Composing with Cubes: Iannis Xenakis and Nomos Alpha

[@JakobSpindler]

Very informative! I'd also love to hear the piece you composed with this concept :)

[@morinkhuur]

Thank you for this. You are brilliant. Xenakis became my all-time hero one day in 1967 when I heard the opening bars of Metastaseis in a booth in HMV Oxford Street. I had to learn to listen all over again.

[@AlannahMarie]

Thank you for your kind words. It’s lovely to hear how you discovered Xenakis.

[@yagiz885]

Such a well made, informative video. Also very entertaining in my opinion. Keep up the good work! I love to see essays on avant garde composers in this format.

[@AlannahMarie]

Thank you! That's lovely to hear :)

[@bkarosi]

Great video Alannah. 😍 Greetings from NY

[@fromzton]

That was amazing! Solid analysis. Love the passion you put into this. Thank you so mcuh!

[@machida5114]

Forty years ago, I listened to Nomos Alpha on vinyl every day. It is a performance of Siegfried Palm. This work is dedicated to him. It's a really great piece and performance.

[@machida5114]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/oHu2YX9rh8uCd6c

[@machida5114]

Can you answer the question in the comments in the video above?

[@AlannahMarie]

Which question is this?

[@machida5114]

@@AlannahMarie Why are the first 3 measures missing in the recording?!

[@machida5114]

the recording: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oHu2YX9rh8uCd6c

[@n7275]

How am I just finding your channel? This is amazing!

[@ChainsawCoffee]

Dice! It's four 6-sided dice! One for pitch, one for duration, one for dynamics, one for articulation. Roll the dice, and then line them up. This is absolutely fine for synthesizers. The Korg *logue filters can be set to 1/2 tracking, and then set to "ring," thus giving a 24ET octave. On a modular, the keyboard pitch is put through a voltage divider, or set up a voltage sequencer and step it manually. Great presentation!

[@mediapathic]

Thank you, this was very much the level of analysis of this piece that I needed. As someone with only the most rudimentary music theory, I had always enjoyed Xenakis as avant-garde but never really understood the conceptual basis for what he was doing. This video has me psyched to get more into his work. Thank you! (and also, yeah, I want to hear your composition too. It'd be a really good counterpoint (ha!) to hear a different piece composed with similar methods)

[@mediapathic]

Also I wanted to add that I'm a writer of fiction, and now I'm thinking about how to use these methods in my medium...

[@AlannahMarie]

Thank you, that’s so lovely to hear. I’m glad you found the video useful. And the fiction writing sounds exciting!

[@MicoAquinoComposer]

Thank you for the video! Very helpful!

[@MagnusWallesverd]

somehow i stumbled on Xenakis through a vaguely related wikipedia rabbit hole. Found that my Uni had the book in the library and checked it out. Now Im trying to decipher all the math and this video has helped. Thanks!

[@AlannahMarie]

So glad it’s been useful, thanks! Your research sounds interesting

[@MagnusWallesverd]

@@AlannahMarie You’re welcome. I compose with synthesizers, drum machines, and samplers. i’m hoping to automate these compositional processes with code so I don’t get “lost in the cube” haha. Cheers!

[@AlannahMarie]

Sounds amazing! :D

[@ajiang502]

thank you for your sharing! ! ! too exciting❤

[@danielbetancourt1483]

Brilliant video

[@pdv9603]

Brilliant, thank you!

[@CameronWattMusic]

I have just finished a composition for solo piano called 'Starry Night' which uses 3-dimensional algebraic tiles to determine the probabilities of events in the sample space. I am currently working on learning to play the composition, I hope to upload it when I am ready. This cube idea is very novel and an interesting restriction which I might try myself.

[@AlannahMarie]

Cool!

[@omarleone99]

Very intresting. Thank you

[@zacebbflo]

Hello, please take away that I very much enjoyed this video. I can tell you are knowledgable and passionate on the subject. FOR ME, the interruptions with yourself solving the Rubik's cube did disrupt my flow and I found myself having to actively concentrate, where as a solid flow of information would of kept me more attached. I look forward to any more videos you do.

[@AlannahMarie]

Thanks for the info @zacebbflo :)

[@elijahstewart3231]

this is fantastic, thanks!

[@patrickp9624]

first video i see from you and damn its interesting! Thank you! I will try to use this method for some electronic stuff. synths don't have arms that cannot do some stuff. they can jump and do where and whatever. but this video is so inspiring! Thanks!

[@ndmath]

Thanks for making this.

[@artemmelnik7965]

Is there a record of your piece? 🧐

[@TeemuOnteroComposer]

This video of yours inspired me to finally look again into the Nomos Alpha structures! (Been thinking about that for a couple of decades...) Not too deeply, though, it's very complicated and messy stuff, and perhaps not even really that completely explained in the Xenakis Formalized Music book. However, I had great fun implementing and testing some modular synthesis computer code based on just the basic cube rotations stuff!

[@AlannahMarie]

That's really great to hear! :D

[@sophie444100]

bonjour merci pour cette vidéo. J'ai vu un concert de Xenakis hier soir à Paris et grâce à ta vidéo j'ai mieux compris sa composition. Tes vidéos sont bien faites, simplement le bruit du cube est désagréable mais c'est amusant car cela rappelle certains passages désagréables à entendre pendant le morceau de Xenakis, donc c'est un bon clin d'oeil! :) Merci

[@crocaduck]

Thanks so much for the video! This explains Xenakis’ piece really well. I like your rubik cube micro interludes. I came across Xenakis’ music completely by chance in 72? I was working at a local library and would look through the various albums available (mostly classical section) and sign them out. Eventually, I came across a Nonesuch album by Iannis Xenakis (Pithopratka, Akrata) and Krzysztof Penderecki (Capriccio For Violin & Orchestra, De Natura Sonoris). Wow, I was blown away! Started buying anything 20th century. Talk about a musical shock!

[@AlannahMarie]

Thanks! And that’s amazing you got into Xenakis so suddenly! :D

[@crocaduck]

@@AlannahMarie I forgot to mention I got people at get togethers to listen to Pithopratka… in the dark! Ha. Needless to say, they were impressed.

[@AlannahMarie]

Amazing 😃

[@timeven4769]

Xenakis's system can of course be further generalized to include polygons with n vertices for example

[@marcinbobak...]

Hi there! Great educational vids about avant garde composers. That's so good you bring them to life... Xenakis?! Definitely the most important composer of our times! Do you have anything about Fausto Romitelli, Per Norgard, Giacinto Scelsi, Toru Takemitsu?

[@AlannahMarie]

Thank you for watching and the kind words. I don’t - but those are good names! I’m always looking for ideas / suggestions, thank you 🙂

[@marcinbobak...]

You're very welcome. Seems like you put a lot of effort into making it. ... I've also checked your sounds...You've got something strangely interesting there 🤔

[@christophertalbot9488]

I've used - or tried to use - structures like this in a number of compositions. However, when it gets to the realm of timbre and articulation the structures tend to explode out of all proportion. For instance, a glissando can be played with a > and also trilling along its length. It seems necessary always, if composing along these lines, to have myriads of cubes dedicated to timbre/articulation. The works remain unfinished...

[@NickBatinaComposer]

lol, I tried this one time, and ended up ditching the whole idea and replacing it with a flow-chart system based on serialized durations and a litany of varying degrees of a particular “inhale or exhale”. Try it out, ya might be able to merge the ideas, and it gives ya a lot of creative freedom, like randomly deciding to swap “paths” at will and breaking the system lol!

[@ntodd4110]

I was trying...really trying...to get into this video, but I couldn't take all the interruptions with the speeded-up Rubik's cube. If they were half the length, they wouldn't have intruded so much into the rhythm of the verbal material.

[@AlannahMarie]

Thanks for watching. OK noted, thank you.

[@StefaanHimpe]

I'm perhaps slightly disappointed that the cube is nothing but a tool to make permutations of a fixed number of elements. I mean, one could also use concentric circles and get a similar (simpler to visualize) process?

[@AlannahMarie]

Thanks very much for the thought-provoking question! You can change the shape to whatever you like in theory. Regarding the circle…Well, sure, but circles don’t have points and are two dimensional. There’d be less parameters to play with plus how would you fix a point on a circle and visualise that easier than a square? Maybe you have a way? Also the cube’s elements are not fixed as such, they have to be modified and they can be changed (you’re the composer so you’re allowed to do what you want, why not?). Furthermore the phrase “permutations of fixed elements” could be used to describe scales, keys, and chords in Western Tonality. The point of the cube is to get you thinking differently about musical parameters and interacting with the material as a composer, modifying where necessary so that it’s playable and not merely generated by a process. I hope this makes sense and adds a new perspective. Happy to discuss further.

[@StefaanHimpe]

@@AlannahMarie Hello Alannah, and thank you for the thorough answer. With respect to how to fix points on a circle, consider e.g. an (analog) clock which has 12 points spread over its circumference (but one can spread any desired number of points over a circle). I understand that the purpose of the cube is just as a source of material with certain built-in constraints and connections. If you rotate one cube with respect to one other, there's a systematic transformation taking place, it's not just shuffling all elements to random new places, because of the relation introduced between the elements by the edges of the cube. But the same is true of concentric circles. Although now that I think of it a bit more clearly, with concentric circles there are less degrees of freedom for rotation (you can only rotate around the center point around one axis and you could imagine also lifting and flipping a circle over, causing everything to be mirrored around an axis representing its diameter, whereas each cube can be rotated around any of the x, y or z axis, and, if desired, mirrrored around many possible planes. So I guess the cubes win in terms of overal flexibility :)

[@Ziad3195]

Hello! Awesome video, where did you buy your Xenakis t-shirt from?

[@AlannahMarie]

Hi! I actually had it made via a T-shirt printing company. 😃

[@alschnittke]

awesome!

[@Urdatorn]

Love the T-shirt!

[@AlannahMarie]

I love that you noticed! :D

[@BrucePetherick]

Where did you get the shirt?

[@GustavoStrauss]

Great!! 👏🏽🤍

[@peterpeper4837]

it is not Zenakis, but Ksenakis, soft k like the x in Huxley

[@MattDavies-yj7cn]

Nice x tku

[@ra6378]

It's at 6:25 your welcome.

[@AlannahMarie]

Wonderful

[@PavlosKatsivelisMusic]

This is a great video! It should have lots of views! Would it be too much to ask to listen to the piece you wrote using the cube method?

[@AlannahMarie]

Thank you! Not too much trouble at all. It's never been performed but I can make a Sibelius demo rendition (kind of, without the timbral exploration etc.) and follow-along score.

[@PavlosKatsivelisMusic]

@@AlannahMarie Great!

[@ilirllukaci5345]

Where's the klangfarben ghost cube? It'd have to be a ghost buckyball with a modern orchestra.

[@AlannahMarie]

Interesting notion! You could position instruments or certain timbres around points of the cube! Or even "sound objects" (I'm thinking of electroacoustic music now...or even musique concrete). Or it could be mere "attempts to make certain sounds" that you would then have to orchestrate. You've got me thinking now haha...

[@vidavieira1595]

Just subscribed to Ur channel

[@MenonDwarka]

Tesseract

[@AlannahMarie]

I see it 👀

[@siveverdun5355]

bruh if u would get bangs u would look like jane from braking bad that would be sick

[@DarioRamosMaldonado]

¡Que linda que sos! ❤

[@iamnoti6162]

In the end...you just write whatever SHIT enters your brain!!!

[@marcsolax6180]

i stopped at 7 min becuase im too busy with my vodka

[@AlannahMarie]

Do you drink it neat?

[@marcsolax6180]

@@AlannahMarie ya and i kinda like the first shot that provoke weird face : - ]

[@AlannahMarie]

Hahaha OK

[@victorvasylenko]

The cube technique is just an algorithm similar to what AI would and sounds rubbish because, again like AI, it doesn't include the incomplete 'gap' present in universal law and nature that allows something new to come in. Also, like AI it doesn't have the fractal zoom pattern connectivity that resonates throughout everything in nature. It might be clever-trevor for some, but I'm not impressed.

[@AlannahMarie]

For real? I’m gonna take an educated guess and say you didn’t watch the video. Xenakis literally dealt with the golden ratio! Also the whole cube process requires the composer to think and compose around the problems it throws up. It’s merely a means of overcoming writer’s block or composing something you wouldn’t have otherwise. You can literally compose what you want, it’s not like the cube composes it for you, it’s like a palette you can use instead of the rules of harmony and counterpoint (which AI can and does also use btw). This is not about “being clever”.

[@franciscoaragao5398]

She looks like lost.