David B. Doty:
Composer Bio and Résumé

David B. Doty (born 1950) is a primarily self-taught composer, performer, theorist, and synthesist.  He is a leading authority on Just Intonation, having composed exclusively in just tunings for over thirty years, and is the author of The Just Intonation Primer (San Francisco: The Just Intonation Network. 1993, 1994, 2002). He began building instruments and composing in 1970, inspired by the work of Harry Partch and other “outside” composers. In 1975, Doty cofounded the San Francisco–based experimental music ensemble Other Music (1975–1986), along with Henry Rosenthal and Dale Soules. After studying intonation with Lou Harrison at the Center for World Music in Berkeley, he began a series of experiments with justly tuned metallophones, culminating in the creation of Other Music’s American gamelan, a large ensemble of instruments tuned to a just scale of fourteen tones per octave, designed by Doty and Soules. Doty was Other Music’s most prolific composer; his compositions were featured on numerous performances by the group throughout Northern California, including the 1978 and 1979 Cabrillo Music Festivals. Some of his compositions from this period can be heard on Other Music’s two LP recordings, Prime Numbers (1980) and Incidents Out of Context (1983).

After the break-up of Other Music, Doty composed mainly for MIDI instruments in a studio environment, taking advantage of the more extensive pitch sets and greater variety of timbres available from computer-controlled synthesizers and samplers; a selection of his works for this medium are featured on his 1998 CD Uncommon Practice.

In the early 2000s, he resumed composing music to be performed in real time on acoustic and electroacoustic instruments. Recent works include The Steel Suite, for Just Intonation National Resophonic Guitar, recorded by Elliot Simpson on the CD The Wayward Trail (Microfest Records, 2015); The Suite in the “Cinna” Tuning, for justly tuned tack piano, premiered at Microfest 2018, in Claremont California; and Parthenion, a setting of a Greek lyric poem by Alkman, for a female chorus singing in the Bulgarian diaphonic style plus percussion, premiered at the 2020 John Donald Robb Composer’s Symposium at the University of New Mexico. A keyboard version of The Steel Suite was recorded in 2008 by harpsichordist Jonathan Salzedo, with the aid of a Subito grant from the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the American Composers Forum.

His current projects include choral settings of poems by W.B. Yeats, a new work for the American gamelan, and designing justly tuned wind instruments for 3D printing.

Doty is a founder of the Just Intonation Network and was the editor of the network’s journal, 1/1, from 1985 through 2006.

 

Selected Compositions, 1975–2021
Title	Date	Instrumentation
Recorder Piece #1 for Henry Rosenthal	1975	Any Number of Recorders
Recorder Piece #2 for Henry Rosenthal	1975	Any Number of Recorders
4 x 4 for Tape Loop	1975	Two Tape Decks, Four Vocalists
Phase Canon #1	1975	Two Recorders
Envelope Study	1975	Four Cone Gongs
Cycle of Five, #3	1976	Tubular Chimes, Five Players
Hocket	1976	Consort of Four Equal Instruments
HUMNE MOUSA	1976	Four or More Chanting Voices
Prolation Canon	1976	Consort of Four Equal Instruments
5 x 4	1976	Tubular Chimes, Four Players
Mixed Consort #1	1976	Tubular Chimes, Flute, Violin
242 + 1	1977	Three Metallophones and Two Stamping Tubes (later revised for Other Music’s American Gamelan)
Lagu Chondong	1978	Other Music’s American Gamelan
Song of the Apostate	1978	Other Music’s American Gamelan
Sunagi	1978	Other Music’s American Gamelan
Gending: A Waning Moon	1979	Other Music’s American Gamelan, with Solo Flute
Recom III/River of Dreams	1979	Other Music’s American Gamelan
Dithyramb	1980	Other Music’s American Gamelan, with Solo English Horn (later revised for MIDI instruments)
Score for Surface Tension1	1981	Other Music’s American Gamelan, plus Electronic Keyboards
Music with Too Many Parts	1981	Other Music’s American Gamelan, plus Electronic Keyboards
Waltz in Pelog	1981	Other Music’s American Gamelan, with Solo Cello
Music With Four Tones	1978–79	Other Music’s American Gamelan
Fake Greek Music	1984–95*	MIDI Instruments
Fake Irish Music	1984–95*	MIDI Instruments
Paradigms Lost	1984–95*	MIDI Instruments
Sarabande	1984–95*	MIDI Instruments
Waters of the Abyss	1984–95*	MIDI Instruments
Son of Fake Greek Music	1984–95*	MIDI Instruments
Rituals and Ceremonies	1984–95*	MIDI Instruments
Contrapunctus 1.01	1984–95*	MIDI Instruments
Bodhisattvas in Berkeley—Mu!	1984–95*	MIDI Instruments
Paradigms Lost	1984–95*	MIDI Instruments
Lament in Didymus Chromatic (later incorporated into The Suite in the “Cinna Tuning”)	2003–06	Just Harpsichord, Tack Piano, or Electronic Keyboard
Steel Suite	2003–06	National Reso-Phonic Just Intonation Guitar
3 x 7 Recorder Duo #1	2004–06	Modified Alto and Tenor Recorders
Variations on a Ground (Movement for String Quartet)	2005–06	String Quartet
Parthenion	2007–2014	Women's Chorus Singing in th Bulgarian Diaphonic Style, Accompanied by Virtual Instruments.
Suite in the “Cinna Tuning”	2017	Justly Tuned Tack Piano
(8+7) = (3x5/5x3)	2021	Other Music's American Gamelan

*MIDI pieces were begun at different times and worked on and revised repeatedly until the creation of the Uncommon Practice CD, so that it is impossible to accurately determine start and finish dates for any of these pieces.

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