Bohlen-Pierce "Stick Men" by Elaine Walker

I composed "Stick Men" in 1991 in the Bohlen-Pierce Scale, and this is the first time I've performed it from beginning to end! I built these two keyboards especially for this performance at the Bohlen-Pierce Symposium, March 8, 2010. The keyboard I'm playing is a rearranged Roland A-30, and Dan is playing a Korg Poly800 with keys that I specially ordered, sawed, sanded and rearranged. I'll post videos on the making of these keyboards at some point. The hexagon keyboard (Called a "sonome") is the same one that is in my video series on rearranging the keys for the Bohlen-Pierce Scale. I had a deal with C-Thru-Music to keep the keyboard for a while, then give it to Dr. Boulanger of Berklee College of Music. "Dr. B" is performing on it here!

"Stick Men" was directly inspired by Dr Richard Boulanger's "Solemn Song for Evening" movement 2, which he played for composition class in the Music Synthesis Department at Berklee College of music during my undergrad, in 1990.

Performers: Elaine on her BP-tar (Bohlen-pierce scale tuned vertical keyboard), Dr Boulanger on the BP-sonome, Dan Sedgewick on BP-piano, Marji Gere on a BP-tuned violin.

This was performed in the Music Synthesis performance room at 22 The Fenway, room F12, in Boston, MA, on March 8, 2010 for the Bohlen-Pierce Symposium.

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Bohlen-Pierce Scale Symposium, Boston 2010

There has been enough interest lately in the Bohlen-Pierce Scale - a macrotonal musical tuning system based on a 3/1 frame (three times the frequency, called a "tritave", as opposed to the 2/1 "octave") divided by 13 equal steps - that an entire symposium was organized in Boston. It included the support of three major music educational institutions - Berklee College of Music, the Goethe Institute and New England Conservatory. Heinz Bohlen and Max Mathews skyped in at various times. It included three full days of talks and three full nights of music. I will type more information here soon and upload more videos as I get them digitized. Professional cameras were covering the entire symposium. Here I will just upload what I captured on my own camera. This symposium was very overwhelming for me, thinking I was among just a handful of interested BP fans. There were at least 40 people actively involved in this event and many more in the audience! See also: http://bohlen-pierce-conference.org/schedule/
http://bohlen-pierce-conference.org/concert-1/

Category:

Music

Tags:

• elaine
• walker
• stick
• men
• performance
• bp-tar
• piano
• violin
• sonome
• macrotonal
• bohlen-pierce
• scale
• symposium
• berklee
• college
• dr
• boulanger
• vertical
• keyboard

[randyhelzerman]

Is that a B.P. keytar!!!!!!!

[miselaineeous]

@randyhelzerman - Good GOD, Randy, this is not a KEYTAR!! They are my competition. lol. It's called a Vertical Keyboard. Just add a dot com after VerticalKeyboard and you can shop around. :D

[Shmlegshmlin]

Which mode(s) is this song in? I can't get it out of my head. Especially the section starting around 3:37 is just incredible!

[miselaineeous]

@Shmlegshmlin Oh gosh I have no idea. I write purely by ear. The keyboard itself is arranged in Dur II mode, and the one Dan is playing is in Lambda. I should really go back someday and analyze my music (I was kind of hoping other people would do that so I wouldn't have to. lol)

[miselaineeous]

@Shmlegshmlin - Oh gosh I have no idea. I write purely by ear. The keyboard itself is arranged in Dur II mode, and the one Dan is playing is in Lambda. I should really go back someday and analyze my music (I was kind of hoping other people would do that so I wouldn't have to. lol)

[clones98]

This is brilliant! Elaine do you exclusively work in B P now?

[miselaineeous]

@clones98 No, For but for the most part I've stuck with 19, 10 and BP only. I'm tired of 19, so I'm going to really focus on the two latter, then eventually try more equal temperaments. (I know.. I need to open my mind. lol) I tried a whole bunch of ET's over the years, but like 10 and BP so much more than most. 19 was just so easy since it's so closely related to 12.. a great way to get started with microtonal composition. That's why most of my music is 19.. but I'm moving on!

[expandingvoid]

Very rad! big ups to Dan and Marcy as well (fellow Xenharmonic Praxis 2011 Campers!!)

[Synapsenkitzler]

woaa, spooky spooky ;-o :-)

[dmGuillotine]

And then I realized ZIA was your band. Should've noticed sooner. I'll have to check out more of your work Elaine, it's a glorious sound.

[dmGuillotine]

Stumbled across this performance via Ziaspace, in something written there about the BP scale. This is fantastic, ethereal music which puts the concept of the scale to excellent use. I love when microtonality can be expressed sincerely in a live performance--you've made it so much more than math here. Bravo!

[akamarutv]

It's not a bad composition but it's a little strange because it resembles the whole tone scale and lots of augmented chords. So very spacy like, but it's nice to see someone actually playing microtonal music instead of just talking about it with math and science.

[jesusfreak1975]

bizarre scary creepy moving surreal journey..

[philnoll]

If you liked this video, vote for it.

[philnoll]

@Shmlegshmlin This chick is brilliant. Violins don't have frets. So they are free to play between the twelve modes. You might even have a keyboard in a different temperament completely up there. Search for "19 equal temperament" and "Bohlen Pierce" for info and examples of scales that have more than 12 notes. This is an amazing piece.