3/5 Interview with Ervin Wilson
3/5 Transcript
Ervin Wilson (00:00):Understand perfectly well here with what he was saying, because the woman who I was with was, would translate, he didn't say a word of English, but then he'd give me sound samples. And on and on the sound samples, they were done on flute, the division of the minor third into hole step, and a semitone on that particular fruit delivered in an eight seven and a 28 27 if you, a large hole tone, the eight seven. And then the semi difference between that and the minor third, when I heard the eight seven played in a musical context that I could not ignore or could not dismiss as being my whole brain absolutely re rewarded itself. I, I started laughing just, and I, I uncontrollably at the psychic shock of, of, of hearing something and, and suddenly recognizing it's true musical meaning. Mm mm Yeah. And so I tried to conceal that.
(01:26):I was laughing by looking away. And if he noticed that I was laughing, he did not allow me to notice that. And because he didn't want me to lose face, nor did I want, but what, however it worked out. But I found out later also in other contexts, in other Japanese films that had I'd seen filmed, they, the same pentatonic scale would divide that minor third into equal parts, not the Pythagorean parts. So that there, on the shaku Hachi there was quite a bit of freedom on how you played Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> the different pentatonic mosquitoes.
(02:17):Uh, and so that was where I, and I didn't know I was hearing the eight, seven. I just knew that that was working. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I went to the service club over at Tokyo one day and they did have a piano there. And just sitting there playing some of my own compositions with my own strange harmonies that I would, you know, I would just transpose minor courts by a minor third and do, do things that are really forbidden, parallel, <laugh>, all of this stuff that, that if you go to music theory classes, you can't do that. Well, of course you can. Don't be silly, but <laugh>, you can do whatever you want to do. And I was still, but I was sitting there playing some more stuff and there's this poor young, um, whack or waving, homesick and sad and standing by the piano there less than just sobbing.
(03:36):So just, I heard it. He really beautiful, abusive <laugh>. Not to laugh at him <laugh>. But then this fellow came along and was listen to me. And he said, I play on the harmonics. He says, I play the harmonics. And so he, the harmonics, what are the harmonics? And he explained what the harmonics series was to me. And that was the first time in my whole life that anybody had ever told me that there was such a thing as a harmonic series. So I had clued every two. I knew what the chain of fifths was, that I knew what the Harmonic series was at that point. When I realized what the, I would still find the, try to find the closest thing to the seventh and the 11th. I couldn't pretty do it all, but I did the best I could. But, but when I got to, when I finally got out of the Air Force after three years, then it was the reason I enlisted.
(05:07):'cause ordinarily it would've been a five year enlistment, but they, this greedy gave a special for people would go in there and just join up quickly. You can get out. And, uh, and so I got out when I, when it was time for me to get out, I left. And then my immediately commanding officer, I was back there, my New York City again. And, and I wrote up my own discharge and took it in and, and, and he suddenly realized that he was going to lose his secretary. And I was doing good work for him. I was, would correct his English, correct his spelling and, uh, produce a professional looking document. And that poor fellow realized suddenly that he was losing me. And he called me into office and he almost begged me to stay or fell outta. I says, I've gotten to get to school and get an education. And, uh, and I said, I'm not, I'm not gonna get anywhere here. Actually, I would've got somewhere. I, I stayed there. I would, I just, I would've just, if I, that I wanted to go into the, the wine. I wanted to become a pilot
(06:30):And some, some pilot school. I'll stay under that condition and then I would become <inaudible> anyway. But anyway, he realized that I should get him education, I realized. So I went straight home to Rainier, Oregon, and I had my GED scores and general education development. He said, he says, Irv, well, he says, you are in fact the equivalent of a high school graduate. And so my mother got on the lie and called up Uncle Howard, my uncle Howard McDonald, who was then running Brigham Young University. And he says, Howard, could you get Irv into school there this year? And, uh, he says, well, send me his, send me his transfers records. And he wrote back what went on the letters. And he wrote back and says, have him take a short course in this class. This, he needs one more time to take it. Have him take, he said, by mail, took the class. When she fixed me up to go school, I got BYU. The very first thing I did is ask him, are there any microtonal books here? It so happened, there was one fellow doing his doctoral desk Dissertate. Wait, you
Gary David (08:02):Knew that, that, um, label by that time, I mean, after you were in Japan, you knew what Microtonal meant.
Ervin Wilson (08:12):I knew what Microtonal was because before I even got went to Oregon at 15, I had read about the Indian scale of 22 tones. Okay. Somehow or rather way out there and isolated Pacheco, I got wind of the fact that the Indians had a 22 tone scale. And so I said, must find out about 22 tone scale. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But, um, so I knew there was a 22 point scale, so
Gary David (08:51):You asked if they had any microtonal.
Ervin Wilson (08:53):So, so as soon as soon as soon as I got to Portland, as soon as I got to Rainier, Oregon, I found that I could borrow books from the University of, or of, from the state university at, at Salem. And so I wrote in and said, do you have any books on music? And they sent me two, uh, two or three references on Indian music, but none of them, Fox strangle ways and that set, but none of them gave the discrete descriptions of the ratios. They just, it was just kind of almost bizarre gibberish, you know, using strange formulas and so forth. But I realized that there was at least a chain of fifths at that time that went out beyond 12. And, uh, by that time, I'd also learned that there was a harmonic series. But anyway, getting to BYU knowing that there was a 22 tone scale, perfectly viable 22 tone scale. Also in, in Mexico, I knew somewhere, I knew that there was a slightly flatted fifth. I could hear it just a quarter tone flat. And I didn't know where that fifth came from, but I knew that somewhere some far away Indians were singing that people from American Indians were singing that lowered fifth.
Gary David (10:40):Were there any key people at Brigham Young that enhanced that curiosity of yours?
Ervin Wilson (10:49):The guy who had done his doctoral thesis that went and talked to him, he said, yes, there's a book by Harry P up there, there's a book by Joseph Yasser. And, um, there's Sensations of Tone by Helm Hols. So I went up there one after the, and got each one and, uh, began working with them. And I would, I was, I was also taking piano lessons at the same time. And I got, had the privilege, unique privileges, studying with Leon down, very, very gifted composer. He finally took over Long Beach, the University of Long Beach. And, um, but I had enough information then that I could, that I could figure out scales. But, uh, the calculation of the ratios was exceedingly difficult. And I knew in my mind's eye that I had to have a ratio. I had to have a way of making the octas all equal in size and a way of measur so that they would all be equal in size.
(12:16):That gave the arc to as the unit. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And my friends say, oh, you want it? And, and I had some notion how to, I, I had had some notion of how to do it. I, I had actually somehow other heard of the golden section by that time. I don't know how it was, but they says, there's this math student over there and go tell him what you, what you're doing. And he, he, what you're trying to do, and you, I couldn't quite get it mathematically. And he sat down and I explained to him what I was trying to do. He says, what you're doing is called logs to the base two, and this is how you solve them. There is a great big book, this thick up here, all of log rhythms to the base 10 all written in, handwritten in with, with so many of them that you can interpolate them to get anything you want in there. What you do then is you take logs to Base 10 and you run this quick little routine on them, and they turn into logs to base two. So by hand, I began calculating by hand, calculating and, and changing logs base 10 over to logs base two up through 64. And those have been published, but I did them back at BYU. Oh, interesting. They were published much later than that.
(14:00):And that gave me such a, having logs based two made some computation so easy to do. And just the more I worked with them, the more I realized what they, I could do with them. Just, I think about it a little while a sudden I just realized that this was open obsess, and it put me literally light years ahead of all of my peers and all, and has kept me there ever. The simple fact that I can work logs based two lightning put calculations and, uh, you, you know, how valuable they're, of course you do. And so then I began taking these logs based to try and decided I was going to calculate, but that by that time I could go through the divisions one by one by one by one, and find out quickly which divisions were going to have the best approximations to the, to the Harmonic series.
(15:08):And I went up there and, you know, and it says, got up to 7 0 17. Hey, there's another, there's some interesting things going on up there. I got up to 22, I said, oh my gosh, this is, this is a, a miracle. And, but I kept on going and I got up to 29 and it really looked good. <laugh>, and then some inner voices keep on going here. <laugh> went two more steps forward and got to 31 and completely rediscovered the 31 Tone equal division, which a August to Novarro had, was perfectly literate about and published a year before I was born in Pacheco. But I rediscovered 31 and began figuring out ways to use 31. But incidentally, before I stopped, I had actually calculated 41 2 on top, and I thought, I, I better find, I got up to 41. I realized that's just not as bad. Um, so then, um,
Gary David (16:26):I have a question.
Ervin Wilson (16:27):Yeah.
Gary David (16:28):I noticed that there was a shift in this period of time from making music, you know, melodies and playing chords and playing in bands, and suddenly the shift toward the scale itself suddenly took place during this time. Is that, am I seeing that right?
Ervin Wilson (16:47):I would always, when I would go up there, I would, uh, I was always taking formal piano and, uh, lessons. I was taking piano lessons from first of, I take with a, a certain eccentric piano teacher that taught me how to play a, something pleasant enough, but I wasn't happy with them. One day I was driving along and, uh, I had the radio. I bought a little cross, the little Green Cross hadn't split. I picked it up down there because it wasn't very, it didn't, didn't cost me very much at all. And I wanted, you don't, I don't know if you ever even saw the Little Cross. Oh yeah, absolutely. Oh, you have it. Oh, alright. But, but I was driving it around one day with the radio on, and I heard this music, I could not believe my Bella Bar talk a name that I couldn't forget. And so I dashed out and somehow, or they got hold of his microcosms and started playing the Microcosmos on my own. And when I started, but later on I started studying piano music with, with Leon Dell and himself. And I told him about, and I had written a few things for Leon that studied music with him. And he was, uh,
(18:35):Well, he, and he was, but so I said, she says, where did you hear about? Where did you hear about talk? I heard on the radio. And, but by that time I had somehow hurt this finger right here. I caught it in steel door. I had to work at this, found not work at a hospital. And, and a relative patient refused to go back into his cell. And so I pushed the door shut and the door shut my fingers well, so I could use this. So I started working one hand and started working the other, and we continued on through the Microcosmos Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But by that time, I was starting to make serious plans about writing music in 31, and figured out ways and keyboards and things and that forth. And I'd put, I'd, I'd figured out a generalized keyboard, I, and put it on a little piece of paper and told Leon down I was going to write 31. And he said, he says, uh, he was sort of, she said, I'd like to hear you do some good things in 12 first <laugh>. And I was just, I was just raring and ready to go. How
Gary David (20:05):Old were you about this thing?
Ervin Wilson (20:08):I'd been three, three years in the Air Force. And, and after the Air Force, I went straight to BYU. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.
Gary David (20:15):So you're about 21, 22.
Ervin Wilson (20:18):Okay. 18 plus three is 21. So I was getting in, moving into my 22nd year. Okay. And, uh, so, uh, but I, I stayed. So he
Gary David (20:36):Said, you should start learning, doing some stuff in 12 before
Ervin Wilson (20:40):You did 31. He, he felt like I should really try to write, and I had no way of realizing 31. But, uh, I decided to, there was somebody at at USC who was very, very skilled in Microtones, and I forget his name, but I decided I was gonna come out to California and studied with him. Got out here, and I didn't have any money. I needed money and, uh, and didn't have a job, and I needed a job. And, uh, one thing led to another and I didn't get over to USC. It turned out I found out later that the man was a hypocrite. Anyway, he, he wasn't serious about Michael to, he was, he just wrote that article because he was a good writer and he was being paid to write it. And, but, but, but at that point, I had 31 down and I began designing keyboards and I found out about John Brock out in Compton.
(21:53):And so I set up the pitches and went right out to John Brock and said, can you make me set of, of Song Bells to 31? And I had organized one. The, the song Bells are still in there in Amil Richard's warehouse. I, I haven't been able to get them away from 'em. He retiring into Hawaii, but I had a set of song belts to 31 made, and that was the, the probably the first instrument in 31. And I was living down in Santa Monica that before I actually got the song. Yeah. I had the song built by that time. But then I began thinking, it says Erwin, I said, I said to myself, I says, Erwin, um, you know, probably somebody else. You don't just suppose that somewhere else on the planet. Someone else is doing 31.
(23:01):It's, it couldn't be. But I wrote to James Murray Barber and it says, dear, dear Murray Barber, I'm, this isn't what I'm doing with 31. Can you tell me there's somebody else, anywhere that, you know, I was making music in 31. And he shot a letter back and he said, it is just amazing how two people in such different parts of the world can be doing the same thing. And got me in touch with Doctor, with Adrian Fa. And I set up communication with him right away. Of course, he had his pipe organ in, in there, in, in Tyler's museum. And they were getting together and ha getting concerts. And uh, and we finally got the Faulker. And so I was corresponding with Dr. Faulker, and he was a, a a bit impatient with my keyboard. And I asked him what his keyboard was like, and he wouldn't divulge what his keyboard was like.
(24:16):But I had a dream one night. I just told myself I was, all right, I'm going to, I'm gonna dream what his keyboard is like. So I went, I went to sleep and I dreamt, and I dreamt they were just straight horizontal rows. And the woman was showing me the keyboard, and it was just horizontal rows. And one was expected to go by, by and hold tos up this way and semi tos up this way. And I said, that's ridiculous. And I says, that's the first idea I had. I would just reject completely because you, you go off the edge of the keyboard besides Boong, he is so much better.
(25:08):And, but anyway, it went out to John Brock and he built a set of song goats and I could listen to anything I wanted to in 31. The tuning wasn't perfect because he had to tune from vibration. He caught the master pitch, but then he had to tune from beats and to figuring out with a, with a ball on his piece of string, how fast the beat should be and so forth. And he finally got his set of 31. That was fairly good. But when we really got it right down to Measurings, we, well, after the, after he built me the Song Bells, I had those, and that would lend them to Amal Richards. And he would use them in films.
(26:04):This is much late, like, like flute Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and stuff. And then I had, but then I also had a 22 to instrument built from square branch tubing and had one of those built up. And those were used to make that celestial sound. And, and that guy, that Chinese fellow, what was his name, looking for his father, um, uh, it was a whole series about a boy, Kung fu Kung fu, yes. David, um, IDE, David Ide, uh, that, that was a, for, for transfiguration things they would use that as transf. But at any rate, I got out here and I had the 31 tone sets and met Harvard Derrick, and he had, and so, uh, I, Derrick began, introduced me around, and there were other people who were doing 31, but me and John Chalmers got together and I, knowing the rules, knowing what I had to do to do a search for 30 ones, just an extensive search for good harmonics, cooperating with John Chalmers.
(27:26):And we did the equal DI divisions, and we, and checked to see how well they did the harmonics up fairly high up in the harmonics series. And we went up to around 2000 divisions and to have the tables printed up there, I still have them. And we worked from that. Right. But from that, from that point on, we started, well, it, it took, by that time I started patenting, putting down on paper and patenting, patenting, pardon me, different keyboards for 31. And, uh, then a, an actual generalized keyboard for 22, which is the, which is your keyboard. Got a patent on that. And then we began, uh, exploring different ways to tune it and so forth and so on.
(01:26):I was laughing by looking away. And if he noticed that I was laughing, he did not allow me to notice that. And because he didn't want me to lose face, nor did I want, but what, however it worked out. But I found out later also in other contexts, in other Japanese films that had I'd seen filmed, they, the same pentatonic scale would divide that minor third into equal parts, not the Pythagorean parts. So that there, on the shaku Hachi there was quite a bit of freedom on how you played Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> the different pentatonic mosquitoes.
(02:17):Uh, and so that was where I, and I didn't know I was hearing the eight, seven. I just knew that that was working. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I went to the service club over at Tokyo one day and they did have a piano there. And just sitting there playing some of my own compositions with my own strange harmonies that I would, you know, I would just transpose minor courts by a minor third and do, do things that are really forbidden, parallel, <laugh>, all of this stuff that, that if you go to music theory classes, you can't do that. Well, of course you can. Don't be silly, but <laugh>, you can do whatever you want to do. And I was still, but I was sitting there playing some more stuff and there's this poor young, um, whack or waving, homesick and sad and standing by the piano there less than just sobbing.
(03:36):So just, I heard it. He really beautiful, abusive <laugh>. Not to laugh at him <laugh>. But then this fellow came along and was listen to me. And he said, I play on the harmonics. He says, I play the harmonics. And so he, the harmonics, what are the harmonics? And he explained what the harmonics series was to me. And that was the first time in my whole life that anybody had ever told me that there was such a thing as a harmonic series. So I had clued every two. I knew what the chain of fifths was, that I knew what the Harmonic series was at that point. When I realized what the, I would still find the, try to find the closest thing to the seventh and the 11th. I couldn't pretty do it all, but I did the best I could. But, but when I got to, when I finally got out of the Air Force after three years, then it was the reason I enlisted.
(05:07):'cause ordinarily it would've been a five year enlistment, but they, this greedy gave a special for people would go in there and just join up quickly. You can get out. And, uh, and so I got out when I, when it was time for me to get out, I left. And then my immediately commanding officer, I was back there, my New York City again. And, and I wrote up my own discharge and took it in and, and, and he suddenly realized that he was going to lose his secretary. And I was doing good work for him. I was, would correct his English, correct his spelling and, uh, produce a professional looking document. And that poor fellow realized suddenly that he was losing me. And he called me into office and he almost begged me to stay or fell outta. I says, I've gotten to get to school and get an education. And, uh, and I said, I'm not, I'm not gonna get anywhere here. Actually, I would've got somewhere. I, I stayed there. I would, I just, I would've just, if I, that I wanted to go into the, the wine. I wanted to become a pilot
(06:30):And some, some pilot school. I'll stay under that condition and then I would become <inaudible> anyway. But anyway, he realized that I should get him education, I realized. So I went straight home to Rainier, Oregon, and I had my GED scores and general education development. He said, he says, Irv, well, he says, you are in fact the equivalent of a high school graduate. And so my mother got on the lie and called up Uncle Howard, my uncle Howard McDonald, who was then running Brigham Young University. And he says, Howard, could you get Irv into school there this year? And, uh, he says, well, send me his, send me his transfers records. And he wrote back what went on the letters. And he wrote back and says, have him take a short course in this class. This, he needs one more time to take it. Have him take, he said, by mail, took the class. When she fixed me up to go school, I got BYU. The very first thing I did is ask him, are there any microtonal books here? It so happened, there was one fellow doing his doctoral desk Dissertate. Wait, you
Gary David (08:02):Knew that, that, um, label by that time, I mean, after you were in Japan, you knew what Microtonal meant.
Ervin Wilson (08:12):I knew what Microtonal was because before I even got went to Oregon at 15, I had read about the Indian scale of 22 tones. Okay. Somehow or rather way out there and isolated Pacheco, I got wind of the fact that the Indians had a 22 tone scale. And so I said, must find out about 22 tone scale. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But, um, so I knew there was a 22 point scale, so
Gary David (08:51):You asked if they had any microtonal.
Ervin Wilson (08:53):So, so as soon as soon as soon as I got to Portland, as soon as I got to Rainier, Oregon, I found that I could borrow books from the University of, or of, from the state university at, at Salem. And so I wrote in and said, do you have any books on music? And they sent me two, uh, two or three references on Indian music, but none of them, Fox strangle ways and that set, but none of them gave the discrete descriptions of the ratios. They just, it was just kind of almost bizarre gibberish, you know, using strange formulas and so forth. But I realized that there was at least a chain of fifths at that time that went out beyond 12. And, uh, by that time, I'd also learned that there was a harmonic series. But anyway, getting to BYU knowing that there was a 22 tone scale, perfectly viable 22 tone scale. Also in, in Mexico, I knew somewhere, I knew that there was a slightly flatted fifth. I could hear it just a quarter tone flat. And I didn't know where that fifth came from, but I knew that somewhere some far away Indians were singing that people from American Indians were singing that lowered fifth.
Gary David (10:40):Were there any key people at Brigham Young that enhanced that curiosity of yours?
Ervin Wilson (10:49):The guy who had done his doctoral thesis that went and talked to him, he said, yes, there's a book by Harry P up there, there's a book by Joseph Yasser. And, um, there's Sensations of Tone by Helm Hols. So I went up there one after the, and got each one and, uh, began working with them. And I would, I was, I was also taking piano lessons at the same time. And I got, had the privilege, unique privileges, studying with Leon down, very, very gifted composer. He finally took over Long Beach, the University of Long Beach. And, um, but I had enough information then that I could, that I could figure out scales. But, uh, the calculation of the ratios was exceedingly difficult. And I knew in my mind's eye that I had to have a ratio. I had to have a way of making the octas all equal in size and a way of measur so that they would all be equal in size.
(12:16):That gave the arc to as the unit. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And my friends say, oh, you want it? And, and I had some notion how to, I, I had had some notion of how to do it. I, I had actually somehow other heard of the golden section by that time. I don't know how it was, but they says, there's this math student over there and go tell him what you, what you're doing. And he, he, what you're trying to do, and you, I couldn't quite get it mathematically. And he sat down and I explained to him what I was trying to do. He says, what you're doing is called logs to the base two, and this is how you solve them. There is a great big book, this thick up here, all of log rhythms to the base 10 all written in, handwritten in with, with so many of them that you can interpolate them to get anything you want in there. What you do then is you take logs to Base 10 and you run this quick little routine on them, and they turn into logs to base two. So by hand, I began calculating by hand, calculating and, and changing logs base 10 over to logs base two up through 64. And those have been published, but I did them back at BYU. Oh, interesting. They were published much later than that.
(14:00):And that gave me such a, having logs based two made some computation so easy to do. And just the more I worked with them, the more I realized what they, I could do with them. Just, I think about it a little while a sudden I just realized that this was open obsess, and it put me literally light years ahead of all of my peers and all, and has kept me there ever. The simple fact that I can work logs based two lightning put calculations and, uh, you, you know, how valuable they're, of course you do. And so then I began taking these logs based to try and decided I was going to calculate, but that by that time I could go through the divisions one by one by one by one, and find out quickly which divisions were going to have the best approximations to the, to the Harmonic series.
(15:08):And I went up there and, you know, and it says, got up to 7 0 17. Hey, there's another, there's some interesting things going on up there. I got up to 22, I said, oh my gosh, this is, this is a, a miracle. And, but I kept on going and I got up to 29 and it really looked good. <laugh>, and then some inner voices keep on going here. <laugh> went two more steps forward and got to 31 and completely rediscovered the 31 Tone equal division, which a August to Novarro had, was perfectly literate about and published a year before I was born in Pacheco. But I rediscovered 31 and began figuring out ways to use 31. But incidentally, before I stopped, I had actually calculated 41 2 on top, and I thought, I, I better find, I got up to 41. I realized that's just not as bad. Um, so then, um,
Gary David (16:26):I have a question.
Ervin Wilson (16:27):Yeah.
Gary David (16:28):I noticed that there was a shift in this period of time from making music, you know, melodies and playing chords and playing in bands, and suddenly the shift toward the scale itself suddenly took place during this time. Is that, am I seeing that right?
Ervin Wilson (16:47):I would always, when I would go up there, I would, uh, I was always taking formal piano and, uh, lessons. I was taking piano lessons from first of, I take with a, a certain eccentric piano teacher that taught me how to play a, something pleasant enough, but I wasn't happy with them. One day I was driving along and, uh, I had the radio. I bought a little cross, the little Green Cross hadn't split. I picked it up down there because it wasn't very, it didn't, didn't cost me very much at all. And I wanted, you don't, I don't know if you ever even saw the Little Cross. Oh yeah, absolutely. Oh, you have it. Oh, alright. But, but I was driving it around one day with the radio on, and I heard this music, I could not believe my Bella Bar talk a name that I couldn't forget. And so I dashed out and somehow, or they got hold of his microcosms and started playing the Microcosmos on my own. And when I started, but later on I started studying piano music with, with Leon Dell and himself. And I told him about, and I had written a few things for Leon that studied music with him. And he was, uh,
(18:35):Well, he, and he was, but so I said, she says, where did you hear about? Where did you hear about talk? I heard on the radio. And, but by that time I had somehow hurt this finger right here. I caught it in steel door. I had to work at this, found not work at a hospital. And, and a relative patient refused to go back into his cell. And so I pushed the door shut and the door shut my fingers well, so I could use this. So I started working one hand and started working the other, and we continued on through the Microcosmos Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But by that time, I was starting to make serious plans about writing music in 31, and figured out ways and keyboards and things and that forth. And I'd put, I'd, I'd figured out a generalized keyboard, I, and put it on a little piece of paper and told Leon down I was going to write 31. And he said, he says, uh, he was sort of, she said, I'd like to hear you do some good things in 12 first <laugh>. And I was just, I was just raring and ready to go. How
Gary David (20:05):Old were you about this thing?
Ervin Wilson (20:08):I'd been three, three years in the Air Force. And, and after the Air Force, I went straight to BYU. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.
Gary David (20:15):So you're about 21, 22.
Ervin Wilson (20:18):Okay. 18 plus three is 21. So I was getting in, moving into my 22nd year. Okay. And, uh, so, uh, but I, I stayed. So he
Gary David (20:36):Said, you should start learning, doing some stuff in 12 before
Ervin Wilson (20:40):You did 31. He, he felt like I should really try to write, and I had no way of realizing 31. But, uh, I decided to, there was somebody at at USC who was very, very skilled in Microtones, and I forget his name, but I decided I was gonna come out to California and studied with him. Got out here, and I didn't have any money. I needed money and, uh, and didn't have a job, and I needed a job. And, uh, one thing led to another and I didn't get over to USC. It turned out I found out later that the man was a hypocrite. Anyway, he, he wasn't serious about Michael to, he was, he just wrote that article because he was a good writer and he was being paid to write it. And, but, but, but at that point, I had 31 down and I began designing keyboards and I found out about John Brock out in Compton.
(21:53):And so I set up the pitches and went right out to John Brock and said, can you make me set of, of Song Bells to 31? And I had organized one. The, the song Bells are still in there in Amil Richard's warehouse. I, I haven't been able to get them away from 'em. He retiring into Hawaii, but I had a set of song belts to 31 made, and that was the, the probably the first instrument in 31. And I was living down in Santa Monica that before I actually got the song. Yeah. I had the song built by that time. But then I began thinking, it says Erwin, I said, I said to myself, I says, Erwin, um, you know, probably somebody else. You don't just suppose that somewhere else on the planet. Someone else is doing 31.
(23:01):It's, it couldn't be. But I wrote to James Murray Barber and it says, dear, dear Murray Barber, I'm, this isn't what I'm doing with 31. Can you tell me there's somebody else, anywhere that, you know, I was making music in 31. And he shot a letter back and he said, it is just amazing how two people in such different parts of the world can be doing the same thing. And got me in touch with Doctor, with Adrian Fa. And I set up communication with him right away. Of course, he had his pipe organ in, in there, in, in Tyler's museum. And they were getting together and ha getting concerts. And uh, and we finally got the Faulker. And so I was corresponding with Dr. Faulker, and he was a, a a bit impatient with my keyboard. And I asked him what his keyboard was like, and he wouldn't divulge what his keyboard was like.
(24:16):But I had a dream one night. I just told myself I was, all right, I'm going to, I'm gonna dream what his keyboard is like. So I went, I went to sleep and I dreamt, and I dreamt they were just straight horizontal rows. And the woman was showing me the keyboard, and it was just horizontal rows. And one was expected to go by, by and hold tos up this way and semi tos up this way. And I said, that's ridiculous. And I says, that's the first idea I had. I would just reject completely because you, you go off the edge of the keyboard besides Boong, he is so much better.
(25:08):And, but anyway, it went out to John Brock and he built a set of song goats and I could listen to anything I wanted to in 31. The tuning wasn't perfect because he had to tune from vibration. He caught the master pitch, but then he had to tune from beats and to figuring out with a, with a ball on his piece of string, how fast the beat should be and so forth. And he finally got his set of 31. That was fairly good. But when we really got it right down to Measurings, we, well, after the, after he built me the Song Bells, I had those, and that would lend them to Amal Richards. And he would use them in films.
(26:04):This is much late, like, like flute Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and stuff. And then I had, but then I also had a 22 to instrument built from square branch tubing and had one of those built up. And those were used to make that celestial sound. And, and that guy, that Chinese fellow, what was his name, looking for his father, um, uh, it was a whole series about a boy, Kung fu Kung fu, yes. David, um, IDE, David Ide, uh, that, that was a, for, for transfiguration things they would use that as transf. But at any rate, I got out here and I had the 31 tone sets and met Harvard Derrick, and he had, and so, uh, I, Derrick began, introduced me around, and there were other people who were doing 31, but me and John Chalmers got together and I, knowing the rules, knowing what I had to do to do a search for 30 ones, just an extensive search for good harmonics, cooperating with John Chalmers.
(27:26):And we did the equal DI divisions, and we, and checked to see how well they did the harmonics up fairly high up in the harmonics series. And we went up to around 2000 divisions and to have the tables printed up there, I still have them. And we worked from that. Right. But from that, from that point on, we started, well, it, it took, by that time I started patenting, putting down on paper and patenting, patenting, pardon me, different keyboards for 31. And, uh, then a, an actual generalized keyboard for 22, which is the, which is your keyboard. Got a patent on that. And then we began, uh, exploring different ways to tune it and so forth and so on.