Schools, goals, etc

You know, there may be as many reasons to be interested in non 12 eq tunings as there are people who study the field. I can tell you that I have a few reasons why I do it: first, it's a real challenge to me as a musician, and I love to learn. Second, I am bored out of my wittle skull with the 12 tone system, and I realy want to see people start composing in other tunings...I want to hear unfamiliar sounds. And, I would hate to see any sort of standardized school/system develop around tuning, cause it's such a vast and unlimited field. We don't need any new standards, I'd rather see people use tunings that fit the sort of music they want to play. The basic fundamentals of tuning theory, I feel, should be taught to all students, on any instrument, from the very beginning... and then, they will have the mental chops to make their own decisions about what tuning/tunings to use. I am integrating tuning theory with many of my students, and am finding they really are interested. The main problem, as someone just said here, is that our music schools pretty much ignore the whole concept of tuning, so nobody even knows what it is...fix that, and I've found a real interest with most of my students. One kid had a 24 tone guitar fretted, and a 15 year old girl wants to get a synth with non 12 tunings on it...she wants to play Bach in well temps, super cool.
Why tuning is ignored is beyond me...it's a fundamental part of any music, anywhere in the world, and if more musicians just knew there WERE options to 12 eq, the whole situation would change. And, I'm doing what I can, through my students, recording, trying to get reviews (and write for mags, but boy that's tough going), and generally trying to spread the word that, hey, there's more to music than the 12 tone system. It's good fun, very challenging, but I also feel there are deep Universal correspondences between tuning (sound/music) and the very structure of reality. And, that's a very ancient belief, one held by the Greeks, Indians, Arabs, Chinese, in fact every culture I've looked at. There's some deep stuff to be discovered, and in the long run, that's what interests me the most now. When I first started (on 19 eq), it was a nice change from 12, and I could get some new things happening with blues/jazz/country, etc. But, after I started reading and studying in more depth, I realized that there is a deeper purpose to the way we tune our music, and I'm still trying to see what's there.
And, I get emails constantly from folks who are just getting into tunings, and that's very encouraging. I do what I can to help, and I do see this movement getting larger by the week...a good sign.
Enough for now, best in 2006 to everyone...HHH
microstick.net

I absolutely agree that ignorance of tuning is largely an educational
problem. Unfortunately, it seems that after a certain age, many
musicians build up an intolerance to the idea that tuning is an
important (and open-ended) question in composition.

I took a class during my undergrad on medieval music. The prof was a
competant performer of medieval repetoire, and he knew just enough
about tuning to get himself into trouble ;) I had to laugh when he
told me I was wrong for calling Pythagorean a Just Tuning...

Anyway, my point is that, 90% of the class hated the tuning section of
the course (Actually, I think I was the only one who enjoyed it).
Why?? Because it was MATH! And the students couldn't stand thinking
that math and music could go together (beyond counting measures). And
for that reason the majority went away with the assumed and
collectively developed myth that tuning was what the crazy old folk
did for the purpose of being obtuse and sounding intelligent, before
people decided to us their ears instead of their theories (which of
course led them straight to 12eq). Ahh!!

I guess my point is that if you really want to bring tuning back to
the social musical consciousness, give a micro instrument to a kid,
and they're less likely to spit in your face :)

On 1/10/06, Neil Haverstick <microstick@...> wrote:
> You know, there may be as many reasons to be interested in non 12 eq
> tunings as there are people who study the field. I can tell you that I have
> a few reasons why I do it: first, it's a real challenge to me as a musician,
> and I love to learn. Second, I am bored out of my wittle skull with the 12
> tone system, and I realy want to see people start composing in other
> tunings...I want to hear unfamiliar sounds. And, I would hate to see any
> sort of standardized school/system develop around tuning, cause it's such a
> vast and unlimited field. We don't need any new standards, I'd rather see
> people use tunings that fit the sort of music they want to play. The basic
> fundamentals of tuning theory, I feel, should be taught to all students, on
> any instrument, from the very beginning... and then, they will have the
> mental chops to make their own decisions about what tuning/tunings to use. I
> am integrating tuning theory with many of my students, and am finding they
> really are interested. The main problem, as someone just said here, is that
> our music schools pretty much ignore the whole concept of tuning, so nobody
> even knows what it is...fix that, and I've found a real interest with most
> of my students. One kid had a 24 tone guitar fretted, and a 15 year old girl
> wants to get a synth with non 12 tunings on it...she wants to play Bach in
> well temps, super cool.
> Why tuning is ignored is beyond me...it's a fundamental part of any
> music, anywhere in the world, and if more musicians just knew there WERE
> options to 12 eq, the whole situation would change. And, I'm doing what I
> can, through my students, recording, trying to get reviews (and write for
> mags, but boy that's tough going), and generally trying to spread the word
> that, hey, there's more to music than the 12 tone system. It's good fun,
> very challenging, but I also feel there are deep Universal correspondences
> between tuning (sound/music) and the very structure of reality. And, that's
> a very ancient belief, one held by the Greeks, Indians, Arabs, Chinese, in
> fact every culture I've looked at. There's some deep stuff to be discovered,
> and in the long run, that's what interests me the most now. When I first
> started (on 19 eq), it was a nice change from 12, and I could get some new
> things happening with blues/jazz/country, etc. But, after I started reading
> and studying in more depth, I realized that there is a deeper purpose to the
> way we tune our music, and I'm still trying to see what's there.
> And, I get emails constantly from folks who are just getting into
> tunings, and that's very encouraging. I do what I can to help, and I do see
> this movement getting larger by the week...a good sign.
> Enough for now, best in 2006 to everyone...HHH
> microstick.net
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

--
"... free speech is meaningless if the commercial cacaphony has risen
to the point that no one can hear you." -Naomi Klein

Chris Bryan wrote...

> Anyway, my point is that, 90% of the class hated the tuning section of
> the course (Actually, I think I was the only one who enjoyed it).
> Why?? Because it was MATH!

Unfortunate attitude... There really isn't any math in basic tuning theory
that anyone who manages to pass enough tests to get into a university
shouldn't already know.

Of course, this points out that those musicians should have learned some
of the very basics long before they ever got to university.

Rick

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Chris Bryan <chrismbryan@g...>
wrote:

> I had to laugh when he
> told me I was wrong for calling Pythagorean a Just Tuning...

In defense of your prof, some people reserve "just" for the 5-limit.
It doesn't make much sense, but there it is. I think it shows Partch's
p-limit vocabulary needs to be introduced into the conversagtion at
that point.

> And
> for that reason the majority went away with the assumed and
> collectively developed myth that tuning was what the crazy old folk
> did for the purpose of being obtuse and sounding intelligent, before
> people decided to us their ears instead of their theories (which of
> course led them straight to 12eq). Ahh!!

Completely backwards, of course. Or more complicated than
that--Pythagorean tuning was mathematical, adjusting it by ear then
led to meantone.

> I guess my point is that if you really want to bring tuning back to
> the social musical consciousness, give a micro instrument to a kid,
> and they're less likely to spit in your face :)

Give a micro instrument which flips between various tunings and you
might really drive the point home.

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Chris Bryan
<chrismbryan@g...> wrote:

Someone wrote:

And, I would hate to see any
> sort of standardized school/system develop around tuning, cause
it's such a
> vast and unlimited field. We don't need any new standards...

+++++++ A second standard (in addition to 12 EDO of course) would
increase microtonality's effect. Imagine 100 operating systems
with programs (let's say musical ones) that were incompatable.
How would this foster music? I believe the same thing is true
in microtonality if no standard emmerges to concentrate
all non-12 EDO. Individual musicians can always go a 3rd route
on their own time. I've said all this before, nothing new here.

Stephen Szpak

stephenszpak wrote:

> +++++++ A second standard (in addition to 12 EDO of course) would
> increase microtonality's effect. Imagine 100 operating systems
> with programs (let's say musical ones) that were incompatable.
> How would this foster music? I believe the same thing is true
> in microtonality if no standard emmerges to concentrate > all non-12 EDO. Individual musicians can always go a 3rd route
> on their own time. I've said all this before, nothing new here.
> I think there are some good candidates for a standard which would include 12-ET as a subset, rather than replacing it. Some of the more promising ones include 12-ET with deviations in cents written above the notes, 72-ET, and Sagittal notation. The 12-ET notation with cents has its advantages, but isn't very practical for instruments that can play chords. Sagittal does 72-ET as well as existing 72-ET notations, plus it's good for many other ET's as well; its main disadvantage is the complexity of learning to use it correctly (especially for oddball temperaments or tunings without a single consistent JI interpretation, like some of the golden horogram scales). 72-ET isn't very precise, but it happens to be a good approximation of JI for its size, up to the 11 limit.

The situation is similar to character sets on a computer, with ISO 8859-1 as a superset of ASCII, and Unicode as a superset of ISO 8859-1. Web browsers (and even some email applications, like the one I'm using now) support Unicode, but are still mostly compatible with older web pages that use ISO 8859-1, and have no difficulty with pages written in plain ASCII. The complexities of Unicode are even more intricate than the correct use of Sagittal notation, but now it's a standard for web browsers, which makes it possible for sites like Wikipedia to support hundreds of languages.

Herman wrote,

> The situation is similar to character sets on a computer, with
> ISO 8859-1 as a superset of ASCII, and Unicode as a superset of
> ISO 8859-1. Web browsers (and even some email applications, like
> the one I'm using now) support Unicode, but are still mostly
> compatible with older web pages that use ISO 8859-1

Bizarre... I never thought I'd see Unicode mentioned in a tuning context
as an example of cumulative standardization... ;-)

It's precisely the facts Herman cites which make Unicode a reasonable
upgrade path in its realm. A similar inertia applies to music notation:
people want backward compatibility. No mass movement is going to happen
toward any notation system that is incompatible with current notation. But
I would argue that there are some differences here between the character
encoding realm and the music notation realm.

For my own part, I find notation systems like Sagittal perhaps reasonable
for notating music that is upwardly compatible with the 7-tone diatonic
system, having 7 named things with their "modifications", up to a point.
But for any other group of tunings (like my old favorite 15-tet) that don't
lend themselves to having precisely 7 named things with their
modifications, Sagittal makes no more sense than current notation, to me.

And as always, simply notating the stuff is a small part of the battle.
You still have to get from score to sound, and that means there has to be a
comprehensive system built around it, involving notation, synthesis,
and/or human performance. Not to be discouraging, but I'm not holding my
breath for any notational breakthrough in my lifetime that would put
usable, mass-production microtonal notation software for any possible
tuning at my fingertips for real use with real instruments, or even
electronic instruments.

Rozencrantz piped in to say he's "abandoning notation". I'm not doing that
because it's far too useful to me. But I have certainly abandoned the idea
that something notated as "A above middle C" or even "B double flat above
middle C" means anything other than MIDI note #69, whatever frequency that
happens to be tuned to. The notation is not a mystical window into the true
essence of the music or anything like that. It's just a mapping onto a set
of 128 pitches and some temporal reference. The current system has the
sole advantage that trained musicians can read it, and if their instrument
is tuned to the intended system, will get the right pitches.

I would have to reject any microtonal music notation system that expands
current systems by simply piling more symbols for tweaks-from-diatonic onto
the current system of 5 lines. They only get more complex for the
performer; and current notation is quite complex enough. And it matches
current instruments, while Sagittal notation (for example) doesn't match
any current instruments.

In this way, music notation differs from Unicode. Unicode doesn't make it
hugely more complex to write English (for example); it makes it possible to
mix English with other things. This is a very different thing than
layering arbitrary microtonal notation on top of western music notation, in
my opinion.

Anyway, sorry, I'm just blathering now. Suffice to say that I'm not very
impressed with the ability of any alternative notation system I've ever
seen to cope with myriad tunings and still be usable.

Rick

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Herman Miller <hmiller@I...> wrote:

> I think there are some good candidates for a standard which would
> include 12-ET as a subset, rather than replacing it. Some of the more
> promising ones include 12-ET with deviations in cents written above the
> notes, 72-ET, and Sagittal notation. The 12-ET notation with cents has
> its advantages, but isn't very practical for instruments that can play
> chords.

An alternative, with similar problems but some theoretical advantages,
is 612-et rather than 1200-et.

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Rick McGowan <rick@u...> wrote:

> It's precisely the facts Herman cites which make Unicode a reasonable
> upgrade path in its realm. A similar inertia applies to music
notation:
> people want backward compatibility.

Which means they want a meantone system, which means they probably
want 19 or 31 equal as a means of exploring xenharmony.

> But for any other group of tunings (like my old favorite 15-tet)
that don't
> lend themselves to having precisely 7 named things with their
> modifications, Sagittal makes no more sense than current notation,
to me.

My own feeling is that it's probably best to treat each linear
temperament separately so far as notation goes, with obvious problems.
However, learning to think using the general nature of such things
opens up a big tuning world.

> You still have to get from score to sound, and that means there has
to be a
> comprehensive system built around it, involving notation, synthesis,
> and/or human performance. Not to be discouraging, but I'm not
holding my
> breath for any notational breakthrough in my lifetime that would put
> usable, mass-production microtonal notation software for any possible
> tuning at my fingertips for real use with real instruments, or even
> electronic instruments.

Still, people *do* perform period meantone tunings. In theory, that's
not far from people performing 31-et.

> Rozencrantz piped in to say he's "abandoning notation". I'm not
doing that
> because it's far too useful to me. But I have certainly abandoned
the idea
> that something notated as "A above middle C" or even "B double flat
above
> middle C" means anything other than MIDI note #69, whatever
frequency that
> happens to be tuned to.

It's precisely because it can mean more than that which allows you to
switch between meantone tunings. I'd like to see Scala notation
organized around linear temperaments; the present approach seems ad hoc.

> Anyway, sorry, I'm just blathering now. Suffice to say that I'm not
very
> impressed with the ability of any alternative notation system I've
ever
> seen to cope with myriad tunings and still be usable.

On the other hand, they *can* cope with specific tunings and be
useful. Things like decimal actually do work, but decimal applies to
miracle, not to tuning in general.

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Rick McGowan <rick@u...> wrote:
> ...
> For my own part, I find notation systems like Sagittal perhaps
reasonable
> for notating music that is upwardly compatible with the 7-tone
diatonic
> system, having 7 named things with their "modifications", up to a
point.
> But for any other group of tunings (like my old favorite 15-tet)
that don't
> lend themselves to having precisely 7 named things with their
> modifications, Sagittal makes no more sense than current notation,
to me.

I infer that in instances such as these you would advocate a
different staff configuration involving other than 7 nominals. This
raises the question: What symbols would you then use for
accidentals? Would you give conventional sharp and flat symbols
completely new meanings, or would you devise completely new symbols
for each staff configuration? Or is there a better option that
employs pre-existing symbols?

One of the misconceptions about Sagittal is that it's intended only
for a conventional staff. Dave Keenan and I (along with a few
others, including Herman Miller and Gene Ward Smith) have already
considered the possibility of using Sagittal accidentals for
alternate staff configurations and have found no reason why it
couldn't be done. (As a matter of fact, this very thing was
suggested in footnote 2 on page 2 of our Sagittal paper, which was
written a couple of years ago.)

> ...
> I would have to reject any microtonal music notation system that
expands
> current systems by simply piling more symbols for tweaks-from-
diatonic onto
> the current system of 5 lines. They only get more complex for the
> performer; and current notation is quite complex enough. And it
matches
> current instruments, while Sagittal notation (for example) doesn't
match
> any current instruments.

If you mean by this last clause that Sagittal doesn't relate pitches
to 12-equal, then please read the first two paragraphs of page 17 and
the diagram on page 18 of our Sagittal paper:
http://dkeenan.com/sagittal/Sagittal.pdf
which describes the 12-relative (12R, or "trojan") symbol set, which
is used to modify pitches of 12-equal in increments as small as 6
cents. This is our standard method for notating edo's that are
multiples of 12 (including 72), and it may be used in either the pure
or mixed-symbol versions.

--George

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Rick McGowan <rick@u...> wrote:

> In this way, music notation differs from Unicode. Unicode doesn't
make it
> hugely more complex to write English (for example); it makes it
possible to
> mix English with other things. This is a very different thing than
> layering arbitrary microtonal notation on top of western music
notation, in
> my opinion.

Huh? Why is it different? If you're just playing Western music, you
don't have to layer any notation on top of it, it stays exactly in its
conventional form (when you use Sagittal). So I don't see this point at
all. Many foreign-language symbols are regular letters with little
notations added; why is this any different?