Beauty in the Beast — Wendy Carlos

It is a tour de force of microtonal approaches.

It stands alone among all works in the attention and time invested in sound design.

The composer was the first person to record a classical music album which went Platinum.

Incantation

Dark, cold, earthy, stones of isolation, hot gusts and flashes, raw metal blown, ancient ceremony.

Wendy opens the album by throwing down the gauntlet with Incantation, a piece inspired by traditional Tibetan music based on the interval of the just tritone.

In western music, the tritone of 600 cents is considered to be most dissonant of all intervals. Ambulance sirens play a tritone interval because it is considered so distasteful and repugnant to be sure to get your attention. But strangely, psychoacoustic studies have shown that listeners worldwide consider the just tritone to be one of their favorite intervals when compared to other intervals. The reality is that the western mistuned tritone of 600 cents is hated because it is so close to the lovely just tritones 7/5 at 582.5 and 10/7 at 617.5 cents, but misses them, creating disappointment in the listener.

Tibetan music, with its challenge to western sensibilities can reasonably be considered the most exotic and alien music of all world cultures. That Wendy starts here is meaningful because the journey is just beginning. Can there be any musical frontiers left, or have we visited the very edge of the known world and are now ready to return?

Beauty in the Beast

Disintegration, elevation, creation, resolution of disparate elements fundamentally incombinable.

Rather than return to convention for a break, Wendy takes a right turn and heads right out of earth’s atmosphere, leaving all that is known and conventional behind. The second track, the title track, Beauty in the Beast, is the most innovative and beautiful composition that has ever been conceived, much less written down. We have already seen in Incantation the destruction of the concept of dissonance — the interval considered most dissonant in all the western world has been shown to work not just as the basis of a composition, but as the foundation of an entire culture. If the tritone is not really dissonant, but consonant, where else is there left to go?

The only thing more sacred to western music theory than the dissonance of the tritone is the ubiquity of the octave. All western music theory assumes a priori the superiority of the octave interval and its essential necessity as the fundamental basis of all of music. Western music theory requires and demands the octave. Without it, western music theory and its supposed basis on nature, rationality and science falls flat, then dissolves into nothing as a witch dowsed with water. The octave is the glue that keeps western music together. Without an octave, there can be no identity of chords through inversions. Octave equivalence must exist, must be inviolable in order for what is taught in conservatories worldwide to make any sense whatsoever. Without octave, the credentials of academics everywhere would be seen to be hollow and false, their masks removed to show them empty of any knowledge of music, however rudimentary. To question the octave is to question supply and demand, it is to question Darwin, it is to question Democracy, it is to question motherhood and apple pie. There can be no question more subversive, no exploration more dangerous to the fabric of western culture.

Beauty in the Beast has no octaves. It uses two separate, non conjoining nonoctave scales, alpha and beta, each which live and breath in mostly orthogonal planes to the other. The only property they share is that each is an equal division of a near-fifth interval, but the tuning of the fifths between alpha and beta can not line up.

I am going to be straight up with you. This music can not exist. If it does exist it must be unlistenable, it must be dissonant, it must be pointless and it must make no sense. It must because the alternative is anarchy.

Unfortunately, this music is cohesive. It is beautiful. It is intricately constructed and deployed. Its existence is not as alien as supposed. It works. It opens up new possibilities. It is the Gap through which the pioneers enter into the New World. It destroys permanently the authority of the king. But not without striving, bitter sacrifice and war. It is a Declaration of Independence. The founding fathers who sign this Declaration will be hated. Their houses will be burned down, their families murdered in their sleep by now foreign soldiers, soldiers protecting the unquestioning convention of despicable tyranny. If captured, these revolutionaries will be put to death. Such is the nature of revolutions in which truth is valued over dogma.

Poem For Bali

They say that with robots, if you make them too close to a human, people feel uncomfortable around them. It might look almost like a human but is not exactly the same, in a way that only another human would detect and find disconcerting.

I like this piece in a Balinese style very much. But when I played it for my teacher and friend, the renowned Balinese composer I Made Lasmawan, it made him feel very uncomfortable. I think that means Wendy got this one pretty close.

Just Imaginings

Just Imaginings takes Wendy’s harmonic scale and extends it completely around the circle so that you can modulate all the way through the circle of fifths, back to the beginning, and stay in tune at all times. This technique is a form of extended just intonation and is one of the most complex pieces of the album. Examples of this technique, well composed, are extremely rare. You should know what it sounds like to do this. If you have a background in music theory, you’ll understand why this is a very accomplished thing to do.

That’s Just It

Yusae Aisae

These are both written in 19 limit just intonation.

C’est Afrique

Four sections, four african scales.

A Woman’s Song

This is a gorgeous downtempo place evocative of a lone woman gathering water at a well as the sun rises and dust swirls. I would guess a middle eastern tuning, but it is actually an indian tuning and a bulgarian melody.

Conclusion / Technique

Wendy is a big name. She knows what she is doing. This is a great album just for the music alone. But it is also an introduction to more microtonal techniques than is reasonable to expect from a library of works, much less a single album. No one should be without this album. If you hate this album, you need to keep listening. Or possibly you are insane. No fear. It has happened to many for lack of good music. Just keep listening and regain your sanity. Wash away the years during which boring conventional pieces polluted your ears. Put aside cheap imitations and thin wannabes. See what real gold tastes and smells like.

Wendy has thrown this down for us to examine. In so doing, she is saying, “Here it is. I have been to the other side. This is where we are going. Come and see.” And she is right. This is where we are going. Come and see.

Where to Get It

Wendy Carlos is one of the most renowned and best selling performers of Western Classical Music. Many of her greatest fans love the best pieces from the distant past, but find lacking other works done by living composers. They yearn to return to a romantic, idealized image of old ways and old times, to leave behind new things and settle down comfortably with the best music written three centuries ago. The past seems safe to many because it seems to be predictable and known.

For these fans, this album was a betrayal of all they held dear. It was a challenge which they did not want to be confronted with. It was a sin that was unforgivable. Because of this, Beauty in the Beast was reviled when first released. Almost no one understood anything about the album. It quickly went out of print and could only be found in bargain bins.

Fortunately, the album has at long last been rereleased and can now be obtained from a number of sources, including here at Amazon which has excerpts from each piece. This newest release comes with supplementary materials on an enhanced track of explanations and demonstrations of the tunings used. You may also wish to read Wendy’s notes here.

After twenty years of shock, horror, repulsion and disregard, listeners are at last beginning to understand what Wendy has really said. It is not hatred or spite with which she revealed this music, but courage and love.

Galunlati — Jacky Ligon

Effervescent bubbles in the gel come up at you and ripple around your body in shimmering eddies. The gel luminesces and you feel its wetness. Its temperature matches your body. Falling falling, down you go across the universe, past clouds of interstellar matter, past stars, through perfect blackness. The bubbles in the gel somehow enable you to breath deeply and slowly, rhythmically.

Your body has been impaled on a shaft of light that is being transmitted through the center of the gelataneous conduit. Grounding Energy enters your feet and comes up through your body, activating each of your chakras. You feel each of them in turn as they resonate and align with each crest of the wave of energy that continually flows through you. As a burst breaks through your third eye and then triggers the crown chakra, you have the sensation of the white globe above your head bursting open like a white peony in spring. The energy wave, the impaling shaft of light, travels on up past infinity and into the eye of God.

An intoxicating aroma swirls within your nasal cavity, shimmering and resonating within your senses. You become aware that your vocal chords are vibrating — you are groaning in unison with the voices you hear. They chant a prayer of unity with the cosmos. All is one, we are all interconnected. You have become attuned and in resonance with that truth.

Welcome to “Ten Thousand Things”.

Now it is night time but it is bright because a full moon has appeared on the horizon, slowly ascending. You are on top of a clearing on a hill in the mountains. The clearing is surrounded by woods. You are lying down, facing up at the sky. There is bright light flickering nearby but you feel no warmth, but no cold either. There is no discomfort, no fear, all concerns are gone. You are in a deep state of peace and awareness. Without turning your head, you know that a wolf to the east observes you silently from just within the woods.

Now you remember why you are here. Your body is burning away on top of a funeral pyre. Flesh is being reduced to ashes. You observe the process intimately. It feels right.

Slowly, the moon traverses the sky as the fire burns on throughout the night. It is silent except for the crackling and occasional boom coming from the incinerating wood.

Morning comes and then a brief afternoon squall finishes off the embers. A few skull fragments are left but not much else. Ashes wash away into the ground from the rain.

As the seasons pass, you feel each atom of your body as it is redistributed throughout the earth. Parts of your minerals feed grass and wildflowers and you feel in resonance with each blade. Deer eat the grass and you move on and travel with each of them, seeing and experiencing what each of them sees and experiences. Slugs and grasshoppers eat your blades of grass. Other men eat the deer and then one day, they burn too. Some particles of you soak into the water table and move hundreds of miles underground then up through a spring into a creek then down the creek into a river then out the river into the ocean. Your body is now thousands of miles across. You are completely aware of each molecule and of each atom within each molecule. Some molecules chemically react with others in their new environment and became new substances. You are aware of each one. A thousand years pass. Then two thousand. During this time, you see and are part of all and are completely aware.

One day each molecule will be reassembled from diverse places into a resurrected body and you will move again.

You will then be told of Galunlati — the Celestial Upper Realm. The Land of the Great Elders, where the animals and plants lived before the Creation of Man.

Galunlati: Ancient Sounds in A Modern World

1. Transmigrations of Inner Light
2. Galunlati
3. Quest for Pure Metals
4. Clouds of Remembrance
5. Ten Thousand Things

Technical Details

Mixing is extremely well done. Transparent with no harmonic distortion. Uses spatializer type 3D enhancement throughout, but also some use of a 3D positional audio algorithm.

Orchestration shows superb choices of timbres, combining acoustic drums and live vocals with organic use of synthesizers, and samples of acoustic instruments as needed to facilitate retuning.

Performance is flawless with the use of highly talented performers. The percussionist Bill Smith is particularly remarkable and vocalists Richard Hunt and Ghighua are extremely professional.

Liner notes are included with details on the tunings used.

Overall, astonishing.

Summary

Who can deny that music hit a brick wall and died two hundred years ago? It has lain dead in a ditch on the side of the cow path since that time, though some have confused the occasional twitching of that corpse with symptoms of new life.

The 21st century is finally showing promise though with the appearance of tribal artists resurrecting the ancient traditions and creating new paradigms of metaphysical unity through multidimensional soundscapes. Jacky Ligon, a Native American from North Carolina, is one such artist who has tapped into the wavefront of the energy of his ancestral spirits, riding that crest as it builds up approaching the shore of the 21st century, ready to become a tsunami or wildfire that levels the old cities, erasing their constrictions and gifting us with an opportunity to rebuild.

Where to Get It

Not available, sorry. I really mean I am sorry since I want you to hear this work. It is a sad thing that you can’t get this album right now. But snatch one up if this album goes back into print.

Chrysalid Requiem — Toby Twining

I enjoy a really well done opera. I loved the San Diego Opera performance of Catan’s Rappaccini’s Daughter. Brilliance. I loved La Traviata the first time I saw it because of the lighting design. I hated it the second time because there was a different lighting designer. Listening to opera on the radio or on records, please count me out. Dull. I want the gestalt experience. I want the opera that is a brilliant mockery of the establishment. I want opera that transcends sound. I groove on Ladysmith Black Mambazo — who doesn’t! Bobby McFerrin is great. Old time scat is funky. I heard some crazy ancient nasal stuff in a church once and that technique has almost died out, but it was awesome. But over all, vocal’s not really my thing so much. It’s ok, but I’m not going to sit around and listen to a choir sing block chords. Yawn. How can you even stay focussed. A whole album of vocal pieces in just intonation? How could that be interesting.

Oh dear. It’s not that. It’s something that’s never been done before. It’s something that is leading the way into something new, something you can sink your ears into. Something that challenges the performer and surprises and delights the listener.

Composition

The day will come when it is accepted knowledge that Toby Twining was one of the greatest classical composers of the 21st century. People will ask why it took so long to get funding to produce his second album. They will write essays about how backwards the establishment was that his genius was not immediately recognized and celebrated. But who knows, maybe this is a good thing, so it doesn’t go to his head and rest on laurels. I doubt it though. He’s not that kind of person. He has a passion and drive and is ready to do more, he is waiting to be unleashed.

Toby writes in extended just intonation. There are hundreds and thousands of different, discrete notes that are written for each piece. You may never sing the same note twice! Many people have discussed this approach, or wanted to do it, or wished they could do it. But no one, no one could accomplish it because it was just too hard to do on acoustic instruments. Acoustic, unfretted instruments like the voice, well there is no point to bother writing that way because it is simply impossible to get any humans that could sing it.

It is both audacious and unreasonable to write this music. But it was written. And it was performed. Beautifully. The sort of thing you can put on and any one can listen to and appreciate. The sort of thing you can listen to again and again and wonder at its genius.

Performance

People ask me about extended, or infinite just intonation on acoustic instruments. I tell them not to get their hopes up. It’s too hard to do this. It’s not just hard, it’s actually impossible. Please don’t waste your time even trying. Spend your life doing something else. Many have tried to do this and many have failed. If Toby had asked me what I thought I would say he was crazy. He was wasting his time. He was embarking on a futile quest that could have no good end. Don’t throw your life away, move on to something that is feasible. And coming from me with my nonoctave tunings, maybe it would be taken as good advise. Good thing he didn’t ask me! He didn’t take no for an answer and he accomplished the impossible. You have a full choir singing in perfect harmony, in acapella free infinite just intonation, following a score that, absurdly, has notes with dozens of accidentals each. It is obvious to anyone that such a score can not be sung and that no one should bother trying.

Toby changed my mind about what is possible if only you believe.

Technique

There’s also multiphonics on here. That’s where one singer sings more than one note at a time. These are really good singers. Where did Toby get this choir? How could they have so much talent as they display, and yet not realize that what they were being asked to do was impossible and it was pointless to even try. They should have laughed at him and walked out at the first practice because what he was asking was impossible. Well, somewhere he found vocal geniuses that could do the task and yet weren’t scared to try. Brave, brave people. Foolish too. But they made us the fools by proving that they were up to the challenge. And they succeeded. This makes Toby also the greatest living choir director.

Where to Get It

Bang on a Can Store : Samples from each track can also be heard here.

Buy this. Get money to him so he can produce another album. Are you a wealthy benefactor? This is a good cause. Listen to this album and think about what he is doing. Hire him for a professorship. Whatever it takes. The world needs Toby Twining.

From On High — Marcus Satellite

Composition

Electronica is one field that just seems naturally right for xenharmonics. You are using all electronic instruments and they can be retuned any way you like with no constraints. But a lot of it, which I call Bad Techno is in 12 equal, and 4/4 meter, and 180 beats per minute. But there is some microtonality I hear from time to time, fortunately more often as time goes by. But I wonder if they know what they are doing or if they are just randomly messing around, or maybe their instruments are just all out of tune.

Marcus Satellite is one who understands. He knows how to do xenharmonics. He totally understands everything. Perhaps too well. He could probably bore you to tears talking about math. Usually math guys stay on the math side and don’t enter the music side. But that’s not Marcus. He’s a composer first and foremost. He knows how to write a great song with catchy riffs. This is so important. If you can’t write a song, knowing the math won’t do you any good since you can never connect theory to reality. You can only speculate and hope that your speculations have some bearing on reality, which they probably don’t through no fault of your own. You need both sides to make that connection. The curse of the math head who wishes to be creative, but simply is not that sort of person.

But there are rare folks that can master the creative side and the technical side. We call these people genuises. Marcus picked up what he had to to accomplish what he needed to and uses it to supplement and feed into his songwriting skills. And he kept on top of it, not knowing when to stop until he was so far out there that he had transcended anything that had been done. And kept going because it was so darn much fun to be a pioneer on the frontier with a banjo and a skillet for cornbread. He’s good at the math. Really good. The music makes sense, the tunings make sense, and half the time, I have no idea what he is doing, only that it sounds cool.

I have some of his songs memorized. The lyrics are catchy, poignant, whimsical, dark, a whole range. He’s not going on about scoring some chick in an alley or yammering about the size of someone’s butt. These are much more hard core than that. Hard core, philosophically. But humorous as well. Marcus knows how to be funny.

Performance

Great, professional singers complement well written lyrics and can turn your work into a real class act. You know they do. This is the stuff you hear on the radio. Except it’s not the same. The tunings are not the same.

Audio Quality

The mastering and mixing and balances are all what you expect from someone living in LA who works in the industry and knows exactly what he is doing.

Technique

I don’t know what he is doing as far as technique. Hundreds of years from now, someone will write a book about it. But until then, know that this is his first big full microtonal album and you should get it.

But then you should check out his website and subscribe to his podcast. He has gone way beyond this album and now he is off on a vista somewhere where no one and no one is exploring. I mentioned above how some brave folks are doing extended just intonation. Marcus is beyond that. He traverses multidimensional spaces in which pitches exist, floating, waiting to be tickled by the paths he follows. Marcus is now, as we speak, doing insane things that put the experimental music programs at the most avant garde institutions to shame. I sort of understand some of what he is doing but only some. He’ll show you the diagrams and point out different things. Some people that do this are faking. You can tell them because they have no music to share. But Marcus has music. He is the real deal. The diagrams do describe what he is doing. I hope you have extensive experience with ancient languages and are comfortable speaking space alien dialects. This stuff I can follow with my ear, but it is insane. It is futuristic, but it is too futuristic. Someday this will be heard as normal. But how would jazz sound to someone from the Renaissance. It would be just too different for them to understand. But they might be able to recognize that there is pattern and structure, they just can’t grab what it is.

It’s going to take the collapse of civilization and rise of a new one before this stuff seems normal. I thought I was out there on the fringe of what was possible and then Marcus showed that there is a new frontier beyond that one, or maybe even farther, than we could just see in the distance, but not make out completely. But he is there. And he has some apple seeds that he is planting. And when us stragglers get there, there will be some nice apple trees. Thanks for planting those trees Marcus.

Where to Get It

Shrink-wrapped CDs are available for purchase directly from the composer, Marcus Satellite. E-mail him directly at: perfectbuzz at yahoo.com. Also, many sample tracks, including entire singles are available at Perfect Buzz Music.