s what I want to do; the educational capital of the world. What’s teaching me about harmonics is being able to see them outside of music. To separate it from the feeling of music into the visual. This gets my eyes and mind functioonin from a different angle. In the Body Instrument you feel for the center of the tone--where it grounds in the body. Instead of putting your hands on a fret board, you’re feeling, “Oh, A Flat is right there in my elbow.” We can get into philosophy; how we perceive what we se as reality. And now we can talk about proportion and how this data Some NW CyberArtists and their contact information: The order is alphabetical, the list is incomplete. Omissions? Updates? Mention it at the meeting! Bret Battey -Researcher bret@eskimo.com John Beezer -On-Line Czar bisquik@eskimo.com Aurianna Marici 206-820-9454 Bob Moses bobmoses@pan.com Steve Turnidge -Host CompuServe: 72250,3205 Internet: stevet@rane.win.netThe Northwest CyberArtist 3 Internet Corner How to join the on-line CyberArtists List: Send email to listproc@u.washington.edu. Leave the subject line blank and include only the following in the message body: subscribe cyberartists yourname How to join the on-line Electronic Cafe interest group List: Same as above with the following in the message body: subscribe ecafe yourname How to join the Northwest Elektro-Industrial Coalition List: Same as above with the following in the message body: subscribe NEC yourname Call me at work if you have any problems getting signed on. Please pass this on to all others interested in these topics Edward M. Galore, lemaire@cac.washington.edu, (206)543-5970 MAY CALENDAR OF NWCA ACTIVITIES: Monday May 1st 5:30 pm Resource group meeting at Black Citroen Monday May 1 st 7:30 pm Regular NWCA meeting at Black Citroen Monday May 15th 7:30 pm Open Studio (See below) Saturday, May 6th 9:00 pm At the Black Citroen. 513 N. 36th Einar Ask (of the Same) and Julius Brown (former Diamoon Fist Werny Visuals) With Twinkle -Charley Rowan and Company Wally Shoup and Rob Angus. $5.00 Cover player, and cassette deck are available, as well as synthesizers, mixers, a Macintosh, and an Internet feed. Please contact Bret Battey at 206-281-8639 or bret@eskimo.com if you wish to present something. You can bring work unannounced to the Open Studio; howevver we can only guarantee time for those who have made arrangements ahead of time. You will be responsible for bringing any equipment you need beyond what is available in the studio. You do not have to bring something to present to participate in the Open Studio. Open Studio-Monday, May 15th, 7:30 PM The Open Studio is a monthly forum for artists and technologists to present and discuss their work or the work of other artists. We meet at Symbionics in The Western Building, 619 Western Avenue, Seattle. (1 block north of the intersection of Yesler and Western in Pioneer Square, west side of the street. Go up the stairs to second floor and through the rolling fire door left of the landing.) A VCR, DAT4 The Northwest CyberArtist CYBERARTS INTERNATIONAL IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF MILLER FREEMAN INC. NORTHWEST CYBERARTISTS AND THE NORTHWEST CYBERARTIST LOGO ARE TRADEMARKS OF NORTHWEST CYBERARTISTS AND OF THE DESIGNER. Northwest CyberArtists 10802 47th Avenue West Mukilteo, WA 98275-5098 ADDRESS CORRECTION REQUESTED Is this Junk Mail? Please Mark “RETURN TO SENDER” and drop in the mailbox; Thank You! FIRST CLASS MAIL Meeting LOCATION NOTICE! Please see page 1 for details They Meet Copyright 1995 Bill H. Ritchie, Jr. Sometimes when I go to meetings and I get a little bored, she comes to me and whispers a story in my ear. When the meeting is interesting, I pay attention, and I ignore her. She is such a complainer! She hates meetings—especially when they show slides. After an interesting meeting, I listen to her. This is one she tells, about a meeting of Northwest Cyberartists in the year 2022. The lights dimmed and the screen overheea brightened. In the dark the speaker was continuing. “And now it’s time for tech-check,” the speaker said. There was a rustling in the crowd as people turned their attention to the screen above. You could hear recordeer clicking open, their red scanners flickeriing pointed at the emitter. In a moment the screen flashed on. A picture of a woman’s face appeared, with a name and contact numbers beside it. In the darkened room someone spoke up: “I am Jane Gilman. I am a community college teacher and I teach digital graphiccs I came here to see what’s happening.” Jane’s image on the screen dissolved and was replaced with one of a bearded man, with long hair flowing down each side of his face. Jane’s name and numbers also were replaced by his. Another screen opened, on the left, Jane’s name and numbeer on it. In the dark a man spoke. “I am Gordon Bley, musician, working in midi and acoustti guitar. I have a day job with GalArt and I am looking for artists who might want to collaborate on a cruise piece for IR.” One by one the peoples’ faces appeared on the screen, their names and numbers swapping from there to the screen on the left, until the list had grown to over 40 people. In the dark, some were picking names and numbers with their scanner pick-ups. It was the custom to make contacts among people this way. The main recorder was taking in the basic information for later archiving, in case tabulation was later requested by those who were absent tonite. Gay was next. His face showed on the screen. His Xapshot had been taken when he came in, and his contact address. The frame-grab had caught him unsuspecting, but surprise did not show in his face. He had noticed some of the regulars had smart cards with them that they handed to the greeters, who in turn inserted the card in a reader. Their smart-shots were, of course, idealized and they did not match the way the person looked tonite. Gay’s shot was still on screen and, hesitantly, he spoke: “My name is Gayrord Dayton and tonite I’m just visiting. I’m a re-entrant,” was all he said. His name was added to the list on the second screen. Beside him, Media spoke, her smart-shot on the screen. “My name is Media. Just Media, and I am a reentrrant. Scanner pickups flickered.