Experimental music notation resources

[AnAverageItalian]

I’ve just found this thread and forum while searching for some Jani Christou scores, and as an avid serial score collector, I can say that I already love it all. Thanks y’all, appreciate ya

[xmacex]

Pulsar graphs from Curtis Roads’ Sound Composition with Pulsars (2001), page 137 of Journal of Audio Engineering Society volume 49, number 3. The graph is explained in paragraph starting with “As the rate of pulsar emission…”

[orbit_f]

Under some aspects also the Schillinger method of composition can be included in this thread.

[timp]

via

[AnAverageItalian]

This generator doesn’t work anymore apparently

[Ruarklewis]

Very interesting outcome. I’d be interested to hear what you make of it rl

[xmacex]

Karlheinz Stockhausen yearning for statistical data in his How Time Passes (1957), a critique of serial music.

Also

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Reading Alain Pottage and Mario Biagioli’s What Is a Book? in 2023 Critical Inquiry vol 49 number 4 about Kant’s proto-media-theoretical remarks, “taking an eye for an ear” and opus vs. opera. On pages 611-612 they bring in Kittler’s on typography as notation resource for (maternal) voice. In interesting take.

Friedrich Kittler highlights the moment towards the end of the eighteenth century when pedagogical texts began to advise German parents, more precisely German mothers, to teach the alphabet to their children phonetically, by metabolizing sounds rather than memorizing letters. According to the new genre of pedagogical manual, the alphabet was to be learned not by memorizing the association between sounds and syllables, as if the sound was an accidental property of the syllable, but by sounding letters out as if they were already, inherently, sonorous or musical: “I must ask you from now on to consider our mouth with its different constituent parts as an instrument upon which we are able to play certain meaningful tones that together we call language. . . . Reading then consists in the art of playing our language instrument from the page of notes before us” (quoted in DN, p. 33). But what really mattered here, and what differentiated this mode of sonority from the “voice” of silent reading as it had so far been practiced, was that sounds were first communicated in the natural and vital voice of the mother (DN, p. 34). And this voice, as a vector of maternal love, became the “transcendental voice” of all reading: “When later in life children picked up a book, they would not see letters but hear, with irrepressible longing, a voice between the lines” (DN, pp. 35, 34). The voice of the Romantic author or poet employed the affective channel, the connection to the soul, that was first established by mothers teaching the alphabet to their children.

“DN” is Kittler’s Discourse Networks, 1800/1900.

[TomWhitwell]

I asked ChatGPT to write me a python script to generate graphic scores. After one iteration (asked it to think about grouping lines, and to make it monochrome) it produced this:

A few variations:

This isn’t creating the image, it’s creating the python code to create the image - here’s the chat Random A3 Graphic Score

Wow.

[khladomysl]

Today, I visited an exhibition in Cracow’s MOCAK, where some graphical scores from Polish composers are exhibited.

Those are visually similar to this one by Bogusław Schaeffer:

Also, here are some scores by Adam Walaciński:

[gcode]

this is so good, reminds me of ryan ross smith animated notation, esp. the study no. 27 [up or down] :

Study no. 27 [up or down]: Animated Notation

cute how it apologized for the misuse of BezierSegment interpolation in the python script

[TomWhitwell]

This is what a modern DAW interface should look like

[neauoire]

A bit backward, it’s a musical language, not a language of music, but I’ve created a topic dedicated to Solresol, which might be of interest to folks in this thread.

Also, I don’t think this has been shared yet, but here’s the signed solfege.

And the scene from close encounters

[Lapis_Elle]

I have a question. As someone who was in elementary school music in the early 2000s, we learned all the hand signs for solfège in class. Did anyone learn those signs in school before or after that time?

[idealstate]

Sad to hear of Steve Roden’s passing yesterday. He exemplified sincerity and integrity throughout his career and his body of work. I do hope his website https://www.inbetweennoise.com/ is maintained - it is a wonderful artistic archive and resource.

[neauoire]

@Lapis_Elle

Did anyone learn those signs in school before or after that time?

We didn’t, but I wish we did!

Vincent gajewski had this nice stenography script:

Inspired by a thread, I got thinking about the Shavian Alphabet, and wondered if maybe I couldn’t encode the Curwen hand signs more directly into it.

The Shavian alphabet was originally an constructed alphabet conceived as a way to provide simple, phonemic orthography for the English language. It conveniently includes glyphs to match Vincent Gajewski’s stenography. An alternative usage of the alphabet could be used to include solresol in web page, based on the Curwen hand shapes.

• 𐑴 do
• 𐑦 re
• 𐑵 mi
• 𐑳 fa
• 𐑯 sol
• 𐑤 la
• 𐑪 si

[exhapax]

Cecil Taylor

[vals]

some more Cecil Taylor

[exhapax]

The Dada drawing that was a "light switch" for Ed Ruscha

[comma]

surprised i haven’t seen mentioned Graphème magazine which is currently at two issues and publishes graphic experimental music scores from various contributors with a wide variety of approaches. you can see some examples in the bandcamp shop for each issue.

[paubarrina]

Ieeeeepa! Visca el Sonògraf!