This actually seems to be much more logical and interesting than a one-dimensional layout. The marimba plays microtonal music, i.e. notes that don't exist on a normal keyboard (the microtonal notes are in between the normal keyboard notes). Each southwest-northeast row contains a scale in a different key. Each scale contains notes whose frequencies are exact multiples of that scale's base key (give or take some octaves) -- e.g. if the base note is C then the scale contains C, G, E, D, plus other non-standard notes. The rows in the perpendicular, northwest-southeast direction also contain scales. These scales contain all the notes that the base note's frequency is a multiple of -- the inverse relationships of the relationships in the southwest-northeast rows -- e.g. for a base note of C, the scale contains C, F, A-flat, B-flat, plus other non-standard notes -- more like a minor scale. The southwest-northeast rows are called otonalities and the northeast-southwest rows are called utonalities... I love good jargon.The coolest thing, however, is that you can actually play the diamond marimba, virtually, at this site. (Note: I think the labels on the lower half are off by an octave or two [i.e. a factor of 2 or 4]).
This guy's site also has links to the software he uses to compose microtonal music. I definitely want to try it.
The diamond marimba was invented by Harry Partch, a 20th century American composer whose music I've been a fan of for a year now, without knowing much about the instruments on which it was played. Here's some of his music featuring (I think) the diamond marimba.
Arrest, Trial and Judgement (single song from the opera Delusion of the Fury)
Delusion of the Fury in its entirety
3 comments:
That diamond marimba is really sweet. Also, the marimba was always my favorite keyboard. :D
This reminded me of a lecture I saw this summer at the Santa Fe Institute. Let's see, here's the abstract from the talk. I think the speaker had a few published papers relating to some of the material from the talk, you might be able to find them if you go looking... It was really sweet stuff.
Whoa. That abstract looks like quite a mindfuck. Thanks for the link.
It was really, really cool. Like, then, in the structures, you'd have these multi-dimensional lattices of note combinations, and then based on how many ways you had of restricting musical similarities (e.g., the same chord or something), you'd project the lattices down onto a lower-dimensional structure. But then you'd have different paths to get btwn the same two points on that structure, based on the notes you played, b/c the paths on the original higher-dimensional space were different (and thus the projected paths were different). And there was all this neat reflection and stuff going on with the movement between paths. Definitely look into it more if you can! My crappy summarizing does not do it justice.
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