math is useless, theory is useless

Stuff is flying around to the tune of, "math is useless", etc.
I would like to ask the authors of these threads to consider
making what they are saying more precise. For example, the
literal meaning of the above quote cannot be the intended one.
We all use math every day, and almost all the tunings we discuss
(various types of JI, ETs including 12, meantone, etc.) involve
math, from Pythagoras to Wilson. What exactly are you guys
debating?

Math is just a tool, like language. Language can commit all of
the atrocities attributed to math. For example, McLaren says
that the 666 cent fifth is functional in 9-tET but not 18-tET.
What does he mean? 9-tET is a subset of 18-tET, as we all know.
This relates to a distinction between melodic scales and
tunings of those scales. McLaren asks about a point at which
the ETs become indistinguishable. It seems as if his question
is really only about using ETs as melodic objects, as it is easy
to demonstrate that chords in 72-tET sound different from chords
in 71-tET. But scales as big as even 18-tET cannot function as
fundamental melodic entities, as McLaren himself one claimed
(private communication), so subsetting is involved anyway.

So the term "scale" is sometimes used interchangably with the
term "tuning" and sometimes used to mean a fundamental melodic
reference frame. McLaren talks about new scales, classifying
them as 1/3-tone, 1/4-tone, etc. -- apparently discussing new
tunings of the diatonic scale. Paul Erlich often uses the word
in the latter sense, proposing "scales" which are intended to
provide a non-diatonic reference frame. Here, fourths and
fifths become entirely different classes of intervals, and the
situation that McLaren mentions of a fifth being a 3:2 and a
third being a 5:4 no longer applies. Rothenberg has created a
detailed model of scales as reference frames. For him, a scale
is something which can exist in many different tunings. We all
know that the diatonic scale can exist in Pythagorean and
meantone tunings, and Rothenberg asks why this is so, and what
the limits of this sort of thing are.

To say that theory is useless, does this include the theory that
allows us to be aware of microtonal music in the first place?
Obviously, all musicians use microtones at some point, if not
regularly -- but they do it unconsciously. It takes a
tremendous body of theory to take that and allow instead what we
hear out of people like McLaren and Grady. This is all useless?

Useless, 'without direct, hands-on experience composing actual
music' is the qualifier that may be implied here. But if Dave
Keenan comes up with a tuning that somebody else uses to make
music, was Dave's effort useless? This is basic division of
labor. At the same time, the fact that many of history's most
famous music theorists were also composers didn't stop them from
producing a body of theory that is mostly hogwash. McLaren has
already spent much ink providing the example of Schoenberg here.
On the other hand, people like Euler came up with very useful
theory, which was then picked up by Fokker and Wilson, and which
resulted in music by the Dutch 31-toners, Rod Poole, Kraig
Grady, and countless others.

-Carl

--- In crazy_music@y..., Carl Lumma <carl@l...> wrote:
> To say that theory is useless, does this include the theory that
> allows us to be aware of microtonal music in the first place?

I'm not sure theory is required to make us aware of microtonality,
depending on how the terms are defined. When I was in grade school, I
was sometimes puzzled by hearing third tone chromatic passages in my
head. That is, I needed third tones to accomplish what I wanted
to hear the musical parts doing. It made me feel that I was a
very strange person, something which I have continued to prove ever
since :-) That was before I could even really read music very well,
when the extent of my musical knowledge involved singing harmony in
church and playing ukulele and trumpet by ear. So I think one can
become aware of what we call microtonality strictly by ear, without
any more knowledge of theory than the most basic necessary to his/her
native music system.

David