IVOR ETC.

There is a new art movement usually called Sound Sculpture, which appears to be catching on more and more. Ivor Darreg is involved in this trend, by reason of the family of expanded-resource steel-guitar-type instruments: the Megalyra contrabass, the Drone Instrument with sitar-buzz and chorus effect, the Kosmolyra with chords on all their four sides of a wooden beam, and the Hobnailed Newel Post which is a variation of this idea.

By painting a fret-line and harmonic-node pattern in various meaningful coded colors on these instruments, the comparison between just and tempered scales is shown graphically as well as permitting the instruments to play either equally well; and moreover, the total effect becomes that of a Mondrian or Kandinsky Totem Pole -- Note that both those visual artists had been involved with music and so, in their abstract works, expressed certain music-derived concepts, hence the allusion to them here.

These instruments have been recorded and also videotaped.

Interested persons are invited to see and hear and try them -- what is needed now is other places to demonstrate and perform on them!

Ivor Darreg continues to promote and get other people involved in a new musical movement which can be called Xenharmonics (strange harmonies) or Non-12 (because of using more than 12 tones per octave) and is often called Microtones if the number of tones is greatly increased -- say, more than 22 per octave. The ordinary scale used by the Musical Establishment for two centuries is well-high exhausted because everybody has explored it till it is threadbare. So it is now time to take advantage of today's technical and artistic advances and move up to new melodic and harmonic resources. You must hear them to understand how urgent this is.

There are new Moods available -- and some have lots of Zonk. Other moods calm and soothe.

Happily, many new instruments are ideal for the do-it-yourselfer to make a home workshop. No need for expensive factories nor to wait for elaborate costly concerts -- with today's tape machines, performances can be recorded in the home and sent to other people's homes, making music a more intimate and up-to-date language.

Ivor Darreg is into electronics, but that doesnot mean he has abandoned the earlier compositions of a 50-year career -- the new are additions to the old, not the abolition of it.

During 1981 the Glasiers of San Diego with their Interval Foundation have performed on a set of Ivor Darreg's instruments located there, and have had him down there for concerts and demonstrations.

The March 1981 issue of OMNI Magazine contained an article by Doug Garr, "The Endless Scale," about a number of musical innovators, and included a color picture of the Megalyra Family of instruments.

October 1981 marked the broadcasting over a Los Angeles area station of an interview featuring Ivor Darreg's compositions.

Also in that month, POLYPHONY, a synthesizer magazine, published a one-page article by Ivor Darreg on Xenharmonics.

In the summer of 1981, Ivor Darreg appeared at The Basement, a place which holds Saturday night events throughout the year, in the Echo Park district of Los ANgeles, and Tim Isbell and members of the audience had a chance to try the Megalyra for themselves.

In December 1981, John Gibbon of Tujunga provided some aluminum tubing for the construction of a new instrument with 2 and 1/4 octaves of quartertones. This is laid out on foam strips, so is portable. Quartertones provide an additional way for conventional musicians to go beyond 12 tones/octave in the simplest way possible.

Visitors now and them came from very distant places, such as New York and Connecticut.

There has been exchange of cassettes and reel tapes with other composer and instrument-makers, so that the Darreg collection now includes most of the practicable non-twelve-tone tuning systems as well as random sounds of various kinds that others have been experimenting with. Such exchange is insurance against theft, fire, accidental erasure, and other disasters, for both parties.

While no further complete issues of the Xenharmonic Bulletin appeared during 1981, many pages of material which will eventually go into later issues were xeroxed for small-scale distribution. Some copies of back issues were ordered and purchased. All 9 will remain in print.

The time has come to farm out many diverse projects, and to get instruments into the hands of those who will use them, rather than put them in silent dead storage. There is room for many people to be involved from time to time. The new fields of computer msuic and synthesizers are developing to a point where Ivor Darreg should be involved in an exchange of knowhow and facilities.

Other projects outside music have been covered in other leaflets and announcements over a period of time, and information is available on request.

Make it known that the present address of Ivor Darreg is

349 1/2 West California Avenue

Glendale, CA 91203