Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup makemicromusic question about microtonal

Hi there,

What you need to learn depends on your goals.

I saw Jon's reply, which I feel is a good one. It's
hard to advise without knowing more about your
experience, your goals and what tools you may already
have.

By 'be a microtonalist' I assume a broad interpretation
-- that you have become aware that the tuning system of
12 equally divided tones per octave which is promoted
and held up as a lofty perfect and final accomplishment
of musical arts, is not the only tuning in the world in
which music can be written. Thus you are open to the
possibility of creating musical art in new and
different worlds of intonation.

Am I right to suppose you have the Logic sequencer?
And then, can I assume your interest is in electronic
instruments and not acoustic?

If so, here's a starting point:

Do you have an instrument which can be retuned? Some of
the older Yamaha ones have good features and can be
gotten for very little money off ebay. Also, some
soundcards, like many of those from turtle beach, can
be retuned. And GM synths can often be retuned using
software like FTS (assuming you are on the PC) which
generates pitch bends; instruments with tuning tables
can be retuned on the PC with programs like Scala, or
on the Mac with JICalc or LMSO.

I might note that wavetable synths will generall
produce sounds with a perfectly harmonic overtone
series. It is good to have an instrument like an FM
synthesizer which can produce sounds with inharmonic
overtone series as well. You may find that different
scales sound better to you with one type of instrument
timbre rather than another.

OK - so lets say you now have a sequencer and at least
one instrument (I myself am only using one instrument
now - a Yamaha SY77, even though I have several
instruments.) and a means of retuning it. And since you
have a sequencer and an instrument, I can assume that
you have some experience writing music.

Some people might advise you at this point to start
studying about lattices or matrices of ratios and means
of creating various forms of triads and which chord
progressions are allowed and how to modulate from one
scale mode to another.

That might work for you. Perhaps after years of study,
you will have some results.

I advise differently.

Partly because that's not how I do it and partly
because I have noticed that many (but not all) of the
persons recommending that approach have little music
they have written or can point to which was created
using this approach. Years into their study, they still
debate this or that lattice endlessly and argue about
which tuning system is best and can never seem to
actally start writting music because year after year
they are still in the mode of 'getting prepared' to
write music. This entire trap can be avoided by simply
remembering to actually write music. Music is not
theory. Music is not numbers. Music is not mathematical
techniques. Music is an artform. It is fine to be a
theorist and try to describe what has been done in the
past, but that is nothing like actually creating
original art.

So... if your goal is to write music - if by 'being a
microtonalist' you mean you want to write microtonal
music, then I encourage you to do so.

I posit the obvious -- can you learn to play the piano
by reading a book and talking to piano players?

Can you learn to expertly carve a sculpture by reading
a book and talking to sculptors?

Can you learn to paint a beautiful landscape or
portrait by reading a book and talking to painters?

Of course not -- all these things can ONLY be learned
by experience. By trial and error. By getting your
hands dirty. Not by only thinking about it. Not my
drawing diagrams or performing computer simulations or
analyses.

So -- try out various scales on your instrument - try
mapping them to your white keys or black keys or all
keys to see how they work. Try improvising. Try playing
various chords at random and see how they lay on the
keyboard. Learn how they sound. Work on writing a song
in some new tuning system. Try different things out in
your sequencer, looping, hearing for yourself how they
sound. Don't let anyone tell you which chords sound
good and which sound bad. Find out for yourself. You
may find that any chord can sound good OR bad,
depending on the context.

Don't limit yourself to a particular tuning clique
either. Some groups only compose in 12tET, as we know.
Others insist that Just Intonation (JI) is the one true
path and these scales are especially loved by the brain
and the ears. Is it so? I don't think so, but maybe
it's true for you. Listen and find out for yourself.
Try to write music in equal divisions of the octave, as
many have. Daring? Bold? Fearless? Move on to nonoctave
tunings -- 88 cET (cent equal temperament), discovered
by Gary Morrison is a good starting point, as are Wendy
Carlos' Alpha and Beta nonoctave tunings. Try out
nonjust nonequal scales, like scales derived from the
spectra of instruments which you have sampled and
examined using a FFT program.

In short, instead of a study of words, I recommend your
study, your class, your laboratory be the world of
music and sound, of listening, of experimenting and
trying out things for yourself. Let your ears be your
guide. Microtonality is too young and undeveloped a
field to have a theory yet anyway. Its like the wild
west where you have the freedom to make your own rules
and experience your own truths, freed from the
domination of others.

You may even start to find out that the 'common sense'
ideas and 'universal truths' you learned in music
theory/common practice harmony class are merely
descriptive of expression of one small style of music
and that real musical art is not constrained at all by
such limiting theories. If you do realize this, don't
feel angry at your music teachers, but thrilled to have
transcended the deafness of the earwashed masses.

Good luck; we all look forward to hearing some of your
creations -- MMM is a good group to bounce music off
other people who are also actively writing music.

- Jeff

🔗jpehrson2 <jpehrson@...>

--- In MakeMicroMusic@y..., "X. J. Scott" <xjscott@e...> wrote:

/makemicromusic/topicId_1834.html#1834

> Some people might advise you at this point to start
> studying about lattices or matrices of ratios and means
> of creating various forms of triads and which chord
> progressions are allowed and how to modulate from one
> scale mode to another.
>
> That might work for you. Perhaps after years of study,
> you will have some results.
>
> I advise differently.
>
> Partly because that's not how I do it and partly
> because I have noticed that many (but not all) of the
> persons recommending that approach have little music
> they have written or can point to which was created
> using this approach. Years into their study, they still
> debate this or that lattice endlessly and argue about
> which tuning system is best and can never seem to
> actally start writting music because year after year
> they are still in the mode of 'getting prepared' to
> write music. This entire trap can be avoided by simply
> remembering to actually write music. Music is not
> theory. Music is not numbers. Music is not mathematical
> techniques. Music is an artform. It is fine to be a
> theorist and try to describe what has been done in the
> past, but that is nothing like actually creating
> original art.
>

****This is really a valuable commentary by Jeff Scott. Actually, in
my own composing in Blackjack I was devising various progressions
using the lattices.

It seemed to work, but I don't want my work to sound "stilted" so I
am now using a *much* freer approach based exclusively on the ear...

I *still* look at the lattices to figure out one thing and another,
particularly if I want consonances, but at this point I am no longer
plotting progressions and using them literally...

Well, that's the development at the moment...

🔗paulerlich <paul@...>

--- In MakeMicroMusic@y..., "jpehrson2" <jpehrson@r...> wrote:

> ****This is really a valuable commentary by Jeff Scott. Actually,
in
> my own composing in Blackjack I was devising various progressions
> using the lattices.
>
> It seemed to work, but I don't want my work to sound "stilted" so I
> am now using a *much* freer approach based exclusively on the ear...

That's a much better approach, as I've always maintained -- with the
caveats that (a) you have to get the scale in your brain before you
can imagine music in the scale, and thus rely exclusively on the ear;
and (b) if you actually rely also on the _keyboard_ rather than
exclusively on the ear, and if you _want_ lots of consonances (which
seemed to be your main concern when you asked the questions that led
to the construction of the Blackjack scale), it's good to have an
easy way to _find_ them -- putting Dave Keenan-style stickers on the
keyboard is probably the best way. As far as I can tell, the only
reason you started mapping common-tone progressions on the lattice is
because you liked Graham Breed's progression which was devised in
this way. As you may recall, I recommended that you try progressions
featuring _contrary motion_ (easily visible on the keyboard, not on
the lattice), rather than always keeping common tones . . .

Personally, I like a combined ear/instrument approach to composing --
I do use a little "precompositional" reasoning to decide on ways of
exploiting the characteristic dissonances of a tuning to engender a
sense of tonality, for example -- but then the music must "flow" off
my fingers in something like real time for it to end up sounding
musical to me. Others may be better at composing "schematically", but
after college courses in which I spent entire vacations _after_ the
course was officially over completing rigorous Bach-style and Mozart-
style compositions, which got good grades but didn't really "flow", I
decided that (for the time being) composing _on paper_ was not for
me . . .

🔗jpehrson2 <jpehrson@...>

--- In MakeMicroMusic@y..., "paulerlich" <paul@s...> wrote:

/makemicromusic/topicId_1834.html#1850

> --- In MakeMicroMusic@y..., "jpehrson2" <jpehrson@r...> wrote:
>
> > ****This is really a valuable commentary by Jeff Scott.
Actually,
> in
> > my own composing in Blackjack I was devising various progressions
> > using the lattices.
> >
> > It seemed to work, but I don't want my work to sound "stilted" so
I
> > am now using a *much* freer approach based exclusively on the
ear...
>
> That's a much better approach, as I've always maintained -- with
the
> caveats that (a) you have to get the scale in your brain before you
> can imagine music in the scale, and thus rely exclusively on the
ear;
> and (b) if you actually rely also on the _keyboard_ rather than
> exclusively on the ear, and if you _want_ lots of consonances
(which
> seemed to be your main concern when you asked the questions that
led
> to the construction of the Blackjack scale), it's good to have an
> easy way to _find_ them -- putting Dave Keenan-style stickers on
the
> keyboard is probably the best way.

****Hi Paul,

Actually I probably overstated my case here. I'm *still* using the
lattices for certain things, but it seems I am using them more
*freely* rather than plotting progressions and *then* figuring out
what to do with them. For this reason, the piece seems to be more
*integral* than the previous method.

So, I imagine each Blackjack piece will evidence a greater
familiarity with the material and more appropriate methods... I hope
so at least...

Joseph

🔗paulerlich <paul@...>

🔗jpehrson2 <jpehrson@...>

🔗Jonathan M. Szanto <JSZANTO@...>

🔗jpehrson2 <jpehrson@...>

--- In MakeMicroMusic@y..., "Jonathan M. Szanto" <JSZANTO@A...> wrote:

/makemicromusic/topicId_1834.html#1857

> Joe,
>
> {you wrote...}
> >****Thanks, Paul! Well, I probably should be talking about it,
> >because it will probably "jinx" it and it won't be on the CD after
> >all... :)
>
> Nah, they'll know a quality item! Any idea how many, if any, other
> microtonal pieces were submitted out of the 70+?
>
> Cheers,
> Jon

Thanks, Jon! We'll see. I hope to make our ol' community proud!

Actually, there's no way to tell how many pieces are specifically
microtonal, since they just listed the composers and a *few* titles.
However, if they are like most other "contemporary music" submissions
going around these days, I would say that many of them
probably have at least *some* microtonal element... say quartertones
or multiphonics, glissandi, etc.

But my guess is that there would be very *few* in *entirely*
different scales or tuning systems.

I would guess that *mine* might be the only one to do that, but I
could be wrong. (Maybe I'm self-aggrandizing... :) )

question about microtonal

🔗X. J. Scott <xjscott@...>

🔗jpehrson2 <jpehrson@...>

🔗paulerlich <paul@...>

🔗jpehrson2 <jpehrson@...>

🔗paulerlich <paul@...>

🔗jpehrson2 <jpehrson@...>

🔗Jonathan M. Szanto <JSZANTO@...>

🔗jpehrson2 <jpehrson@...>