"Serial Killer" Fugue: Somebody Stop Me...

... before I kill again! LOL!

Just for grins, I tested out this subject on the guitar, and... it works amazingly well. It is also nominally in A minor, so it might even replace the current finale of Sonata Zero, but that's just wild speculation at this point. One thing is certain, and that is that this is going to be a very modern, non-traditional sounding fugue: The chromaticism of the subject - and the fact that it is a twelve-tone row - made the most obviously perfect counterpoint to it quite radical by my admittedly antedeluvian standards.

The answer also absolutely, positively had to be perfectly real to replicate the tone row on the dominant level. You put all that together, and you get something weird and wonderous like this:



Here are the first twenty measures: The exposition, a non-modulatory episode, and a middle entry statement. It's tonally based, but quite dissonant, and it's in a unique style I've never written in - or even heard - before. I put it in my .Mac FileShare page as a Work in Progress The filenames are WIP_FTTS.pdf/.mid for those who might like to take a listen. It will certainly turn out to be the most teeth-grindingly "severe" fugue I've ever come up with, but God only knows where this mind-bendingly bizarre path will lead me. I really, really, really, look forward to this particular journey!

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New Site and Blog Links

I have added new links to some fresh and interesting blogs I've found in the sidebar. Be sure to check them out: I enjoy the bloggers the most who have opposing philosophies to mine. I understand better where I'm comng from when I try to understand where others are coming from, and remember: Despite my strongly-worded defenses of my own position, I accept and respect the positions of others who happen to ascribe to other musico-philosophical viewpoints. Cool thing about music is, it's more than big enough to encompass us all. And, it will certainly survive us all as well ;o).

I also went on a fugue-related surfing session this morning. If you haven't checked it out, Smith's Canons and Fugues of Bach is an incredible site, and that lead me to several others that I added in the Links category. There are actually quite a few composers out there who are writing fugues. As I get more time, I will add others that I found. One German winner of a fugue writing contest back in 2000 is spectacularly good: I'm going to see if he has a homepage at some point, but I have chores to do today (Fresh out of clean undies, and the truck is a mess, so it's "laundry and carwash day" (I just know you're glad I shared that)).

Finally, I added a link to an article that I'm not sure how I feel about. The guy sort of disses Bach in some ways, but the perspective is unique (At least, I've never heard a take like that on Bach before). I have always felt that Bach's episodes were kind of overwrought and overly virtuosic in some ways, but that's also one of the fabulous qualities of his music: He was a virtuoso improviser, after all. It's entitled "Bach: His Predecessors". Read it and see what you think.

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Beethoven's Ninth: Allegro, VII

Bet you thought I'd never get back to this. I will finish at least this movement, but these posts will probably be a once-a-month deal from here on out (If you are new to this thread, you'll have to go to the archives for the previous posts, but when I'm done I will post PDF and MIDI files of this entire analysis and transcription on my .Mac FileShare page).

Problem is, this analysis got my compositional juices flowing. The whole Sonata Zero guitar sonata "thing" has been pent up inside of me for the past few years: Beethoven just ignited the required spark, so "off I went". After analyzing the three movements of that guitar sonata, I realize I need a fourth movement in C to balance it out, but I'm now in no mood to write it. So, it's back to free fugues and Beethoven's Ninth.



We are now at measure 275, and theme four appears here in the dominant region. However, this theme is elongated from it's origanal form, and modulates from v to bIII. The bIII region continues into an episode comprised of the head and tail of the main theme, t2, in both rectus and inversus forms, over a variant of the tail figure of that theme. This episode continues through the end of the page, building in intensity as it progresses.



This episode modulates to the parallel major at the top of page seventeen (Can you really fathom how much effort went into just entering this music into Encore?!), and at 297 the t2 theme's head is utilized to get back to... the beginning of the movement... again. Only this time, the intensity is increased, and we are in the tonic level major mode. Basically, the entire "introduction" is replayed here, but now in D major.



At measure 313 we get to a huge hammered-home B-flat dominant seventh chord. Where the Samuel B. Heck did this come from?! The only way I could figure to analyze this was as a subV(7)/V, or in traditional parlance, as an enharmonically notated so-called German Augmented Sixth chord. But... It does not progress to the dominant, it goes directly to the tonic! Ironically, not only is this not jarring or unusual in this context, but it seems natural and inevitable. Sort of.

I seriously can't understand how anyone can possibly think the "well has run dry" with tonality when confronted by music like this. This is just the tip of an iceburg Beethoven only glimpsed opaquely in my view, but... excuse me... frack-all, what an iceburg!!

t1a appears at measure 315, and it's harmonization is fairly mild, but look at the main theme! Double-U, Tee, Eff? Uh... I would never have though of this... until now. WHAT A PASSAGE!!! There are no words to describe this level of perfection. Or intensity. I'm simply aghast here as a listener and as a theorist.

I analyzed 323-326 as being in G minor, but I may change that back to the tonic, as my bVI could easily be rationalized as a Neapolitan chord in root position, but isn't this just fantastic?! Sorry to get so over-the-top, but this is an all-conquering supreme masterpiece, and no words can do it justice.

The page break is unfortunate, as Beethoven here begans a sublime sequence that, incredibly, "sheds" all of the intensity he's built up to here. But, just look at the harmonies!

This may be the single best project I've ever undertaken. So many things I'm learning here just can't be set into words by a crappy writer like me. Sorry about that.

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Serial Fugue Subject: Raiding the "Enemy" Camp

All I have to say is "Ha!", and "this is going to rock!": A twelve-tone row fugue subject that still establishes pitch axes, so it can be broadly interpreted tonally. It is positively screaming "wind trio", no? Can't you just feel the love? (And hear the augmented sixths?). It even has stretto possibilities. I kill me.



I actually thought of this a while back, but didn't have the technique to tackle it. I might even try to cram it onto the guitar (Though, we do actually have a competent wind trio in Alpine, Texas, believe it or not).

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Organizing Classical Guitar Set Lists

One of the things that distracts me about some classical guitarist's set lists (Well, a LOT of solo guitarist's in other idioms as well) is that there is no "rhyme or reason" to them. Much of the time, the pieces selected are seemingly arbitrary in both selection, and in the order that they are performed. Just having a slow, fast, slow scheme isn't good enough, in my opinion, and selecting nothing but highly technical "show off" pieces really chaps my butt: You should - again, in my opinion - take the audience on some sort of a musical journey.

There are many ways to do this. You could start off with Renaissance pieces, work your way through the Baroque era, and wind up in the twentieth century, or you could start with Baroque pieces, play some high-classical stuff, and end up with some Spanish music: The organizational scheme is only limited by your imagination and repertoire.

I'm in an unusual position in that I compose most of my own pieces, I have a pop/jazz background (So I play some contemporary stuff, and I like musical eclecticism). But, anyone can come up with a scheme similar to the one I use if they put some thought into it. Surprising left turns and contrasts are certainly allowed, if they are effective.

Since I wrote a series of Figuration Preludes that progress around the circle of thirds starting in A minor, I organized my set list around those. Since they naturally alternate between minor and major modes, so does my set list (With one exception, which you'll see). Here is the first hour or so of my program, which I perform continuously, only taking brief breaks to sip some iced tea or something between "suites":


01] Figuration Prelude in A Minor - Hucbald
02] E-Axis Study in A Minor - Hucbald
03] Sarabande in A Minor - J.S. Bach
04] Sonatina in A Minor - Hucbald
05] Six Variations in A Minor - Hucbald
06] Classical Gas (In A Dorian, basically) - Mason Williams


As you can see, all of the pieces are in an A minor mode, the tempi progress slow, fast, slow, moderate, fast, fast, and the final piece is a "crowd pleaser" type of deal. I replicate the basic pattern of this suite in all of the following keys. This little suite of pieces runs about fifteen minutes.


07] Figuration Prelude in C Major - Hucbald
08] E-Axis Study in C Major - Hucbald
09] Bourree in C Major - J.S. Bach (It's a tiny little piece from one of the cello suites which I think is better on the guitar)
10] Sonatina in C Major - Hucbald
11] G-Axis Study in C Major - Hucbald
12] Guardame Las Vacas - Luys de Navarez (The variations start in C and end in A minor, which prepares for the next piece)
13] Desert Song - Eric Johnson (Also in an A minor modality)


There are soooo many nice guitar pieces in A minor that I used the Navarez piece (Which I love) to transition back to A minor for the Eric Johnson "crowd pleaser": Going from a Renaissance piece to a twentieth-century jazz/fusion improvisation with some Flamenco overtones actually works quite well. At least, I think so. This suite is about twenty minutes in duration.


14] Figuration Prelude in E Minor - Hucbald
15] E-Axis Study in E Minor - Hucbald
16] Sarabande in E Minor - J.S. Bach
17] B-Axis Study in E Minor - Hucbald
18] Bourree in E Minor - J.S. Bach
19] G-Axis Study in E Minor - Hucbald
20] Spanish Fly - Eddie Van Halen (People love this piece!)


All three of my axial study sets converge in E minor because the axes function as the root, fifth, and minor third respectively, and I have no Sonatina for this key (yet); as a result, I had to use a couple of Bach pieces here (Which is no problem, because they are both superb, and the Bourree is a crowd pleaser all on it's own). This suite is also about twenty minutes long.


21] Figuration Prelude in G Major - Hucbald (This piece is required to recover from the Van Halen tap stuff)
22] B-Axis Study in G Major - Hucbald
23] G-Axis Study in G Minor - Hucbald
24] Minuet in G Major - J.S. Bach (The little piece from the Anna Magdelena Notebook)
25] G-Axis Study in G Major - Hucbald
26] A Day at the Beach - Joe Satriani (Originally in A, I transposed it down to G so it fits on a classical fretboard)


The preludes get progressively longer and more difficult, and the G Major G-Axis Study and the Satriani piece are two of the three toughest pieces in the first half of my program.


27] Figuration Prelude in B Minor - Hucbald
28] Menuetto in B minor - Hucbald
29] B-Axis Study in B minor - Hucbald
30] Scherzo in B minor - Hucbald (The movement from Sonata Zero)


"All Hucbald, All The Time" here, but I am planning to add another Minuet from Anna Magdelena after the B-Axis Study: The bizarre little piece I analyzed here a while back (And, interestingly, I recently heard that new scholarship has shown that this isn't by J.S. Bach, but one of his contemporaries, and (Sorry, can't remember the name) that this person also wrote the earlier Minuet in my set from Anna Magdelena - which comes as no surprise to me because these are weird little pieces that would be out of character for Bach (The earlier Minuet even has a parallel ninth in it!)). But, I don't care if Bach authored them or not: I like them, and that's all that matters. The Scherzo is the most difficult thing I perform... period, and I'm pretty wiped out by this point. One of the nice things about having a prelude after the crowd pleaser type pieces is that it gives needed recovery time, which is something to consider. Especially if you perform 2.5-3 hours or more in a night!

I play through D major, F-sharp minor, and A major before my dinner break, but those suites are still a "work in progress": I'm working on - get this - Leo Kottke's arrangement of Bach's Jesu for the D area, since it and all of my pieces in that key use a drop-D tuning, and - ta, da! - Steve Howe's "Mood for a Day" for F-sharp. The A major suite currently ends with "Stairway to Heaven", but I'm planning to replace that (Or follow it, more likely) with Chet Atkins' "Yankee Doodle Dixie", which absolutely, positively cracks people up in the extreme (Including myself).

Some other cool pieces I'm doing for later in the set are Joe Satriani's "Tears in the Rain" (C-sharp minor) and Steve Morse's "Point Counterpoint" (E major). You get the picture. I'm not really a "classical" guitarist, I just compose that way (And I did stay at a Holiday In Express once or twice). LOL!

In my opinion, more nylon string players should take this kind of an approach versus being so stuck-up about playing only "standard rep" stuff: I get a lot of gigs because people like the eclectic variety of pieces in my set. I intentionally stayed away from jazz over the past ten years or so, but I'm now even thinking about adding some Joe Pass and Pat Metheny stuff to my set. Why the hell not?

And another thing! ;^) ...

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Concert Pitch vs. Philosophical Pitch: Questioning the Foundation

I began to become interested in well-tempered tunings and early pitch standards back when I discovered Davitt Moroney's recording of J.S. Bach's Art of Fugue. His pitch standards and tunings are those of Bach - as closely as can be reconstructed - and the sound is so sublimely wonderful that listening to any other pitch standard and tuning has become something that grates on my nerves.

As a guitarist, there is nothing I can do to slide the frets around and get J.S. Bach's variant of the Kirnberger III tuning system, which is certainly designed around the Golden Mean, but tuning the guitar to the Philosophical Pitch of C= 256 Hz (A= 430.5 Hz), is a piece of cake. I had thought about doing that, but there were no A= 430.5 Hz tuning forks around, and my Lexicon's built-in tuner was set at A= 440 Hz, and there is no calibration adjustment for it. Besides, I had no rational compelling reason to lower my pitch standard. That all changed today.

As far as the tuning system is concerned, I am stuck with the guitar's admittedly compromised version of equal temperament (Guitar intonation is NEVER perfect - even by equal temperament standards - due to the fact that the different strings start out at their own set pitch and progress base-E, base-A, etc. individually through their own version of the temperament), but I had already solved that cosmic conundrum: Since I play electric nylon string the vast majority of the time, I simply apply 36% of pitch-shift chorus to every virtual acoustic environment that I program. Combined with the Hall Reverb and various phase, flange, and comb filter effects that I use, the inherant nastiness of equal temperament is nicely ameliorated (Not to mention that my sound is "awesome" according to many of my audience members).

But there is that A= 440 Hz "thing". I thought that the foundation of our tuning system was a convienience that simply didn't matter, but then I read this article and all that changed. I'm going to need to re-read it several times to internalize it all, but I got goosebumps reading it because I knew I'd discovered something profoundly fundamental to add to my musico-philosophical outlook. I suggest you read it and question everything: The only truth about "conventional wisdom" is that it's conventional, because it certainly isn't wisdom, or even the truth!

Turns out there is a cool little chromatic digital tuner that can callibrate the pitch A anywhere from 420 Hz to 460 Hz, and it's small enough and cheap enough that I can buy five of them and put one in each of my guitar cases and gig bags. Bingo. The guitar is inaccurate enough that 430 Hz versus 430.5 Hz isn't of any practical or practicable difference anyway. I love the results. It's impossible to explain, but the effect it has on me is that the instrument and the music "breathes" easier and just has an... indescribable "niceness" to it.

Good luck to all you pianists out there ;o).

UPDATE: "Heh", as Glen Reynolds would say.

My blog is worth $6,774.48.
How much is your blog worth?

Via Scott Spiegelberg, whose blog is woth much more than my little backwater.

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Guitar Gear Philosophy

I have always been a big believer in two things where guitars and guitar gear are concerned: 1] There is no substitute for the finest possible quality, and 2] Small is beautiful.

My first electric guitar was a Les Paul, and my first guitar amplifier was a MESA/Boogie MK I. The guitar was a top of the line model and, of course, MESA/Boogie amps are legendary. The cool thing about that original rig was that it was small (But, admittedly heavy): The guitar was just a guitar in a rectangular hardshell case, and the amp was a 100 watt combo model with a single 12" Altec speaker. The whole enchilada fit inside my old 1969 VW Beetle, and the sound quality (And - ahem - volume) was second to nothing else out there at the time. I could even cram it all into the back seat if I had to make room for a girlfriend.

Even when I was a professional rock guitarist, I kept the original philosophy I started out with. By those days I had discovered stereo rack-mountable effects devices, so my rig had grown, and of course, I was a Synclavier guitarist in those days, so I had that monster to schlep around (It was at this time that I realized that pickup trucks with shells or bed covers are the last word in musician's vehicles (Unless you are a fan of vans, which I'm not)). But, discounting the Synclavier, the electric guitar part of the rig was still quite small: I had a Steinberger GL2T-GR guitar - which was positively miniscule - a pair of 1-12 combo MESA/Boogie MK III's, and a ten-space Calzone effects rack on wheels. It was still smaller that an 8-12 Marshall stack, and it sounded far superior to any Marshall-based monophonic rig ever could. And yes, it was ridiculously loud when it needed to be. I have never owned a full stack: The closest I ever came to that was having a pair of matching 1-12 cabs for my combos that made 2-12 mini-stacks. And, frankly, that was never necessary: It just looked cool (Hey...).

Fast forward to today, and the only thing that has changed is the equipment, not the philosophy: I play an electric nylon string Godin Multiac Grand Concert Synth Access guitar now, the Boogies have been replaced with a Bryston 2B-LP solid state stereo power amplifier, their EVM-12L's I used to love so much have been replaced by Yamaha AS108-II 8"/1" mini-PA speakers, and that ten space effects rack has now shrunk down into a Lexicon MPX-G2 Guitar Effects Processor, which I use in stand-alone mode as the rig's preamp also. The only other piece of gear in the rig is a Furman AR-1215 A.C. Line Voltage Regulator (Not a cheap "Power Conditioner": A real honest-to-God voltage regulator with isolation transformers and everything. Using super-expensive gear without a voltage regulator in various places where you don't know what the electricity is like is exactly for your gear like having unprotected sex with a series of strange chicks would be for you: Could prove fatal).

Since each piece of gear is a single rack space, I only need a four space ultra-lightweight SBK molded rack to house it all (If you don't allow for an empty vent space between your power amp an everything else, you are an idjit, pure and simple).

The only remaining things are the speaker stands, an Ultimate X-Stand for the rack, and a guitar stand. I got one of those nifty Gruven collapsable guitar stands that actually fits in my gig bag, and am getting a custom made ballistic nylon bag that will hold all three of the other stands.

Even at "cozy" gigs I have concert-quality stereo sound and I don't get in the way:



Those bags in the background are hops and barley! Playing at a brewery rocks: I drink for free (After the gig, of course: That's Diet Cola in that mug on my rack).

And, the whole PA fits on a single handtruck:



I believe in small guitar gear, but not in small pickup trucks!



The locking bed cover gives me the worlds second-largest trunk (It's only a 6.5" bed), and means my small venue PA and hand truck never leave the vehicle. I love that! I practice on my large venue rig in my studio, and both systems will fit into the truck if I have a larger gig. It's... perfect.

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