Scriabin Synthesizer No. 1 is an interpretation of A. Scriabin’s mystic chord and its numerological mysticism in the context of sound synthesis. The six tracks were generated by computer algorithms. The whole album was derived from a revised mystic chord following a natural overtone scale.
Some parts of this 3 hour album consist of very low frequency or extremely soft sounds. You may not hear anything without a proper sound system or headphone.

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Scriabin Synthesizer No.1

Alexander Scriabin and his music were not more than an extreme example of romanticism of European intellectuals. His music didn’t break the limitation of romantic music style. However, his ideas were more radical, some of them stand outside European classical music, even music.

He was the first European composer who imagined sounds outside time. His mystic chord doesn’t have any function of progression in the composition, even it was the extension of a dominant chord. He dreamed a part of Prometheus would be played very slowly, then the chord sounds eternal. He hoped his music escaped from the yoke of time. This is not music anymore, even we can say, it is sound installation.
He was the first composer who introduced the idea of set of pitches. The pitch set doesn’t have time order. His music was constructed in space, not time. For him, a chord and a melody are essentially the same. If all pitches of a melody are played at the same time, it is a chord. The concept of the set gave some impacts in music history, Roslavets, Hauer and Jazz improvisation (after George Russel) shared the concept.

What was the mystic chord? Scriabin reached the chord after extensions of a dominant chord. But after he established the chord, it abandoned the role of functional harmony.
As far as we follow the composer’s biography by Leonid Sabaneev, Scriabin was conscious that the mystic chord is on a natural overtone scale. It consists of 1, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13th overtones. One point is that the second-lowest note of a mystic chord, which is argument 4th interval from the route, also the 11th overtone, should be nearly 50 cents lower. It means this interval which was essential for Scriabin, is in the middle of perfect 4th and argument 4th, the mystic chord is fundamentally ultra-chromatic, micro-tonal. The set consists of odd numbers overtones without the 3rd one. The accumulation of odd number overtones has a crucial meaning for sound synthesis, it makes triangle wave and square wave by additive synthesis which was the main method in early sound synthesis. Interestingly, the mystic chord neglects the 3rd overtone, the 5th interval. A tonal scale is built with a repetition of perfect 5th. It also proves the mystic chord is not inside tonality and 12 equal temperament.
The internal structure of the mystic chord belongs to electronic music rather than classical music.

Scriabin Synthesizer No. 1 is the first project of this interpretation of the mystic chord. It is a digital album consists of six tracks which were entirely generated by computer algorithms. All chords, tones, melodies, rhythms, tone colours (overtone structures of each tone,) transitions, spatial structures and time structures are variants of one mystic chord on the natural overtone scale.
Throughout the album, the fundamental frequency is 43.315Hz which is the lowest note of the lowest audible mystic chord, this album begins and ends with the chord. This frequency was lead from the duration of the lifetime of Scriabin.
5 other mystic chords are derived from the lowest mystic chord, then these 36 notes form a scale which is an equivalent of Prometheus Scale by Scriabin, but it isn’t based on octave transpositions.
At the same time, the whole album provides an overview of the history of sound synthesis in the 20th century. It adopts three basic technics of sound synthesis; additive (includes subharmonics,) subtractive and frequency modulation. For example, the additive synthesis is propelled with a bank of 36 sine wave oscillators.

This is not music, rather sound. It is a mystic chord continues eternally. It is a digital interpretation of Scriabin’s numerological mysticism.

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Tomomi Adachi is a performer/composer, sound poet, instrument builder and visual artist. Known for his versatile style, he has performed his own voice and electronics pieces, sound poetry, improvised music and contemporary music, also presented site-specific compositions, compositions for classical ensembles, theatre pieces, choir pieces for untrained musicians and sculptural poetry pieces in all over the world including Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, Tate Modern, Maerzmusik, Centre Pompidou, ZKM, Palais de Tokyo, Akademie der Kuenste Berlin and Walker Art Center. He has interpreted historical experimental music works by Cornelius Cardew, Christian Wolff and notably “Europera 5” and “Variation VII” by John Cage as Japan premieres. He has been working with a wide range of materials; self-made physical interfaces and instruments, artificial intelligence, brainwave, artificial satellite, twitter texts, fracture and even paranormal phenomenas. He has performed with numerous musicians including Jaap Blonk, Nicolas Collins, Jennifer Walshe, TAKAHASHI Yuji, Carl Stone, Ute Wassermann, SAKATA Akira, ICHIYANAGI Toshi, Zbigniew Karkowski and OTOMO Yoshihide. As the only Japanese performer of sound poetry, he performed Kurt Schwitters' "Ursonate" as a Japan premiere in 1996. CDs include the solo album from Tzadik, Fontec, Omegapoint and naya records. He stayed in New York from 2009 to 2010 as a grantee of Asian Cultural Council. He was a guest of the Artists-in-Berlin Program of the DAAD for 2012. He receive the Award of Distinction from Ars Electronica 2019.
www.adachitomomi.com