Music and community (Robert Walker's plainsong)

Hello, there, Robert, and as promised, here's my belated but very
enthusiastic reply to your post on Sesquisexta (two Pythagorean
tunings at a 7:6 apart).

> I've just realised, I can play in your 24 note dual manual scales by
> splitting the keyboard and playing one in left half and the other in
> the right half.

> Just been trying out your two pyth. scales at interval
> of 7/6, and a lovely one it is too.

> E.g.
> C C+ D+ E+ G F D C

> where + = + 7/6

Trying this melody in a plainsong kind of rhythm, I find it very
beautiful, and also reminiscent of some English folk melodies of a
kind I might associate with Ralph Vaughan Williams, whose music I
love.

The especially "xenharmonic" element here might be the comma shift,
maybe clearer if I use a notation where "v" shows a note lowered by a
septimal or 64:63 comma from Pythagorean:

> C C+ D+ E+ G F D C
C Ebv Fv Gv G F D C

A curious analogy occurs to me: maybe that Gv-G shift is a bit like
moving between two medieval hexachords. That might be a bit of an
obscure reference for people not immersed in medieval European music,
and maybe something discussed in depth on other lists, so I'll just
provide a link here for the curious:

http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/harmony/pyth.html

> I've added a little plainsong like improv in this to my
> tunes page, repeating it with elaborations; gradually
> moving into new regions.

Just playing the theme you've noted on keyboard, not necessarily in
the best rhythm or with the expression you give it, suggests to me the
beginning of a beautiful improvisation. I'd love to hear this, maybe
on CD or cassette.

> I'll add it to the FTS Midi In presets drop list to make it easy for
> FTS users to try it out, and also to make related maps consisting of
> two scales at an interval to each other by simply changing the scale
> and the interval of modulation.

May I just say that this looks like a wonderful feature, because
placing two scales at some arbitrary interval to each other is one
very creative approach to arrive at new tunings which have old or
familiar intervals also. I hope that FTS users really enjoy this, and
play with it to come up with possibilities we might not guess in
advance.

Most appreciatively,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@...

Hi Margo,

> Trying this melody in a plainsong kind of rhythm, I find it very
> beautiful, and also reminiscent of some English folk melodies of a
> kind I might associate with Ralph Vaughan Williams, whose music I
> love.

That's a very nice association to have with it, thanks. I am very fond
of the kind of sparse understated quality of some folk melodies.

> The especially "xenharmonic" element here might be the comma shift,
> maybe clearer if I use a notation where "v" shows a note lowered by a
> septimal or 64:63 comma from Pythagorean:

> > C C+ D+ E+ G F D C
> C Ebv Fv Gv G F D C

Yes, that's clear

> A curious analogy occurs to me: maybe that Gv-G shift is a bit like
> moving between two medieval hexachords. That might be a bit of an
> obscure reference for people not immersed in medieval European music,
> and maybe something discussed in depth on other lists, so I'll just
> provide a link here for the curious:

I've had a browse through your explanation of hexachords. General
idea is that one makes larger scales by joining one chord to
another, each being a pythagorean diatonic subdivision
of a sixth (T T S T T), then depending on which notes connected to which
one could get comma shifts when passing from one tetrachord to
another. Is that roughly what you have in mind?

I notice also that Eb is particularly given as a note - I suppose
you get that rather easily by joining a hexachord mi to the
the Sol of the one in C.

Anyway, I think the idea of a kind of fragment scale rather than
complete octave, and transiting from one fragment to another by
comma shifts, is rather what it sounds like.

In this little phrase, there is no kind of compelling logical reason
for including a comma shift when playing the notes of hte Eb hexachord,
as none of the notes in the comma shifted fragment are linked in any
kind of a very definite way with the c based hexachord, except that it felt
/ sounded beautiful.

> Just playing the theme you've noted on keyboard, not necessarily in
> the best rhythm or with the expression you give it, suggests to me the
> beginning of a beautiful improvisation. I'd love to hear this, maybe
> on CD or cassette.

I'd like to make one for you to hear. I don't have a CD writer at the
moment, but it seems such a useful thing to have that I think I
might splash out on one.

Then I could do a CD of some of my music with this improv.

I've just done an improvisatino in 13-tet - see next msg.

> May I just say that this looks like a wonderful feature, because
> placing two scales at some arbitrary interval to each other is one
> very creative approach to arrive at new tunings which have old or
> familiar intervals also. I hope that FTS users really enjoy this, and
> play with it to come up with possibilities we might not guess in
> advance.

Great. Yes, I think that is it, the way one can combine old and new
intervals together, and I hope they really enjoy it too.

For FTS users - I've done this by adding a new option to the TRacks
window which lets one transpose any of the tracks by any interval one
likes (not necessarily in the scale or mode) - one can also do it
using the Scales for tracks window, but this is quicker to change
as one just needs to type in the new interval of transposition for the
track in the Tracks window.

I.e. just select Margo's scale as the preset, then go to the Tracks...
window and edit the interval of transposition. I'll explain this in
the help for the presets when I update it.

Robert