The Devil's Staircase

An adaptation of a Disklavier piano recording of György Ligeti’s Étude No. 13: L'escalier du diable / The Devil’s Staircase. The piece is noteworthy for, among other things, including possibly the most extreme dynamic marking ever intended to be taken seriously, an octuple forte, ffffffff

This is Experiment #2 in using BIAB to create new solo tracks for weird classical music. This violin solo is, I think, a lot more user-friendly than #1's electric slide guitar solo was.

Of course, it’s still life in Hell.

I took the MIDI performance and BIABerized it to create a chord sheet, then generated a band backing and a violin solo, keeping only the solo. But it didn’t hang together very well, so I had Logic make a MIDI track from the solo, then quantized piano and violin to a fixed rhythm and to Logic’s “Japanese” scale (C – Db – F – G – Ab). This completely violates the score of the original piece, of course, and I am well aware of what happened when Stanley Kubrick tried similar funny business with Mr. Ligeti’s music, but it works for this kind of crazy material and allows me to engage BIAB.

I added a few hot licks on Logic’s Heavy Metal Organ and Medieval Recorder, and made some manual tweaks to the solo, derived from RealTrack "Fid,Sol,CltReelAndy,Ev16,110 (3856)".

Running time: 4:53

Original performance files by Aaron Kurz:
https://www.yamahaden.com/midi-files/advanced-search/18037

YouTube video by Pierre-Laurent Aimard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoLam2O3gtY

I love most of this... I'm also a huge fan of M.C. Escher's art...
The middle of your piece was again, OMH... but then, so much of everything is.

Thanks. If I understand you, the part you didn't like was the "bells", which has the pianist chilling a bit and is (apart from instrumentation) the only part that's really true to the score/performance. Rhythm quantization added nothing, and I didn't need the scale quantization to glue it to the solo, so I hoped to provide some relief from the nail-gun-to-the-head effect and break the piece up. If you aren't a fan of the dissonance, you can blame that on György. =8^)

That's pretty interesting. Reading your description of how you created this.... you put a lot of work and thought into it. Kudos on that.

Very interesting, Mark.
Your description shows the extent of your exertions in construction and arrangement. Accolades for your imagination, tenacity and verve! That said, it's not the sort of melody I could readily put on a loop while I'm writing my novel.
It would, I feel, work well as background (or even foreground) music for a documentary or a film about a lunatic asylum.
I am glad it was the first piece of music I listened to upon waking, rather than the last piece before bedtime.

Kind regards,

Ghostgum

Very interesting piece of music. The first thing I thought of a start was chaos and panic. When imagining it with the art work it fit perfectly. Very well done.

Guitarhacker, Ghostgum, Scott C,

Thank you, gentlemen, for your comments!

This certainly was a labor of crazy love.

Hopefully I've been clear enough about who did what here. I know I did something, though I can't claim authorship, OTOH I'm sure György's Ghost would not appreciate having this attributed to him, what with changing the notes and all. (I guess I could tag it something like "A Devil's Staircase, after György Ligeti", and not specify any author, whatever that would mean...)

Hi, Mark.

Interesting bit of frenetic music. ffffff is a bit tiring to listen to after a while, but fortunately MIDI doesn't really go that high.

With the violin on top, I didn't really notice the "climbing" effect that's in the original music. Weird.

The middle section was so different, it didn't seem to fit at all.

Cool experiment, nonetheless.

I wonder what Beck would've done with it...
Frenetic it is and it'd be hard yakka to perform.
I enjoyed the "bell" section - particularly the "fall" into it.
Those percussive parts of the piano in the last minute or so are cool.
I think a piano would need a holiday after a pounding like that.
Good fun Mark, another cross training session for the brain.

Ligeti must have been smiling when he wrote that. I imagine him saying, "This one goes to eleven!"


I can explain, I think.

1) BIAB doesn't know its bass from its treble, in terms of which end of a piano is being played and what the soloist should do. I didn't want to transpose the violin to follow the piano range (I tried, yuck) so it doesn't climb the way the piano does. My conceptual solution: the piano is the staircase, the fiddle is the feet flying up it.

2) I couldn't find where (if anywhere) Apple says what Logic's "Japanese" scale is, so I experimented and found it to be, for the key of C:

C – Db – F – G – Ab

Some pretty big holes in there, considering we're coming from a chromatic composition, so this quantization makes for some jumpy jumping vs. smooth ascending.


That's fair. I think perhaps I will try not dropping the pitch quantization, for that part, just the rhythm.


Thanks for listen + comment, always much appreciated.

Beck's "Colors" is available as a Logic demo file. Lots of tracks, many audio but many MIDI, too. Could be a fun playground for plunderphonics.

I had to look this up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Yakka


Mixed feedback about the bell section, I think I'll make another pass without the excessive attempt to restore authenticity.

Indeed, about the pounding. I feel guilty thinking that a real person actually played this, and here I am opening a MIDI file and giving it to a computer. =8^(


Thanks. It did help me get started this morning.

OK, based on YOUR COMMENTS I have made the following significant change:

I applied the same pitch quantization to the "bell" section as to the rest of the piece, constraining it to the pentatonic scale described, while still sparing it rhythmic quantization.

This makes the listening a whole lot less difficult. I have decided to go for the easy listening and tolerate the guilt feelings.

The link up top is now to the revised piece. The changed part is from 2:43 – 3:28.

Thanks again! =8^)

I don't quote understand all that you did to create this, but I like the results, nonetheless. The middle part that starts at 2:46 flowed well from the preceding movement and provided relief, a bit of catharsis, from the frenzied mayhem. I found your piece a bit of a treat.

Well, now, THAT is more than I would even hope for! Thank you, sir, and glad to hear you enjoyed.

OH MY!

That's high powered exhilaration

My BP is off the charts.

moto

=8^D

Bear in mind, this is a chromatic piano piece pitch-quantized to a pentatonic scale, so that’s less than half the different notes that poor pianist originally had to play.

Wow, listening to your score is always a refreshing break from all the country songs that try to sound as much as country songs as possible. Although I don't much care about the theoretical things, the feeling is more important and in my ears your works try to stretch all possible rules, almost breaking them and going beyond impossible And that's what true art is all about. BIABerizing is a very imaginative concept and the picture describes it very well.

Janne

Thank you thank you thank you for these kind words, and in particular for noticing my invention of the term "BIABerize" to describe the process of justinization. =8^)

Much could be said about rules and rule breaking and the nature of art. I think of what I do in something like this as more experimental rule combining, mixing related and unrelated forms in such ways as technology invites. And of course BIAB is all about mixing forms, so it's just a playground for this sort of thing.

By the way, if you haven't listened to it, Ligeti's un-messed-with piano piece is way more out there than my unauthorized distortion of it here! I have made his totally dissonant piece much simpler and more accessible, both rhythmically and harmonically, turning it into kind of a pop, "lite" version (and for this I do accept I will burn in Hell...)