neutral (something) seventh

Robert Walker said :

> So this scale has the 11/9 "diminished seventh"
> as 1/1 11/9 3/2 11/6.
>

I just thought it was curious that my "name" for
this chord is "neutral major seventh". So far I
haven't been terribly satisfied with music I've
tried to make with this chord. I'll see if changing
the name helps.

thanks,

bob Valentine

> From: Robert C Valentine <BVAL@...>
> To: <crazy_music@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Monday, July 16, 2001 2:49 AM
> Subject: [crazy_music] neutral (something) seventh
>
>
> Robert Walker said :
>
> > So this scale has the 11/9 "diminished seventh"
> > as 1/1 11/9 3/2 11/6.
> >
>
> I just thought it was curious that my "name" for
> this chord is "neutral major seventh". So far I
> haven't been terribly satisfied with music I've
> tried to make with this chord. I'll see if changing
> the name helps.

Hmmm... interesting. I really love this chord,
and have always thought of it as a neutral-like-
but-still-major-sounding 7th-chord.

I think "diminished 7th" just carries too much
baggage from my familiarity with the "common-practice"
type of "diminished 7th", for me to use that name
for this. "Neutral major 7th" works fine for me.

-monz
http://www.monz.org
"All roads lead to n^0"

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Hi Monz,

> Hmmm... interesting. I really love this chord,
> and have always thought of it as a neutral-like-
> but-still-major-sounding 7th-chord.

> I think "diminished 7th" just carries too much
> baggage from my familiarity with the "common-practice"
> type of "diminished 7th", for me to use that name
> for this. "Neutral major 7th" works fine for me.

I expect it depends on the context in which it is used.

In 7-tet I find it works a bit like a diminished
seventh, because you can use it to move about
- all the steps are identical 11/9s and though
you've got a 12/11 at the top, so it doesn't
have the complete symmetry of a diminished seventh
you can stack two of them on top of each other
to get a chord with all the notes of 7-tet
which I suppose is the real 7-tet diminished
seventh type chord, with seven notes.

It's a nice chord actually.

Thinking this through a bit more has helped with
improvising in 7-tet - I've just added a new
improvisation using the 7 note "diminished 7th".

In 7-tet in fact it is even more of a "diminished
seventh" than in 12-tet as with two of them
stacked on top of each other, you can go absolutely
anywhere in a single step.

The 7-tet tempered 3/2 destabilises it so that
you have no sense of it being rooted to the
tonic.

You can however "Setherise" the timbre to
a 7-tet "third harmonic" and then you get the
best of both worlds - a nice neutral triad
and a neutral diminished seventh as well.

I've done an improvisation in this too
on my improvisations page.

http://tunesmithy.netfirms.com/tunes/improvisations.htm

My sense of rhythm isn't quite up to what I'm trying to
do in it, but you can get the idea.

Robert