The site of
GIOVANNI GROSSKOPF, composer and pianist
ANY INFORMATION ON
THE DEVELOPMENT OF
THIS SOFTWARE WILL BE WRITTEN ON THIS PAGE.
IF YOU ARE INTERESTED, PLEASE VISIT IT REGULARLY.
IF YOU ARE INTERESTED, PLEASE VISIT IT REGULARLY.
WORKING ON A NEW SOFTWARE!
Are you a composer of classical contemporary atonal music? Are you fascinated by the harmonic and chordal aspect of music? Would you like to gain a better control on it? Do you sense that some chordal sequences, also in atonal music, must follow precise laws, even if you don't feel able to define them clearly?
THE PRECISE DESCRIPTION OF A CHORD TIMBRE COMPLETE OF EVERY DETAIL, GIVEN USING A LANGUAGE THAT IS CLEARLY UNDERSTANDABLE TO MUSICIANS…
Imagine you are playing on a piano two notes at the same time: we all know very well the "hollow" sonority of a perfect fifth, the warm timbre of a major third, the distinctive "vibrato" resulting from the beatings which come out of a major second… but these are plain basic intervals, made of only two notes. Nowadays, composers work usually with complex chords, made of many simultaneous sounds, really like sound "towers" made of ten or twelve notes played together…
Would you like to have, at once, the precise detailed description of the timbre of a chord, and the description of the contribution that each single interval featuring in it gives to produce its global sonority? It would be a description of this kind: "This chord, made of three notes, D - F sharp - G sharp, contains a major third, a major second and a tritone (augmented fourth). The global sonority of this chord is produced for the 55% by the sonority of the major third, for the 33.2% by the sonority of the major second, and for the 11.8% by the sonority of the augmented fourth. The timbre complexity index is 43.5. The dissonance index is 33.7".
It would be like like refracting a light beam through a prism, in order to detect in its spectrum the contribution of each single color to the production of the global color of that beam.
This would make possible, for instance, to understand precisely what the timbres of two chords have or do not have in common. It would make possible to juxtapose deliberately chords with a contrasting timbre, or to use together those having a similar timbre. It would make possible to classify all the chords in categories, according to their timbre, with extreme precision. It would make possible to measure the timbre complexity of a series of chords in order to arrange them starting from the one which has the simplest sonority and ending with the one with the most complex timbre, or also to measure the dissonance degree of a group of chords in order to arrange them from the most consonant one up to the most dissonant one, or vice-versa…
It would be useful in composition, but also during music analyses, in order to analyze the practice and the inclination of the composers we are analyzing, with regard to the nature of the chordal sonorities they prefer…
THE IMPORTANCE OF A SENSE OF CONSEQUENTIALITY…
Would you like to obtain also in atonal music, when connecting two chords, the same feeling of directionality and logical consequentiality that composers used to obtain within the tonality system, when connecting the dominant chord and then the tonic chord immediately after it?
Well, doing all this is POSSIBLE!
In the past years, having these goals in mind, I have been working for many years on a method for the analysis of the timbre of a chord, called "Interval Perception Analysis" (IPA), which has been illustrated during international conferences and has been investigated during serious musicological researches, also abroad.
In those years, together with some excellent musicologists, I had worked on some softwares that, beside performing other tasks, included also a partial utilization of this powerful method, which allows a composer or a music analysis scholar to perform very well all the above mentioned tasks and many others. The description of a three notes chord, reported above, is based on imaginary data and is simplified, but the Interval Perception Analysis method works very well when applied to real situations, and the results it gives are far more precise and even more comprehensive, interesting and exhaustive than those described in the fictional example reported above.
We are now developing a new cross-platform software, with a new name and a new approach, devoted only to a complete implementation (that is: a practical, immediate application, easily usable and easily understandable) of the Interval Perception Analysis method. The program we will create will be a practical and everyday tool for composers and music analysis scholars (just in the same way a pocket calculator can be a practical and everyday tool for an engineer who has something to build).
The developers are Gianluca Mei (who does all the programming work) and Giovanni Grosskopf (who conceived the Interval Perception Analysis model and tests the program according to it).
ANY INFORMATION ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF
THIS SOFTWARE WILL BE WRITTEN ON THIS PAGE.
IF YOU ARE INTERESTED, PLEASE VISIT IT REGULARLY.
(Update: March 2011, the project is going on!)
IF YOU ARE INTERESTED, PLEASE VISIT IT REGULARLY.
(Update: March 2011, the project is going on!)
Please be patient. Please take into account that this software is now being developed by a… team consisting of two people, and that both have also many other activities. It could be a reasonable idea to write in your agenda a note in order to remind you to check again this page for news now and then. Anyway, if you are interested, please do not forget to do that. even when it seems that nothing is happening here. We are really going on with our work on this project, it has NOT been abandoned at all - absolutely - and you will not find on the Web another software with the same features and the same approach.
