The Animation
of Lists And the Archytan Transpositions
by
Warren Burt
XI Records, New York, 2006
2 audio CDs. 63'29" and 64'48"
XI 130
Distributors website:
http://www.xirecords.org/.
Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen
Hogeschool Gent
Jan Delvinlaan 115, 9000 Gent, Belgium
stefaan.vanryssen@hogent.be
Warren Burt
has a history of exploring the very edges
of what is technically possible with new
and old instruments. He has been using
the mechanical gates of the earliest generation
of synthesizers as percussion instruments,
thereby changing would-be electronic instruments
into acoustical ones. He has travelled
the most remote regions of what is possible
with the human vocal apparatus and redefined
the borders between digital and analogous.
With a solid background in musical and
organological analysis and an ongoing
interest in psycho-acoustics, he seems
to be able to take any established practice
just one step further, creating fuzzy
no-mans-lands where entirely new aesthetics
can be created, enjoyed and used to reassess
old ones.
For this double CD Burt has been using
a set of tuning forks precisely tuned
to a just intonation. One would wonder
how a tuning fork could not be precisely
tuned, but the expression 'just-intonation'
refers to the actual frequencies the forks
are tuned to and not the fact that they
vibrate at one frequency only. Our traditional
tuning forks fit in a system of 'tempered
scales' where certain tones are slightly
off from what they should be in a perfect,
just-intonation scale. Under pythagorean
assumptions, all notes in a scale should
I emphasize "should"
because Pythagoras and his followers soon
discovered that reality isn't as ideal
is they hoped it to be be ordered
in a series of ratio's of integers: for
the octave, 2/3 for the fifth, etc. However,
if one moves through the scale and tries
to find the ratio's necessary to construct
all intervals in this way, the system
runs into serious trouble. It gets even
messier when you go beyond the octave
or when you move from major to minor and
more exotic scales. Numerous schemes have
been proposed to solve these problems
before Western music settled for the 'tempered'
scale where one instrument is supposed
to be able to perform any scale. The tempered
scale, however, trades harmonic integrity
for practical ease and loses a lot of
aesthetic qualities in the deal. I apologise
for this long digression, and you will
certainly find a better explanation in
any good book on harmony and the mathematical
basis of music, but it is necessary to
explain what the otherwise cryptical 'Architan
Transpositions' refer to.
In the first four pieces, Burt uses a
series of sounds played on his tuning
forks and manipulates that series to create
a cycle of four equal-length variations.
He digitally shifted the pitches of his
series up and down and combined the manipulated
recordings into highly intricate fabrics
of very pure sounds. The sound of bass
forks with a decay time of up to thirty
seconds combine with the clear and crisp
bell-like sounds of the treble ones. Their
harmonics merge, melt, create unexpected
chords and seem to play a game of their
own. Nothing new-agey here, simply pure
and almost pythagorean effectless music.
In the "Architan Transpositions",
Burt does something similar with digitally
retuned forks. The Greek mathematician
Archytas of Tarentum proposed a variation
on the pythagorean scale where a certain
interval is taken to be 28/27. To our
modern ears, this results in a weird scale,
but using this interval to transpose the
pitches of some of his forks, Burt succeeded
in creating a combined virtual/real instrumentarium
of 53 forks with harmonics that are more
interesting than the ones in his first
series of variations. The second cycle,
called "And the Archytan Transpositions
1 to 4" has more colourful harmonies and
at times even more drive because of the
'beating' interferences we hear between
certain pitches. But don't expect anything
like a drum 'n base record. The music
is absolute. The harmony is most intriguing
and yet unimaginably pleasing, but it
takes a lot of effort to enjoy this record
or should we say, this perfect
example of what 'research in music' could
mean.