January 1984 to January 1985 Progress Report

IVOR DARREG

Many people were scared when the ominous-sounding year of 1984 opened. Orwell's Big Brother Is Watching You! sent chills down most of our spines. I'm happy to report that it wasn't so bad after all; 1984 was a good year for the growth of a xenharmonic network of people, widely scattered around the country, finding out by chain-referral that other people actually existed who were involved with new musical instruments and new scales to enlarge the composer's vocabulary and lend new moods even to existing music.

Of course there were still some musical pundits and self-appointed authorities who did not want any progress in music beyond 1870, so they have gone on a Power Trip and tried to suppress anything which the piano cannot do. Too late for them: new electronic instruments are slowly taking over the piano's top-dog position, and computer music is getting easier to implement, now that so many people are becoming acquainted with the personal computer.

Late in January 1984 this was made evident: I was taken to the NAMM exhibition in Anaheim where acres of musical instrumnets and paraphenalia were on view, and the new electronic keyboards were everywhere, while pianos remained just about where they were a century ago, with only the smallest cosmetic changes. The reall tell-tale of advanacing progress, however slow, was that there were several compact portable keyboards which could imitate a piano or a harpsichord. Now if the piano was as firmly locked in place as Only Game In Town, the was it was in 1924, there wouldn't be that many other instruments imitating it to keep the sound available as the average person's access to real pianos decreases. (Sordid factors like high cost and weight and space taken up.)

Compare prices of instruments--it will be obvious which instrumnets are on the way up and which are gradually fading away. For at least some of us, there is a new and most exciting option: some instruments are fairly easy to make. If we make our own, then we are free of amny commercial constraints and pressures. For instance, Buzz Kimball of Contoocook, New Hampshire, visited the Los Angeles area in Spring of 1984, and while here built some instrumnets and revamped others, using my tools and outdoor workbenches. A trip to Hollywood (not so glamourour anymore!) yielded a 12-string guitar which he used as 10-string and refretted to the 19-tone scale. You should have seen him ergetically detwelvulating this instrumnet by yanking out all its original frets as soon as he got back here, and filling in the original kerfs as fast as he could. When he got through, it was difficult to see where the 12-tone conventional frets had been.

Later that Spring he went on to other projects, such as adding an octave to Chris Banta's 5-tone marimba bars and mounting them for me; building stands to hold my 24-tone Tubulong with its 3 1/4 octaves of 79 steel and aluminum tubes; and inlaying numerous markers on a fretless fingerboard that he had brought along with him, to show where some non-12 scales could be fingered. Finally, he took one of my unfinished Newel Posts and put his own make pickups on it and strung it with his special tuning, later taking it back to his home in New Hapmshire and christening it the Screaming Yellow Zonker. (I had painted it yellow and put all the Maglyra fret-line markings on all its four sides.)

During 1984 two more Hobnailed Newel Posts were strung on their four sides with special tunings, so that at this time of writing, three of these instruments are on the premises, since hte original Newel Post was returned from rental. The HNP is a variation on the steel-guitar idea==being hte Pedal Steel principle of many strings and many chords without the sewing-machine and bicycle mechanism. Instead of tightening or relaxing strings to change tunings, one simply turns it over to another of its four sides, or stands it erect and walks around it. With 16 or more strings on each side, more than one tuning is sinstantly available on each side. It bears the Megalyra fret-lining scheme, which shows a number of just intervals alongside the oridnary lines for 12-tone, in contrasting colors. The balanced tension on a heavy wooden beam means that it will stay in tune quite well. Thousnads of possible tunings exist, to suit any user from conservative to radical. Thus it serves as a performance instrument or as a Harmonic Laboratory for classroom and studio purposes. With the steel slider any pitch for any chord is available over two octaves' compass. The dual fret=lining shceme is a built-in comparison chart for conventional and just intervals.

There are four Drone Instruments also in existence, one of which is specially fitted with fret-lines for the bagpipe scale for Glen Prior, who took it to Michigan with him when he moved from Los Angeles last Fall. The other three bear drone strings on one side and unison-and-suboctave pattern on the other with the same colored-line pattern as the Newel Posts just described above and the Megalyra Contrabass have. The bridges fo rhte melody strings are arranged to afford a sitar-buzz.

There are also four of the Megalyra Contrabass Steel. These have been pictured in a number of magazines and newspapers and exhibited in several art galleries. At the moment, one of them is being used by Jonathan Glasier of Interval Foundation at the Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco. He has also featured the Megalyra in many apearances in San DIego and eslewhere. The other Megalyra instruments have been rented out from time to time. Last year a Megalyra and a Drone Instrument were used by Jeff Stayton for recordings.

Early on in 1984 I drew up a sepcification-sheet for what shall and what shall not be considered a Megalyra COntrabass. Similar specifications fo rhte other related instruments will be vailable. Briefly, the Megalyra must be 1.8 m (6 ft) or longer, since its tone can only derive from long strings. It must have several strings to a note for chorus effect, tuned with 4 pitch levels on the melody or solo side, in the same way that the pedal pipes of an organ furnish 4 pitches at once from any pedal key. It must be strung on both sides to balance the tension so that the long board will not warp. The other side will be for accompaniment or contrabass and bass parts, again with groups of strings for chorus effect and the dual set of colored fret-lines. It will usually be of wood, and have two sets of magnetic pickups.

My plans for the Megalyra are these: It will not be turned over to some huge impersonal manufacturer, becuase they would redesign it out of all recognition and destroy most of the distinctive features which I have now proved in practice and which have been heard by hundreds of persons since 1976. It must be kept apart from the 4-stringed electric bass and from the giant metal beam and girders which are too big to play a rapid tune on--they are used primarily for sound-effects and do not bear the colored fret-line pattern I have devised, and would not be convenient as the Megalyra is practical and convenient for regular musicians to play existing bass and contrabass parts in a regular orchestra or ensemble of some kind.

All during the last year and right up to the present time, dozens of visitors have been wildly enthusiastic about the Megalyra Contrabass and have tried it for themselves. With some 2,000,000 pictures of hte family of Megalyra instrumnets in national magazines and smaller publications, and exhibitions of them in art galleries and other public places, as well as two NBC Channel 4 TV appearances and a Disney Cable videotaping and some 5 other videotapings of these instruments existing, I now enjoy some measure of protection under the new coyright laws for their visual design as abstract sculptures--well maybe not so abstract, since the colored lines form rational-fraction-against-logarithmic-increment comparison charts. Stood erect, the instruments become Mondrian and Kindainsky Totem Poles.

When someone wants a Megalyra or Drone or Newel Post or combination or variant of these instruments, it should be quite feasible to have a small customizing shop or luthier simply copy one of the existing instruments, preferably under my supervision, but sometimes this will be impractical, as in the case of an order from the deep South or the East Coast. I don't mind being copied, now that I have all that magazine picture publicity. With actualy working instruments existing, why bother with plans and all kinds of blueprints and bureaucratic delays? What you see is what you get another of! The logical next step is for a number of musicians to develop their own personal styles of playing these instruments and to get out recordings as soon as possible. If I had transportation, I would be out demonstrating them right now.

Recording studios, attention! These instrumnets would be dandy props and inducements for your customers to record on them. You will ahve a hard time keeping their cotton-pickin' fingers from strumming on them.

At age 67 1/2 it would be stupid for me to hold on tightly to ideas, hence this Report: there isn't much time to waste. It's now or never: this is my time-slot and I need people who need me. Insteed, there already are networks of people actively exploring possibilities for progress in music. So far, these persons have been in very distant communities, so it is urgent that I find part-time partners, agents, promoters, or those wishing to consult me on matters relating to music and to my Numaudo Coding System, as well as the Creativity meeting Project. I need connections close to home, and since I will ahve to move sometime this year, it is just plain common sense to want to make such connections before having to move to some strange or lonely town. (A big FOR SALE sign was erected onthe street in front, 8 months ago.)

Up until Glen Prior left Los Angeles last Fall, we had eleven meetings of the Xenharmonic Music Alliance, at which those attending played in new scales, discussed music thoery, and learned about one another's instruments and tuning-systems. I hope to continue this and/or to have others do likewise, after I know when and where I will have to move.

I have received some offers to mount similar schemes elsewhere around the country--this could happen eventually. Gary MOrrison of AUstin Texas has expressed interest, for example. In forming a group in his city to explore new scales on both conventional and electronic instruments, he is already involved with computer music. Henry Rosenthal and David Doty have started a Just Intonation Network based in San Francisco. A newsletter is planned. I was taken last October to visit their studio (see below). There may come to be some activity of this kind on the East Coast--their affairs seem to be tending in that direction.

Note carefully the Network idea--the notion of lateral communication among equals who share shome common interests and want to do something about them. I do not want any readers of this report to yawn and say "Another formal association or club being started" or "Another hierarchical rigid organization being dreamt up by some self-appointed music authorities"--there are dozens of those around the world and what have they ever done for the progress of music? On the contrary, they often thrwart progress and put roadblocks everywhere--they don't want new instruments or new scales, just the endless monotonous repetition of 19th-century works by a few Central European long-dead composers.

There is too much INTIMIDATION in the Musical Establishment. During hte past year I have had to answer phone call snad caution people on this score. I've had to send out many letters to this effect. The so-called "rules of harmony" are neither scientific laws or principles nor yet Goernment regulations or City Ordinances. They are deduced from the compotions of people dead for many many years and cannot possibly allow for today's lifestyles and problems, today's and tomorrow's instruments, or the constant repetititon of yesterday's music by records and radio, day and night seven days a week. These rules reflect an era when most musical possibilities were unexplored, literally, unheard-of. How different from now, when tens of thousands of composers have been hard at work grinding out works, which performers and arrangers have altered in many different ways, and so long as new scales have not been used, it becomes impossible to avoid tired-out cliches. Ennui has set in. This situation cannot be improved by starting more uptight organizations or writing more books of rules. Progress in music cannot be aided by giving up the effort and resorting to adding video effects and writing avant-garde scores in wild new silent pen-and-ink notations. No, progress in music involves new forms of order that are HEARD as orderly, along eith new SOUNDS, regardless of how they are notated or even if they are never visually notated at all!

I have done something about this. I have located people, or they more often have located me, who also are doing something about progress in music. The bureaucratic or religio-cultist mind wants to standardize everything. That is just hte trouble of the last centruy and more. There has been an enforced stasis, with resentment and pressure building up out of sight, till now it is erupting, and we simply must make up for lost time. On page 1 I mentioned the new keyboards as against the uncahnging piano--it is now just over 60 years since I took my first piano lesson and there has been no real change in paino design during all that time! They sound the same as they did when I was a little boy, unless they have been let go, and then they sound worse or don't work at all.

There are too many possibilities now open for any one person to explore them all. Progress in electronics has been explosive, permitting a control over sound hitherto impossible. Too fast even to read about all of it. So there is plenty of room for everybody who wishes to get into a network. Commercial synthesizers generally are mere copies of each other. That is, they are using only a small fraction of hte possibilities now available and affordable. They are haunted by the piano's Ghost. No need for that! Here is where I come in and my contemporaries also can come in, evolving new instruments with what is right now available. We don't have to wait for the big companies to come out with something different: I won't live that long. Both the design of electronic musical instruments and the programming of computers for musical purposes have become practical for individuals and small groups. Also, modifications in ordinary instruments such as refretting of guitars--I have now done 30 of those and published many fretting tables so that others have surely done several hudnred regrettings by this time.

In March 1984, the weekly Los Angeles Reader put some of my instruments on their front page and continued with a logn article entitled NEW MUSICAL EXPRESSIONISTS, which told about five other innovators besides myself and had pictures of some of them with their instruments.