mutantrumpet
The mutantrumpet is a hybrid electro-acoustic instrument with three bells, two sets of valves, and a trombone slide. The sound is converted via a pickup in the mouthpiece to MIDI information by a pitch to MIDI converter. There are momentary switches located next to the valves on the body of the instrument, as well as four continuous MIDI controllers in the form of pressure sensing pads and potentiometers. The acoustic volume of the mutantrumpet is often used as another MIDI controller. The mutantrumpet's computer interface enables Neill to trigger and manipulate sequences, grab samples and manipulate them in real time, and control lighting, slide and video projection.
rhytharmonics
In 1987 I began writing music in which I used ideas of pure tuning to generate all of the various aspects of my compositions. This approach grew out of my study with La Monte Young and also was greatly facilitated by my use of a personal computer to create music. It is a method of integrating all of the different elements into a kind of practical unified theory for musical composition. I have termed this concept rhytharmonics.
"In the broadest sense, music is all rhythm; we perceive faster rhythms, like a string playing an A and vibrating 440 times per second, as pitch, making harmony a form of polyrhythm, while we experience very slow cycles of repetition as structures" 1
Sound is comprised of vibrations, or sound waves. Periodic waveforms generate pitched sounds, or tones. When periodic waveforms are slowed down, they eventually become rhythmic pulses. This can best be demonstrated with an analog oscillator; as you lower the pitch, at a certain point the pitch changes to individual pulses, or beats.
Just intonation is the term which is given to the tuning of frequencies according to simple whole number ratios. This method of tuning was introduced to me by La Monte Young, and had a profound influence on my musical thinking.
"One of the interesting characteristics of the system of rational numbers is that is potentially a system for categorizing the relationship between sound and the kind of sensation or "feeling" one has each time a performance in the same musical mode is heard...Periodic composite sound waveforms [which are generated by justly tuned intervals and chords] may be singularly perceptible models of the fundamental principles of vibrational structure." 2
Rhytharmonics takes this idea of tuning frequencies by simple whole number ratios and applies it across the pitch/rhythm continuum on multiple levels. It is through this process that harmony, rhythm, and large scale form can be generated from one kernel of information. This approach is strongly related to fractal structure, or Rupert Sheldrake's concept of nested hierarchies, in which large structures are built up in nature by the repetition of patterns on many different micro and macro levels. Rhytharmonics assumes La Monte Young's observations on the nature of just intonation to be true, and then sets out to assert them in different time strata, and in different media, simultaneously. Rhytharmonics assumes that the already powerful effects of just intonation will be multiplied geometrically when the numerical system is implemented on different levels of time, that new types of sum tones, difference tones and harmonics will be generated from these more complex renderings of the same numerical structure that underlies just intonation.
I have utilized this concept of rhytharmonics in many different ways in my music. In some pieces, such as parts of ITSOFOMO (1989), Antiphony (1991), and the recent sound and light installation Pulse (1997), the process of composition is purely a working out of mathematical algorithmic permutations. However, more often I set up a structure according to the rhytharmonic principles and then introduce some element of improvisation which gives the system a random element, some imperfections or irregularities. It is this aspect of my compositional approach that is inextricably bound up with my live performance system and the continuing development of live digital performance technologies. This combination of structure and improvisation characterizes most of my recent work, including my last three albums Green Machine, Triptycal, and Goldbug.
Notes:
1 Jon Pareles, "The Rhythm Century: The Unstoppable Beat", New York Times, May 3, 1998, p. 20
2 La Monte Young, The Well Tuned Piano, liner notes, Gramavision CD R279452, pp. 5-7
3 Rupert Sheldrake, The Presence of the Past, Park Street Press, p. 95.