IN: Harry Partch (June 24, 1901 - September 3, 1974) was an American composer, music theorist, and creator of musical instruments. He composed using scales of unequal intervals in just intonation, and was one of the first 20th-century composers in the West to work systematically with microtonal scales. He built custom-made instruments in these tunings on which to play his compositions, and described his theory and practice in his book Genesis of a Music (1947). Partch composed with scales dividing the octave into 43 unequal tones derived from the natural harmonic series; these scales allowed for more tones of smaller intervals than in standard Western tuning, which uses twelve equal intervals to the octave.

Partch made public his theories in his book Genesis of a Music (1947). He opens the book with an overview of music history, and argues that Western music began to suffer from the time of Bach, after which twelve-tone equal temperament was adopted to the exclusion of other tuning systems, and abstract, instrumental music became the norm. Partch sought to bring vocal music back to prominence, and adopted tunings and scales he believed more suitable to singing.  Inspired by Sensations of Tone, Hermann von Helmholtz's book on acoustics and the perception of sound, Partch based his music strictly on just intonation. He tuned his instruments using the overtone series, and extended it past the twelfth partial. This allowed for a larger number of smaller, unequal intervals than found in the Western classical music tradition's twelve-tone equal temperament. Partch's tuning is often classed as microtonality, as it allowed for intervals smaller than 100 cents, though Partch did not conceive his tuning in such a context. Instead, he saw it as a return to pre-Classical Western musical roots, in particular to the music of the ancient Greeks. By taking the principles he found in Helmholtz's book, he expanded his tuning system until it allowed for a division of the octave into 43 tones based on ratios of small integers.  Partch uses the terms Otonality and Utonality to describe chords whose pitch classes are the harmonics or subharmonics of a given fixed tone. These six-tone chords function in Partch's music much the same that the three-tone major and minor chords (or triads) do in classical music. The Otonalities are derived from the overtone series, and the Utonalities from the undertone series.
QUESTION: What are some of this theories about?
IN: The Kinks were an English rock band formed in Muswell Hill, North London, in 1964 by brothers Ray and Dave Davies. They are regarded as one of the most important and influential rock bands of the 1960s. The band emerged during the height of British rhythm and blues and Merseybeat, and were briefly part of the British Invasion of the United States until their touring ban in 1965. Their third single, the Ray Davies-penned "You Really Got Me", became an international hit, topping the charts in the United Kingdom and reaching the Top 10 in the United States.

The Kinks started out playing the then popular R&B and blues styles; then, under the influence of The Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" recording, developed louder rock and hard rock sounds -- due to their pioneering contribution to the field, they have often been labelled as "the original punks". Dave Davies was "really bored with this guitar sound - or lack of an interesting sound" so he purchased "a little green amplifier ... an Elpico" from a radio spares shop in Muswell Hill, and "twiddled around with it", including "taking the wires going to the speaker and putting a jack plug on there and plugging it straight into my AC30" (a larger amplifier), but didn't get the sound he wanted until he got frustrated and "got a single-sided Gillette razorblade and cut round the cone [from the centre to the edge] ... so it was all shredded but still on there, still intact. I played and I thought it was amazing." The jagged sound of the amplifier was replicated in the studio; the Elpico was plugged into the Vox AC30, and the resulting effect became a mainstay in The Kinks' early recordings--most notably on "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night".  From 1966 onwards, The Kinks came to be known for their adherence to traditions of English music and culture, during a period when many other British bands dismissed their heritage in favour of American blues, R&B and pop styles. Ray Davies recalled that at a distinct moment in 1965 he decided to break away from the American scene, and write more introspective and intelligent songs. "I decided I was going to use words more, and say things. I wrote 'Well Respected Man'. That was the first real word-oriented song I wrote. ... [I also] abandoned any attempt to Americanise my accent." The Kinks' allegiance to English styles was strengthened by the ban placed on them by the American Federation of Musicians. The ban cut them off from the American record buying public, the world's largest musical market, forcing them to focus on Britain and mainland Europe. The Kinks expanded on their English sound throughout the remainder of the 1960s, incorporating elements of music hall, folk, and baroque music through use of harpsichord, acoustic guitar, mellotron, and horns, and creating some of the most influential and important music of the period.  Beginning with Everybody's In Show-biz (1972), Ray Davies began exploring theatrical concepts on the group's albums; these themes became manifest on the 1973 album Preservation Act 1 and continued through Schoolboys In Disgrace (1976). The Kinks found little success with these conceptual works, and reverted to a traditional rock format throughout the remainder of the 1970s. Sleepwalker (1977), which heralded their return to commercial success, featured a mainstream, relatively slick production style that would become their norm. The band returned to hard rock for Low Budget (1979), and continued to record within the genre throughout the remainder of their career.
QUESTION:
What did the green amplifier do?