Virtual Partch Instruments

Bobby Lee · From: Cloverdale, California, USA

Wow! Harry Partch's JI instruments have been virtualized in cyberspace!

click here

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Bobby Lee - email: quasar@b0b.com - gigs - CDs
Sierra Session 12 (E9), Williams 400X (Emaj9, D6), Sierra Olympic 12 (C6add9), Sierra Laptop 8 (D13), Fender Stringmaster (E13, A6),
Roland Handsonic, Line 6 Variax

Chip Fossa · From: Monson, MA, USA (deceased)

WOW!!! Harry's out there.

Mike Perlowin · From: Los Angeles CA

Both Partch and his fellow microtonalist Ivor Derrig used and built steel guitars and steel like instruments. At one time Derrig (whom I interviewed for an article in SGW) had a Stringmaster on which he painted different fret markings.

Take a close look at Partch's Surrogate Kithera. It's basically an acoustic double neck steel. The essential difference was that Partch played with a glass rod UNDER the strings. (One wonders how he could have slid it up and down the neck with all the tension on it.) This enabled him to press down the strings behind the rod to get pedal like sounds.

If Partch were alive today, it's reasonable to assume he'd be doing something with a pedal steel guitar. Probably with an altered fretboard and the pedals tuned to microtonal intervals.

Gino Iorfida · From: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

one good thing about a pedal steel, it would be VERY easy to convert a psg to 'microtonal' tunigns, since you coudl essentially print your own fretboard off on the computer, and as for the pedals, it would be NOTHING to back off the tuning nuts a bit to accomplish this... dont know if my ears would be into the microtonal thing, but to each his own

Bobby Lee · From: Cloverdale, California, USA

richard burton · From: Britain

and the bell on my bicycle sounds more tuneful.

Mike Perlowin · From: Los Angeles CA

You could be right about Partch Bobby. I never met the man. but I did spend a day with Ivor Derrig before he died and he was very much into electric instrunments. Besides the stringmaster, he has something he called a megalyre, which was a 6 foot long beam with tuning peg and a bass pickup, and 12 strings all tuned to C for a massive chorusing effect. The frets were painted in differnt colors for the different scales, and he played it like a steel with a piece of pipe.

He also had some synths which he had adapted play microtonal scales.

I have to say that between the 2 of them, Partch was far more creative. Derrig was more of a theoretician. I feel that he helped give us a new harmonic language and some toosl for expressing it, but never created any works of signicance. Partch gave us much more.

Bobby Lee · From: Cloverdale, California, USA

Partch's concepts are great, but his music doesn't inspire me at all. It just sounds wierd - too much dissonance for my taste.

If you want to hear some really nice JI microtonal music, listen to Lou Harrison.

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Bobby Lee - email: quasar@b0b.com - gigs - CDs
Sierra Session 12 (E9), Williams 400X (Emaj9, D6), Sierra Olympic 12 (C6add9), Sierra Laptop 8 (D13), Fender Stringmaster (E13, A6),
Roland Handsonic, Line 6 Variax

chas smith R.I.P. · From: Encino, CA, USA

His music, from my perspective, was more about visuals and theatre and personal documentation than about just music. For all of the effort and rigor of his tuning system and instruments, I tend to agree with the reviewer who decribed his compositions as kind of 4-square. However, if you were to see a live performance, it probably would have had a greater impact. I got to see a performance of "Highball". There was a lot of staging, costumes and activity as well as the instruments, which are theatrical in themselves. It was very impressive. One of the things I most admire about Harry Partch is that he literally created his own musical world, from the ground/instruments up.

Chris Brooks · From: Providence, Rhode Island

I attended a Harry Partch concert at UCLA about 1970.

Chas, the theatrical aspect was indeed very much in evidence. Performers all in black. The instuments were beautiful up there on stage in that small auditorium: lots of nice woods, his famous "cloud chamber" bowls, the super marimbas.

The composer was in the audience and, of course, introduced. I think he lived for a long time in Venice, CA.

Chris

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now living in the Ocean State ....

Bob Hoffnar · From: Austin, Tx

Wow ! Great site !

I went to school at SUNY Purchase in part because they had a massive collection of the original Partch instruments. I spent quite a bit of time in the studio with them. I love the recorded stuff but it does not compare to hearing them in a room. For one the marimba eroica produces a tone so low that you need a very big room to even let the waveform exist. The whole corporial concept is a big part of Partch's music.
I think that along with inventing a new form of music he also invented a new way to experience music. It seems that most have missed that aspect of his work so far. As time goes by he will be up there with Beethoven in terms of his impact on what is thought of as music. Remember that Beethovens music was thought of as proof that a deaf man can't compose in his day. Partch's concepts have already been integrated in a very large way into many aspects of current composition. Lets hope those academic bozo's that are all jumping ship on the serialism thing and going JI don't screw it up too much.

Bob

Bobby Lee · From: Cloverdale, California, USA

I believe that Steve Reich's influence will end up being the largest single musical force remembered from the late 20th century. Maybe I'm crazy to say that.

I'm not sure that microtonal music will ever really catch on. Reich's minimalist pulse, on the other hand, is already totally so assimilated into the culture that few see its origin. His ideas spread like wildfire.

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Bobby Lee - email: quasar@b0b.com - gigs - CDs
Sierra Session 12 (E9), Williams 400X (Emaj9, D6), Sierra Olympic 12 (C6add9), Sierra Laptop 8 (D13), Fender Stringmaster (E13, A6),
Roland Handsonic, Line 6 Variax

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