YEAR-END REPORT FOR 1983

Some two and a half years after the photographing and interviewing were done, Life magazine for November 1983 carried (pp. 139-144) an article with color pictures entitled "Twangs and Tweedles." Starting off with a group of people bowing a piano and then Bob Wilhite's group who play unusual sound sculptures, it then goes on to a balanced-wheel with strings tuned to just intervals which can be spun around to the next note to be played, and then the last color page shows Ivor Darreg's Megalyra instruments and the related Hobnailed Newel Posts which are also extensions of the steel-guitar idea. The Tubulong (metal tubes in the foreground of the picture) has 17 tones per octave and most of it was constructed by Ervin Wilson and Glen Prior. Nothing is said in the text about the varied purposes and sounds of the instruments, since sounds cannot be described in print. In particular, the instruments on the other three pages were not designed to play existing melodies, whereas the Megalyra is fully capable of playing the standard repertoire for bass and contrabass instruments, while the Hobnailed Newel Post can sound a number of standard chords in any key as well as some new chords hitherto unheard-of. The Drone Instrument is capable of a sitar-buzz effect and a wide range of melodies in the tenor register and above, either with or without the accompaniment of drones located on the reverse side of the long narrow instrument. For the photograph, the instruments were stood erect, much like Mondrian or Kandinsky Totem Poles, to reveal their varied colors and color-coded fret-lines which show both just intonation and the 12-tone equal temperament.

As a result of this article finally seeing print, NBC TV News put on two programs at dinner-time featuring the Darreg instruments--first the Megalyra and Drone Instruments and Newel Post and some of the metal-tube and metal-bar instruments outdoors, then the refretted guitars (19-, 22-, and 31-tone guitars were played, while those in 14, 15, 16, and 17 were at least seen), the Electronic Keyboard Oboe built in 1937 and still working, and the Electric Keyboard Drum which is capable of polyrhythms. Thus the people of Los Angeles County finally discovered that Ivor Darreg exists.

In August, there were two other publications: Connoisseur magazine, 11 years after the interviews and photographs were done, ran an article, "Sounds of Infinity" beginning on p.100, showing several people in the new-instrument movement with their instruments. A novel visual effect was made by putting small portions of two of the Megalyra instruments side-by-side as though they were an abstract painting, showing the brush-marks clearly, in such a manner that no one would ever guess this was small parts of two instruments, nor would anyone suspect the result had the slightest connection with musical or other sounds! That is to say, everything was visual art, and music really did not enter the picture.

The Glendale News-Press was informed by some reader about this above-mentioned article and sent out a reporter, publishing an illustrated article about the Megalyra and the xenharmonic (non-12-tone new tunings) movement at the end of August. In turn, the Burbank Disney Studios arranged for a TV taping of Darreg's and Prior's instruments, and this was eventually show on Cable.

In the city of Orange, David Hill had constructed a new kind of computer-controlled synthesizer capable of just intoantion carried out to more than 300 pitches per octave. This far exceeds anything hitherto realized in practice. It is true that some instruments were built which had a capability of 1024 pitches per octave, but only 24 to 31 of these were accessible at any one time from the keyboard(s). The present form of Hill's instrument does not function in "real time," to use the computer-operator's jargon, but each note must be encoded in a special code and fed in by a hexadecimal keypad, as a number to base sixteen. However, at least five octaves with over three hundred pitches per octave are equally accessible. Later versions of the instrument may have more conventional keyboards for real-time performances.

David Hill coded Ivor Darreg's Organ Prelude in D Major, composed in 1942 and never presented in any organ recital by any organist in 42 long agonizing years, after Darreg marked up the score to convert the ordinary 12-tone equal temperament notation into exact deisgnations of untempered intervals, then recorded it on tape. This first draft, completed in spring of 1983, was later revised--allowing the tiney commas (81:80) and septimal intervals impossible in ordinary practice (64:63 and 36:35) to be heard. THe four voice parts have different timbres and the freedom to vary their loudnesses widely and independenly of one another, just as signers or players in an ensemble could, rather than the rigid dynamic constraints of the conventional organ. The piece modulates all the way from E-flat to F-sharp, and contains such closely spaced pitches as A-sharp and B-flat and the septimal lowered B-flat, as well as some shifts of a comma (1/9 whole-step approximately). This is a resounding refutation of any uninformed statements about limited modulation in just intonation.

Wally Holland of Buena Park (Orange County, CA) arranged for Ivor Darreg to play his two synthesizers--one is monophonic and analog, the other polyphonic and digital; and both can be set to non-twelve-tone scales, in the 19- and 22-tone systems--both keyboards at once-and recorded the improvisations. This was a big breakthrough, since it proved a conventional keyboard can be used for other tuning-systems with facility and thus the allegation that special keyboards are not available becomes an empty excuse. Actually, special keyboards will come on the market as soon as there is sufficient demand--the typewriter keyboard as adapted for computers is not a bad model for them, by the way. The great difference in sound and effect between Hill's and Holland's synthesizers, even though both use computer control, proves that electronic instruments need not be all alike, the way those mass-production manufacturers make them; they can have the individuality and personality of their makers, as much so as acoustic conventional instruments if not more so. That is an even greater break-through, getting rid of monotony and boredom!

This contrasts sharply with the exhibition in North Hollywood in late September of the synthesizers, sequences, imitation-pianos, and drum machines of a number of manufacturers--Frank Garlock of El Cajon took Darreg to this exhibit--the resemblance of one make of synthesizer or piano-style keyboard to another make was frightfully close, as though a dozen or more manufacturers were more interested in copying one another than competing! A number of us in the movement are quite concerned about this--electronic music has gotten a very bad reputation which it does not deserve at all, merely because of the "me-too" attitude of the manufacturers and a certain reflection of this in the trends and styles of popular bands.

Dr. Rudolf Rasch of the Huygens-Fokker Foundation in the Netherlands visited the USA in Fall 1983, and has been compiling information on composers and instruments and compositions in the 31-tone system (which is for all practical purposes the same as 1/4-comma meantone temperament). On his way to San Diego for an acoustical society meeting he stopped in at Ivor Darreg's place and had a chance to hear many different scales as well as 31-tone on acoustic and electric guitars. He uses the Archiphone which is a special electronic organ for the 31-tone system made in Holland.

Glen Prior who has been involved for some time with the 31 and just systems, collaborated with Ivor Darreg to start the Xenharmonic Music Alliance, which has held nine meetings so far, and will gradually grow in the Los Angeles County and neighboring areas with performances and the theoretical discussions and inducting newcomers into the many scales which do not sound like the conventional twelve-tone equal temperament.

Brian Hartzler of Hermosa Beach, CA recently undertook the arranging of Ivor Darreg's compositions for other instruments, e.g., the Five Subminor Sketches which were composed in the 1930's and 40's for violin, in the quartertone system, are now available for viola, cello, and doublebass. The Pizzicato Etude for Cello, some 40 years old, is now available for viola and violin. (One instrument at a time is meant.) Phrygian Melody written 50 years ago is now available for viola and doublebass as well as the violin and cello versions originally written and the piano and organ arrangements which were made by Darreg a long time ago but alas! were lost in moving. Hartzler has played a 19-tone guitar for some time and composed for it.

In April 1983, the FM station KPFK in Los Angeles put on a tape recital Notes on the Notes between the Notes, conducted by Jeannie G. Pool, who is from New York City and has been furthering the cause of contemporary composers, with tapes and discussions by Ivor Darreg, Glen Prior, and Kraig Grady. Compositions in many scales were heard, such as "Lullaby for a Baby Computer" in the 17-tone system, which was improvised on Darreg's special elastic electronic organ in 1964.

Other Darreg organ compositions included a Rhapsody in the 19-tone system and a Prelude in the 22-tone system. "Elastic" means that this organ is so designed that when a chord is sounded, its notes influence one another's pitches, and that this process of adjustment to each other takes a noticeable time, say half a second, to complete. When the next chord comes along, those notes readjust themselves, with the result that no matter what temperament is tuned on the organ, it tries to go to just intonation and "improve" all its chords.

The radio program opened with a tape of David Hill's extended just intonation themes using new intervals based on the 7th, 11th, and 13th harmonics, thus achieving new exciting effects impossible with conventional instruments.

Early in May, at the L.A. Convention Center, Ivor Darreg had an opportunity to demonstrate his 1937 Electronic Keyboard Oboe and a Thereminvox built in 1948 and modified several times since then. People lined up just like a grocery checkout counter to try these instruments and hear them demonstrated. To the general public, both instruments, despite their great age for any electronic apparatus, appeared to be brand new and Futuristic, in keeping with the theme of the show going on in that Center at the time. A more shocking example of how inventions and ideas and innovations, particualrly in the musical field, have been suppressed and censored by the Establishment would be impossible to find. Better late than never!