“Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed — no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.” — George Orwell. 1984
Nella teoria musicale il tritono è l’intervallo di quinta diminuita (o anche quarta aumentata o quarta eccedente): tra una nota e l’altra c’è una distanza di tre toni. Il tritono è anche la metà esatta di una ottava. Questo intervallo è una delle maggiori dissonanze della scala diatonica, e durante il medioevo era chiamato diabolus in musica. Il suono del tritono tende fortemente verso la risoluzione di una progressione.
Sostituzione di tritono
Nella musica jazz la sostituzione di tritono consiste nel sostituire, normalmente nell’ ambito di una progressione ii-V-I, un accordo di settima di dominante (che può anche comparire con la quinta e/o la nona alterate) con un altro accordo di settima avente la tonica distante tre toni dalla tonica dell’accordo precedente.
Per esempio in Do maggiore l’accordo di dominante è il Sol7, che può essere sostituito dal suo tritono Reflat7.
Le ragioni alla base di questa sostituzione sono diverse:
* La principale sta nell’osservare che i due accordi hanno la stessa terza e settima, ma in ordine inverso (nell’esempio Sol-Si-Re-Fa e Reflat-Fa-Laflat-Si) e il terzo e il settimo grado di un accordo sono considerati molto caratterizzanti.
* La fondamentale e la quinta nell’accordo sostituito (nell’esempio, Sol e Re) sono rispettivamente la quarta aumentata e la 9b dell’accordo di rimpiazzo, e la stessa relazione , vale per la fondamentale e la quinta di quest’ultimo rispetto al precedente.
* Se uno dei due accordi è alterato (con quinta e nona aumentate o con quinta aumentata e nona bemolle) si può usare – melodicamente – la stessa scala (lidia aumentata) su entrambi gli accordi, ad esempio:
* La sostituzione nella cellula II-V-I permette al basso di eseguire la progressione Re-Reflat-Do ad intervalli discendenti di un semitono, che è molto comune.
Questa sostituzione è diventata così frequente nel jazz moderno che viene spesso effettuata anche su accordi di dominante che non compaiono nel contesto di una progressione ii-V-I.
The Devil’s Chord
Exploring the history of the tritone
By Brian Allan
July 2006
The tritone or ‘Devil’s Chord’ – a musical interval, such as the augmented fourth, spanning three whole tones – has a long musical history of links to diabolism, from the Church’s wholesale banning of it in the Middle Ages, through the Romantic era, blues and jazz, to modern film music and death metal.
Before the proscription of the interval it was, according to Professor John Deathridge, King Edward Professor of Music at King’s College London, often used to represent the presence of evil: "In mediæval theology, you have to have some way of presenting the devil. Or if someone in the Roman Catholic Church wanted to portray the crucifixion, it is sometimes used there." Later, though, it came to be seen as a dissonance, and was outlawed, says Deathridge, on technical grounds in which, perhaps, a theological ban can also be read.
Romantic portrayals of evil – particularly in the works of Wagner – brought the tritone’s tension-inducing power to the musical fore, and modern musicians – from film composer Bernard Hermann to seminal ‘metal’ act Black Sabbath – have drawn on these associations to add a spooky atmosphere to their own work. Sabbath’s guitarist Tony Iommi denies making conscious use of the ‘Devil’s Interval’, claiming that he was just looking for "something that sounded right… something that sounded really evil and very doomy."
The genre’s love affair with the tritone is examined in a new film about the history of heavy metal, A Headbanger’s Journey (see http://www.metalhistory.com). BBC News, 28 Apr 2006
Liszt – Dante Sonata
Wagner – Gotterdammerung
Sibelius – Fourth Symphony
Britten – War Requiem
Leonard Bernstein – West Side Story
Bernard Hermann – The Day the Earth Stood Still
Jimi Hendrix – Purple Haze
Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath
King Crimson – Larks’ Tongues in Aspic
Rush – YYZ
Metallica – For Whom the Bell Tolls
Danny Elfman – The Simpsons Theme
L.O.S.D. "Organic 23"; disco in vinile 5 pollici e copertina
Questo post e’ dedicato ai pionieri dell’hip hop del turntablism e dello scratch: Kool DJ Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, Grandwizzard Theodore, Grandmaster Flash, Grandmixer DST (AKA DXT), Charlie Chase, Red Alert, Scott La Rock (RIP), Jam Master Jay (RIP), Eric B, Terminator X, Steve D, DJ Qbert, the X-ecutioners, DJ Craze, A-trak, Mix Master Mike.
Spulciando le pagine della rete ho trovato questo articolo che avvisa i collezionisti di vinile di NON FARE COSA FANNO I DJ con i dischi (vedi titolo dell’articolo). Mi sembrava divertente pubblicare l’articolo e dedicarlo a tutti i dj, agli skratcher, ai turntablist e a tutti quelli che cercano dspingere l’idea del giradischi come strumento musicale. In effetti è vero che la pratica dello scratch rovina inevitabilmente il supporto vinilico, ma si puo’ ovviare a questo inconveniente in vari modi:
1: usare delle puntine con punta sferica o ellissoide (io uso le ortofon concorde perche’ mi trovo bene, non per fare pubblicità, ma hanno un suono pulito e soppoortano bene l’usura provocata da scratch ed altre manipolazioni)
2: non caricare troppo peso sulla puntina del giradischi (3 grammi di peso bastano per non far saltare la puntina e non consumare troppo il solco; attenzione a bilanciare bene il contrappeso)
3: non essere grossolani e non avere la mano pesante quando si manipola il vinile sul giradischi, cercando di non far saltare lo stilo (puntina)
4: usare dischi appositamente creati per lo scratch e i turntablist che generalmente hanno solchi piu’ profondi dei normali dischi (dipende anche dal formato e dalla velocita’ di rotazione 16, 33, 45 o 78, piu’ alta e’ la velocita’ di rotazione piu’ il solco e’ profondo, in teoria) il che fa si’ che il suono non perda le sue caratteristiche e duri un po’ di piu’ anche se sottoposto alle sollecitazioni tipiche dello scratching. I suddetti vinili, chiamati battle breaks o scratch tools o piu’ semplicemente tools (arnesi, attrezzi, strumenti), sono reperibili in qualsiasi negozio di dischi specializzato per i DJ oppure via internet, e ne esistono a centinaia anche sul mercato italiano
5: procurarsi piu’ copie di un vinile che usate spesso in modo da avere una copia di riserva se il suono perde le sue caratteristiche e la sua dinamica originale (gia’ dopo pochi ascolti si ha una perdita quantificabile in kilohertz sulle alte frequenze*) o viene accidentalmente graffiato; inoltre con due copie identiche si possono fare cose che sono impossibili con una sola (per esempio il break beat, ovvero creare un beat prolungando indefinitamente un break di batteria).
*
da wikipedia: "La RIAA ha quantificato la riduzione alle alte frequenze in base al numero di ascolti e sarebbero udibili: fino a 20 kHz dopo un ascolto, 18 kHz dopo tre ascolti, 17 kHz dopo cinque ascolti, 16 kHz dopo otto, 14 kHz dopo quindici, 13 kHz dopo venticinque, 10 kHz dopo trentacinque, 8 khz
dopo ottanta ascolti. Il degrado può aumentare, se si ascolta il vinile
ripetutamente in rapida successione. L’enorme pressione dello stilo
sulle pareti del solco, equivalente a circa una tonnellata per
centimetro quadro per ogno grammo di peso in una scala microscopica,
causa una deformazione delle pareti del solco generata dal calore e la
conseguente distorsionesonora."
This post is dedicated to the pioneers of hip hop music of turntablism
and scratch: Kool DJ Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, Grandwizzard Theodore,
Grandmaster Flash, Grandmixer DST (AKA DXT), Charlie Chase, Red Alert,
Scott La Rock (RIP) Jam Master Jay (RIP), Eric B, Terminator X, Steve
D, DJ Qbert, the X-ecutioners, DJ Craze, A-trak, Mix Master Mike.
Reading the web pages, I found this article that warns
vinyl collectors to DON’T DO WHAT YOU SEE DJS DOING with records (see title of the
article). I publish it beacause it seemed fun at the fact that I do dj sets for over
11 years and in fact it must be said that the practice of scratching
inevitably ruins vinyl supports , but you can avoid this problem in
various ways:
1: use a needle with spherical or ellipsoid stylos tip (I use ortofon concorde because is good for me, but there’s also anternatives to it, i believe)
2: do not load too much weight on the turntable arm (3 grams of weight
enough to prevent needle skipping and not consume the groove too much; be careful
balancing the arm counterweight)
3: do not be coarse and do not be heavy-handed when handling the record on the turntable, trying not to skip the needle while scratching
4: use records specially created for scratching and turntablists who
generally have deeper grooves than normal records (also depends on
the size and speed of rotation 16, 33, 45 or 78, the highest is
the speed of rotation the most the groove is deep, in theory), which means
that the sound does not lose its dynamics even when
subjected to the typical stresses of the scratching techniques. These records,
called battle breaks or scratch tools or more simply tools, are available in any record store designed for DJs or via
the Internet, and there are hundreds in stores
5:
obtain more copies of a record you use often in order to have a backup
copy if the sound loses its features and its dynamic original (already
after a few listenings there is a quantifiable loss in high
frequencies kilohertz*) or if it’s accidentally scratched; also with two
identical copies you can do things that are impossible with one (for
example, break beat, to make a beat or create a break indefinitely prolonging drums breaks).
* from Wikipedia: "The RIAA has quantified the
reduction of high frequencies based on the number of hearings and would
be audible up to 20 kHz after a hearing, 18 kHz after three hearings,
17 kHz audience after five, 16 kHz after eight, 14 after fifteen kHz,
13 kHz after a twenty-five, 10 kHz after thirty-five, 8 kHz after eighty hearings. degradation may increase if you listen to the vinyl
repeatedly in rapid succession. enormous pressure of the stylus on the
walls of the groove, equivalent to about a ton per cm square for each gram weight in a microscopic scale, causes a deformation of the
walls of the wake created by the heat and the resulting distortion
of sound."
Record Care
Written by Administrator
Thursday, 31 August 2006
Forum discussion
Hardware related
1- clean your LPs preferrably using a record cleaning machine or at least
manually with a good brush and cleaning solution.
2- clean your LPs prior to their first play to remove mold release
compound. Use a special deep cleaner that removes mold release compound.
This will help prevent pops and clicks.
3- use a good support system for your turntable. Some suggestions are a
wall-mounted shelf, a good rack, and/or a rack with a specialty platform
such as a Neuance platform.
4- Use a better inner sleeve than those usually provided.
Nagaoka and Mobile Fidelity sleeves are reccommended.
Many people also prefer plain white rice paper sleeves.
5- Store your records tidily and vertically.
Partitions about a foot square are good.
6- Use a good turntable and cartridge/needle. Worn needles, or where there
is too much or too little weight resting on the record can all damage it. A regular
service of your TT is not a bad idea also, both for protecting them and for
getting the best sound quality out of them.
7- Don’t leave finger prints on your records.
They leave greasy smudges and attract dust. Try and use the edges and the labels to hold
your records. Don’t do what you see DJs doing!!
Can I Get An Amen? is an audio installation that unfolds a critical perspective of perhaps the most sampled drum beat in the history of recorded music, the Amen Break. It begins with the pop track Amen Brother by 60’s soul band The Winstons, and traces the transformation of their drum solo from its original context as part of a ‘B’ side vinyl single into its use as a key aural ingredient in contemporary cultural expression. The work attempts to bring into scrutiny the techno-utopian notion that ‘information wants to be free’- it questions its effectiveness as a democratizing agent. This as well as other issues are foregrounded through a history of the Amen Break and its peculiar relationship to current copyright law.
From his home in Shepperton following the November 2, 2004, US Presidential elections, J.G. Ballard wonders over the phone with V. Vale if there is something fundamentally flawed about the American take on reality.
V. Vale: I wanted to get your “take” on the neo-cons and Bush, and your perspective on what happened with this election in November, 2004.
J.G. Ballard: I’m sure you and your readers have had an absolute Niagara of comment on the subject, so I don’t want to give anything but one European’s perspective on it. But there’s no doubt that most people over here on this side of the Atlantic were hoping for a Kerry victory. There’s something very frightening about Bush and the neo-con group. Donald Rumsfeld is quite a scary figure — putting it mildly.
V. Vale: One feels that Bush and his closest advisors are entirely driven by emotions. They’re no longer driven by a reasoned analysis of where the world is going, and what the U.S. response should be. They’re driven by this visceral need to express their anger — you know, their anger and, really, rage at the world. One feels, listening to people like Rumsfeld, Bush himself, and one or two of the others like Richard Perle, that the world is seen as an extremely hostile place.
J.G. Ballard: And moreover, they want it to be a hostile place. They need enemies who can be challenged and then destroyed. This is a kind of psychology that people in Europe are very familiar with, going back to the psychology of people like Hitler and his henchman, and then to Stalin and the whole paranoid stance that both the Nazi and the Soviet regimes had towards their enemies. If they didn’t have enemies, they would soon invent enemies. Because they’re absolutely hung up — and I suspect Bush and the neo-cons, to a surprising extent, in a great democracy like the U.S., are hung up on this need to hate and this need to destroy. And of course it’s frightening, because where will it end? Today Iraq, tomorrow Iran, and the day after, hmmm… maybe France, you know, because given their mindset, there will be no shortage of enemies. I think there’s nothing particularly extreme about saying this. I think it’s what people over here perceive of as part of the dangers of this situation. Nobody thinks there is a connection between the 9-11 attack and Saddam Hussein. There’s no connection at all — it’s quite the opposite. Hussein was running a secular regime. Bush and Rumsfeld have created a kind of unstable regime dominated by religious fanatics in Iraq, of the Khadafi kind they thought they were getting rid of! So it is unnerving. It leads us to question many other areas of the American world view. Is there something fundamentally flawed about the American take on reality? I say that as a lifelong admirer of the U.S., by the way. But it does seem to me that a lot of the formulas that govern American life — in particular its entertainment culture — have leaked out of, say, the Hollywood films and into political reality. That’s frightening. I’ve got a feeling that Americans, who have always been admired and always been liked for the most part, don’t take kindly to being disliked. Unlike, say, the British and French, who have been disliked since the year “dot.” The Americans don’t like being disliked; the reverberations of 9-11 are not going to go away. I’m sure there will be other attacks of a similar kind and they will keep the pot boiling.
V. Vale: Yes. And these days, the Bush Team seems to basically dictate press announcements to the press as “news,” and then the news media just gladly print them without any critical stance or analysis. Recently in the news there was the declaration: “Well, we think Iran has weapons of mass destruction.” Obviously Team Bush is gearing up for an attack on Iran.
J.G. Ballard: Well, it does look like that. What’s worrying is that that will be an automatic response: “So, it’s going to be Iran next.” I can’t imagine American ground forces are going to roll across the border, but I can see strategic bombing attacks designed to destabilize the present regime and knock out their nuclear research installations. But, the consequences would be disastrous for the world economy if the huge oil supplies locked up in the Middle East were interrupted. God knows what will happen.
V. Vale: We saw a preview of that in Mad Max, didn’t we?
J.G. Ballard: Yes, absolutely. It’s a worrying time because Bush seems to delight in the sort of mythological version of himself which he’s created: the swaggering Texan who is supremely confident of his ability to stare down any mean guys who get in his way. Rumsfeld seems to come out of the same corner of the fairground. Some of the others, like Perle, whom we see a lot of on British television, and Wolfowitz whom we also see, are much more intellectual and they provide a smooth rationale. Something worries me. This goes back to the period of forty years ago when strategic planners in the Pentagon were heavily influenced by game theory, John Von Neumann and others. They seriously believed there was a window of opportunity that the U.S. should take while it still enjoyed nuclear supremacy. This was the time to strike, before the Soviet missile deployment would match the U.S.’s. From what one reads, serious thought was given to picking a fight with the Russians and then obliterating them! One sees something of the same mind-set at work today, and it’s a little bit scary.
V. Vale: [laughs] To say the least. Wow. I’m very cautious of conspiracy theories because you can drive yourself crazy — you will never really know who killed JFK, for example. But at the same time I’m very interested in the underlying thinking that doesn’t get publicized, like the game theory of John Von Neumann, who was the model for the title character in Dr. Strangelove. You don’t hear much about that anymore, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t go away.
J.G. Ballard: I think it’s come to the surface again, hasn’t it? It’s something I’ve argued for a long while. In my last novel, Millennium People, I was putting forth the proposition that nothing disconcerts people more than an apparently meaningless act. If a hostile act in particular has some sort of obvious point… if you’re an anti-globalization protestor and you picket the offices of some multinational company, or even if you blow up their showroom windows, everybody understands — they may disapprove, but they understand. But on the other hand, a meaningless act really unsettles people for obvious reasons, because we look for logic. To some extent, the tragic events of 9-11 constitute a kind of meaningless act.
V. Vale: What do you mean?
J.G. Ballard: I haven’t seen any convincing explanation of what Mohammed Atta and his fellow hijackers were trying to achieve. I mean, this is a spectacular blow against what we’re told is — was — an American symbol: the twin World Trade Center towers…
V. Vale: The WTC was a spectacular symbol of American economic dominance over the world, I think.
J.G. Ballard: I don’t think they were seen as such by the rest of the world. They were seen as two very tall buildings. I’ve never heard anyone refer to them. Now, the Empire State Building, and to some extent the Chrysler Building, had enormous symbolic value, which I remember back in the 1930s, soon after the Empire State Building opened for business. That stood for New York, and it stood for America. But I’ve never heard of the World Trade Center thought of in those terms. I’ve never heard anyone in any television program, documentary, article or book refer to the World Trade Center towers in the way, for example, that people always refer to the Pentagon as a threatening presence.
V. Vale: I think the WTC towers were elevated into this position of representing American capitalism after the event.
J.G. Ballard: Well, whether they were or not, the point is: the attack on them was really meaningless — it didn’t achieve anything, apart from killing a huge number of people. It was almost a meaningless act; the logic was difficult to follow. If you hated the U.S. so much, there were other and better targets, in a way: the Capitol in Washington, the White House, the Pentagon itself — one plane obviously wasn’t going to do enough damage; all four planes could have gone into the Pentagon. The symbolic value of an attack, say, on the White House or the Capitol would have been far, far greater. By comparison, the attack on the World Trade Center in New York was really… It almost comes into the category of a meaningless act… and it’s this that people find so unsettling. I think that when you’re faced with a meaningless act of that kind, the brain rushes around trying to find some sort of conceivable reason at work in the perpetrators’ mind. Although no one is prepared to come out and sort of back Samuel Huntington’s notion of “The Clash of Civilizations” — you know, the Christian West vs. Islam — people act as if the war against the Muslim world were already declared.
V. Vale: In fact, Bush constantly talks about war, doesn’t he? He refers to himself as the “War President.”
J.G. Ballard: Whereas in terms of the huge enormous unlimited power of the U.S. military, I would regard the invasion of Iraq as a police action. I mean, it’s degenerated into a kind of huge police action now — it’s a “law and order” problem. The reactive mechanism in Bush’s mind, and in the minds of the neo-cons around him, has been touched off. And also of course, the other thing that sort of worries us in Europe, is the way in which religious belief has begun to merge seamlessly into this sort of war mentality. That is something that is very scary, because it justifies anything. If “God” is on your side and you’re absolutely convinced of that, then you can do anything.
V. Vale: And justify anything you did.
J.G. Ballard: Absolutely. Going back to the Crusades and religious pogroms in Europe, the Dark Ages, the Inquisition in the 14th-15th century (or whenever), the religious wars… One doesn’t want to get too carried away, but there are unsettling echoes — put it like that. I think back to earlier American Presidents when I was younger — say, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower… one can’t imagine them ever having gotten into this war in Iraq. Or into this peculiar mind-set, this sort of “Religious Warrior” mind-set. They weren’t riding an emotional horse… The puzzling thing is: Why has this happened? Is there something within the American view of the world, the way that Americans think, that is responsible? In other words, has the genie escaped from the Hollywood bottle … and got out into the ordinary air we breathe? One can’t help wondering that. The logic that underpins Independence Day and Con-Air and all these films seems to be directing America today. I’m probably wrong, but that’s the impression that people have over here.
V. Vale: Definitely. Those popular films perpetuate, or inflict, a mythology, upon Americans … there are all these assumptions underlying those films.
J.G. Ballard: Yes, it underpins those films, and it underpins the American comics that I read in the 1940s. I remember reading Superman comics in 1937, 1938 in Shanghai, and the hero could transform himself — which Bush thinks he can do: he goes into the War Room in the Pentagon and he comes out a cross between Richard the Lion-Hearted and god knows who else. There is the idea that if what you’re doing is “right,” and “God” tells you so, you have unlimited power. That’s a very powerful combination, actually, if you happen to be President of the U. S., but it’s frightening for the rest of the world. I mean, I can imagine a world where everyone is so frightened of the U.S. that we all convince ourselves that we admire it absolutely, and will agree with everything America demands of us, but that will not satisfy the man in the White House at the time. What he needs — or it may be a she, although I would think that Hillary’s hopes are rather slender at the moment — I mean for eight years’ time, whenever. But there seems to be a need… Maybe it’s something as simple as the need for revenge — it’s hard to say. But I think it’s more than that; I think it’s the need to turn the rest of the world into a free-fire zone where anybody who puts his head up out of the nearest ditch is going to get it shot off. That way they’re “safe.” But, it may be a passing phase…
This interview was first published in Arthur Magazine, February 15, 2005, and was excerpted from the book, J.G. Ballard: Conversations. This book, and a companion volume, J.G. Ballard: Quotations, is now available from www.researchpubs.com
