Teaching tunings

It's interesting...if Europeans hadn't wanted to play chordal music that modulated, we might all still be playing Pythagorean scales, and our music would be essentially modal. But, the need to harmonize/modulate sent musicians on a long quest to figure out how to best do that, and now we have 12 tone eq temperament...and it's ubiquitous, every culture in the world has been greatly affected by it, and that's one huge reason why music is so incredibly bland today...ONE tuning system dominates, and again, there's absolutely no reason why it has to remain that way. Unfortunately, once 12 eq got settled in, the search was over, the discussion ended, and that one tuning was just taken for granted..."Here's your guitar/piano/flute/whatever, let's play..." but, WHY/HOW did we get to this point is never addressed. And, if that attitude would change, then everything else would, too.

Point being...as we all know, there are an infinite number of ways to tune...but, most musicians know nothing about the options. If they did, if musicians were taught tuning theory as a fundamental part of their education, I am sure there would be curious folks who would want to at least experiment with other systems...but, as that old saw goes, "out of sight, out of mind." If you don't even know something exists, you certainly can't engage with it. Before John McLaughlin came out big with Mahavishnu, in the early '70s, nobody played guitar like that...and afterwards, zillions of folks said, "hell, that's cool, I wanna do that too" (and I was certainly one of them)...a whole new style of music was born. If you've never heard music in other tuning systems, of course you aren't gonna play in them...but what if those options were made available to you at the beginning of your musical path? You now have a choice, and that's what I would love to see happen.

But, it's like the folks who want "smaller government;" good luck, guys, ain't gonna happen too soon, it's way the hell too far gone to change it now. I realize that the 12 tone system is incredibly huge and integrated into the way folks all over the world play music; the idealistic part of me still believes it can change, and in my personal life, I am trying to help that change along. And who knows...could happen. I would love it if many systems were in use, if people used tunings like they use modes (which, to me, they are...modes of the Harmonic Series). But, changing 12 eq would be kind of like getting the Pentagon budget down..certainly a worthy goal, but...gonna be hard, and take some time...best...Hstick

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Neil>"But, the need to harmonize/modulate sent musicians on a long quest to
figure out how to best do that, and now we have 12 tone eq temperament.
..and it's ubiquitous, every culture in the world has been greatly
affected by it, and that's one huge reason why music is so incredibly
bland today...ONE tuning system dominates, and again, there's
absolutely no reason why it has to remain that way."

IMVHO
A) 12TET is relatively easy to make instruments for because it's equal temperament...plus it has few notes IE it's no 54TET.
B) Modulation is very tricky to do in non-TET tunings...and 12TET is just about the lowest TET tuning that fits chords low in the harmonic series fairly well.

>"And who knows...could happen. I would love it if many systems were in
use, if people used tunings like they use modes (which, to me, they
are...modes of the Harmonic Series)."
C) Here-in lies a problem to me. Micro-tonalists (and, sadly, I believe many on this list) appear to be obsessed with using alternative tunings simply to "purify" the exact JI intervals 12TET approximates instead of looking for completely new intervals. This often leads an untrained listener (IE the average listener) to think "it sounds virtually the same as 12TET to me...maybe a weird mode of 12TET, but still 12TET so it's not that fresh".

What's an unusual interval (to me, at least)? Something like 12/11 that's right smack in between two tones in 12TET (the major and minor 2nd) and creates a whole new feel rather than an "estimate" of a 12TET feel/"tonal class".

>"Before John McLaughlin came out big with Mahavishnu"
+100 for mentioning Mahavishnu Orchestra btw...they were outstanding

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