{"id":201,"date":"2010-02-19T12:09:57","date_gmt":"2010-02-19T01:09:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/x37v.com\/x37v\/?p=201"},"modified":"2013-03-22T14:01:07","modified_gmt":"2013-03-22T03:01:07","slug":"tathagata","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/x37v.com\/x37v\/writing\/tathagata\/","title":{"rendered":"Tathagata"},"content":{"rendered":"

The base-chords and note progression that forms Tathagata is something that must have been going through Fredrik Thordendal’s head for some time.\u00a0 This progression is something that has emerged at least 3 times in both Meshuggah and Fredrik’s solo work, and can be heard as the basis of Tathagata<\/a> (Sol Niger Within, 1997; Sol Niger Within version 3.33, 1999)<\/em>, the close [3:50] of Sublevels<\/a> (Destroy Erase Improve, 1995)<\/em> and the outro [9:06] of Fredrik’s Secrets of the Unknown<\/a> demo.<\/p>\n

Tathagata is a beautiful track that seems to will the listener into innately feeling or predicting the next series of notes.\u00a0 I was wondering why I felt this way about the track, until I sat down and started to score out the notes.\u00a0 What emerged was a pattern, or a recursive, self-pitch-clipping algorithm.\u00a0 (While it is a progression that continues to spiral upward, it has octave subtraction protection to stop it going on infinitely upward).\u00a0 This is a very cool progression that, while it isn’t an auditory illusion, for some reason makes me think of a Shepard-Risset glissando<\/a>, Risset’s rhythmic accelerando<\/a> auditory illusion, or Autechre’s Fold4,Wrap5<\/a> (LP5, 1998)<\/em>.<\/p>\n

At first, I thought the track progressed in measures of 5, with the notes being played on the 1, 2 and 3. Sarah<\/a> argues that each measure is divided into 16ths with stresses on 1, 4 and 7, which I now think is actually correct.<\/p>\n

In lay terms, the track can be represented as such:<\/p>\n

The pattern progresses in a count of 16.<\/p>\n

The ‘root’ note starts at MIDI pitch 56, and adds 5 semitones after each loop.\u00a0 If ‘root’ exceeds 62 (or the initial ‘root’ value + 6), then subtract 12.<\/p>\n

‘root’ plays a chord (root, root + 7, root + 12 [they are transposed down an octave in the code below]) on the 1 that rings out over the course of the measure.<\/p>\n

‘note[1-3]’ is the melodic progression of the plucked parts.\u00a0 They play on positions 1, 4, and 7 respectively of the measure.<\/p>\n

note[1] = root + 2<\/p>\n

note[2] = root + 3<\/p>\n

note[3] = root + 11<\/p>\n

One possible implementation of Tathagata for JS in Max
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\/\/ Simple representation of pitches and key modulation in Fredrik Thordendal's Tathagata.\r\n\/\/ Tathagata.js by Alex Mesker \/ alex@x37v.com \/ www.x37v.com\r\n\/\/ Save as Tathagata.js and put it in your Max search path.\r\noutlets = 2;\r\nsetoutletassist(0, \"Melodic progression (MIDI pitch)\");\r\nsetoutletassist(1, \"Root chord note\/s (MIDI pitch)\");\r\nvar root = 56;<\/span>\r\nvar cutoff = root + 6;<\/span>\r\nfunction msg_int(i) {<\/span>\r\nif (i==1) {<\/span>\r\noutlet(1, root-12);<\/span>\r\noutlet(1, root-5);<\/span>\r\noutlet(1, root);<\/span>\r\noutlet(0, root+14);<\/span>\r\n} else if (i==4) {<\/span>\r\noutlet(0, root+15);<\/span>\r\n} else if (i==7) {<\/span>\r\noutlet(0, root+23);<\/span>\r\nroot += 5;<\/span>\r\nif (root > cutoff) {<\/span>\r\nroot -= 12;<\/span>\r\n}<\/span>\r\n}<\/span>\r\n}<\/span><\/pre>\n
Save the above JavaScript as Tathagata.js<\/a> and put it in your Max search path.<\/p>\n
A Max patch that uses it can be downloaded here:<\/p>\n
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The base-chords and note progression that forms Tathagata is something that must have been going through Fredrik Thordendal’s head for some time.\u00a0 This progression is something that has emerged at least 3 times in both Meshuggah and Fredrik’s solo work, and can be heard as the basis of Tathagata (Sol Niger Within, 1997; Sol Niger […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[18,23,15],"class_list":["post-201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-javascript","tag-max","tag-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4SgL0-3f","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/x37v.com\/x37v\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/x37v.com\/x37v\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/x37v.com\/x37v\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/x37v.com\/x37v\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/x37v.com\/x37v\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/x37v.com\/x37v\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":269,"href":"https:\/\/x37v.com\/x37v\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions\/269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/x37v.com\/x37v\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/x37v.com\/x37v\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/x37v.com\/x37v\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}