Lewis Sykes

Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design (MIRIAD),
Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
January 2014

Whitney Triptych - Notes
The Augmented Tonoscope

Exploring the counterpoint in J. S. Bach's Fugue in F minor BWV 881 by visualising
the harmonically interdependent right and left hand parts of the Prelude each as a
Whitney Rose pattern with a third, central rose displaying the harmonic relationship
between them.

Context

This piece featured as part of a performance at Seeing Sound 3, Bath Spa
University, UK, 24th November 2013. The set featured four, short, abstract
audiovisual works created as part of my Practice as Research PhD and recent
collaborative practice with Ben Lycett - all of which attempt to show a deeper
connection between what is heard and what is seen by making the audible visible.
By looking for similar qualities to the vibrations that generate sound in the visual
domain, we try to create an amalgam of the audio and visual where there is a more
literal harmony.
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Concept

At the Understanding Visual Music 13 conference in Buenos Aires in August 13, I
was fortunate enough to spend some time discussing my work with composer, writer
and video artist Bill Alves - one of John Whitney Sr.s last collaborators before his
death in 1995. Alves built upon the principles outlined by Whitney, extending his
differential dynamics into three-dimensions and exploring new interpretations of
dynamic Just Intonation. Ive found his succinct summaries particularly useful in
re-evaluating Whitneys ideas and approaches, as well as recognising Whitneys
inuence and legacy through his video work.

The fact that whole number proportions create these arresting patterns of visual
resonance suggest a correspondence, or complementarity, to consonant musical
sonorities created by whole number frequency ratios, that is, Just Intonation. In my
rst video based on these principles, Hiway 70 (1997), I extended the polar
coordinate curves of Whitneys Permutations to three-dimensional graphics. But the
most important way in which my work was distinguished from his is that, approaching
this work as a composer, I created a soundtrack in tandem with the visual
composition, carefully synchronising movement between points of tension and
dissonance and points of stability and tonal consonance. I created the music entirely
in Just intonation, using harmonies which were often direct analogues of the patterns
of visual symmetry

" Alves, B. (2004) Digital Harmony of Sound and Light. Computer Music
Journal, Volume 29, Number 4, Winter 2005

So I showed Bill a real-time version of Stravinsky Rose - a Whitney Rose inspired
visualisation of Igor Stravinskys Three Pieces for Clarinet Solo (1918) performed by
Fiona Cross of the Manchester Camerata (Id screened a full-dome version short lm
in the Buenos Aires Galileo Galilei Planetarium as part of the Understanding Visual
Music 13 programme). He suggested I develop the idea further using the technique
to explore counterpoint - the harmonically interdependent parts in a piece of music
that are independent in rhythm and contour - proposing that I could display each
portion of a two part counterpoint as independent Whitney patterns, with a third
displaying the harmonic relationship between the two. Bill also hinted that this was
something John Whitney Sr. himself would have been very interested in - and I
needed no more persuasion than that.


Scrubbing the Algorithm

John Whitney Sr. is considered by many to be the godfather of modern motion
graphics. Beginning in the 1960s, he created a series of remarkable lms of abstract
animation that used computers to create a harmony - not of colour, space, or musical
intervals, but of motion. Based on the trigonometry of Euclidian geometry, Whitney
used simple mathematical equations to generate elementary animated gures,
arguing that their vital, alternately diverging and converging forms, could be viewed
as a visual parallel to the sonic harmonic series.

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Like Bill Alves and many others inspired by Whitneys ideas, Ive sought a
correspondence between musical pitch and#the convergence/divergence of the
patterns in the#Whitney Rose. Since the resolution of these patterns occur at those
ratios defined by small whole number ratios e.g. at a ratio of 1/2 or 0.5 the pattern
displays two arms, at a ratio of 1/3 or 0.33 the pattern displays three arms and so on,
Ive attempted to correlate a pattern to a pitch - to match those points along the
Roses progression with the frequency or pitch of a note also dened by small whole
number ratios or Just Intonation harmonic relationships. For example, if I set a root
frequency, say A4 at 440Hz, then a ratio of 1/2 or 0.5 will produce a frequency of
440*0.5 i.e. 220Hz or A3 - one octave down - and the Whitney Rose algorithm will
display two arms.

Yet through development of my own works based on Whitneys code I've started to
understand the nature of the algorithm more and make my own modest contribution
to Whitneys legacy. I've realised that the deceptively simple Rose algorithm has
a periodic, cyclic nature - it repeats. So it's possible to conceive of it as a long looped
sequence - albeit with a cycle length ranging from minutes to hours. It's also possible
to jump to and 'jog' up and down points along the timeline of this sequence in a
manner very akin to video editing or music sequencing - essentially scrubbing the
algorithm.

To demonstrate this act I use a tweening function - a scalar interpolation from one
position to another that determines position as a function of time - to tween between
these points - to fast forward the dynamic pattern generated by the algorithm
onwards or fast reverse it backwards to a specific point along its progression. To
make the transition from point to point more naturalistic, I add easing at the start
and end of the motion - to simulate an acceleration, a change in speed or velocity.


Technical Realisation

The work explores real-time audiovisual performance using custom-made software
systems developed using the creative C++ toolkit openFrameworks.

In Stravinsky Rose I tracked Fionas live performance using a customised ddle
object in MaxMSP and sent the resulting MIDI note values into the OpenFrameworks
visualising sketch. Within the sketch I compared these successive values to the
dominant note in each of the pieces (theres no tonic as such - Stravinsky didnt write
these works in a given key) and calculated the respective ratios between the
dominant and incoming notes. I then used this ratio to scrub along the timeline of a
series of variants of the Whitney algorithm moving to that specic point along the
timeline dened by the ratio i.e. if the incoming note was an octave below the
dominant note the ratio would be 0.5 - half way along the algorithm timeline.

In Whitney Triptych I use a similar technique within the OpenFrameworks visualising
sketch to compare the incoming notes of a MIDI le of the Bach fugue played via
Ableton Live 9, with the left and right-hand parts separated onto their own MIDI
channel. I compare the successive notes of each of these parts to the F4 tonic and
scrub each respective Rose to that specic point along its timeline. Finally, I
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calculate the ratio between the last incoming note from each part and use this value
to scrub the central Rose to that specic point along its respective timeline.


Choice of Music

While Ive been a musician for many years, my focus has always been on
contemporary musical styles such as rock, electronic pop and reggae and
particularly underground dance genres such as techno, breakbeat and electronica.
So Ive been keen to broaden my musical horizons, develop my knowledge of music
theory and explore unfamiliar musical traditions and forms through my PhD research.

The use of Just Intonation (JI) based tuning systems argued by Whitney, Alves and
others opens up interesting possibilities - despite the limitations in such systems that
led ultimately to the adoption by Western Music in the C18th of the twelve-tone
Equal Temperament - a system of tuning, in which the octave is divided into a series
of 12 equal steps with identical frequency ratios between successive notes.

Yet there have been efforts to extend the basic system of Just Intonation in more
sophisticated ways to create more exible 12-tone and multi-tonal scales - including
5-limit, 7-limit, 17-limit - as well as specic JI tuning systems employed by the likes of
Harry Partch, an American twentieth-century composer and instrument creator.
Partch was one of the rst composers to work extensively and systematically with
microtonal scales, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments that he
built himself, tuned in 11-limit (43-tone) Just Intonation.

This historical musical evolution results in a rich Western Music tradition centred on
Just Intonation - from the Pythagorean tuned music of ancient Greece, the plainsong
of early Western religious music, the subtle harmony through inference rather than
full chordal structures conveyed through the counterpoint of the Baroque, to
contemporary composers such as Harry Partch exploring microtonal scales
developed from sophisticated Just Intonation scales. Theres also numerous non-
Western musical traditions, such as South Asian art music and the Arabic Maqam
scales, which while not wholly based on Just Intonation, do rely heavily on the just
interval within their organisation.

So a key issue Ive asked, despite a general disinterest in micro-tonality, is how
might the principles of Just Intonation impact on my research and on my design of an
audiovisual instrument? How will this shape its development? What existing
instruments will it be most akin to? Which musical traditions might best support the
search for an equivalence between musical tone, analogue cymatic pattern and
digital motion graphics?

As such, Bill Alves suggestion of exploring counterpoint was something Id already
considered but hadnt rationalised. Counterpoint has been most commonly identied
in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the
common practice period, especially in Baroque music. So the Baroque Period offers
the apex of the natural evolution of musical counterpoint from the 13th century
onwards - and J.S. Bach arguably represents the pinnacle of the form.
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Limitations

While I think this work is one of my more successful proofs of concept it does have
its limitations.

The Bach prelude is a MIDI le downloaded from the online collection of the J. S.
Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II edited and sequenced by Yo Tomita. Despite
Tomitas efforts to add more elaborate articulations, ornamentations and tempo
changes, to my mind it lacks the human feel, musical expression and natural
cadence and dynamic of many of the performances of the piece I found on Spotify.
I did try to extract the grooves from selected audio recordings and apply it to the
MIDI le, but even though this is one of Bachs slower tempo fugues it is still typically
complex and Ableton Live 9s Melody to MIDI and Harmony to MIDI functions
werent quite up to the job - and it would have been too onerous a task to stretch the
MIDI le out to reect these recordings bar-by-bar. So a next natural step is to record
the MIDI of a skilled pianist performing this or an alternative work. My recent
connection with young percussionists at the Royal Northern College of Music
(RNCM) should certainly help here.

While there is limited polyphony in the piece there are occasional chords and since
my technique can only use a single ratio value Ive elected to select only the lowest
note of any chord - which is most likely to be but might not actually be the tonic.

Certain sections of the prelude feature right-handed parts only, so Ive selected those
few notes that seemed to best reect the counterpoint and have moved them into the
left-handed part (they fall within the range played by the left hand anyway).

Lastly, but most signicantly, while Bachs harpsichord may not have been tuned to
12-ET tuning - the MIDI le is. So despite my rationalisation above, the actual ratios
generated for each note against the tonic of F is currently based on 12-ET tuning
and not on a Just Intonation based tuning system such as Pythagorean 3-limit tuning
or John Telfers Lamdoma Matrix JI framework which Ive since integrated into my
own musical interface. As such the ratios produced are not based on small whole
numbers and so the Whitney Rose animations dont display their converging and
diverging patterns as faithfully as they might. Ableton Live is not well suited to JI and
although I have started to adapt a Max4Live device that will allow a range of GM
MIDI notes to have specic pitchbend values resulting in a precise Just Intonation
scale, I didnt quite manage to implement this in time for this version.
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