Tag: music-theory

Oak Knoll Antiquarian Book Catalogue

I recently submitted a re-design for Oak Knoll's Antiquarian Catalogue. Oak Knoll is "the world's largest inventory of books about books and bibliography," with a hefty share of titles concerning typography and book design.

I used Robert Slimbach's Minion Pro Condensed with its
proportional ("Old Style") figures, widely spaced small caps for book titles, and a very readable italic for book descriptions:

Oak Knoll Antiquarian Catalogue design

The page proportion is a standard 2:3 (a perfect fifth, according to Robert Bringhurst's "Page Proportions As Musical Intervals") and I designed a harmonic text block proportion of 3:5 (Bringhurst's major sixth) with margin proportions 1:2 (the octave):

Oak Knoll Antiquarian Catalogue design

Not a winning design, but an enjoyable exercise and a chance to dig deeply into a treasure-filled catalogue for bibliophiles.

A Microtonal Dolphy

"At home [in California] I used to play, and the birds always used to whistle with me. I would stop what I was working on and play with the birds."

He described how bird calls had been recorded and then slowed down in playback; the bird calls had a timbre similar to that of a flute. Conversely, he said, a symphony flutist recorded these bird calls, and when the recording was played at a fast speed, it sounded like birds.

Having made his point about the connection of bird whistles and flute playing, Dolphy explained his use of quarter tones when playing flute.

"That's the way birds do," he said. "Birds have notes in between our notes-you try to imitate something they do and, like, maybe it's between F and F#, and you'll have to go up or come down on the pitch. It's really something! And so, when you get playing, this comes. You try to do some things on it. Indian music has something of the same quality-different scales and quarter tones. I don't know how you label it, but it's pretty."