The Sonic Sky

Surfing the Sonic Sky Awarded 2012 Worldfest Houston Special Jury Award

thesonicsky — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:31:07 +0000

Worldfest Houston has just announced that the 20 minute film, SURFING THE SONIC SKY, directed by Stephen James Taylor, was given a Special Jury Award. This is the oldest independent film festival in the world. The Special Jury Award is the highest honor a film can earn in its category.

This is its first award and “props” to Gary David, Marcus Hobbs, Andrew Taylor, Allyson Taylor, Nancy Taylor, Aaron Rapoport, Jim French, and Chuck Jonkey and others for their important roles in helping the film turn out as it did. Ervin Wilson, whose groundbreaking work it examines, will be very happy about this.

If you haven’t had a chance to see it yet, here it is:

This film is part of a larger body of transmedia works in progress. We would love to hear any thoughts about the project and where you think we could go from here.

Octaval Spiral

thesonicsky — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 23:57:07 +0000

The Harmonic Series as an Octaval Spiral issued by Erv Wilson on March 1, 1965 and logarithms base 2 of the numbers 1 to 64 issued by Erv Wilson on October 21, 1964.

Microzone Keyboard Controller

thesonicsky — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 00:01:06 +0000

The “Microzone” is a keyboard controller designed by Erv Wilson. It is available at www.starrlabs.com.

Photographs of Erv Wilson

thesonicsky — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 23:44:44 +0000

Kraig Grady Interview

thesonicsky — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 20:55:10 +0000

Composer Kraig Grady talks about his long association with Wilson and explains some of his work.

Moments of Symmetry as a User Interactive Circle

thesonicsky — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 03:29:49 +0000

Marcus Hobbs’ user interactive visualization of one of Wilson’s galaxy clusters of musical tunings known as Moments of Symmetry.

Warren Burt Interview

thesonicsky — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 21:19:50 +0000

Dr. Warren Burt explains the impact of Wilson’s sonic structures on future directions in music.

Microtonal Cartoon Cues

thesonicsky — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 23:18:12 +0000

A 1993 medley of musical cues written by Stephen James Taylor for Disney’s Timon and Pumbaa using Wilson’s “Meta-Ptolemy” tuning ratios.

Hosted by the Sonic Sky SoundCloud

Erv Wilson Diagrams

thesonicsky — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 21:31:50 +0000

To view the entire collection of Wilson’s papers go to http://www.anaphoria.com/wilson.html

31 Tone Hex Keyboard

A diagram of how to map a 31 tone scale onto Erv Wilson’s hexagonal keyboard. (Also see Starr Labs)

The Scale Tree

The first page of the pitch field known as The Scale Tree, aka Moments of Symmetry. Those fractions, or their decimal equivalents, generate a vast array of unequally tempered scales that all possess the characteristic of containing only two different sized chromatic intervals (instead on just one as per the regular western piano tuning). These scales make for the most exotic melodies!

Pascal’s Triangle

Also know as the scale of Mt. Meru, Pascal’s triangle provides a way of deriving sets of musical scale frequencies by adding the diagonals of this ancient array. Coincidentally, many of them resemble scales used in many of the world’s indigenous cultures.

Horogram 22

This is a circular version of a set of scales found on the Scale Tree. This one generates the “Golden Mean” and can be used for scales, rhythms, and visual art. These circular transforms of the Scale Tree Erv calls “Holograms”, due to the fact that they look like an unusual clock.

Hexany

A prime example of one of Erv’s ways of creating new scales. He call this approach here “Combination Product Sets.” By multiplying a small set of numbers (any numbers, here represented by the letters A-D), you can create a larger group of derivative notes, Here he maps the note relationships onto geometric objects.

The Coprime Grid

An arithmetic array of fractions seeded with any two a starting values at the top. The circled numbers are spots where the numerator and denominator are “coprime” to each other, i.e. the only number that can divide equally into both is “1″.

Music from the Lake Aloe Festival

thesonicsky — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 01:40:29 +0000

Microtonal music from the Island of Anaphoria composed by Kraig Grady.

Hosted by the Sonic Sky SoundCloud

For more samples of Kraig Grady’s music visit http://anaphoria.com/samples.html