Re: [cm] Metatuning Debunked - Part 1

I am not sure if this is really an answer to your thoughts. I just had the spontaneous feeling that the personal approaches of a person to move into mathematics can structure a mind and through "aha-moments" create additional fun within a connected musical output. I can understand that any idea within my music in uncommon ways may connect to tuning or musical feeling. Personal motivations or drives that could seem inexplainable to others may appear as a "dogm", but are they not just something that would not hurt to be followed?
I understood one basic thing about these people that never really reflected about the standard western tuning more than 2 minutes in their life, and still being busy with music as a satisfaction or job: I understood, that the mental understanding of very schooled and trained musicians is PART of their joy of seing music becoming alive FOR THEM. So our pre-experienced minds may need some kind of personal interpretation, and they would find stability in concepts of great radiation, so that they could try to find a "real frame" to be in? Mh..

Well, and if analyzing music, (you'll hopefully not hate me for this) everywhere is math. Notation, rhythm, is pure math, math is there before there is microtonality. Every musician must in a high speed be able to calculate hand patterns for placing fingers, even when their are no transpositions. The whole circle of fifths, math. The modes, relationships of different followings of numbers, audible as tones. Of course, if you are a listener without analytical experience, you might in some rare cases even feel attacked by analysis. But we have so many colours. And if we really pick a string to find out of what sounds all the systems are derived, is it not true, that intervals, hidden in the fact of different note heights, can best be defined through relationships in mathematical numbers? I am agreeing with you in we should not reduce music in it's ability to reflect our life, but how we approach that is beyond right or wrong?
I am feeling philosophic. Am I talking nonsense? *laughs*

Mh. I was attacked by all sheet-readers for not being able to express the feeling within their mental words. I played the feeling itself, in itself. This was my message, but with the motivation to see math, beauty, chords, rhythm in it, or the name i gave it, or whom i imagine when I play, it changes, depending very much on the listener. Is it wrong to search for more in maths?

Okay, but this is crazy music, anyway.

Just some thoughts :)
Clemens
----- Original Message -----
From: xenharmonic
To: crazy_music@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, April 08, 2004 9:04 PM
Subject: [cm] Metatuning Debunked - Part 1

When faced with a question, what does a reasonable person do?

Does a reasonable person head off on a tangent and spend the
rest of hi/r life pursuing whatever spur-of-the-moment
belief happens to seem momentarily plausible?

A follower of a cult like the Heavens Gate cult would say
"yes." Cult members typically skim some passage in a book or
some sentence on the internet and then spend the rest of
their lives in the service of that vacuous superstition.
But is that how a reasonable person behaves?

While you mull that question over, let's consider a
recent post from the metatuning list:

[metatuning] Message 7037 of 7039
Msg #
From: "Aaron K. Johnson" <akjmicro@c...>
Date: Thu Apr 8, 2004 3:41 am
Subject: Gene--do you have a Yahoo ID?......

"(..) I also have a lot of technical math curiosity
questions to ask you---I need a 'tuning math tutor'."
---------------
"At the heart of science is an essential tension between two
seemingly contradictory attitudes -- an openness to new
ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may
be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas,
old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep
nonsense. Of course, scientists make mistakes in trying to
understand the world, but there is a built-in error-
correcting mechanism: The collective enterprise of creative
thinking and skeptical thinking together keeps the field on
track." -- [Sagan, Carl, "The Fine Art of Baloney
Detection," from "The Demon-Haunted World," 1992]
------------
Instead of wallowing in mindless superstition, suppose we
apply critical thinking and the test of evidence...

Why does any musician need a "tuning math tutor"? Where is
the hard objectively verifiable evidence for this assertion?

Let us see it. Where is it?

What is the objectively verifiable evidence that proves math
has any causal connection or explanatory power for music?
How do we know math plays any more of a role in music than a
table of the annual rainfall statistics of the Amazon basin?

When faced with a question, what does a reasonable person do?

Does a reasonable person spend his life pursuing some wacky
notion he read on the internet just because somebody made
the claim without offering a shred of proof?

A flat-earther or a psychic surgeon would would say
"yes." Such people typically read a pamphlet handed out
by some guy with a shaved head and then spend the rest
of their lives enslaved by that vacuous superstition.
But is that how a reasonable person behaves?

Or does a reasonable person instead apply "the most
ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new" and
first ascertain whether a claim actually has some
objectively verifiable relationship to observed reality?

So let us apply common sense and the test of reality to Aaron
K. Johnson's post.

What is the hard objectively verifiable evidence that math
has any causal connection to music? What is the hard
objectively verifiable evidence that math has any
explanatory power for music?

Aaron K. Johnson goes on to aver:
"The irony is that I *adore* math... (..) Ultimately, I want
the math to serve the music."

What is the evidence that math serves music in any meaningful
way?

What is the hard objectively verifiable evidence that math
has any meaningful connection to music at all?

Which listening tests, performed by which tenured professors
at which accredited university, and published in which reputable
peer-reviewed scientific journals, prove that mathematics has any
causal connection with, or explanatory power for, music?

What are the issue numbers and the volume numbers and the
page numbers of the peer-reviewed journal articles of listening
experiments which prove that Aaron K. Johnson's assertions about the
alleged connection of math with music are true?

=========

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've
been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence
of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out
the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too
painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've
been so credulous. (So the old bamboozles tend to persist as
the new bamboozles rise.)" -- [Sagan, Carl, "The Fine Art of
Baloney Detection," from "The Demon-Haunted World," 1992]
---------
--mclaren

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