Two monochords play a duet, using segments of the string that are divisible by eleven.

A piece for two melody instruments and keyboard.

My translation of The Art of Noises is now available from Black Scat Books!

Luigi Russolo’s treatise on enriching music with noises was published in Milan in 1916. It contains his 1913 Futurist manifesto on noises, as well as his accounts of building noise instruments, his riotous concerts, his notation, and analyses of the noises of nature and technology. My translation sticks closely to Russolo’s ebullient style, and adds notes and an introduction on contemporary receptions and on Russolo’s later work. All of Russolo’s scores and instruments are lost, but his ideas have inspired generations of experimental musicians.

This marks the tenth anniversary of Black Scat Books, and editor Derek Pell (aka Norman Conquest) designed a beautiful edition for the occasion. You can find it on Amazon.

For those keeping track, this is my first Italian translation since 2002, when I translated Giovanni Battista Nazari’s alchemical dream vision Three Dreams for Magnum Opus Hermetic Sourceworks in Glasgow. My, how time flies.

A brooding piece for bass recorder and piano.

Here’s another study in wet tuning, the practice of slightly detuning two pitches to give a richer sound. It’s often used in accordions. Here, I detune double melody strings on a chord zither. As in the diatonic study, I offer two possibilities.

Wet tuning is the practice of slightly detuning two pitches to give a richer sound. It’s often used in accordions. Here, I detune double melody strings on a chord zither. And I offer two possibilities.

This interlude uses five pitches around middle C: 250, 255, 260, 265, and 27o Hz. I retuned a chord zither, but a digital keyboard would also work.

The 25th issue of Black Scat Review is now out and ready for you to read! This one is subtitled “Lewd, Nude, and Rude,” and contains three of my contributions: “King Merrimack,” in which the eponymous monarch and his physician Celso receive a boorish visitor; “The Noble Apothecary,” my translation of a 1664 novella by Jean Donneau de Visé, concerning love, jealousy, and enemas; and “English Etiquette,” my translation of a brief passage from Casanova on the finer points of relieving oneself in public.

You can also savor the work of Mark Axelrod, Thomas Barrett, Sebastian Bennett, Norman Conquest, R J Dent, Dawn Avril Fitzroy, Eckhard Gerdes, Alexander Krivitskiy, Amy Kurman, Hélène Lavelle, Marc Levy, Olchar E. Lindsann, Clément Marot, Lilianne Milgrom, Alison Miller, T. Motley, Angelo Pastormerlo, Gerard Sarnat, Valéry Soers, Gregory Wallace, Tom Whalen, and David Williams. The whole thing is edited and designed by Norman Conquest (with contributing editors Farewell Debut and Nile Southern), and is available on Amazon.

Two monochords play a duet: one plays segments of the string that are divisible by six, the other segments that are divisible by seven. All ends harmoniously on 84.

Seven pitches are used: 410, 420, 430, 440, 450, 460, and 470 Hz. I retuned a chord zither, but a digital keyboard would also work. Here’s the first page: