Re: Igs' post on compositional technique from metatuning

This is in response to a post I made a looooong time ago on metatuning
when I was feeling frustrated at not "understanding" 7-limit harmony.
The thread continued on the tuning list after, but Igs has just
responded on metatuning. Since it's become more about microtonal
compositional techniques and less about specific tunings, it makes
more sense to put this on MMM than tuning.

The original post and thread is here:
/metatuning/topicId_12391.html#12404

On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 7:07 PM, cityoftheasleep
<igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> Damn, I can't believe I missed this. Sorry to revive an old thread, but I've got a few ideas on this. It has become my main area of interest!
>
> There are a few basic ways that we can work effectively with chord progressions in microtonal scales, and they are all derived from ways that we work with 12-tET. I'll list them:
>
> 1. Start with a melody and harmonize it.
>
> 2. Use a scale based on a chain of some interval, analogous to the circle of fifths, and apply tonic/dominant/subdominant/mediant/etc.-esque relationships to this structure. For example, in the Porcupine scale (generated by, say, a chain of 160-cent intervals), the dominant is the chord 160 cents up from the tonic, and the subdominant is 160 cents down. Leads to some odd cadences, but works surprisingly well!

Do you have any examples for this? I know you have a 22-tone guitar,
do you have any recordings for this?

Would you transpose the scale up by 160 cents, or just move
"diatonically" up the scale, as we would with 12-tet?

I've also gravitated towards playing outside of any particular scale,
but using different scales as background modal structures to imply
different feelings and colors, which is how I'm used to doing things
from jazz.

> 3. Use common tones. Rare is the scale that you can't move from one consonant triad to another by raising or lowering a single note. Depending on the scale, you will have different common-tone linkages between the notes in the scale.
>
> Really, the hard thing about "extended JI" (i.e. trying to add in 7, 11, 13th harmonics etc.) is that they either multiply the number of notes in the scale or they diminish the total number of consonant triads...unless you drop some lower harmonics all together. Each harmonic adds another dimension to the tonal framework, complicating common-tone progressions and general tonal relationships, also allowing in more commatic inflections. This is why I prefer to work with temperaments--in JI, you can't get from the 5th harmonic to the 7th by any sort of common-tone or chain progression, but in some temperaments, you can. That has a way of "integrating" different primes into a more unified tonal framework.

Yeah, I made this post a looong time ago, my thinking has changed a
lot since then. I no longer think that it's all about JI, or hearing
implied JI relationships - I think that intentionally detuned JI
relationships are just as much a musical asset as JI ones.

> Of course, the most important thing first of all is to just explore different chords, and figure out which ones you like and want to base a tonality upon. There are lots of possibilities of basic JI chords, which can then be tempered in various ways to fit different tonal structures. Look at meantone, porcupine, and blackwood--all these have essentially a 4:5:6 and 1/4:5:6 basis (maybe), but these triads are tempered and twisted in different ways and thus create different chains. The common-tone progressions in each one follow different paths. Using a familiar triadic basis but inserting it into a different tonal structure is one good way of making non-stupid microtonal music. Alternatively, you can try a totally different basis--maybe an 8:11:13, a 16:18:21, a 6:7:9, a 5:6:7...it doesn't have to be concordant, and it doesn't have to be rooted, and it doesn't have to be Just, it just has to "say something" to you. Then start looking at different temperaments, or try out some different lattice-like JI structures generated by making common-tone chains emanating from your tonic triad. You can start with tetrads if you like, but if you don't treat tetrads as two triads that share two common tones, that will complicate things.

I'm really digging 17-equal because it has 9:11:13 - the thing is, if
you octave double the 9 below (so like 4.5), it sounds much more
dissonant than if you put a 4. Ditching the OCD need for
octave-equivalent scales helps a lot here I think.

> Using this sort of approach, I feel like I've been able to produce music in many different temperaments which, even if it sounds "out of tune", still feels logical and natural.
>
> Also, there is no reason not to apply standard principles of chromatic harmony--for instance, arriving at the tonic by means of a leading-tone, even if the leading-tone is out of scale. That will *always* work, no matter what the scale, no matter what type of triad.

What about instead of using a leading tone, you use a falling tone?
Like in G7 -> Cmaj, you have the F to the E. I think that also is
pretty effective. So what if you use leading and falling tones to
chord tones other than the root, and build scales in which the
leading/falling interval is a prime feature? Porcupine[7], you should
note, doesn't have it (although Porcupine[8] does). That is what I'm
screwing around with lately.

I would, although, expect the actual leading tone interval to probably
be specific to the interval you're resolving to - maybe bigger jumps
for something moving to 8, and smaller jumps for something moving to
13, or something like that.

-Mike

One would hope intervals could be identified as something besides being what it is not or detuned from.
It is for this same reason i turn away when i hear atonal, or non octave etc.
i am interested in what is being done , not what isn't being done.
i mean it is more interested that one has a period of 3/1 that non octave.

This is one reason i keep mentioning Viggo Brun Algorithm cause one can plug in any interval one wants and at each step one can go any direction one wants and add or subtract and material one likes. It requires one using the ear over the calculator though.
It is not about finding some answer that one gets right off the bat but by working toward what one wants step by step. The examples in the archive shows how two different one with 5 limit intervals, but there is no reason one has to pick with one pattern or the other. One can use one and then another or try out both and see which one prefers .
One can also go down to a certain level and decide one no wants a particular small interval.
One can easily do this.

/^_,',',',_ //^/Kraig Grady_^_,',',',_
Mesotonal Music from:
_'''''''_ ^North/Western Hemisphere:
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/>

_'''''''_^South/Eastern Hemisphere:
Austronesian Outpost of Anaphoria <http://anaphoriasouth.blogspot.com/>

',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',

a momentary antenna as i turn to water
this evaporates - an island once again

On 28/11/10 10:19 AM, Mike Battaglia wrote:
>
>
> Yeah, I made this post a looong time ago, my thinking has > changed a
> lot since then. I no longer think that it's all about JI, or > hearing
> implied JI relationships - I think that intentionally detuned JI
> relationships are just as much a musical asset as JI ones.
>