Tutorials:Fractal tunes

Preamble
Fractal tunes belong to a genre known as Algo-comp  music. Some may already have experience of this type of music, but it will be new to many. So let's start with that. This section will assume nothing in the way of previous experinece of music making or composing, but I will try to keep it interesting for the more seasoned musicians and composers too. Perhaps that is possible since Algo-comp is new to nearly everyone including many seasoned composers.

Usually if one improvises or composes a piece of music, all the notes are decided in advance, or as you play - either way you decide every note you want to play. Even if you use music made out of repeating loops, as many do nowadays, though the way the loops interact may lead to surprises, still, every note of each loop is set individually by the composer.

In algo-comp though, all the notes of the tune are inter-related. Youi vary a parameter, and the entire tune will change. There are many types of fractal music - generated from the Mandelbrot set for instance - for some sites to visit to get an idea of the range of work that is done in this field, see the Thinks.com Fractal Music page. However, most of the tunes you make with Fractal Tune Smithy are based on the idea of a musical seed. So let's investigate those..

If you make something you particularly like in these exercises, save your results. You can do this using File | Save As  (Ctrl + A)  and you can save them in the New Tunes  folder. Either save using a name that will remind you of the music, or just save as tune 1, tune 2, or experiment 1, 2, or whatever. While working on the piece, you can save over the old version again at any time using Crl + S .

In our first exercise, we investigate the way in which the tune varies as you change the seed.

Select any tune from the drop list of fractal tunes. Now select another seed from the drop list of seeds. Notice how the entire tune changes - not just a single loop in one instrument, but the entire tune as played by all the instruments. Now try editing the numbers for the seed. Keep the first number as it is (usually 0) and change one of the other numbers. You can do this while the tune is still playing. Hear how the entire tune changes when you change a single note of the seed. You can also change the tune with mouse clicks rather than from the keyboard using Bs | Seed as bar charts .

As you will realise, this needs a new way of working. There is no way to change just a single note of a fractal tune in FTS. If you want to do that, save the fractal tune in Midi format, and then use the material as you please in a conventional sequencer - which some composers do indeed. Another way to use FTS is to play a favourite fractal tune until you hear a sequence you like and again, use that sequence in your pieces - maybe add a vocal part and other parts to it. Others just use some of the sequences of notes that emerge from the fractal tunes as inspriation for their pieces - this can be a useful method of melodic invention- maybe it could free up blocks to creativity too :-). Here though, we'll focus just on the process of making the fractal tunes themselves.

Fractal music work needs a much more experimentalist approach than other types of music making. Don't be afraid to just try out anything. After all it is easy to change things. If you do something that sounds particularly nice, save it for future reference and continue exploring. If you want to go back to a previous stage of the tune you are working on you can undo your changes using Ctrl + Z (repeatedly if necessary) and redo them using Ctrl + Y.

At this point you may like to look over [howthe.htm How the seeds build up to make tunes].

You can also make seeds yourself by playing them from the PC keyboard - see [Seeds.htm#Making_new_seeds_for_the_melody  Make new seed ], also from a music keyboard if you have those - see [Seeds.htm#Making_new_seeds_from_midi_keyboard Make new seed from Music Keyboard].

Instruments
Now lets explore instrumentation of the fractal tunes. Choose File | New . Choose a seed from the drop list or make a new one - any seed is fine for this exercise. You'll hear the tune played on a flute voice. Try selecting other instruments from the Voices  menu, and hear what the same tune sounds like on various instruments.

Seasoned composers and musicians can skip the next few paragraphs - but some readers of this help may have never written a piece or even a melody before. So, I'll give a brief introduction to musical instruments and instrumentation for newbies.

You'll notice that the Voices  menu is grouped into families. The voices there are the standard ones from the General Midi specification. Originally the first musicians who worked in midi made clips to be played on a particular synth only. If you played it on another synth, the voices might be completely different - the original piano may now be an oboe and so forth. So, in order to make it possible to share clips between musicians using different synths, the General Midi spec. was developed. In a GM synth, the first voice is always going to be some variety of acoustic piano for instance, so even if your piece maybe mightn't get played with the exact timbre of acoustic piano you heard when you created it, it will be played on a piano voice of some description..

There are many ways of grouping instruments into families. Perhaps a good overall classification is into percussive instruments such as marimba, glockenspiel etc, plucked ones such as guitar, harp etc, wind instruments such as flute, trombone etc, voice, and string instruments. Each of these has further subdivisions, for instance, the wind instruments are subdivided into woodwinds - flute, oboe, clarinet etc - and brass - trumpet, trombone etc. The Cor Anglais, or French Horn as it is otherwise known is actually a type of oboe so counts as a woodwind instrument.

Sometimes composers make ensemble pieces in which all the instruments that play are the same, such as a consort of recorders, trombones, or viols - or all in the same family. As an example of an ensemble of instruments in the same family, the string quartet consists entirely of string instruments - the violin (two of them - the first and second violin), viola, and 'cello. Other ensembles may consist entirely of woodwinds - or brass instruments (think of a brass band), or a combination of both.

In other pieces, the instruments are used that contrast / complement each other nicely. Some instruments are very companionable as it were, for instance, flute and harp go nicely together. Generally, it can be nice to combine a plucked or percussive instrument like harp, marimba etc with a melodic instrumnt with a more legato smoothly flowing type of sound such a flute, violin etc. Also it's nice to combine strings with wind instruments - and of course the orchestra has instruments from all the families, often played in episodes in which some of the players take a rest while others play in some contrasting arrangement, or as a little consort of woodwinds suddenly in the midst of it all, or whatever.

The fractal tunes provide an ideal environment for a beginner composer to experiment with orchestration -you don't need to think much about the notes - just focus on the process of intrumentation itself. You may also find you appreciate listening to orchestral music more as a result of experimenting with orchestration yourself in this way.

Each instrument has a natural range. For instance, the double bass is a low pitched instrument. You can play it high, but this is rarely done - it has an insteresting rather "thin" kind of a sound when it is played like that. You even get double bass concertos (e.g. by Vivaldi) in which the double bass is the solo instrument, mostly played high. Similarly, flute is usually played high, with middle C as the lowest note - but you can get alto flutes and even bass flutes that go very low. Similarly for other instruments. Stravinsky uses a bass clarinet to great effect in his Rite of Spring. Some instruments change completely in timbre depending on the register - the Basson has a very distinctive timbre in its lower registered. When played high however, it sounds almost like a new instrument (this is used to great effect by Mahler in the opening of Das lied von der Erder).

So that's something to bear in mind. You can either play the instruments close to their natural range - or for effect you can play them higher or lower.

To move individual parts up or down by octaves, go to the Parts  window, and highlight the part,and change the Octave Shift  (either use scroll bar or type new value in thebox below the column).

Orchestration
So now for our next exercise - to experiment with orchestration. Choose any of the fractal tunes from the drop list. Show the Parts  window. The instruments in play for the fractal tunes are all the ones shown in this window up to the number of parts in play. Select one of them and vary its instrument by selecting a new one from the voices menu. Also try changing the pitch by varying the octave shift.

If you can't quite pick out one of the parts when you listen to your tune, you can silence all the others by selecting silence into their parts - then the one remainingt part will continue as it was before, but without the other instruments. Once you can hear it, put the others back as they were and see if you can now hear it in the complete piece.

Sometimes one of the instuments.in the group has a more prominent role as the "solo" instrument that cariries the tune - think of a singer accompanied by harp, lute, guitar or piano for instance. Often even then the accompanying instrumet will have its own solo sections when it carries the tune for a short while. With the fractal tunes, generally the fastest tune is the more prominent solo one - but sometimes one of the middle speed ones is. Generally, the one that is at the right speed for the tune it plays to be "singable" is the solo instrument - at least in terms of speed if not virtuosity!. Sometimes the tune stays with one instrument all the time, and with other fractal tunes, the main tune gets moved around amongst various instruments.

So, one can think a bit about what instrument one wants to use for the solo line. Usully it tends to be a higher instrument rather than a lower one. This isn't by any means an unbreakable rule -think about Dvorak's New World Symphony for instance. Dvorak is an example of a composer who often puts the main melodic line into the bass line.Shubert also often has very singable bass lines even if they are not necessarily the main lines of the piece.

Also often in conventional arrangements you will have many notes above the main melodic line - e.g. maybe a piano or guitar will play high notes above the range of the singer they accompany.

Another kind of frequently broken rule - if you have a combination of a plucked or percussive instrument with a more continuous string / wind / voice instruemtn, the more continuous one has a tendency to carry the main melodic line more frequently.

So, experiemnt with various instruments for the main melodic line and try conventional type arrangements where the main line is continous and high-ish, and unconventional ones where it is percussive or plucked or low. Try various instruments for the accompaniment, and just get a feel of which ones help and which ones obscure the main line. Some pieces too may have more of a chordal than a melodic focus, and may have no strong melodic line at all. Also try some ensemble type pieces where all the parts are played by the same instrument - and try playing your piece again using another instrument for the ensemble. You can change the voice for several parts in one go by highlighting them all -click on the first then Shift + click on the last - then select a new voice and you will find it gets selected for them all at once..

Some of the instrumentations chosen for the fractal tunes that come with Fractal Tune Smithy are fairly conventional and some are already unconventional. Have a listen to some of them and see which ones you think sound more conventional and which sound rather unconventional in the instrumentation. Then try doing ones like that yourself too, either way

A quick way to build up a fractal tune one voice at a time
Start with File | New . Choose which instrument you want for the first part from the Voices  menu. Now make sure you have Voices | Auto Sel Las  t selected. Increase the <font color="#FF8000">Number of Parts to play  one at a time, and each time select a voice from the <font color="#FF8000">Voices  menu until you have the number of parts in play as desired - you can do all this while the tune is playing. Then transpose the parts as desired by showing the <font color="#FF8000">Parts  window and using the <font color="#FF8000">Octave Shift  column as usual. If you want to transpose the entire tune up or down - all the parts at once - use the <font color="#FF8000">Pitch  window.

Moving the tune from one instrument to another, and hocketing
Show the <font color="#FF8000">Parts  window. Then look at the Order of Play menu., and see what you have selected there. If this is a new tune, then you'll find it shows <font color="#FF8000">By Layer . You can hear this in the [1.082b/oboe_and_friends.ts oboe and friends] fractal tune. The tune continues normally in the top line, but the start of every seed that begins a new seed at a higher layer gets played by one of the other instruments instead of the oboe. You get this kind of syncopated effect with the oboe often missing the first note of its seeds. So, try that out to hear what it sounds like with your instrumentation.

Many of the fractal tunes use the next selection in this list, <font color="#FF8000">By layer with simultaneous notes  Try that instead - you will find the first part plays all its notes, accompanied by the second part playing the same tune,but more slowly - now the extra notes played by the ohter parts get sustained all the way to the next note for that part. And so on - you'll hear a canon by augmentation in fact with your chosen instruments, as explained in [howthe.htm How the seeds build up to make tunes].

Okay, that's pretty nice, many of the tunes use it. However, let's explore the other options here.

<font color="#FF8000">'''. By Note height ''' - the same note in the arpeggio always gets played by the same instrument. <font color="#FF8000">By time  - the tune just cycles round amongst the instruments, each playing one of the notes in turn. <font color="#FF8000">Cummulative note height  is a more complex way of assigning notes to the instruments. Anyway the general idea is that the tune gets broken up by being assigned to each instrument in turn. This is known as hocketting. See the help for this window for a little about those options: [User_guide2.htm#Order_of_play_menu Order of play menu].

Try those various options - then try the <font color="#FF8000">Other  option. This lets you make up your own combinations of the other options. Actually, you don't need to try to keep track of what the formula will do. Just enter some formula using the various letters such as <font color="#0080FF">t+m+h  or <font color="#0080FF">N+H+L  or whatever, and see what happens. You can try it out with any of the pieces. There are various other options in this window to explore - see it's help [User_guide2.htm#Order_of_Play_Other Order of play | Other]. The option to <font color="#FF8000">Sustain all notes to next note for same part  can be used to get several parts playing together.

Also at this point one could also digress to explore <font color="#FF8000">Bs | Seeds Options | Seed pos increment  as well, perhaps with <font color="#FF8000">By layer with simultaneous notes  - see the help for that window for some informatin about what it does - main effect is you get more notes played in the second and third parts, and a somewhat more complex texture to the fractal tune. One could also try the polyrhythm tunes too - many other things too, but I'll leave those for later FAQ entries on this page. Now, let's go on to the tuning of the notes - the really fun part in my (slightly biased probably) opinion.

Tuning
For this exercise, choose any of the fractal tunes, or one you built up from new in the previous exercises, and try changing the scale from the scales drop list.

As a general guide, ones with fewer notes in them are easier to use, and five or seven or there abouts is enough to have an interesting variety of intervals for the melody, and few enough notes so that nearly everything you play will be nice. Try twelve tone scales with the <font color="#0080FF">pentatonic  or <font color="#0080FF">diatonic  modes (in the <font color="#FF8000">Arpeggios  drop list) - and the minor scales. Then have a look at the other modes for the twelve tone scale (by a mode here I mean a selection of notes from the scale), e.g. the 5 note modes, which you get to from the <font color="#FF8000">Arpeggios  drop list for the twelve tone scales..

If you find the tune goes rather high or low, you can set a range for each part using <font color="#FF8000">Parts | More | Ranges . To set the range for several parts at once, highlight all the ones you want to change. The scroll bars shift the bounds of the range by semitones, tones, or the scroll bar below the note number shifts it up / down by octaves.

If you would like an introduction to the various twelve tone systems in the <font color="#FF8000">Scales  drop list at this point, have a look through [#histtuning How do I play the historical tunings of the diatonic and twelve tone systems?] which will get you started. Also have a look through the [Scales_and_Fractal_Tunes.htm <font color="#000000">Musical note intervals ] page for some of the background and theory for them. But, you don't need to know all that to have fun with them - it is just for those who find such things of interest, and kind of useful eventually to know in the long run I expect.

You'll see there are many other scales apart from teh twelve tone ones. Try the <font color="#0080FF">Pygmie  and Koto scales, which are very tuneful, also the Slendro and Pelog which are really interesting and unusual (to the Western ear - these are scales typical of those used in Indonesia). Try the Thailand scale too, which is close to seven equal temperament (seven equally spaced notes to an octave). Generally, try the ones with fewer notes first.

Also be sure to have a go with the harmonic series. This is the series of notes you get in the partials (component frequencies of the note) of many "harmonic" timbres such as voice or string, woodwinds - most of the instruments of the orchestra in fact. The result is that the notes of the harmonic series go well together. See [harmonic_series_notes_sound_well_together.htm <font color="#400040">Why two notes of the harmonic series sound well together ]

For a really unorthodox one try the <font color="#0080FF">Bohlen-Pierce  one - that one should have 3/1 (octave plus a fifth) instead of 2/1 (octave) as the "octave". So in the <font color="#FF8000">Parts  window, change the drop list to read <font color="#0080FF">Modulate by (interval)  and to transpose instruments up / down, use <font color="#0080FF">3  or <font color="#0080FF">1/3  or <font color="#0080FF">9  or <font color="#0080FF">1/9  if you want them to go up and down by two "octaves".

For some more small scales to try go to <font color="#0080FF">Scales | More Scales  drop lists - then the <font color="#0080FF">Woodstock windchimes scale  there is really nice, and also the selection of pentatonic scales labelled " <font color="#0080FF">Canright's exs from Superparticular Pentatonics  ", and " <font color="#0080FF">Canright's Some pentatonics I have known  ".

If you want to be a bit more unorthodox, take some normal type of pentatonic scale like the woodstock windchimes <font color="#0080FF">5/4 4/3 3/2 5/3 2/1 , then change one of the intervals to an exotic one like 11/8, 11/9, 13/8, or some other one using the eleventh or thirteenth or higher prime harmonics. Maybe in this case leave the 3/2 as a kind of grounding thing, so how about <font color="#0080FF">5/4 11/9 3/2 13/8 2/1  or something. Just to get an idea of what those types of intervals sound like in a scale - and if you like it, as usual, save the result for future reference. Sometimes adding just one exotic interval to an otherwise fairly conventional one can be quite striking, as in the [1.082a/bitter_sweet.ts bitter sweet ]fractal tune. That one consists of a normal major chord, with an 11/8 added to it to make the scale <font color="#0080FF">5/4 11/8 3/2 2 . Sounds rather more exotic than you'd expect from adding just one note to a major chord :-).

Another fun thing you can do is to make a scale that is non ascending, or an arpeggio that is non ascending. For instance the piece [1.082a/major_chords_round_the_cycle_of_fifths_-_Bach_temperament.ts major chords round the cycle of fifths - Bach temperament] uses a conventional well tempered twelve tone scale from Bach's time - and then an arpeggio 0 4 7 12 7 which goes up a major chord, and then down to the fifth. As you go up this arpeggio, rather than ending at the octave at each repeat of it, you end a fifth higher instead. So the further you go up it, the further you go round the circle of fifths - hence the title. So the tune gradually wanders up the circle of fifths - but because of the fractal nature of the tune, keeps returning to the home key, at longer and longer intervals of time.

Now that you have an eye for what to look out for, take a look at the scales and arpeggios used for some of the other fractal tunes and they may give you a few ideas.

Then, try out the SCALA scales - you need to install the SCALA archive first - see [FTS_and_SCALA.htm <font color="#400040">Setting FTS up for SCALA and vice versa ] <font color="#400040">. You can order the SCALA scales drop list so that the smaller scales go first in the list, and in fact that's the standard setting for FTS. That's because then the earlier ones in the list will generally be easier to use in the fractal tunes.

<font color="#400040">FTS also has a number of options to help you make your own scales. Take a look at [#New_scales <font color="#0000FF"> Make new Scale ] <font color="#400040">, and the [More_scales.htm <font color="#000000">Scales ] <font color="#400040">help page to find out more about this. Of course, SCALA is an entire program completely devoted to the construction and exploration of new scales.