This music was created with FL Studio 9 and FL Studio 10 (Producer Edition). Version 10 was released while I was still working on the music for this formation.  I used included samples and synthesizers for bongos, toms, clave, kick, maracas, strings and rim.  I downloaded a free sample set for the ethnic harp, used to play the melody.  Since there are sixteen places for markings within each pie slice, I made the time signature 4/4.

The experience of putting it together was frustrating because I was trying to perceive a clockwise spin, which meant the right side of the slice would play first, then the left half of the slice.  Well, in FL Studio, the programming is linear, so I'd program the right side of a slice into the left half of a measure, then I'd program the left half of a slice into the right side of the measure.  I screwed up the toms and bongos and had to go back and reprogram them when I realized I had them switched around.

First here's the whole thing with all the instruments playing together.  The first link is just the disc played one time, which makes 27 seconds of music.  The second one loops three times. You can let your browser's configured plugin play them, or you can download them and play time offline.  Don't expect Lady Gaga here.  There's a lot of interplay between dissonance and consonance, and an amazing resolution that seems to satisfy the whole piece, but I don't think you'd hear this on a top-40 station.

All links are programmed to open a new tab or browser window.

Thanks to Steve Alexander for the photo, and thanks to Andreas Müller for the diagram that made it easier to read the formation.

To contact me, e-mail me.

Circle 2010-05 Full Version (1 play)
Circle 2010-05 Full Version (3 loops)

I just added on 2011-04-08 a longer version.  There's nothing new in it, just a layering in of each instrument one at a time, starting with claves to get your left/right brain communication warm-ups done.  Then the harp comes in, followed by rims, then toms, then kick and maracas, then bongos, and finally, the strings which handle all the chords.

I really hate making changes, but I can't stop coming up with ideas on how to improve it.  I thought today about making it more interesting by using three octaves for the chords and using some key shifts, but that'll take some time to program, and then I figure I'll find something else to do to it, like panning the sounds instead of putting them 100% to the left speaker or 100% to the right speaker, or in both speakers equally.  I think that would add a whole new dimension to it instead of sounding so robotic like it does now....not that that's a bad thing. :)

Finally, here's an early experimental version with claves and a kick, what set my brain off.  The tempo is significantly faster, too.

For the harp, I tried just using notes that would only make real chords, but since I'm not a musician of any caliber (beyond half a year of piano lessons in the 4th grade, then junior high band), I was never really familiar with all the different types of scales.  I checked out a book at the library: Beginning Songwriter's Answer Book by Paul Zollo (ISBN 0-89879-561-3).  I decided to go with what the book called a "melodic minor" scale, starting with A.  I thought it was interesting that when playing up the scale, you play F# and G#, but when playing down the scale, you play G and F.  I liked the sound of that, so I went with it since I was going to be playing up the scale when programming the music away from the center, and down the scale when programming toward the center. As it turns out, the G and F naturals didn't really come out all that often.  Measures 1 and 3-10 didn't even play G or F natural. Anyway, all harp notes are played as 16th notes.

I used strings for chords.  I can't afford the nice, high-quality samples so the strings aren't made by collections of cello, viola, violins and whatnot.  It's just "Strings".  But to get the chords, I just programmed the strings to play the same notes the harp would be playing, but all as half notes, and I used the melodic minor scale for A.

Also, until I added the chords, I thought I had picked a good place to start the music.  When I first started getting serious about coming up with something for this formation, I had the start point at what is now measure 3.  Measure 3 just looks like a perfect introduction: Two to the right, two to the left, rest, rest, right, left.  Well, after hearing the resolution of dissonance in what used to be Measure 10, I knew that just had to be the last measure of the music so I went back and shifted everything two measures to the right and pulled the last two measures to the beginning, resulting in what's on this page now.

If you've already heard the MP3, you might have noticed a lot of dissonance, or rather "unpleasant" chords playing.  There's a friend of mine out there, and if he's reading this, I'm sure his eyes are squirting blood for my saying this, but I don't like to gravitate toward any conclusion before all the facts are in.  I accept that either (1) people on Earth made crop circles with boards and string, (2) our collective consciousness created them, or (3) the least likely (to me) aliens made them.  Even if people made this using boards and strings, when looking at us all as an species working like a machine, I say the collective consciousness would have had an effect on the decisions made during the creation of crop formations, no matter who or what created them.  So with that in mind, I'm suggesting that there may be so much dissonance in the music because I'm looking at this as an encapsulated record of all of the universe.  You've got a few unpleasant chords, a few pleasant ones, and a pretty fancy and contemporary resolution in measure 12, the last measure.  I don't want to judge the music of this formation according to today's pop standards.  I think of it as world music, or universal music, and I have to say, after listening to this thing loop for extended periods of time, my brain has gotten used to the way it sounds and I feel its effects in my body.