Hiromi's Sonicwonder on tour

The cheezy opening synth riff notwithstanding, this video for the title track from Hiromi's fizzy, invigorating 2023 studio album, "Sonicwonderland", is oddly watchable (or is it just hypnotic?), closely following the plot of nearly every 8-bit console game I played as a child while looking infinitely more stylish and detailed. 

Even better? Catching Hiromi and her new Sonicwonder group live on tour at Evanston SPACE this past April! The fact that it was a homecoming for drummer Gene Coye contributed a poignant additional dimension to what was already a seismic event. I hadn't been to a live show for months (excluding a spirited theatrical adaptation of Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle at the Lifeline shortly after moving to Rogers Park). By the time the dust had finally settled it was clear that I could hardly have picked a more auspicious or altogether unique occasion to re-enter the world of live music! It's tempting to say there isn't anyone else doing anything quite like this, and in terms of raw energy matched with equal parts quantum-level composition and "laser sharp" virtuosity Hiromi is without a doubt in extremely rare company. Although perhaps not as immediately accessible, groups like Kneebody have touched on broadly similar material in recent times, showcasing a dense, largely keyboard-driven group-as-organism approach to contemporary Jazz. That latter ensemble's more aggressively cerebral emphasis is, however, along with some of Hiromi's own earlier work, somewhat at odds with the disarmingly madcap and downright charming sensibility of Sonicwonderland, some of whose quieter moments wouldn't sound entirely out of place on a mid-70s CTI outing. A once-in-a-generation artist who, like a young Glenn Gould, burst onto the scene as a teenage prodigy, has matured and moved into fresh new phase of her career; every bit as electrifying and focused on the future, yet with an even stronger sense of playfulness and willingness to take musical risks, and for this she and her ensemble should be highly commended.    

While the band currently appears to be taking a likely much-needed break from performing in support of the album, Sonicwonder are set to play two more shows this fall in the US (both in California) before heading back to play more dates in Japan. 

Can't wait to hear what'll come next from these truly next-level propeller-headed prog jazz susperstars!   

Adieu, l'ami

 

9 billion tongues

The utility of language is a function of its indexicality. Language doesn't describe or represent; rather, it points. It constitutes next to nothing on its own. It could even be said that it is devoid of any content. There is no greater inherent meaning to be found in the most ponderous of orations than in the humblest of apostrophes. The content is always furnished - conjured, if you will - by the interpreter, in much the same fashion as it was originally furnished by the intellect of the writer or speaker.

Words, like images and in general all manner of multisensory input, inevitably come to suggest far more than they contain, and can be considered effective mainly insofar as they succeed in this capacity. The empty vessel of sign: a puff of air, the splash of ink, in time plays host to an elaborate menagerie of phenomenological fauna and flora, both real and imagined.   

Corollary: If this were not so, the meanings of words would forever be fixed, and the patterns of language rendered static and inflexible through the ages. There would be but one universal tongue.

Aragon Ballroom

 

42

(for the post on June 30)

Yet we ought to remind ourselves that the contrariwise appearance of separate things is just that: an appearance. The things in themselves are never opposed, but at all times unified into a single system, together with the perceptual apparatus, in such a way as to produce these experiential effects. That is to say, the perceived contrast between one thing and another is entirely an artifact of the cognitive process. 

The boundary between distinct entities being itself a product of neural activity, it isn't merely phenomena like color and temperature that would ultimately fail to inhere in objects. It cannot be the case that only these are internal projections of other "things" like wavelength or the statistical average of molecular motion, but nothing else is besides. Surely the persistence of objects in and of themselves as extant "items" must likewise be called into question! The totality of any thing, then, including the concept, idea or symbol of that thing, is chiefly an inhabitant of the cognitive domain.

Thus, "everything", taken at face value, is, strictly speaking, nothing at all. The world is quite literally brought into being by its inhabitants.

The straight and narrow

Just to keep the record straight, it should be noted that the first equal-tempered tuning systems were not actually developed in ancient Greece, but rather in China. Although there is little evidence that Han dynasty Taoist philosophers Liu An (劉安) and Jing Fang (京房) did more than articulate what is essentially a mathematical problem of how to divide the octave into twelve equal portions around the first and second centuries BCE, an ingenious solution to the puzzle was at last published in 1584 in a treatise written by Zhu Zai-yü (朱載堉) called A New Account of the Science of Pitch Pipes. 

Zai-yü's method was elegantly simple: Multiply the ratio corresponding to the musical interval of a perfect fifth (3:2) to obtain a new equivalent ratio, 750:500. Then, subtract 1 from the numerator, shrinking the harmonic ratio ever so slightly. When these "imperfect" intervals are stacked in a series, one on top of the next (along what musicians today call the "circle of fifths") the result is reasonably close to every degree of the 12-note equal-tempered scale, with the 13th note matching very closely with the octave; something that isn't at all possible if you stack 12 fifths having a "perfect" ratio of 3:2. (The modern derivation, incidentally, is based on roots: namely, the 12th root of 2, but such mathematical conveniences were barely understood in antiquity).    

It appears that the problem of equal temperament was for the Chinese primarily one of theoretical rather than practical importance, emerging over many centuries by way of ancient Taoist ritual rather than arising out of the demands newly encountered in the construction of workable keyboard instruments capable of being played in any key without excessive dissonance, as was the case in 17th century Europe. Chinese scholars had already established a tradition of commentary on the proper tuning of bamboo pitch pipes going back as far as 2700 BCE. These ancient scholars were mainly interested in the psycho-spiritual aspects of sound and musical pitch in relation to their unique strand of theosophical cosmology which, among other things, commemorated the passing of a year with a series of monthly ceremonies associated with specific customs, modes of behavior, colors, foods and dress, along with musical pitches which were said to represent a kind of "balance of energies" for each calendar month. The question, then, of what the correct pitches were became one of extreme importance. Consequently, although Zhu Zai-yü is now credited as the earliest inventor of twelve-tone equal temperament, Chinese music overall doesn't seem to have had very much traffic with it except in this rather scholarly, rarified context prior to the modern era.   
      
For further reading and general information on the historical development of equal-tempered tuning, see Isacoff, 2001: Temperament (Vintage Books). See also Needham & Ronan, 1978: The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 4 - Part 1 (Cambridge University Press). A more recent Chinese treatment by Hui Yu (喻輝) can also be found here. 

The genius of nature is such that no matter what extremes or particularities may arise at any moment, or indeed come to define an age, there have been and will be again contrary extremes, outright reversals of fortune and all manner of complementary and transitional shades in between. If this were not so, then moments themselves would be barely distinguishable, blurring together instead to form one great gray, undifferentiated, incomprehensible mass.