This is a collection of compositions composed and (mostly) recorded in the Fall of 2019 and winter of 2020. It is the first album I have released that has no saxophone on it. Combination Locks #1 and #2 were briefly released on bandcamp in 2020 under the title "Steeple", but I took them down after a few months because I felt I did not draw enough attention to the release (I just put them on bandcamp without even telling anyone). I had plans of printing vinyl, but here we are in Summer of 2022 and I still haven't gotten around to it, and there is a vinyl shortage, so it takes two years to print vinyl now. So, here I am again, releasing the music on bandcamp without any fanfare. I figure it's better for this stuff to be out there somehow. Below is some information about the compositions.

BASE TEN: When I wrote Base Ten I was thinking about J. S. Bach's ability to write music that is translatable across many different types of instruments. In other words, his ability to write music where the relationships of the pitch and rhythms were more important than the timbre. In the 20th and 21st centuries there is so much emphasis on timbre. I wanted to challenge myself to write music that didn't rely on timbre as the primary formal element. So, to sort of test the hypothesis on this record, I have recorded two versions. One (track 1) that is on the organ. The organ version is super dramatic, with stops being pulled by yours truly to create a very organistic/orgasmic dramatic arc. The second version, track 4, was realized using only sine waves. In other words, timbre and dynamics are completely pulled out and the piece is distilled to its core elements, rhythm and pitch. Of course there is a dramatic arc to the piece still, but that only occurs because of the density of the material, not because the amplitude of the individual pitches are increased. Although the piece is theoretically possible to be performed by an actual organist, both versions were generated using MIDI. The MIDI organ at Wesleyan was used for the organ version. A Prophet REV-2 synthesizer was used for the Sine Wave version. You can look at the score here.

www.chrispitsiokos.com/materials/BaseTen.pdf

As you can see in the score the piece progresses through addition and subtraction, expansion and contraction. On the sine wave version, all sine waves are played at exactly the same dynamic. The apparent psycho acoustic accents you hear just have to do with the overlapping of material.

COMBINATION LOCKS
The combination locks scores are here, along with extensive descriptions.
www.chrispitsiokos.com/materials/CombinationLocks1.pdf
www.chrispitsiokos.com/materials/CombinationLocks2.pdf

DEDICATED TO THE ARTIST NO LAND
This piece was committed to memory and never written down. It utiliizes the tierce and nazard stops in combination with the fundamental stops to create microtonal dissonances and beating patterns.