Bohlen-Pierce "Love Song" by Elaine Walker

Hear the album: http://ziaspace.com/_music/discograph...

I composed "Love Song" in 2007 in the Bohlen-Pierce Scale. I built these two keyboards specifically for this performance at the Bohlen-Pierce Symposium, March 8, 2010. The keyboard I'm playing is a rearranged Roland A-30, and Dan is playing a Korg Poly800 with keys that I specially ordered, sawed, sanded and rearranged. I'll post videos on the making of these keyboards at some point. The hexagon keyboard (Called a "sonome") is the same one that is in my video series on rearranging the keys for the Bohlen-Pierce Scale. I had a deal with C-Thru-Music to keep the keyboard for a while, then give it to Dr. Boulanger of Berklee College of Music. "Dr. B" is performing on it here!

"Love Song" was an experiment, to see if I could compose a song in the Bohlen-Pierce Scale in such a way that the listener wouldn't notice anything strange about the tuning. To do this, I used more organic sounds than I normally do (piano, violin, flute, cello) and chose a lyrical topic that is very standard (love and heartache), then worked on finding chord progressions that work. Was my experiment successful? Does it bend your ears? Or does it just sound like a nice love song?

Performers: Elaine Walker on the BP-tar (Bohlen-pierce scale tuned vertical keyboard), Dr Boulanger on the BP-sonome, Dan Sedgewick on BP-piano, Marji Gere on a BP-tuned violin.

This performance is in the same room at Berklee College of Music in Boston where I performed my senior project - 22 The Fenway, room F12.

Liner notes from the concert:

LOVE SONG – 4:40
My mission since the early nineties has been to write microtonal music in the same style that I would otherwise use 12 tones for. I see no reason to treat microtonal scales, particularly equal tempered ones of a reasonable size, any differently than the 12 tone tuning, other than to get to know each for its unique “flavor”. Since I normally write electronic pop of a strange brand, Love Song was a deliberate exercise to use more accessible parts than I normally do. I chose a familiar topic (love and heartache). I chose familiar sounds (piano, cello, flute). My intention in doing so was to allow the Bohlen-Pierce scale to stand on its own. Secondly, since the listener has familiarity to grasp onto, it was my hope that no one would even notice the strange, alien tuning.

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Bohlen-Pierce Scale Symposium, Boston 2010

There has been enough interest lately in the Bohlen-Pierce Scale - a macrotonal musical tuning system based on a 3/1 frame (three times the frequency, called a "tritave", as opposed to the 2/1 "octave") divided by 13 equal steps - that an entire symposium was organized in Boston. It included the support of three major music educational institutions - Berklee College of Music, the Goethe Institute and New England Conservatory. Heinz Bohlen and Max Mathews skyped in at various times. It included three full days of talks and three full nights of music. I will type more information here soon and upload more videos as I get them digitized. Professional cameras were covering the entire symposium. Here I will just upload what I captured on my own camera. This symposium was very overwhelming for me, thinking I was among just a handful of interested BP fans. There were at least 40 people actively involved in this event and many more in the audience! See also: http://bohlen-pierce-conference.org/s... http://bohlen-pierce-conference.org/c...