Writings About Music

Equally Different

I can attest to the excitement of exploring these concepts. While staying in Kula, Maui several years ago, the pure continuity of the truly black sky at night merging with the black sea in the distance, and the black contours of Haleakala, suggested melodic forms different from ragas I have used in the past, and I imagined three new melodic constructs immerging from shaping the saptaka (octave) into nine, eight, and seven equal parts for my composition, Nightmarchers, the three parts being Kula Midnight, Lahaina Midnight, and Hana Midnight.

 

 

 

 

Rather unexpectedly, I’ve discovered that the more one listens to the unorthodox tunings found here, the more natural they seem. Perhaps that’s because the new scales grew out of an aesthetic necessity rather than an arbitrary calculation. 

- Michael Robinson, August 2017, Los Angeles

 

© 2017 Michael Robinson All rights reserved

 

Michael Robinson is a Los Angeles-based composer and writer (musicologist).