Searching for New Sound - Music Composition ideas

 The instruments of H. Partch are unique along with his tuning. However, the instruments are big and hard to transport making his music limited to the physical presence of the instruments. Although recording technology can let the music spread rapidly, the live performance is nonreplaceable. After the COVID, musicians flooded to get back to the track of live performance, which is solid proof.  For composers, if I would like to compose by using the instruments of Partch is also particularly difficult, the unique sound and tuning must be heard by the composer before the composition process. To revive and popularise the music of Partch is more than playing the old recording. Freshwater is needed, composers compose music from Partch's ideology and instruments are the best way to preserve Partch's music. I had an idea of using Partch's instrument to compose, but I found it extremely difficult since the demonstration of each instrument is limited, there are no virtual instruments...

 When an instrument is played, when put the sound into the spectrum analysis (Fast Fourier Transform), there are multiple tones sounding at the same time, which contributes to the timbre of each instrument. For most instruments, strings, winds, and voice, the frequencies of vibration follow the pattern of harmonic series. Different loudness of individual harmonics contributes to the unique timbre of each instrument. Harmonic series follows the pattern from the whole multiples of the fundamental frequency (f,2f,3f,4f,5f, etc). However, the inharmonic percussion instruments do not follow the harmonic series, thus, this pattern is called inharmonicity. The timbre, as Sethares (2010) describes, is gong-like or bell-like. The spectrum analysis of some iconic orchestral sounds can be found in my previous article . For percussion containing wood or metal bars with free ends, the pattern of harmonic partials is irregular. Sethares (2010) calculated the pattern of the first 6 partials as: ...

 Cantonese opera, San Francisco, H. Partch, these three things may sound irrelevant at the first glance. However, these three things documented the very first scene of Chinese music exported to America. In California, where Partch was born, living and dead, Gold Rush first lured them in 1848, Chinese immigrants had come to the United States to work. About 175,000 Chinese immigrants who entered San Francisco through Angel Island between the great earthquake in 1906 and the Exclusion Act's repeal of many Chinese in 1943 by the Magnuson Act. The immigrants also brought with them a desire for entertainment from home, a desire musicians and touring companies eagerly filled as Chinatown prospered.  Chinese opera was regaining its foothold in Chinatown in the 1920s; Cantonese opera flourished from this early start until the 1890s and reached its peak in 1920’s. Mei Lanfang and Ma Shizeng toured the United States in 1930 and 1931–32, respectively. Chinese music kept resurfacing throug...