McLaren's article

I've always got a hoot out of McLaren, and when I was just getting started as a micro guy, he was very helpful to me, sent me a lot of papers/recordings, and did all he could to help me figure out what was happening. We always got along pretty well, overall, but I am aware that he can piss people off pretty easily and often. He often takes very extreme positions regarding tunings/music, and I think people like that can be very important, as they make others take a look at their own beliefs, and examine just why they feel the way they do about a topic. I've never thought his attacks on others were cool, but I've seemed to avoid those for the most part.

I'm not sure that there is any one way to teach folks about "microtonal tunings;" I really don't even think in those terms anymore (microtonality) myself. There is a very large pitch continuum, and there can be, literally, an infinity of ways to tune an instrument, or arrange notes in scales/patterns. And, I surely do not assign values to one scale over another...15, 24, 22, JI, 31, Pythagorean, Well Tempered, Arabic, Indian, whatever...MUSIC is what I want to hear, and what tuning we use to create a piece of music is not a big deal to me. I myself have used numerous tuning systems over the years, and I plan to keep exploring more and more of them in the coming years. Composing, arranging, orchestrating, lyrics...these are also vital parts of creating music, and tunings are just one link in that chain. But, the gift of creating deep and profound music...this takes precedence over anything else, in my view. The tuning I use to come up with a composition is directly related to the end result, but why 15 is better than 24 is completely subjective, in my opinion. Like Ellington has famously stated, "There's only 2 kinds of music, good and bad" (or something like that). If we get too hung up on the tools, such as tunings, I think we miss the more important aspects of music. Just write something of meaning, and take it from there...best...Hstick

www.microstick.net www.myspace.com/microstick

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