![]() Not just O, R, I, and RI, but also the “flipped” versions of those. The combination of these controls gives us 8 transformations of our original material. It is also possible in Photosounder to horizontally flip a spectrum and to rotate it by 90, 180, and 270 degrees. Together, they make a pretty powerful pair. Photosounder enables you to do a resynthesis of a sound using any sample as your waveform. Photosounder does a very nice FastFourier Transform analysis of sound, and you can save the analysis as a graphic to import to other programs. Two of those programs are Photosounder by Michel Rouzic (and AudioPaint by Nicolas Fournel ( audiopaint.htm). Recently, I’ve been working a lot with graphics-to-sound conversion programs, especially those at the lower end of the cost spectrum. (Years later, studying Erv Wilson’s papers, I found that he, too, had come to the same conclusions about Yasser’s significance for applying segmentation to microtonal scales.) Somewhere along the line, it might be from that seminar, or it might be from somewhere else, I acquired a recording of Milton saying: That marvellous relation called an interval which is unique almost entirely to the perception of sound and nothing else.” The sound quality of the sample is pretty miserable, but no matter, it was the content that counted, and I’ve always liked working with lo-fi anyway. Yasser’s ideas were indeed, at least in rudimentary form, a source of how to apply segmentation to various microtonal scales. Eventually, I did find a copy of Yasser’s book, read it, and Milton was, of course, right. This, mind you, after he had given a 3 hour seminar on Schoenberg. What was supposed to be a 10 minute walk across campus, bringing a guest to one place or another, turned into an extended personal seminar. Without missing a beat, he began telling me about Joseph Yasser’s Theory of Evolving Tonality, and had I heard of it, and I should get a copy and read it, but basically, Yasser says…. ![]() After the talk, I was walking somewhere with Milton, and I asked him if any of the segmentation ideas he had been discussing would have any application to microtonality. Listening to the talk, old memories came flooding back, as well as familiar voices during the question and answer period. Years later, that copy emerged in his archives, found by David Dunn, who copied it to mp3 form, and emailed it to me. I remember afterward that Kenneth Gaburo wanted a copy of the seminar, so I dubbed it off to cassette and gave him a copy. It ran well overtime – no one wanted it to end – and I recorded it all. Milton gave an amazing talk about Schoenberg’s work one afternoon during the symposium. Milton was one of the featured guest speakers, and as one of the Graduate Assistants there, I was heavily involved with the organizing and running of the Symposium. It was in 1974 at UC San Diego, at the Center for Music Experiment, when we held a Schoenberg Symposium. 100 Warren Burt: The Shape of the Voice 1: Milton Babbitt I only had one extended encounter with Milton. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: ![]()
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