Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup makemicromusic JI question

Hi Mark,

Well actually you're in luck :)
Right now is the first time in history that you can learn about true Just Intonation.
And your inexperience with JI is no disadvantage, as nobody else besides me knows how to do correct JI either ;)

I don't have a white paper or website yet, but there will be a website soon at www.justintonation.com
I've posted some information about my JI research findings in the "Marcel" thread here on MMM.
Further you can find information in my folder here on MMM:
/makemicromusic/files/Marcel/

I'd advise you to carefully listen to both the "classic 5-limit JI" version of Drei Equale no1 and my MJI version, and make up your mind if either one sounds in tune to you.
If you chose to learn JI from me, I'll give you a few basic guidelines and you can then study the tuning of Drei Equale no1 (and several other pieces I'll upload soon).
After that you can learn further by analysing and retuning a few compositions of your own choice, and after that I'd teach you how to make microtonal jazz / blues and strongly microtonal polyphonic arabic music etc.
It is a serious study but should take no more than a few months before you're ready to be one of the first to make completely new music in JI.

If all this sounds a bit too much like a jump in the dark right now, np.
If you wait a few months there will be much more information and just about everybody will be wanting to learn it :)

Btw, about the links Juhani gave you.
I'd strongly advice you to not study "classic JI" as it's all wrong, can't even tune the simplest of common practice music and does not give any musical insight whatsoever.
It'll make a very unproductive person out of you, you'd spend most of your time fighting a losing battle with tuning problems and the results will sound very out of tune.
Temperaments other than 12tet are another tragic story. Infact if you decide not to study my JI, I could not advice you stronger to stay away from anything to do with microtonality.

-Marcel

From: Mark Stephens
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 9:43 AM
To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MMM] JI question

<...goes deeper than the notation or current music theory. This JI off course
works for all music, old and new, gives deeper insight into the functioning of
the tonal side of music, and suggests ways to do new things.<

I'm still very new here so I apologize for asking such a basic question... but
can you explain or do you have a white paper or website that explains the math
and/or mechanics behind this? I've basically just recently enjoyed discovering
some of the basic math of harmonics and have played around with it some. You
talking about creating a customized JI tunings for each piece of music, right?

Obviously I'm a bit of a "blank slate" so I'm very open minded to both sides.
I'm actually leaning more toward *not* thinking "Just Intonation" will always
work for pieces of music which make key changes but I'm not closed minded about
that. I just don't understand how JI would not drift or go out of tune when the
key changes.
Mark Stephens
ProgPositivity - The Best Prog and Fusion - Positively!
http://www.progpositivity.com

🔗m.develde@...

I forgot to answer your drifting question.
No, there is no harmful drifting in my JI.
There is drifting along the main chain of fifths, but this is normal for
music and is not a problem in any way.
Look at normal notation for instance, here there is drifting along the chain
of fifths as well when changing keys. (there is no circle of fifths, there
is a Pythagorean chain of fifths)
And even where this drifting can sometimes give a theoretical problem in
some extreme 12tet music with enharmonically equivalent notes, this problem
does not exist in my JI.

Also, my JI does not generate a custom scale for each composition if you
think that's how it works.
There a potential pitch field (an infinite chain of fifths, with another
chain of infinite fifths a 5/4 relative to it) and the music indicates in a
functional way which pitches it hits.
For instance in Drei Equale no1, even though it is a piece entirely in the
key of D minor, there are more than 12 pitches per octave used (prob about
17-20 I didn't count)

-Marcel

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht----- From: m.develde@...
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 12:49 PM
To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [MMM] JI question

Hi Mark,

Well actually you're in luck :)
Right now is the first time in history that you can learn about true Just
Intonation.
And your inexperience with JI is no disadvantage, as nobody else besides me
knows how to do correct JI either ;)

I don't have a white paper or website yet, but there will be a website soon
at www.justintonation.com
I've posted some information about my JI research findings in the "Marcel"
thread here on MMM.
Further you can find information in my folder here on MMM:
/makemicromusic/files/Marcel/

I'd advise you to carefully listen to both the "classic 5-limit JI" version
of Drei Equale no1 and my MJI version, and make up your mind if either one
sounds in tune to you.
If you chose to learn JI from me, I'll give you a few basic guidelines and
you can then study the tuning of Drei Equale no1 (and several other pieces
I'll upload soon).
After that you can learn further by analysing and retuning a few
compositions of your own choice, and after that I'd teach you how to make
microtonal jazz / blues and strongly microtonal polyphonic arabic music etc.
It is a serious study but should take no more than a few months before
you're ready to be one of the first to make completely new music in JI.

If all this sounds a bit too much like a jump in the dark right now, np.
If you wait a few months there will be much more information and just about
everybody will be wanting to learn it :)

Btw, about the links Juhani gave you.
I'd strongly advice you to not study "classic JI" as it's all wrong, can't
even tune the simplest of common practice music and does not give any
musical insight whatsoever.
It'll make a very unproductive person out of you, you'd spend most of your
time fighting a losing battle with tuning problems and the results will
sound very out of tune.
Temperaments other than 12tet are another tragic story. Infact if you decide
not to study my JI, I could not advice you stronger to stay away from
anything to do with microtonality.

-Marcel

From: Mark Stephens
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 9:43 AM
To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MMM] JI question

<...goes deeper than the notation or current music theory. This JI off
course
works for all music, old and new, gives deeper insight into the functioning
of
the tonal side of music, and suggests ways to do new things.<

I'm still very new here so I apologize for asking such a basic question...
but
can you explain or do you have a white paper or website that explains the
math
and/or mechanics behind this? I've basically just recently enjoyed
discovering
some of the basic math of harmonics and have played around with it some.
You
talking about creating a customized JI tunings for each piece of music,
right?

Obviously I'm a bit of a "blank slate" so I'm very open minded to both
sides.
I'm actually leaning more toward *not* thinking "Just Intonation" will
always
work for pieces of music which make key changes but I'm not closed minded
about
that. I just don't understand how JI would not drift or go out of tune when
the
key changes.
Mark Stephens
ProgPositivity - The Best Prog and Fusion - Positively!
http://www.progpositivity.com

🔗genewardsmith <genewardsmith@...>

🔗m.develde@...

No offence meant Gene for what I'm about to write. I know you like temperaments, but I have a different view on them.
And he asked about JI.

Here my take on temperaments for music composition:
Somewhat well behaved temperaments do not offer much extra colour.
And temperaments that do offer colour are not well behaved.
Colourful temperaments are very limiting in what you can play in them, and even then the results are very questionable as to how out of tune it sounds. (I personally certainly can't stand what's being produced on these lists, and the wider audience can't either)
Colourful temperaments are also certainly not things suitable to progressive rock with all it's modulations.
In my opinion (and that of many others) there is only one really good temperament, and it's called 12 tone equal temperament :)

Also, my JI gives deep insight into the functioning of music and is a composition aid if understood well enough.
Temperaments offer no such thing.

And about the retuning, I suggested retuning as part of a learning method, after which one can create original music.

-Marcel

From: genewardsmith
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 4:08 PM
To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [MMM] JI question

--- In mailto:MakeMicroMusic%40yahoogroups.com, <m.develde@...> wrote:

> I'd advise you to carefully listen to both the "classic 5-limit JI" > version
> of Drei Equale no1 and my MJI version, and make up your mind if either one
> sounds in tune to you.

I'd advise you to ignore the issue of retuning common practice music, as it's probably not relevant to your concerns beyond suggesting that meantone will seem more familiar than other temperaments. At least, if I understand correctly you want to do original music, maybe prog/fusion.

> Temperaments other than 12tet are another tragic story.

Temperaments are in fact enormously varied and quite interesting, and are probably what you want to look at. If you want to boggle your mind with some of the vast range of possibilities, check out this:

http://xenharmonic.wikispaces.com/Regular+Temperaments

🔗Michael <djtrancendance@...>

Mark>"can you explain or do you have a white paper or website that explains the math and/or mechanics behind this?"

Different papers will say different things beyond "uses small whole number ratios", to an extent.

The only accepted formal definition of JI is " any musical tuning in which the frequencies of notes are related by ratios of small whole numbers."-Wikipedia

However, to be honest a no apologies...many experts disagree on what constitutes JI beyond this.

Some people believe JI involves simply keeping dyads IE 7/6, 5/4...as small ratio numbers. In such situations, people rate dyads by odd-limit and prime-limit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd_limit...and lower limit essentially means "more just".

Odd limit is the more reliable predictor as to how dissonant dyads. 7/6 is 7-odd-limit as 7 is the highest odd number left in the fraction that divides either the numerator or denominator.

Other people (Carl, for one) have voice to me they believe JI to be about larger harmonic structures such as tetrachords (4-note chords) IE 2:3:4:5 and 3:4:5:6 are 5-odd-limit tetra-chords. Still others simply base JI one conforming to triads (3-note chords) IE 3:4:5, 2:3:4, and 4:5:6 are all 5-limit triads.

--------------------------------------
The practical problem, in my mind, is the larger the chords you seek to make JI in a scale...the more likely you are to make other dyads and chords in the JI scale higher limit in order to achieve this.

If you make a scale by layering 3:4:5:6 chords on top of each other
3:4:5:6---9--12:15:18
------6:8:10:12--
You'll notice you get a 9/8 and 10/9 and even a 15/9 dyad in there (and the 15/9 is 15-odd-limit!)...and you also get higher limit chords like 8:9:10:15 and 6:8:9:10.

Some people try to get around this by accepting larger intervals. If you made a scale 1/1 5/4 25/16...you'd actually have 2 highly Just dyads as 25/16 is 5/4 away from the listed above 5/4. The process of forming lower number fractions from gaps between higher number ones is often called "rational intonation".

I'm not 100% sure on this but...I'm pretty sure you decided to take the 5/4 (generator) and make it smaller so that generator squared is near the much lower limit 14/9 (which is very near 25/16), you will have "tempered out" the 25/16 over 14/9 = 225/224 comma. This has advantages in that it lets you get two near-just 5/4's and a near-just 14/9 instead of just the just 5/4's in strict JI...and leads you toward the art of temperament (rather than JI).

--------------------------
In short, JI often comes down to being the art of getting some larger chords low-limit for the sake of making other ones much less so. Note that you can go the other way IE aim for higher-limit chords and scales (IE "less just" ones) on purpose to strategically add dissonance.

🔗Michael <djtrancendance@...>

🔗m.develde@...

Michael, no offense meant in any way.
But I'll advice again to stay away from all these forms of historical JI.
They do nothing but confuse and all give terrible out of tune results.

-Marcel

From: Michael
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 4:45 PM
To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [MMM] JI question

Mark>"can you explain or do you have a white paper or website that explains the math and/or mechanics behind this?"

Different papers will say different things beyond "uses small whole number ratios", to an extent.

The only accepted formal definition of JI is " any musical tuning in which the frequencies of notes are related by ratios of small whole numbers."-Wikipedia

However, to be honest a no apologies...many experts disagree on what constitutes JI beyond this.

Odd limit is the more reliable predictor as to how dissonant dyads. 7/6 is 7-odd-limit as 7 is the highest odd number left in the fraction that divides either the numerator or denominator.

🔗Michael <djtrancendance@...>

Marcel>"Michael, no offense meant in any way. But I'll advice again to stay away from all these forms of historical JI. They do nothing but confuse and all give terrible out of tune results."

In that case, Marcel, please explain exactly how you are getting around the issues of not using either the "historical" methods of temperament or rational intonation and yet are able to get virtually everything "perfectly in-tune" without making other things out of tune to accomplish this.

--- On Sun, 2/27/11, m.develde@... <m.develde@...> wrote:

From: m.develde@gmail.com <m.develde@...>
Subject: Re: [MMM] JI question
To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sunday, February 27, 2011, 7:59 AM

Michael, no offense meant in any way.

But I'll advice again to stay away from all these forms of historical JI.

They do nothing but confuse and all give terrible out of tune results.

-Marcel

From: Michael

Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 4:45 PM

To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [MMM] JI question

Mark>"can you explain or do you have a white paper or website that explains

the math and/or mechanics behind this?"

Different papers will say different things beyond "uses small whole

number ratios", to an extent.

The only accepted formal definition of JI is " any musical tuning in

which the frequencies of notes are related by ratios of small whole

numbers."-Wikipedia

However, to be honest a no apologies...many experts disagree on what

constitutes JI beyond this.

Some people believe JI involves simply keeping dyads IE 7/6, 5/4...as

small ratio numbers. In such situations, people rate dyads by odd-limit and

prime-limit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd_limit...and lower limit

essentially means "more just".

Odd limit is the more reliable predictor as to how dissonant dyads. 7/6

is 7-odd-limit as 7 is the highest odd number left in the fraction that

divides either the numerator or denominator.

Other people (Carl, for one) have voice to me they believe JI to be about

larger harmonic structures such as tetrachords (4-note chords) IE 2:3:4:5

and 3:4:5:6 are 5-odd-limit tetra-chords. Still others simply base JI one

conforming to triads (3-note chords) IE 3:4:5, 2:3:4, and 4:5:6 are all

5-limit triads.

--------------------------------------

The practical problem, in my mind, is the larger the chords you seek to

make JI in a scale...the more likely you are to make other dyads and chords

in the JI scale higher limit in order to achieve this.

If you make a scale by layering 3:4:5:6 chords on top of each other

3:4:5:6---9--12:15:18

------6:8:10:12--

You'll notice you get a 9/8 and 10/9 and even a 15/9 dyad in there (and

the 15/9 is 15-odd-limit!)...and you also get higher limit chords like

8:9:10:15 and 6:8:9:10.

Some people try to get around this by accepting larger intervals. If you

made a scale 1/1 5/4 25/16...you'd actually have 2 highly Just dyads as

25/16 is 5/4 away from the listed above 5/4. The process of forming lower

number fractions from gaps between higher number ones is often called

"rational intonation".

I'm not 100% sure on this but...I'm pretty sure you decided to take the

5/4 (generator) and make it smaller so that generator squared is near the

much lower limit 14/9 (which is very near 25/16), you will have "tempered

out" the 25/16 over 14/9 = 225/224 comma. This has advantages in that it

lets you get two near-just 5/4's and a near-just 14/9 instead of just the

just 5/4's in strict JI...and leads you toward the art of temperament

(rather than JI).

--------------------------

In short, JI often comes down to being the art of getting some larger

chords low-limit for the sake of making other ones much less so. Note that

you can go the other way IE aim for higher-limit chords and scales (IE "less

just" ones) on purpose to strategically add dissonance.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

🔗m.develde@...

Hi Michael,

First of all, if you're stacking 2 5/4 major thirds to get a 25/16 then you're not doing real Just Intonation anymore, but rather some out of tune rational intonation which has been wrongly labelled "just intonation" in the past.

And no, temperaments do not offer insight into the functioning of music.
At best, take 53tet and compare it to my JI in a limited form for common practice music (just a chain of fifths and a single other chain of fifths 5/4 relative to it).
53tet tempers the difference between 32/27 and 1215/1024, 128/81 and 405/256, 256/243 and 135/128, etc.
This way you lose out important information. (not to mention that you'd have to do JI to get this kind of information at first)
On top of that, 53tet does not sound as good as JI.
etc etc etc.

Furthermore, you seem to think that my JI has issues with getting ratios pure?
It does not in any way whatsoever.
The thing is that not all major thirds are pure as 5/4.
In many situations to play a certain major third as 5/4 would be to play it out of tune as the music calls for a 81/64 for instance in that function.
The tonal side of music comes from the underlying mathematics, not the other way around.

-Marcel

From: Michael
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 4:59 PM
To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [MMM] JI question

Marcel>"Also, my JI gives deep insight into the functioning of music and is a composition aid if understood well enough. Temperaments offer no such thing."

Isn't it fair enough to say temperaments can be explained as rounding between fundamentals of JI IE if you take a tempered 5/4 and another tempered 5/4 to get the nearby 14/9 instead of the 25/16 you get from 5/4 * 5/4...you are getting "more ratios near perfectly Just...instead of less ratios that are exactly/perfectly Just?

How do you get around this issue? How do you get as many ratios "virtually perfect" as possible without tempering? And, if it involves higher-limit fractions that form together to make lower-limit ones, shouldn't you be calling it Rational Intonation rather than Just Intonation? http://tonalsoft.com/enc/r/rational-intonation.aspx

🔗Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...>

🔗jonszanto <jszanto@...>

🔗Michael <djtrancendance@...>

Chris>"I don't know where you have been looking - I've had 17 et pieces on the charts, and in the top 5 for weeks, at normally 12 tet music sites."

I think a lot of it boils down to the focus on what kind of music you are trying to make. Far as microtonal rock music, I think you, Igs, and Neil have proven certain TET tunings IE 17,19,31...can be accepted just so well as 12TET. Also given, there's a certain amount of punkish-ness/rebelliousness that makes putting weird and even at times flat out "noisy" things in rock ethically "cool" to a lot of people, think Tom Morello's crazy sounds for "Rage Against the Machine".

However, the side to it I believe Marcel is looking at (if I have it right) is classical music. Most people have a hard enough time accepting classical music period...and an even harder time accepting the sort of neo-classical material that floats around these lists.
And to make microtonal music acceptable vis-a-vis classical "standards" done in 12TET, sadly, I'm afraid obeying the rules so far as strictly obeying a sense of diatonic formations are of primary importance. I sure as anything would virtually never trust a general Classical listener to ever, say, accept the 22/15 diminished fifths as "proper and planned".

On one hand, perhaps you/Chris and other artists feel an artistic obligation/drive to aim toward odd, very technical microtonal work few people can understand. If that's where you want to go, more power to you, and it doesn't make your music "weaker" because you choose such a goal...but realize most the public is not likely to take it seriously.

Far as non-rock music that I trust could actually make it in most people's minds: Marcus Satellite's mostly pop or dance music, Jacky Ligon's abstract breakbeats/IDM, and Igs's music (which I'd say...is a much mix of jazz and industrial).

And note all of the above genres (as they stand in modern times) seem to welcome more deviance from "proper music" than classical...especially electronica where jilted timbres and sounds are often the norm and listeners are often more open to the unknown.

🔗m.develde@...

Ah common.. I have the "just intonation primer" by David Doty.
It's exactly the kind of nonsense I was referring to earlier.
He says things like "the dominant 7th of major mode is best tuned with a 7/4 when possible" and things like that.
The first thing a beginner even learns NOT to do simply by listening to the results.
The whole primer is complete crap, if I were to list all the nonsense it states I'll be writing for days. It's only useful for some historical information.
These kind of ill-researched books on JI are part of the reason JI has such a bad name.

-Marcel

From: jonszanto
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 7:06 PM
To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MMM] Re: JI question

Hi Mark,

--- In mailto:MakeMicroMusic%40yahoogroups.com, Mark Stephens <musicoptimist@...> wrote:
> Obviously I'm a bit of a "blank slate" so I'm very open minded to both > sides.
> I'm actually leaning more toward *not* thinking "Just Intonation" will > always
> work for pieces of music which make key changes but I'm not closed minded > about
> that. I just don't understand how JI would not drift or go out of tune > when the
> key changes.

Especially with your "blank slate" statement I felt compelled to offer up the following: if you want to get a basic handle on JI, probably the best way to get all of the concepts and background in one package is the "Just Intonation Primer" by David Doty. He is now publishing it himself:

http://www.dbdoty.com/Words/Primer1.html

This is a well-researched explanation into this method of tuning, and has been with us for a number of years. Frankly, the stuff that Marcel has offered up isn't even close to a real answer for you. He's been coming around for about 3 years and has pretty much nothing to show for it, not in terms of a concrete theory, nor in terms of a body of works as examples, or even a pattern of coherent explanations. I'm not trying to be mean-spirited, but unless someone offers up a bona fide path for you, I could see you getting sucked into what isn't much better than a conspiracy-theory, tinfoil-hat version of JI.

🔗cityoftheasleep <igliashon@...>

Hi Mark,

I have been observing the various arguments about JI for quite awhile as a dispassionate observer, as I prefer to work with temperaments myself. What I can say is that there seem to be three main JI "camps".

One camp, which is by far the most popular, includes people like Kraig Grady, Erv Wilson, and Jon Catler. These folks use fixed tunings typically involving prime limits up to 13, and their approach is a definite break from the common practice. They are exploring new sonic territory and have no interest in solving the "historical problems" of JI.

Another camp, which is largely not represented here, uses adaptive JI, which is a method of emulating digitally the effect that normally occurs in ensembles of freely-intonated instruments (like choirs and string ensembles). In adaptive JI, pitches are retuned on the fly so that all chords are Just and yet the roots retain a fixed (usually 12-note) tuning. There are many different varieties and algorithms for this method that I know little about.

The 3rd camp, which seems to consist entirely of Marcel (much to his chagrin), is interested in trying to solve the historical problems of rendering common practice music in JI. Marcel's idea of "Just" is a clear break from its historical and commonly-accepted sense, in that he considers 3-limit triads like 64:81:96 are "Just" in certain contexts. I call his approach "functional JI" because for him, it is not always musically-appropriate to use 5-limit triads, and he is trying to find a way to give musical rules for when Pythagorean triads are appropriate and when Just triads are. The trouble with his approach, of course, is that it will only be possible done digitally, as the tuning will change with every piece of music, and also involves triads that free-intonation instruments cannot accurately produce--Pythagorean triads are notoriously difficult to sing and there is tremendous evidence that free-intonation ensembles tend toward adaptive 5-limit (or, rarely, 7-limit) JI. Nevertheless, I do think his approach produces good renderings that match the rise and fall of tension within the piece of music. I just don't know what sort of practical application it can have to making music outside the digital realm. As I am a guitar player, it is utterly useless to me.

The bottom line is that applying JI to common-practice music is going to be problematic one way or another, and wherever one problem is solved another appears.

-Igs

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Mark Stephens <musicoptimist@...> wrote:
>
> <...goes deeper than the notation or current music theory. This JI off course
> works for all music, old and new, gives deeper insight into the functioning of
> the tonal side of music, and suggests ways to do new things.<
>
> I'm still very new here so I apologize for asking such a basic question... but
> can you explain or do you have a white paper or website that explains the math
> and/or mechanics behind this? I've basically just recently enjoyed discovering
> some of the basic math of harmonics and have played around with it some. You
> talking about creating a customized JI tunings for each piece of music, right?
>
> Obviously I'm a bit of a "blank slate" so I'm very open minded to both sides.
> I'm actually leaning more toward *not* thinking "Just Intonation" will always
> work for pieces of music which make key changes but I'm not closed minded about
> that. I just don't understand how JI would not drift or go out of tune when the
> key changes.
> Mark Stephens
> ProgPositivity - The Best Prog and Fusion - Positively!
> http://www.progpositivity.com
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

🔗m.develde@...

You know, one of the main things is this:
People who do JI "research" make up all these things yet do not test them
properly in practice!

The possibilities with rational intonation are virtually infinite.
People make up theories based on ratios, do some limited and mostly
theoretical testing and then call it "just intonation".

I'll forgive the older theorists such as Zarlino etc etc, since they had
limited practical possibilities for thorough testing.
But in these modern times with computers.. Not thoroughly testing is simply
lazy.

Almost all people on these microtonal lists who have done something in JI
have not even tested their preferred JI system on a single full song.
For a long time I've been asking people to retune Drei Equale no1, and win
100 euro if you do it better than me.
One single person (Petr Parizek) did the full Drei Equale no1 in JI.
I belief one other person tried but gave up (the founder of this list).

I've personally done about 200 different complete and full retunes of Drei
Equale no1.
And this is only part of my testing.
I've been doing practical JI testing full time for over 2 years. And I mean
truly full time, I don't have another job or anything.
I've done prolonged research in every kind of JI that has been invented by
others (except the too silly for words "adaptive-JI").
Classic 5-limit JI in it's many forms. 7-limit JI. Extended JI in many
different forms.
And I've invented a lot of never before tried forms of JI (for instance JI
based on permutations of the harmonic series, and many more)
I've done prolonged investigation in the solutions to the problems of each,
comma shifts, wolfs, drifting.

I don't know of a single person who has done the same.

I'll say it again, one can make and almost infinite number of theories based
on rational intonation.
But the theory should not only work in theory, it should work for the
ear/brain too!!
And since we can't do a brain scan yet that will give us this information,
the only way to find out how true JI works is by testing all these theories
and learning from what these tests have to tell.
And I expected that once you get the theory that makes enough sense, and it
works perfectly for the ear, that magic will then happen and that the theory
will then give insight into the music that's bigger than what one has put
in.
I've reached that point now.
For all those that can't hear it yet in the 2 examples that I've posted, you
will hear it soon anyhow.
I've managed to figure out not only how common practice music works, but
also arabic and extreme blues etc.
I have a few things I wish to finish first, and then I'll compose the first
true just intonation polyphonic/couterpointal strongly microtonal music
(arabic like but polyphonic), this is something nobody has ever accomplished
satisfactory before (and no, the absolute crap for instance ozan made is far
far far from satisfactory)

-Marcel

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht----- From: m.develde@...
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 7:56 PM
To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [MMM] Re: JI question

Ah common.. I have the "just intonation primer" by David Doty.
It's exactly the kind of nonsense I was referring to earlier.
He says things like "the dominant 7th of major mode is best tuned with a 7/4
when possible" and things like that.
The first thing a beginner even learns NOT to do simply by listening to the
results.
The whole primer is complete crap, if I were to list all the nonsense it
states I'll be writing for days. It's only useful for some historical
information.
These kind of ill-researched books on JI are part of the reason JI has such
a bad name.

-Marcel

From: jonszanto
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 7:06 PM
To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MMM] Re: JI question

Hi Mark,

--- In mailto:MakeMicroMusic%40yahoogroups.com, Mark Stephens
<musicoptimist@...> wrote:
> Obviously I'm a bit of a "blank slate" so I'm very open minded to both > sides.
> I'm actually leaning more toward *not* thinking "Just Intonation" will > always
> work for pieces of music which make key changes but I'm not closed minded > about
> that. I just don't understand how JI would not drift or go out of tune > when the
> key changes.

Especially with your "blank slate" statement I felt compelled to offer up
the following: if you want to get a basic handle on JI, probably the best
way to get all of the concepts and background in one package is the "Just
Intonation Primer" by David Doty. He is now publishing it himself:

http://www.dbdoty.com/Words/Primer1.html

This is a well-researched explanation into this method of tuning, and has
been with us for a number of years. Frankly, the stuff that Marcel has
offered up isn't even close to a real answer for you. He's been coming
around for about 3 years and has pretty much nothing to show for it, not in
terms of a concrete theory, nor in terms of a body of works as examples, or
even a pattern of coherent explanations. I'm not trying to be mean-spirited,
but unless someone offers up a bona fide path for you, I could see you
getting sucked into what isn't much better than a conspiracy-theory,
tinfoil-hat version of JI.

🔗chrisvaisvil@...

You are assuming just rock music and that is incorect.
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael <djtrancendance@...>
Sender: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2011 10:20:14
To: <MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com>
Reply-To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [MMM] JI question

Chris>"I don't know where you have been looking - I've had 17 et pieces on the charts, and in the top 5 for weeks, at normally 12 tet music sites."

�� I think a lot of it boils down to the focus on what kind of music you are trying to make.� Far as microtonal rock music, I think you, Igs, and Neil have proven certain TET tunings IE 17,19,31...can be accepted just so well as 12TET. Also given, there's a certain amount of punkish-ness/rebelliousness that makes putting weird and even at times flat out "noisy" things in rock ethically "cool" to a lot of people, think Tom Morello's crazy sounds for "Rage Against the Machine".�

�� However, the side to it I believe Marcel is looking at (if I have it right) is classical music.� Most people have a hard enough time accepting classical music period...and an even harder time accepting the sort of neo-classical material that floats around these lists.
� And to make microtonal music acceptable vis-a-vis classical "standards" done in 12TET, sadly, I'm afraid obeying the rules so far as strictly obeying a sense of diatonic formations are of primary importance.� I sure as anything would virtually never trust a general Classical listener to ever, say, accept the 22/15 diminished fifths as "proper and planned".

�� On one hand, perhaps you/Chris and other artists feel an artistic obligation/drive to aim toward odd, very technical microtonal work few people can understand.� If that's where you want to go, more power to you, and it doesn't make your music "weaker" because you choose such a goal...but realize most the public is not likely to take it seriously.�

�� Far as non-rock music that I trust could actually make it in most people's minds: Marcus Satellite's mostly pop or dance music, Jacky Ligon's abstract breakbeats/IDM, and Igs's music (which I'd say...is a much mix of jazz and industrial).

� And note all of the above genres (as they stand in modern times) seem to welcome more deviance from "proper music" than classical...especially electronica where jilted timbres and sounds are often the norm and listeners are often more open to the unknown.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

🔗m.develde@...

Hi Igs,

I'm surprised by your email (that I largely agree with).
Finally someone with good sense :)
Thank you!

I'd like to reply to 2 things.
First,I've analysed several recordings with Melodyne editor Direct Note Access. (the one that can see the individual notes and their pitches of polyphonic music)
And I've seen that the Pythagorean major and minor chords are actually played and sung a lot in music performed by for instance choir or trombone quartet.
A choir or trombone quartet seems to not have any problem at all playing/singing Pythagorean chords in their right places (or by mistake as I've also seen), but the problem for choir or trombone quartet arises when they're asked to play/sing ENTIRELY in Pythagorean tuning, which would be out of tune in a very particular way and therefore hard.

2nd thing I wanted to respond to is about the guitar and tuning it.
My JI method is I think probably the easiest form of JI to tune your guitar to.
I'm not a guitar player myself so I'm not sure what would be the most convenient way to do it.
But all one really needs for common practice music is strings fretted to Pythagorean.
And then half the strings should be tuned a 5/4 ratio relative to the other strings.
The pitch space you need would be something like:
... 16/9 - 4/3 - 1/1 - 3/2 - 9/8 - 27/16 ... etc chain
+ ... 10/9 - 5/3 - 5/4 - 15/8 - 45/32 - 135/128 ... etc chain.
That's it. No extra chains 5/4 - 25/16 etc like classic 5-limit JI, just 2 chains of fifths.
One can modulate all one wants except at the edges of the chain of fifths (depends on your frets and number of strings how long you can make the chain of fifths), you'd just have to learn this form of JI but that isn't so hard (it may look difficult at first but it's really simple, was only hard to discover) and will give so much in return for music composition (in fact, I can recommend strongly to learn it just for composition insight, even if one plays the composition in 12tet or a temperament)

-Marcel

From: cityoftheasleep
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 8:11 PM
To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MMM] Re: JI question

Hi Mark,

The bottom line is that applying JI to common-practice music is going to be problematic one way or another, and wherever one problem is solved another appears.

-Igs

--- In mailto:MakeMicroMusic%40yahoogroups.com, Mark Stephens <musicoptimist@...> wrote:
>
> <...goes deeper than the notation or current music theory. This JI off > course
> works for all music, old and new, gives deeper insight into the > functioning of
> the tonal side of music, and suggests ways to do new things.<
>
> I'm still very new here so I apologize for asking such a basic question... > but
> can you explain or do you have a white paper or website that explains the > math
> and/or mechanics behind this? I've basically just recently enjoyed > discovering
> some of the basic math of harmonics and have played around with it some. > You
> talking about creating a customized JI tunings for each piece of music, > right?
>
> Obviously I'm a bit of a "blank slate" so I'm very open minded to both > sides.
> I'm actually leaning more toward *not* thinking "Just Intonation" will > always
> work for pieces of music which make key changes but I'm not closed minded > about
> that. I just don't understand how JI would not drift or go out of tune > when the
> key changes.
> Mark Stephens
> ProgPositivity - The Best Prog and Fusion - Positively!
> http://www.progpositivity.com
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

🔗m.develde@...

🔗Dave Seidel <dave@...>

Perhaps we prefer to make music instead of wasting what little time we
have in the pursuit of some abstract, theoretical ideal. I don't make
(much) common practice music myself these days, but as a listener I care
about feeling, sonority, and sensitivity in performance much more than I
care about the tuning system. Or arrogant dogma.

- Dave

On 2/27/2011 2:27 PM, m.develde@... wrote:
>
>
> You know, one of the main things is this:
> People who do JI "research" make up all these things yet do not test them
> properly in practice!
>
> The possibilities with rational intonation are virtually infinite.
> People make up theories based on ratios, do some limited and mostly
> theoretical testing and then call it "just intonation".
>
> I'll forgive the older theorists such as Zarlino etc etc, since they had
> limited practical possibilities for thorough testing.
> But in these modern times with computers.. Not thoroughly testing is simply
> lazy.
>
> Almost all people on these microtonal lists who have done something in JI
> have not even tested their preferred JI system on a single full song.
> For a long time I've been asking people to retune Drei Equale no1, and win
> 100 euro if you do it better than me.
> One single person (Petr Parizek) did the full Drei Equale no1 in JI.
> I belief one other person tried but gave up (the founder of this list).
>
> I've personally done about 200 different complete and full retunes of Drei
> Equale no1.
> And this is only part of my testing.
> I've been doing practical JI testing full time for over 2 years. And I mean
> truly full time, I don't have another job or anything.
> I've done prolonged research in every kind of JI that has been invented by
> others (except the too silly for words "adaptive-JI").
> Classic 5-limit JI in it's many forms. 7-limit JI. Extended JI in many
> different forms.
> And I've invented a lot of never before tried forms of JI (for instance JI
> based on permutations of the harmonic series, and many more)
> I've done prolonged investigation in the solutions to the problems of each,
> comma shifts, wolfs, drifting.
>
> I don't know of a single person who has done the same.
>
> I'll say it again, one can make and almost infinite number of theories based
> on rational intonation.
> But the theory should not only work in theory, it should work for the
> ear/brain too!!
> And since we can't do a brain scan yet that will give us this information,
> the only way to find out how true JI works is by testing all these theories
> and learning from what these tests have to tell.
> And I expected that once you get the theory that makes enough sense, and it
> works perfectly for the ear, that magic will then happen and that the theory
> will then give insight into the music that's bigger than what one has put
> in.
> I've reached that point now.
> For all those that can't hear it yet in the 2 examples that I've posted, you
> will hear it soon anyhow.
> I've managed to figure out not only how common practice music works, but
> also arabic and extreme blues etc.
> I have a few things I wish to finish first, and then I'll compose the first
> true just intonation polyphonic/couterpointal strongly microtonal music
> (arabic like but polyphonic), this is something nobody has ever accomplished
> satisfactory before (and no, the absolute crap for instance ozan made is far
> far far from satisfactory)
>
> -Marcel
>
> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
> From: m.develde@... <mailto:m.develde%40gmail.com>
> Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 7:56 PM
> To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com <mailto:MakeMicroMusic%40yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: Re: [MMM] Re: JI question
>
> Ah common.. I have the "just intonation primer" by David Doty.
> It's exactly the kind of nonsense I was referring to earlier.
> He says things like "the dominant 7th of major mode is best tuned with a 7/4
> when possible" and things like that.
> The first thing a beginner even learns NOT to do simply by listening to the
> results.
> The whole primer is complete crap, if I were to list all the nonsense it
> states I'll be writing for days. It's only useful for some historical
> information.
> These kind of ill-researched books on JI are part of the reason JI has such
> a bad name.
>
> -Marcel
>
> From: jonszanto
> Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 7:06 PM
> To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com <mailto:MakeMicroMusic%40yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: [MMM] Re: JI question
>
> Hi Mark,
>
> --- In mailto:MakeMicroMusic%40yahoogroups.com, Mark Stephens
> <musicoptimist@...> wrote:
>> Obviously I'm a bit of a "blank slate" so I'm very open minded to both
>> sides.
>> I'm actually leaning more toward *not* thinking "Just Intonation" will
>> always
>> work for pieces of music which make key changes but I'm not closed minded
>> about
>> that. I just don't understand how JI would not drift or go out of tune
>> when the
>> key changes.
>
> Especially with your "blank slate" statement I felt compelled to offer up
> the following: if you want to get a basic handle on JI, probably the best
> way to get all of the concepts and background in one package is the "Just
> Intonation Primer" by David Doty. He is now publishing it himself:
>
> http://www.dbdoty.com/Words/Primer1.html
>
> This is a well-researched explanation into this method of tuning, and has
> been with us for a number of years. Frankly, the stuff that Marcel has
> offered up isn't even close to a real answer for you. He's been coming
> around for about 3 years and has pretty much nothing to show for it, not in
> terms of a concrete theory, nor in terms of a body of works as examples, or
> even a pattern of coherent explanations. I'm not trying to be mean-spirited,
> but unless someone offers up a bona fide path for you, I could see you
> getting sucked into what isn't much better than a conspiracy-theory,
> tinfoil-hat version of JI.
>
>

🔗genewardsmith <genewardsmith@...>

🔗Carl Lumma <carl@...>

🔗m.develde@...

Hi Dave,

I could not agree more.
Except for myself, I have the time and the passion for this subject.

But the main purpose for solving JI is for insight into how to make new music.
I think (and now with enormous joy I finally really see it! ), only correct JI will give the very practical insight on how to make for instance polyphonic arabic music.
The new colours that become available and the superior control and knowledge of what one is doing is not abstract but will I think lead to an new impulse in music never seen before :)

-Marcel

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht----- From: Dave Seidel
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 9:03 PM
To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [MMM] Re: JI question

- Dave

On 2/27/2011 2:27 PM, m.develde@... wrote:
>
>
> You know, one of the main things is this:
> People who do JI "research" make up all these things yet do not test them
> properly in practice!
>
> The possibilities with rational intonation are virtually infinite.
> People make up theories based on ratios, do some limited and mostly
> theoretical testing and then call it "just intonation".
>
> I'll forgive the older theorists such as Zarlino etc etc, since they had
> limited practical possibilities for thorough testing.
> But in these modern times with computers.. Not thoroughly testing is > simply
> lazy.
>
> Almost all people on these microtonal lists who have done something in JI
> have not even tested their preferred JI system on a single full song.
> For a long time I've been asking people to retune Drei Equale no1, and win
> 100 euro if you do it better than me.
> One single person (Petr Parizek) did the full Drei Equale no1 in JI.
> I belief one other person tried but gave up (the founder of this list).
>
> I've personally done about 200 different complete and full retunes of Drei
> Equale no1.
> And this is only part of my testing.
> I've been doing practical JI testing full time for over 2 years. And I > mean
> truly full time, I don't have another job or anything.
> I've done prolonged research in every kind of JI that has been invented by
> others (except the too silly for words "adaptive-JI").
> Classic 5-limit JI in it's many forms. 7-limit JI. Extended JI in many
> different forms.
> And I've invented a lot of never before tried forms of JI (for instance JI
> based on permutations of the harmonic series, and many more)
> I've done prolonged investigation in the solutions to the problems of > each,
> comma shifts, wolfs, drifting.
>
> I don't know of a single person who has done the same.
>
> I'll say it again, one can make and almost infinite number of theories > based
> on rational intonation.
> But the theory should not only work in theory, it should work for the
> ear/brain too!!
> And since we can't do a brain scan yet that will give us this information,
> the only way to find out how true JI works is by testing all these > theories
> and learning from what these tests have to tell.
> And I expected that once you get the theory that makes enough sense, and > it
> works perfectly for the ear, that magic will then happen and that the > theory
> will then give insight into the music that's bigger than what one has put
> in.
> I've reached that point now.
> For all those that can't hear it yet in the 2 examples that I've posted, > you
> will hear it soon anyhow.
> I've managed to figure out not only how common practice music works, but
> also arabic and extreme blues etc.
> I have a few things I wish to finish first, and then I'll compose the > first
> true just intonation polyphonic/couterpointal strongly microtonal music
> (arabic like but polyphonic), this is something nobody has ever > accomplished
> satisfactory before (and no, the absolute crap for instance ozan made is > far
> far far from satisfactory)
>
> -Marcel
>
> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
> From: m.develde@... <mailto:m.develde%40gmail.com>
> Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 7:56 PM
> To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com > <mailto:MakeMicroMusic%40yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: Re: [MMM] Re: JI question
>
> Ah common.. I have the "just intonation primer" by David Doty.
> It's exactly the kind of nonsense I was referring to earlier.
> He says things like "the dominant 7th of major mode is best tuned with a > 7/4
> when possible" and things like that.
> The first thing a beginner even learns NOT to do simply by listening to > the
> results.
> The whole primer is complete crap, if I were to list all the nonsense it
> states I'll be writing for days. It's only useful for some historical
> information.
> These kind of ill-researched books on JI are part of the reason JI has > such
> a bad name.
>
> -Marcel
>
> From: jonszanto
> Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 7:06 PM
> To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com > <mailto:MakeMicroMusic%40yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: [MMM] Re: JI question
>
> Hi Mark,
>
> --- In mailto:MakeMicroMusic%40yahoogroups.com, Mark Stephens
> <musicoptimist@...> wrote:
>> Obviously I'm a bit of a "blank slate" so I'm very open minded to both
>> sides.
>> I'm actually leaning more toward *not* thinking "Just Intonation" will
>> always
>> work for pieces of music which make key changes but I'm not closed minded
>> about
>> that. I just don't understand how JI would not drift or go out of tune
>> when the
>> key changes.
>
> Especially with your "blank slate" statement I felt compelled to offer up
> the following: if you want to get a basic handle on JI, probably the best
> way to get all of the concepts and background in one package is the "Just
> Intonation Primer" by David Doty. He is now publishing it himself:
>
> http://www.dbdoty.com/Words/Primer1.html
>
> This is a well-researched explanation into this method of tuning, and has
> been with us for a number of years. Frankly, the stuff that Marcel has
> offered up isn't even close to a real answer for you. He's been coming
> around for about 3 years and has pretty much nothing to show for it, not > in
> terms of a concrete theory, nor in terms of a body of works as examples, > or
> even a pattern of coherent explanations. I'm not trying to be > mean-spirited,
> but unless someone offers up a bona fide path for you, I could see you
> getting sucked into what isn't much better than a conspiracy-theory,
> tinfoil-hat version of JI.
>
>

🔗m.develde@...

🔗genewardsmith <genewardsmith@...>

🔗m.develde@...

LOL
Carl, you're so pathetic it's funny :)
Every time I point out you're full of s*** and the things you write are simply wrong (about Lassus impossible without comma shifts, no comma problems in Drei Equale no1, etc) you stop replying on content only to begin a new negative reply somewhere else.
And it's funny you say I don't have a consistent theory (which I do) as you've never taken the time to investigate it nor even listen to my examples going by your last post on the subject.

Also, the very few things your hand has produced sound so painfully out of tune, you should go work for your government and play your music in suspected terrorists torture chambers. Would fit in nicely with your character as well..

I'm also laughing already because I know that soon you'll have no choice but to accept my theory hahahaha :)

-Marcel

From: Carl Lumma
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 9:13 PM
To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [MMM] Re: JI question

Igs wrote:

>The 3rd camp, which seems to consist entirely of Marcel (much to his
>chagrin),

Actually he seems quite fond of the idea. However, to get your own
camp you need to have a consistent theory, which he does not.

Marcel de Velde is an internet crank, as should be obvious from his
posts. He shouldn't be permitted to post here, nor, in an ideal world,
to own a domain like justintonation.com. Buyer beware.

-Carl

🔗m.develde@...

Hi Gene,

Well actually, I found I can hear it under certain circumstances.
The 53tet major triad sounds less good than a pure 1/1 5/4 3/2 major triad to me with a stable electronic sound.
But with a real instrument, or processed electronic sound I won't hear the difference no.

But the difference is important because of the music theoretical information it contains.
The ratios tell the story of where the voice / chord can go. Which tension it has, it's place in the music etc.

For practical performance purpose purpose 53tet sounds almost exactly the same as 5-limit JI. Agreed there.
Though I'm not aware of a 7-limit equal temperament that is close to as good as 53tet is for 5-limit.
(and I mean a chain of fifths + 1 chain of fifths 5/4 relative to the first, + 1 chain of fifths 7/4 relative to the first)

Another point is. Why use these big temperaments if we can do JI?
If we can do JI I don't see a single advantage anymore with big equal temperaments.
Even for a fixed instrument one can tune 53 notes to JI with 2 chains of fifths one 5/4 relative to the first, and one can do all that 53 tet does with the only exception being that 53tet connects the chains of fifths at the ends. But in practice this is not needed because common practice music isn't written so far off the C key (with very rare exceptions to confirm the rule, but one can simply reinterpret them +or- 12keys).
So the temperament I do see an advantage in is 12tet, for size reasons and because it tempers out 81/80 it's suitable for jamming without any JI or music theoretical knowledge. Yes it sounds out of tune, but fairly acceptably so apparently.

-Marcel

From: genewardsmith
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 9:23 PM
To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [MMM] JI question

--- In mailto:MakeMicroMusic%40yahoogroups.com, <m.develde@...> wrote:

> 53tet tempers the difference between 32/27 and 1215/1024, 128/81 and
> 405/256, 256/243 and 135/128, etc.
> This way you lose out important information.

If you can't hear it, why is it important? Once you spread out the difference of a schisma over a chain of fifths, you are left with some fraction of a cent such as 1/4 cent or so taken from the fifth, and a similar tiny error in the third. As for Pythagorean thirds (81/64, etc) if you want them, a schismatic temperament will supply them. It's not that you must do the same sort of thing you do with JI with schismatic tempering instead, but that you could.

🔗Jake Freivald <jdfreivald@...>

🔗m.develde@...

Hi Gene,

One last message before bed.
I was kinda stupid on the 53tet vs JI on a fixed instrument.
If one wishes to use 53 tones out of JI many of those will of course be tempered out so one would need less tones out of 53tet in order to play the same to a high degree of accuracy.
I'll calculate how much tomorrow.
And an unequal temperament will give this same advantage at least with the Schisma in 7-limit JI.

-Marcel

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht----- From: m.develde@...
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 9:53 PM
To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [MMM] JI question

Hi Gene,

Well actually, I found I can hear it under certain circumstances.
The 53tet major triad sounds less good than a pure 1/1 5/4 3/2 major triad
to me with a stable electronic sound.
But with a real instrument, or processed electronic sound I won't hear the
difference no.

But the difference is important because of the music theoretical information
it contains.
The ratios tell the story of where the voice / chord can go. Which tension
it has, it's place in the music etc.

For practical performance purpose purpose 53tet sounds almost exactly the
same as 5-limit JI. Agreed there.
Though I'm not aware of a 7-limit equal temperament that is close to as good
as 53tet is for 5-limit.
(and I mean a chain of fifths + 1 chain of fifths 5/4 relative to the first,
+ 1 chain of fifths 7/4 relative to the first)

Another point is. Why use these big temperaments if we can do JI?
If we can do JI I don't see a single advantage anymore with big equal
temperaments.
Even for a fixed instrument one can tune 53 notes to JI with 2 chains of
fifths one 5/4 relative to the first, and one can do all that 53 tet does
with the only exception being that 53tet connects the chains of fifths at
the ends. But in practice this is not needed because common practice music
isn't written so far off the C key (with very rare exceptions to confirm the
rule, but one can simply reinterpret them +or- 12keys).
So the temperament I do see an advantage in is 12tet, for size reasons and
because it tempers out 81/80 it's suitable for jamming without any JI or
music theoretical knowledge. Yes it sounds out of tune, but fairly
acceptably so apparently.

-Marcel

From: genewardsmith
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 9:23 PM
To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [MMM] JI question

--- In mailto:MakeMicroMusic%40yahoogroups.com, <m.develde@...> wrote:

> 53tet tempers the difference between 32/27 and 1215/1024, 128/81 and
> 405/256, 256/243 and 135/128, etc.
> This way you lose out important information.

If you can't hear it, why is it important? Once you spread out the
difference of a schisma over a chain of fifths, you are left with some
fraction of a cent such as 1/4 cent or so taken from the fifth, and a
similar tiny error in the third. As for Pythagorean thirds (81/64, etc) if
you want them, a schismatic temperament will supply them. It's not that you
must do the same sort of thing you do with JI with schismatic tempering
instead, but that you could.

🔗cityoftheasleep <igliashon@...>

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, <m.develde@...> wrote:
> I'd like to reply to 2 things.
> First,I've analysed several recordings with Melodyne editor Direct Note
> Access. (the one that can see the individual notes and their pitches of
> polyphonic music)
> And I've seen that the Pythagorean major and minor chords are actually
> played and sung a lot in music performed by for instance choir or trombone
> quartet.

To what level of accuracy? A nice quantitative statistical analysis taking into account the margin of error of the software would help advance your case significantly.

> 2nd thing I wanted to respond to is about the guitar and tuning it.
> My JI method is I think probably the easiest form of JI to tune your guitar
> to.

Most JI makes a mess of the guitar given its usual design. On a guitar, the strings are tuned E-A-D-G'-B'-E'' low to high (where a ' denotes an octave above the low E, and '' denotes two octaves). Chords are usually voiced across no fewer than 3 strings, and scales span across all 6 strings. Tuning a guitar in Pythagorean JI is problematic enough: with 12 notes, there will be some fifths off by a Pythagorean comma in the more distant keys. Increasing to 17 notes means there are going to be frets a Pythagorean comma apart, which are very difficult to play. If you want to add a second chain of 12 or 17 3/2's offset by 5/4 from the other one, you'd have to drastically alter the way the instrument is played or else add an ungodly number of commatically-spaced frets. It would be a nightmare no matter how you go about it.

Really any kind of JI on a fixed-pitch instrument is not going to work for common-practice music because no finite chain of any Just interval closes at the octave--even in 3-limit JI there will be wolves in some keys. So not only is your system unworkable on a guitar, it also won't work on any of these acoustic instruments: a piano, a harpsichord, a banjo, a bass guitar, an organ, a vibraphone, a glockenspiel, a ukulele, a carillon, a lute, a mandolin, an autoharp, a regular harp, a zither, a dulcimer, a psaltry, a hammered dulcimer, an ocarina, an accordion, or a melodica. That's a partial list. Are we to do away with all of those instruments?

And anyway, from the sound of it you are now suggesting that we tune to Pythagorean JI and then give every note a counterpart that is 81/80 flat, so that 5-limit harmonies are also possible. You are far from the first person to propose this and you have not "solved" anything any more thoroughly than it's been solved before. It's well-known that we can get through some of the problems of JI by doing precisely this, but time and again it has been rejected as a "solution" because of its impracticality on fixed-pitch acoustic instruments. Temperament was, is, and will *always* be a more practical solution, and it works just fine because the brain is more than capable of "getting the gist" of slightly-mistuned intervals. The brain has no more difficulty understanding and interpreting tempered music than it does Just music, so the trade-off of temperament is really not much of a loss.

-Igs

🔗Marcel <m.develde@...>

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> --- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, <m.develde@> wrote:
> > I'd like to reply to 2 things.
> > First,I've analysed several recordings with Melodyne editor Direct Note
> > Access. (the one that can see the individual notes and their pitches of
> > polyphonic music)
> > And I've seen that the Pythagorean major and minor chords are actually
> > played and sung a lot in music performed by for instance choir or trombone
> > quartet.
>
> To what level of accuracy? A nice quantitative statistical analysis taking into account the margin of error of the software would help advance your case significantly.

To the accuracy of a cent claimed by melodyne editor dna.
Trombones are fairly stable (if played as such) and give an error of +-2 cents or so on average when exatracted properly I'm guessing.

I'll be publishing the analysis of 3 or 4 different trombone quartets all playing all 3 Drei Equale on my website to start with.
Later I'll expand this perhaps, or hope others will do so.

>
> > 2nd thing I wanted to respond to is about the guitar and tuning it.
> > My JI method is I think probably the easiest form of JI to tune your guitar
> > to.
>
> Most JI makes a mess of the guitar given its usual design. On a guitar, the strings are tuned E-A-D-G'-B'-E'' low to high (where a ' denotes an octave above the low E, and '' denotes two octaves). Chords are usually voiced across no fewer than 3 strings, and scales span across all 6 strings. Tuning a guitar in Pythagorean JI is problematic enough: with 12 notes, there will be some fifths off by a Pythagorean comma in the more distant keys. Increasing to 17 notes means there are going to be frets a Pythagorean comma apart, which are very difficult to play. If you want to add a second chain of 12 or 17 3/2's offset by 5/4 from the other one, you'd have to drastically alter the way the instrument is played or else add an ungodly number of commatically-spaced frets. It would be a nightmare no matter how you go about it.
>

Too bad it's that much trouble.
But I'm allready seeing people do microtonal things with more than 12 notes per octave on guitars.
It should be somewhat easyer with my JI system I'm thinking.

> Really any kind of JI on a fixed-pitch instrument is not going to work for common-practice music because no finite chain of any Just interval closes at the octave--even in 3-limit JI there will be wolves in some keys. So not only is your system unworkable on a guitar, it also won't work on any of these acoustic instruments: a piano, a harpsichord, a banjo, a bass guitar, an organ, a vibraphone, a glockenspiel, a ukulele, a carillon, a lute, a mandolin, an autoharp, a regular harp, a zither, a dulcimer, a psaltry, a hammered dulcimer, an ocarina, an accordion, or a melodica. That's a partial list. Are we to do away with all of those instruments?
>

Many instruments can allready play JI.
But, as I've said many times before. For common practice western music the message gets across in 12tet.
It doesn't however for JI that goes further.
If an instrument can't play uncommon practice JI than that's a loss for this instrument. But that won't stop uncommon practice JI music in any way once good things have been composed.

> And anyway, from the sound of it you are now suggesting that we tune to Pythagorean JI and then give every note a counterpart that is 81/80 flat, so that 5-limit harmonies are also possible. You are far from the first person to propose this and you have not "solved" anything any more thoroughly than it's been solved before. It's well-known that we can get through some of the problems of JI by doing precisely this, but time and again it has been rejected as a "solution" because of its impracticality on fixed-pitch acoustic instruments.

Absolute nonsense what you're writing above.
First of all, no JI has not been solved before.
Untill now, nobody in the world could tune common practice music to JI. Period.
And the rejection of those historical systems was because they gave unsatisfactory results (as they were wrong). Not because some instruments can't play them.

Temperament was, is, and will *always* be a more practical solution, and it works just fine because the brain is more than capable of "getting the gist" of slightly-mistuned intervals. The brain has no more difficulty understanding and interpreting tempered music than it does Just music, so the trade-off of temperament is really not much of a loss.
>
> -Igs
>

You don't get it.
To solve JI is to understand music.
Right now music is not well understood.
The laws of music are in JI.
I've solved JI, this will become the biggest revolution in music ever.
It'll have a bigger influence than the invention of electronic instruments etc.
It will allow many people to compose much much better than ever before.
It'll allow computers to compose, and real time interaction with computer composition algorythms.
It'll bring completely new microtonal music (that sounds in tune for the first time)
It'll rewrite all the music theory books around the world.
It'll make studying harmony etc a scientific study probably under systematic musicology.
It'll be the music in the pop charts all over the world.
Etc etc etc.

But people around here don't get the importance of JI.
And on top of that there's way too much negativity here and bad characters.
I'm going to stop posting and replying here (this is my last such post), with the exception of posting finished songs here, retunes and my own creations.

-Marcel

🔗cityoftheasleep <igliashon@...>

🔗Daniel Forró <dan.for@...>

🔗Ozan Yarman <ozanyarman@...>

🔗Juhani <jnylenius@...>

🔗Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...>

🔗Aaron Krister Johnson <aaron@...>

On Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 3:52 PM, Marcel <m.develde@...> wrote:

> I've solved JI, this will become the biggest revolution in music ever.
> It'll have a bigger influence than the invention of electronic instruments
> etc.
> It will allow many people to compose much much better than ever before.
>

And wait, let me guess, there will be entire cities which will be built that
will house schools and institutes that will study, in detail, your
biography, and how you came across such a miraculous system? A new country,
Marcelistan, will pop up, led by the benevolent dictator-for-life, Marcel de
Velde, and people will worship you in their homes, and cry and scream with
joy to see you in public when you grace the crowds with your appearing?

WOWWWWWW!!!!! THAT'S AWWWWWWWWEEESSSSOOOMMMMMMEEEE!

I cry with joy at such a vision!!!!! Whoooo-hooo!!!!

> But people around here don't get the importance of JI.
> And on top of that there's way too much negativity here and bad characters.
>

Yes, we DOOOOOO have some bad characters. Everyone around here should just
be like you, and utterly dismiss everything that isn't your theory. That is
the first holy commandment of Marcel, and one that I wake up daily wishing
to obey. Forgive me for swaying, most high and holy master!

I'm going to stop posting and replying here (this is my last such post),
> with the exception of posting finished songs here, retunes and my own
> creations.
>

But <sobbing, crying> Marcel----what would we do without your endless supply
of verbal wisdom? We mere mortals won't be able to parse the completely
mysterious seemingly-out-of-tune trombone MIDI files you bless us with
unless you also give us specific and mocking instruction on how to orient
our feeble little minds to embrace the ONE TRUE WAY that you, anointed by
G*D, have come to give to the sinful sweaty hog-like mass of mere mortals.
We need those out-of-tune trombone MIDI files of Drei Equali and the abusive
posts that accompany them if we are to establish the shining cities on a
hill to your name!!!! Please, Marcel, pllllleeeeeeeeeease re-consider your
silence. I need my daily dose of punishing 'Drei Equali' MIDI files. I don't
know how I'd survive without them. And the way they constantly change, and
how you (and thus the TRUTH) grow and change with them---so poignant, so
humbling and soooooo beautiful.

But if you must go, know that Marcel, we will NEVER, I mean NEVER EVER,
forget the way you so touched and moved us with your insights into THE ONE
TRUE WAY. Thank you. We who are unworthy can only stare at your posts in
amazement.

Shalom...and ALL HAIL THE GREAT MARCEL!!!!! LIBERATOR!!!! VIVA LA
REVOLUCION!!!!!

>
> -Marcel
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

--
Aaron Krister Johnson
http://www.akjmusic.com
http://www.untwelve.org

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

🔗Dante Rosati <danterosati@...>

heres some definitions of a "crank" according to wikipedia:

<wikipedia>
Cranks overestimate their own knowledge and ability, and underestimate
that of acknowledged experts.

Cranks insist that their alleged discoveries are urgently important.

Cranks rarely, if ever, acknowledge any error, no matter how trivial.

Cranks love to talk about their own beliefs, often in inappropriate
social situations, but they tend to be bad listeners, and often appear
to be uninterested in anyone else's experience or opinions.

-seriously misunderstand the mainstream opinion to which they believe
that they are objecting,

-stress that they have been working out their ideas for many decades,
and claim that this fact alone entails that their belief cannot be
dismissed as resting upon some simple error,

-compare themselves with Galileo or Copernicus, implying that the mere
unpopularity of some belief is in itself evidence of plausibility,
claim that their ideas are being suppressed, typically by secret
intelligence organizations, mainstream science, powerful business
interests, or other groups which, they allege, are terrified by the
possibility of their revolutionary insights becoming widely known,
appear to regard themselves as persons of unique historical importance.

Cranks who contradict some mainstream opinion in some highly technical
field, such as mathematics or physics, almost always:

-exhibit a marked lack of technical ability,

-misunderstand or fail to use standard notation and terminology,

-ignore fine distinctions which are essential to correctly understand
mainstream belief.
</wikipedia>

On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 9:19 AM, Aaron Krister Johnson
<aaron@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 3:52 PM, Marcel <m.develde@...> wrote:
>
> > I've solved JI, this will become the biggest revolution in music ever.
> > It'll have a bigger influence than the invention of electronic instruments
> > etc.
> > It will allow many people to compose much much better than ever before.
> >
>
> And wait, let me guess, there will be entire cities which will be built that
> will house schools and institutes that will study, in detail, your
> biography, and how you came across such a miraculous system? A new country,
> Marcelistan, will pop up, led by the benevolent dictator-for-life, Marcel de
> Velde, and people will worship you in their homes, and cry and scream with
> joy to see you in public when you grace the crowds with your appearing?
>
> WOWWWWWW!!!!! THAT'S AWWWWWWWWEEESSSSOOOMMMMMMEEEE!
>
> I cry with joy at such a vision!!!!! Whoooo-hooo!!!!
>
> > But people around here don't get the importance of JI.
> > And on top of that there's way too much negativity here and bad characters.
> >
>
> Yes, we DOOOOOO have some bad characters. Everyone around here should just
> be like you, and utterly dismiss everything that isn't your theory. That is
> the first holy commandment of Marcel, and one that I wake up daily wishing
> to obey. Forgive me for swaying, most high and holy master!
>
> I'm going to stop posting and replying here (this is my last such post),
> > with the exception of posting finished songs here, retunes and my own
> > creations.
> >
>
> But <sobbing, crying> Marcel----what would we do without your endless supply
> of verbal wisdom? We mere mortals won't be able to parse the completely
> mysterious seemingly-out-of-tune trombone MIDI files you bless us with
> unless you also give us specific and mocking instruction on how to orient
> our feeble little minds to embrace the ONE TRUE WAY that you, anointed by
> G*D, have come to give to the sinful sweaty hog-like mass of mere mortals.
> We need those out-of-tune trombone MIDI files of Drei Equali and the abusive
> posts that accompany them if we are to establish the shining cities on a
> hill to your name!!!! Please, Marcel, pllllleeeeeeeeeease re-consider your
> silence. I need my daily dose of punishing 'Drei Equali' MIDI files. I don't
> know how I'd survive without them. And the way they constantly change, and
> how you (and thus the TRUTH) grow and change with them---so poignant, so
> humbling and soooooo beautiful.
>
> But if you must go, know that Marcel, we will NEVER, I mean NEVER EVER,
> forget the way you so touched and moved us with your insights into THE ONE
> TRUE WAY. Thank you. We who are unworthy can only stare at your posts in
> amazement.
>
> Shalom...and ALL HAIL THE GREAT MARCEL!!!!! LIBERATOR!!!! VIVA LA
> REVOLUCION!!!!!
>
> >
> > -Marcel
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------
> >
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
> Aaron Krister Johnson
> http://www.akjmusic.com
> http://www.untwelve.org
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>

🔗Michael <djtrancendance@...>

Aaron>"Yes, we DOOOOOO have some bad characters. Everyone around here should just be like you, and utterly dismiss everything that isn't your theory. That is the first holy commandment of Marcel, and one that I wake up daily wishing to obey. Forgive me for swaying, most high and holy master!"

You know, all Marcel is going to get from this sarcasm...is that you're a bit crazy (with respect to him and maybe even in general), which will make him all the more determined to put more things you hate on the list to "prove you wrong".

You know, I have similar issues with, say, people who say I don't know anything about standard JI even though I've made countless JI-based programs, formulate all scales around odd-limit relationships,
etc.

Personally, I think you're both being a bit nuts...if you weren't, Marcel would not be saying his theory is "perfect" and you would prove your smarts by finding and explaining technical flaws in his theory rather than saying "oh, well it's flawed, I can't say exactly why because I don't apparently know, but it is and that gives me permission to bash Marcel about his personality without even staying on the topic of his theories".

Also, to be fair, Some people on this list, to be fair, will call anyone who either
doesn't agree 100% with the mainstream opinion (IE Harmonic Entropy or
the MOS scales of Erv Wilson) or hasn't read virtually every document about it a flaming ignorant idiot. Doing that inspires nothing productive to happen at all...

I happen to think Harmonic Entropy is right on with its ideas on "fields of attraction" is lacking in both lack of consideration of critical band and how badly it handles high Tenney-Height (over 70) dyads and thus misses a huge amount of the better 9 and 11-limit intervals and their, if a good deal smaller, fields of attraction.
I also happen to think Wilson's MOS scales' goal of compromising between even-spacing (better consistency of interval classes) and better harmony of uneven-spacing (chords closer to just) is a noble idea but, realistically, those goals are better achieved by Hyper-MOS scales (3+ interval size) that are strictly proper (more accuracy and similar consistency).

And there's no way on earth anyone preaching "you idiot...you think you're better than Erv Wilson?!" is going to make me change my artistic preferences or make me stop both respecting his work and going out trying to find ways to improve it
relative to my personal artistic goals (yes, I can do both at once). Just don't expect me to say either "Hail Wilson, hail Partch!" and more than I would "Hail Marcel!"...I don't "Hail" anything, just take bits and pieces of ideas that I find useful :-D

My point: we (on this list) need to stop "worshipping idols" before we expect other people to stop worshipping themselves (lol).
. And yes, "idols" includes masters in our field and the whole idea of "appealing to authority" on this list, I believe, has been blown way out of proportion. Saying agreeing their ideas 100% is the only way to go is just as ridiculous as way Marcel is doing (IE saying his own theory is perfect)...

🔗Aaron Krister Johnson <aaron@...>

Michael,

You are reading *way* too much into my humorous sarcastic response. Lighten
up dude. Marcel acts like a fool, and a confident one at that, who has
practically begged to be $%^&*-slapped in his every post.

Furthermore, to even suggest that the huge majority of folks haven't taken
Marcel at face value, and politely (and yes later more pointedly), pointed
out flaws in his thinking *from the beginning* proves only that you're
(possibly) acting nuts, or at best completely ignorant of the entire history
of his posting literally hundreds of "this is the final final final version"
MIDI retuned versions of 'Drei Equali' after someone points out his 273rd
error. The one thing in this thread that you wrote that holds any water is
the fact that Marcel behaves like a classic internet crank. Good
observation. End of story, leave it there.

The best thing we can all do is be assured of this diagnosis and completely
ignore his posts moving forward. Otherwise, you are feeding the troll.

AKJ

On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 10:08 AM, Michael <djtrancendance@...> wrote:

> Aaron>"Yes, we DOOOOOO have some bad characters. Everyone around here
> should just be like you, and utterly dismiss everything that isn't your
> theory. That is the first holy commandment of Marcel, and one that I wake up
> daily wishing to obey. Forgive me for swaying, most high and holy master!"
>
> You know, all Marcel is going to get from this sarcasm...is that you're
> a bit crazy (with respect to him and maybe even in general), which will make
> him all the more determined to put more things you hate on the list to
> "prove you wrong".
>
> You know, I have similar issues with, say, people who say I don't know
> anything about standard JI even though I've made countless JI-based
> programs, formulate all scales around odd-limit relationships,
> etc.
>
>
>
> Personally, I think you're both being a bit nuts...if you weren't,
> Marcel would not be saying his theory is "perfect" and you would prove your
> smarts by finding and explaining technical flaws in his theory rather than
> saying "oh, well it's flawed, I can't say exactly why because I don't
> apparently know, but it is and that gives me permission to bash Marcel about
> his personality without even staying on the topic of his theories".
>
>
> Also, to be fair, Some people on this list, to be fair, will call anyone
> who either
> doesn't agree 100% with the mainstream opinion (IE Harmonic Entropy or
> the MOS scales of Erv Wilson) or hasn't read virtually every document about
> it a flaming ignorant idiot. Doing that inspires nothing productive to
> happen at all...
>
> I happen to think Harmonic Entropy is right on with its ideas on "fields
> of attraction" is lacking in both lack of consideration of critical band and
> how badly it handles high Tenney-Height (over 70) dyads and thus misses a
> huge amount of the better 9 and 11-limit intervals and their, if a good deal
> smaller, fields of attraction.
> I also happen to think Wilson's MOS scales' goal of compromising between
> even-spacing (better consistency of interval classes) and better harmony of
> uneven-spacing (chords closer to just) is a noble idea but, realistically,
> those goals are better achieved by Hyper-MOS scales (3+ interval size) that
> are strictly proper (more accuracy and similar consistency).
>
> And there's no way on earth anyone preaching "you idiot...you think
> you're better than Erv Wilson?!" is going to make me change my artistic
> preferences or make me stop both respecting his work and going out trying to
> find ways to improve it
> relative to my personal artistic goals (yes, I can do both at once). Just
> don't expect me to say either "Hail Wilson, hail Partch!" and more than I
> would "Hail Marcel!"...I don't "Hail" anything, just take bits and pieces of
> ideas that I find useful :-D
>
>
> My point: we (on this list) need to stop "worshipping idols" before we
> expect other people to stop worshipping themselves (lol).
> . And yes, "idols" includes masters in our field and the whole idea of
> "appealing to authority" on this list, I believe, has been blown way out of
> proportion. Saying agreeing their ideas 100% is the only way to go is just
> as ridiculous as way Marcel is doing (IE saying his own theory is
> perfect)...
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

--
Aaron Krister Johnson
http://www.akjmusic.com
http://www.untwelve.org

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

🔗cityoftheasleep <igliashon@...>

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Michael <djtrancendance@...> wrote:

> Personally, I think you're both being a bit nuts...if you weren't, Marcel would not be
> saying his theory is "perfect" and you would prove your smarts by finding and explaining
> technical flaws in his theory rather than saying "oh, well it's flawed, I can't say exactly
> why because I don't apparently know, but it is and that gives me permission to bash
> Marcel about his personality without even staying on the topic of his theories".

Um...technical flaws in Marcel's theory...gee, where to begin?

1. His claim to have "solved" JI is nonsense. The only reason there is anything to solve is because JI is defined as "beatless harmony", which means (for common practice) tuning all major and minor triads as 5-limit consonances. This is *the* definition of JI. Marcel's method of "solving" JI is nothing more than strategic use of Pythagorean triads to avoid comma pumps, and of COURSE that works but it was never considered an option because historic music theorists did not consider Pythagorean triads to be Just. So rather than solving the various historical problems of JI, Marcel has simply denied that they are problems by re-defining JI. It is easy to remove contradictions if you change the definitions of words to fit your desires. With this approach, I could solve problems that have stumped the most erudite mathematicians in history.

2. His claim that JI is somehow the absolute and fundamental logic of common-practice music is based on no research whatsoever. It's a bald and blind assertion that simply *cannot be proved or disproved*. It amounts to what is basically a religious assertion. If he had done some sort of neurological research, if he had developed any sort of theorem or formula that can produce an articulated set of musical rules, if he had any evidence or proof beyond his own personal preferences, he might be taken more seriously. But he has done nothing but blithely assert that he is correct and given only his retuning of Drei Equale as evidence.

3. He has never produced any counter-arguments to the idea that temperament is a more fundamental explanation of the logic of common-practice music than is JI. Ever. This is important, because all of common practice music was written within some temperament or other and takes advantage of properties that these temperaments have, but which JI does not have.

4. His latest hypothesis of two infinite chains of 3/2's separated by 5/4 (which is the same as saying they are separated by 81/80)--although really he needs a dimension of 2/1's in there, too, since two infinite chains of 3/2's will never produce a 2/1--is nothing new at all, and has been proposed and dismissed plenty of times throughout music history because it *does not work with fixed-pitch instruments* on account of gross impracticality, as I recently mentioned. I suspect telling him this is what really set him off on that explosive ego-tantrum where he really did reveal some classic signs of mental illness.

Which brings me to my final point: I don't think Marcel is simply an internet crank. I think he may actually suffer from a mental illness. I am not saying this to be mean, I am actually concerned for the man. He revealed a lot in that last post that makes me think he is genuinely delusional beyond the level of the average crank. This, of course, is not an objection to his ideas (that would be an ad hominem fallacy), but really--I worry about his delusions and his obsessiveness and I don't think it's a good idea to provoke or to encourage the man. Really--please, everybody--can we just ignore him if he ever comes back? I think that would be best not just for the community but also for his own mental health. It's the only thing that won't feed either his ego or his persecution complex.

-Igs

🔗genewardsmith <genewardsmith@...>

🔗Marcel <m.develde@...>

Igs...
I wasn't going to post here anymore, merely post music now and then, but your post had a way of making me change my mind ;)
But also realized I'm not going to be pestered away from here because of people like you.
If you have a problem with me, then that's your problem. Have fun being all irritated etc.. I'm not going to be bothered by it anymore, I'm too happy with how my work is going :)

Now for my reply to your hateful post..

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> Um...technical flaws in Marcel's theory...gee, where to begin?
>
> 1. His claim to have "solved" JI is nonsense. The only reason there is anything to solve is because JI is defined as "beatless harmony", which means (for common practice) tuning all major and minor triads as 5-limit consonances. This is *the* definition of JI. Marcel's method of "solving" JI is nothing more than strategic use of Pythagorean triads to avoid comma pumps, and of COURSE that works but it was never considered an option because historic music theorists did not consider Pythagorean triads to be Just. So rather than solving the various historical problems of JI, Marcel has simply denied that they are problems by re-defining JI. It is easy to remove contradictions if you change the definitions of words to fit your desires. With this approach, I could solve problems that have stumped the most erudite mathematicians in history.
>

First of all..
Just Intonation has as its main meaning to "tune just", to "tune in tune".
We know that the unison is in tune as 1/1, the octave as 2/1.
But for common practice music, nobody knew what constitutes "in tune".
The systems people have thought up with the goal of finding out what is "in tune" have been wrongly labeled "just intonation" in the past.
Just Intonation does not mean that one can only use 1/1 5/4 3/2 for all major triads, this is merely a historical system that was wrongly labeled "just intonation" because the inventor of this system thought it was the correct way to tune "in tune".
Until the battle is over what (if any) system should be called "Just Intonation", the ear is currently the best guide.
And if you choose not to study my system and see in its mathematics and logic that my system is very deserving of the name Just Intonation, then USE YOUR EARS to come to the same conclusion.
But please stop putting out all this nonsense about what you define as "just intonation" as it's wrong.

Secondly..
My system is not mere use of Pythagorean triads when they suit me or something like that.
My system does have Pythagorean chords, but it has many more 5-limit chords (for common practice, after that it has many 7-limit chords).
And more importantly, it has a big "rule set" on where which chords occur, and which chords can come after. It is like functional harmony and counterpoint rolled into one, and then some.

> 2. His claim that JI is somehow the absolute and fundamental logic of common-practice music is based on no research whatsoever. It's a bald and blind assertion that simply *cannot be proved or disproved*. It amounts to what is basically a religious assertion. If he had done some sort of neurological research, if he had developed any sort of theorem or formula that can produce an articulated set of musical rules, if he had any evidence or proof beyond his own personal preferences, he might be taken more seriously. But he has done nothing but blithely assert that he is correct and given only his retuning of Drei Equale as evidence.
>

Yes it can be proved or disproved.
And I've worked almost as hard on disproving it as I've worked on proving it. I'm not a religious person. But I do have a strong trust in my logic, and my logic told me that the tonal side of music most likely has its foundation in tuning. Could not disprove it, and have now proved it to myself and will soon to the world.

I have considered all kinds of research to come to the answer including neurological research (and have read many things in that direction), but I've also seen that most types of research are not (yet) able to provide the answers.
So I've chosen a specific path of research. On of mathematical possibilties, my ear and my logic.
The only research that I could see could solve this problem currently.
Btw, as you see I now have 4 pieces as evidence. And this list will grow fast.

> 3. He has never produced any counter-arguments to the idea that temperament is a more fundamental explanation of the logic of common-practice music than is JI. Ever. This is important, because all of common practice music was written within some temperament or other and takes advantage of properties that these temperaments have, but which JI does not have.
>

Yes I have. Here's my argument.
An octave is pure as 2/1, a fifth is pure as 3/2.
To temper is to make unpure, basic 1+1 logic.
Don't have to make it more complicated than that.
Only if pure would truly be impossible and our brain expects the impossible out of purity, then purity would be lost and temperament would be the next best thing.
But I could not prove purity is impossible, and now I've proven the opposite, purity is possible and it's the foundation of music.

> 4. His latest hypothesis of two infinite chains of 3/2's separated by 5/4 (which is the same as saying they are separated by 81/80)--although really he needs a dimension of 2/1's in there, too, since two infinite chains of 3/2's will never produce a 2/1--is nothing new at all, and has been proposed and dismissed plenty of times throughout music history because it *does not work with fixed-pitch instruments* on account of gross impracticality, as I recently mentioned. I suspect telling him this is what really set him off on that explosive ego-tantrum where he really did reveal some classic signs of mental illness.
>

You keep repeating that the problem is only a practical one for fixed pitch instruments??
Trust me, that was never the problem.
The problem was that nobody in the world ever knew how to tune music "just". And the ones that thought they did know were all wrong and their theories produced results that sound very out of tune to everyones ears (and on top of that didn't provide the right theoretical insight / foundation for how harmony etc appears to function).

> Which brings me to my final point: I don't think Marcel is simply an internet crank. I think he may actually suffer from a mental illness. I am not saying this to be mean, I am actually concerned for the man. He revealed a lot in that last post that makes me think he is genuinely delusional beyond the level of the average crank. This, of course, is not an objection to his ideas (that would be an ad hominem fallacy), but really--I worry about his delusions and his obsessiveness and I don't think it's a good idea to provoke or to encourage the man. Really--please, everybody--can we just ignore him if he ever comes back? I think that would be best not just for the community but also for his own mental health. It's the only thing that won't feed either his ego or his persecution complex.
>
> -Igs
>

Hehe I'm back already.
Please do ignore me if you continue to be negative in this closed and somewhat disrespectful way.

Also, don't worry, my mental health is just fine.
I am an intelligent guy and I'm used to going extreme in some subject for a while. This method has brought me great success and wealth in the past several times.
Though Just Intonation is by far the hardest thing I've set my focus on, it's also the most rewarding one in the long run. And I'm not after wealth this time, but I am after success and it has just begun :)

-Marcel

🔗Ozan Yarman <ozanyarman@...>

ROFWL!

Oz.

✩ ✩ ✩
www.ozanyarman.com

Aaron Krister Johnson wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 3:52 PM, Marcel<m.develde@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I've solved JI, this will become the biggest revolution in music ever.
>> It'll have a bigger influence than the invention of electronic instruments
>> etc.
>> It will allow many people to compose much much better than ever before.
>>
>
> And wait, let me guess, there will be entire cities which will be built that
> will house schools and institutes that will study, in detail, your
> biography, and how you came across such a miraculous system? A new country,
> Marcelistan, will pop up, led by the benevolent dictator-for-life, Marcel de
> Velde, and people will worship you in their homes, and cry and scream with
> joy to see you in public when you grace the crowds with your appearing?
>
> WOWWWWWW!!!!! THAT'S AWWWWWWWWEEESSSSOOOMMMMMMEEEE!
>
> I cry with joy at such a vision!!!!! Whoooo-hooo!!!!
>
>
>
>> But people around here don't get the importance of JI.
>> And on top of that there's way too much negativity here and bad characters.
>>
>
> Yes, we DOOOOOO have some bad characters. Everyone around here should just
> be like you, and utterly dismiss everything that isn't your theory. That is
> the first holy commandment of Marcel, and one that I wake up daily wishing
> to obey. Forgive me for swaying, most high and holy master!
>
>
> I'm going to stop posting and replying here (this is my last such post),
>> with the exception of posting finished songs here, retunes and my own
>> creations.
>>
>
>
> But<sobbing, crying> Marcel----what would we do without your endless supply
> of verbal wisdom? We mere mortals won't be able to parse the completely
> mysterious seemingly-out-of-tune trombone MIDI files you bless us with
> unless you also give us specific and mocking instruction on how to orient
> our feeble little minds to embrace the ONE TRUE WAY that you, anointed by
> G*D, have come to give to the sinful sweaty hog-like mass of mere mortals.
> We need those out-of-tune trombone MIDI files of Drei Equali and the abusive
> posts that accompany them if we are to establish the shining cities on a
> hill to your name!!!! Please, Marcel, pllllleeeeeeeeeease re-consider your
> silence. I need my daily dose of punishing 'Drei Equali' MIDI files. I don't
> know how I'd survive without them. And the way they constantly change, and
> how you (and thus the TRUTH) grow and change with them---so poignant, so
> humbling and soooooo beautiful.
>
> But if you must go, know that Marcel, we will NEVER, I mean NEVER EVER,
> forget the way you so touched and moved us with your insights into THE ONE
> TRUE WAY. Thank you. We who are unworthy can only stare at your posts in
> amazement.
>
> Shalom...and ALL HAIL THE GREAT MARCEL!!!!! LIBERATOR!!!! VIVA LA
> REVOLUCION!!!!!
>
>
>
>> -Marcel
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------
>>
>> Yahoo! Groups Links
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

🔗Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...>

🔗Ozan Yarman <ozanyarman@...>

🔗Michael <djtrancendance@...>

Aaron>"Furthermore, to even suggest that the huge majority of folks haven't taken

Marcel at face value, and politely (and yes later more pointedly), pointed

out flaws in his thinking *from the beginning*"

I never said they haven't, of course they (flaws in Marcel's theory) have been pointed out by others.
But such few posts are becoming hard to find within the piles and piles of insults (humor or not) being posted. And Marcel, admittedly, does add to or change his theory every now and then and the corresponding "I see a flaw in your latest theory" often isn't there.

>"The best thing we can all do is be assured of this diagnosis and completely ignore his posts moving forward. Otherwise, you are feeding the troll."

That's the thing. I don't think he's a troll....though I do think he has some honest ego issues with his whole "I solved music" attitude. It seems clear he's doing what he thinks is a favor to the community, no matter how grotesquely uninformed he may be. Confused, not vicious on trying to "lay bait", is the way I'd describe Marcel.
Same goes with Mario Pizzaro and his Paigui?? scales back on the tuning list that are about 2 cents off 12TET. Then again no one called him a troll but instead "a confused man with good intentions"...but, then again he's been published (and hence my fear of the community's common mistake of "blindly believing in experts/appeal to authority").

>"The one thing in this thread that you wrote that holds any water is the fact that Marcel behaves like a classic internet crank."

I'll say this much I COMPLETELY REFUSE TO LISTEN TO ANY MORE "DREI EQUILI" EXAMPLES! Marcel's admittedly bizarre honest passion for retuning Beethoven-era Common Practice music should at least be tested on other songs from that era...if not completely new pieces of music. It's not that he's trolling (he isn't)...but rather that he's doing the same thing again and again with vaguely any new effort put in.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

🔗Michael <djtrancendance@...>

Igs>"Marcel's method of "solving" JI is nothing more than strategic use of
Pythagorean triads to avoid comma pumps, and of COURSE that works but
it was never considered an option because historic music theorists did
not consider Pythagorean triads to be Just."

They didn't? Interesting...where is that said? If they didn't believe it was "Just", you're probably right... But this doesn't say Marcel's method is bad/useless to current listeners but, rather, that it's simply almost certainly not what the people who wrote those Common Practice classical songs (IE Beethoven) had in mind when writing them...

>"2. His claim that JI is somehow the absolute and fundamental logic of
common-practice music is based on no research whatsoever. It's a bald
and blind assertion that simply *cannot be proved or disproved*."

To his defense, just about any time I hear the functions of temperament narrowed down, it's into terms of JI ratios or chords IE "the tempered ratio can function as an 8/7 or a 7/6 '". I do see a strong pattern around here of "tying everything back to JI" even when talking about temperament (including my 'pet art' of irregular temperaments)...whether it's intended or not...

>"If he had done some sort of neurological research, if he had developed
any sort of theorem or formula that can produce an articulated set of
musical rules,"

Both your suggested methods, I think, are clearly over-rated. Given that music is an art, the only consistent thing I think can prove a theory is working in music...is having listeners both consistently like the sound of its results and consider them very unique sounding. Granted, that can ALSO work for things with Neurological/Psycho-acoustic backing (IE Sethares timbre/tuning alignment)...but I'd clearly say that's a case of the listener approving the math...rather than the math defining the listener.

>"if he had any evidence or proof beyond his own personal
preferences, he might be taken more seriously. But he has done nothing
but blithely assert that he is correct and given only his retuning of
Drei Equale as evidence."

Point blank...I think the solution is clear: if Marcel really wants to prove his theory on "improving the sound of common practice music"...he will have to do so using many many songs, not just one, plus have listener responses of his retunings vis-a-vis 12TET be overwhelmingly positive.

Igs>"He has never produced any counter-arguments to the idea that
temperament is a more fundamental explanation of the logic of
common-practice music than is JI. Ever. This is important, because all
of common practice music was written within some temperament or other
and takes advantage of properties that these temperaments have, but
which JI does not have."

Now you seem to be "Pet Theorizing". Do we know as a fact people who wrote Common Practice music took advantage of properties in temperament because it was a superior feature of temperament...or happened to use those features and not JI features just because the instruments available at the time just happened to be tuned in temperaments?
Again this only seems to point in the direction of that making re-tunings of songs and getting consistently better listener response than the original versions of the songs is the only way to "prove" Marcel's theory.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

🔗cityoftheasleep <igliashon@...>

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

🔗Carl Lumma <carl@...>

🔗genewardsmith <genewardsmith@...>

🔗Graham Breed <gbreed@...>

🔗Marcel <m.develde@...>

Hi Chris,

> Ok, lets take you for face value. You have solved JI and have a
> wonderful system.
>
> I would like to know your plans for overcoming the 12 equal hegemony -
> a hegemony that is even corrupting the microtonal music of other
> cultures around the world.
> Because, until you have done that, there will be NO revolution no
> matter how good your system is.
>
> Chris

Here is my plan, step by step:

1) Render my Lassus and 3 Drei Equale retunings to mp3 with sawtooth wave and post them here (likely to not have any impact)

2) Compose several examples of 7-limit strongly microtonal sounding polyphonic music, and render them with nice sounds from my synth.
This will make this list go crazy, as you'll never have heard such amazing microtonal music ;)
It'll be what you've all been after for all these years.

3) Make the justintonation.com community website.
While making it do more retunings, Melodyne DNA analysis of trombone quartet, more original compositions in the 7-limit, writing my theory and explain it on the website with many audio examples etc.
I'll bounce off ideas here on how to best explain the theory, and you'll all be more than happy to help and learn after hearing my 7-limit compositions.

4) Once the website is live and has enough audio examples, I will promote the website to microtonalists, music theorists, music information programmers, and the general music making communities.
They will all be able to learn on how to use JI for their own compositions. Many music makers will be interested in the 7-limit new music it brings, and music theorists will go into the 5-limit version for common practice classical theory and 7-limit for some jazz and blues. They'll all be able to communicate on all aspects of the theory, and develop it further on the website together.
In a while it'll produce a stream of just intonation music (much of it strongly microtonal) to the general public, books will be written on JI (and eventually music school theory books rewritten / modified), and programs released which use algorithms based on JI to help with composition etc.

Meanwhile I'll also try to make professional electronic music myself with strong polyphonic microtonality, and promote JI as much as I can this way myself. Though I'm unsure how successful I will be in making electronic music as I don't know yet how good I'll be at it :)

Above is how the 12 equal hegemony will be overcome.
The thing is that for common practice music 12tet works fine enough in actually performing this music. The main advantage here is in the better theoretical insight of JI for composing.
But my theory will make possible for the first time in history completely new polyphonic music /colors. This will excite a lot more people, and they'll have no choice but to leave 12tet, both to perform it and to compose in it.

If you belief (as most or all of you will do right now) that I did not find true JI (or belief such a thing doesn't even exist), then I will of course fail in my above goals. Simply because my 7-limit strong microtonal polyphonic music and other audio examples etc will not convince enough. So no problem.
If however I'm right with my theory, and produce strong enough examples of it as evidence. Then above will work.
I say that within a few weeks, people on this list will to their own great amazement will start to see that it will work :)
It'll be fun, I will get to say such a huge "I told you so!" hahaha

-Marcel

🔗Marcel <m.develde@...>

Hi Michael,

> I'll say this much I COMPLETELY REFUSE TO LISTEN TO ANY MORE "DREI EQUILI" EXAMPLES! Marcel's admittedly bizarre honest passion for retuning Beethoven-era Common Practice music should at least be tested on other songs from that era...if not completely new pieces of music. It's not that he's trolling (he isn't)...but rather that he's doing the same thing again and again with vaguely any new effort put in.
>

First of all.
Drei Equale is 3 individual pieces.
I've been using Drei Equale no1 as my main test piece.

No2 (posted less than 10 different versions over the past 2 years) is a different piece altogether.
No 3 (posted I think only once before) is yet another piece.

So I've so far provided proof on 3 different pieces. They're also all 3 in different keys.
The only thing is that they're all by the same composer, and made by that composer to connect nicely from one piece into the next.
It's like a mini symphony.

What you'll notice is how consistently perfect my theory gets all 3 pieces.

Also don't forget I also have the Lassus comma example.
So that makes 3 pieces + the comma example as proof right now.
The list will grow though. After I've done a few original composition of my own, I will retune Bach and Vierne and others.

Now about my "vaguely putting any new effort into it"..
You got to be kidding me!
I've worked for over 3 years full time on this. (of which the last 2 years Drei Equale no1 has been my main test piece, but my main work is my theories).
I don't work 40 hour weeks. I work truly full time.
I wake up and the first thing I do when I open my eyes is thinking about my theories, then just about all day (even when doing groceries etc I think about it) and evening long I think about my theories and work on it, then when I fall asleep again while thinking about my theories. (and then I often dream about it).
This is how just about every day goes by, including weekends etc.
Don't tell me I don't put new effort into it.. you have no idea.

-Marcel

🔗Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...>

I can't say you did or did not "solve" JI because I feel I do not have
enough information to make that distinction.

BUT if you can give me a usable (not just theoretical) system with
completely new polyphonic music /colors I will be forever grateful for
that is why I am on this list.

Given "I say that within a few weeks, people on this list will to
their own great amazement" it seems I only have a couple months to
wait.

Am I skeptical, yes, but that is mostly on the basis of the wide
sweeping bizarre statements about things like the Un12 contest and
composers writing their music incorrectly.

To be frank - we've been at this juncture before - this is not the
first time you have promised new and revolutionary music just around
the corner. And when this list got around the corner with you before
we found had the fate of the coyote and not the road runner. And the
coyote always slams his head on into a rock wall.

Chris

On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 5:10 AM, Marcel <m.develde@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> Hi Chris,
>
> The thing is that for common practice music 12tet works fine enough in actually performing this music. The main advantage here is in the better theoretical insight of JI for composing.
> But my theory will make possible for the first time in history completely new polyphonic music /colors. This will excite a lot more people, and they'll have no choice but to leave 12tet, both to perform it and to compose in it.
>

🔗Juhani <jnylenius@...>

🔗Michael <djtrancendance@...>

Chris wrote:

>Ok, lets take you for face value. You have solved JI and have a

>wonderful system.

"Carl replied">What would that even mean? That's like saying you solved eggs

or matchsticks. -C.

Let me refer to Igs's inference (which I think says/explains more about Marcel's theory than 99% of the stuff on here, my efforts included),

"The only reason there is
anything to solve is because JI is defined as "beatless harmony", which
means (for common practice) tuning all major and minor triads as 5-limit
consonances. This is *the* definition of JI. Marcel's method of
"solving" JI is nothing more than strategic use of Pythagorean triads to
avoid comma pumps, and of COURSE that works but it was never considered
an option because historic music theorists did not consider Pythagorean
triads to be Just."

So he has solved a problem, but the fact seems virtually no one in history has wanted to solve said problem (IE considered Pythagorean triads just)...and the question remains does the listening public want Marcel's results (scales that use Pythagorean triads and avoid comma pumps)?

For the millionth time I swear the only way to test this...is a listening test upon many different songs by many different listeners, done "double-blind". Saying "Marcel is a crank" or anything related isn't actually going to help us prove or disprove his theory on a greater artistic level and finally either move or or move forward with the idea.

--- On Wed, 3/2/11, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:

From: Carl Lumma <carl@...>
Subject: Re: [MMM] Re: JI question
To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com
Date: Wednesday, March 2, 2011, 8:04 PM

Chris wrote:

>Ok, lets take you for face value. You have solved JI and have a

>wonderful system.

What would that even mean? That's like saying you solved eggs

or matchsticks. -C.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

🔗genewardsmith <genewardsmith@...>

🔗Michael <djtrancendance@...>

Gene>"What was wrong with Pizarro's posting? He has a circulating temperament which is close to but not identical with 12et. And?"

It seems like saying Red Ford Mustangs are reliable cars but Orange Mustangs always explode from mysterious gas leaks and should be avoided at all costs. :-D Marcel is the Orange Mustang and Mario Pizzaro is the Red one...

My point is the same generalizations made of Marcel: having an unoriginal theory, having a theory that doesn't make itself as scientifically valuable, saying the scale is an ultimate solution...to a large extent also apply to Mario Pizzaro's scales.

So then it seems to be a personality judgment. Pizzaro has been "published". Marcel has not. Marcel has always been very profilic (in an annoying fashion) about his theories, Pizzaro far less so. Apparently this list can take two people who have done very similar work on their theories and in similarly ignored directions...and label them good or bad largely not based on the validity their work, but if they think such people are "cool" or not.

And that's just sad...because it turns it into a popularity contest rather than a team effort to actually get new and productive theories made and/or take the few good things that can be learned "even" from bad theories and see if they have any value in other/better contexts.

Personally I am trying to be the bigger man and rate Marcel by how
well his theories do in listening tests...rather than how annoying he
is...and give him as many chances to "turn around and make good" as possible. Mario Pizzaro seems to have easily gotten that slack and forgiveness from the community, why not Marcel?

--- On Wed, 3/2/11, genewardsmith <genewardsmith@...> wrote:

From: genewardsmith <genewardsmith@sbcglobal.net>
Subject: [MMM] Re: JI question
To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com
Date: Wednesday, March 2, 2011, 8:19 PM

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Michael <djtrancendance@...> wrote:

> Same goes with Mario Pizzaro and his Paigui?? scales back on the tuning list that are about 2 cents off 12TET. Then again no one called him a troll but instead "a confused man with good intentions"...but, then again he's been published (and hence my fear of the community's common mistake of "blindly believing in experts/appeal to authority").

What was wrong with Pizarro's posting? He has a circulating temperament which is close to but not identical with 12et. And?

> I'll say this much I COMPLETELY REFUSE TO LISTEN TO ANY MORE "DREI EQUILI" EXAMPLES!

He had an interesting xenharmonic retuning a while back, starting right off the bat with flat fifths, but I don't like the recent examples of alternating between Pythagorean and JI triads. It just doesn't work for me.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

🔗Michael <djtrancendance@...>

🔗genewardsmith <genewardsmith@...>

🔗Marcel <m.develde@...>

🔗Cornell III, Howard M <howard.m.cornell.iii@...>

🔗Michael <djtrancendance@...>

🔗cityoftheasleep <igliashon@...>

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Michael <djtrancendance@...> wrote:

> If anything about Marcel's theory does not work...it's that he fails to "live up" to what
> "Just Intonation" has come to mean...and, though his theory works, it is not what it says > it is. I still don't believe it, I think both theories work, but both are to rather unpopular
> causes (Pizzaro too close to 12TET, Marcel's too close to "obsolete" Pythagorean
> theory)...and yet only Marcel seems to be getting the heat for it.

Dude, seriously? Pizzaro posts like, once a month. Tops. I don't think I've ever seen more than three or four consecutive posts by him. He's occasionally posted some quarter-tone scales too. And he never posts with the egomania of Marcel--Pizzaro has NEVER said that his scale "solves all the problems of how to tune common-practice music". He's just tossing out little ideas every once in a while, which while often irrelevant are harmless and easily ignored. In fact, I think the reason he posts so little is because he gets ignored.

Which brings me to my point: the ONLY ways to get rid of bothersome people on internet forums is to ban or ignore them. Since the mods here seem too lax to ban Marcel, I think the only thing to be done about him is to ignore him. He WILL go away when he realizes he can't get a rise out of anyone anymore. And then, gods be praised, the tuning community will be shut of him, for he has nowhere left to go.

But seriously--continuing to correspond with him as if he is a reasonable human being will only perpetuate the madness. And so will taunting him or pointing out his failures. I should have known better than to address the problems in his theory, thinking him gone...of course he would come crawling back in to take up the flame once more. But I will say not one more word on the subject.

-Igs

🔗Marcel <m.develde@...>

Hi Chris,

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...> wrote:
>
> I can't say you did or did not "solve" JI because I feel I do not have
> enough information to make that distinction.

Yes I understand, and I'll do my best to provide you with enough information. May have to be till I get the website done. Or perhaps 7-limit musical examples will sound convincing enough.

>
> BUT if you can give me a usable (not just theoretical) system with
> completely new polyphonic music /colors I will be forever grateful for
> that is why I am on this list.

I will do so!
But one will still have to learn some of the theoretical things behind it to really make proper use of it.
Even for 12tet many people need some level of music theory.
And for 12tet there are already so many examples of music to serve as a reference.
For higher limit music (say a 24 tone unequal temperament even that functions as a 7-limit temperament), not only does one need more theoretical knowledge because many more chords will sound bad. But also there aren't really musical examples to serve as a reference (except for monophonic arabic music)

Still, if you wish to experiment, here is a tempered scale for 7-limit music:
Simply take 12tet, and put another 12tet scale 7/4 relative to the first to make a 24 tone unequal temperament.
But I'll warn you, there are many pitfalls in this scale without the proper theory. Yet enough experimentation should allow you to make amazing sounding microtonal polyphonic music.

>
> Given "I say that within a few weeks, people on this list will to
> their own great amazement" it seems I only have a couple months to
> wait.
>

Yes could be hehe :)

> Am I skeptical, yes, but that is mostly on the basis of the wide
> sweeping bizarre statements about things like the Un12 contest and
> composers writing their music incorrectly.

I understand your skepticism and would feel the same if I were in your shoes. Nothing wrong with scepticism.

Btw, the untwelve comments I made mainly because I saw that nobody sees the importance of JI for microtonal music.
And that experimenting away semi randomly with microtonal scales does note bring good music. But it was merely a personal opinion / observation / frustration. And it was also not meant personal to anybody (especially not you since you may be the most productive one of all)

>
> To be frank - we've been at this juncture before - this is not the
> first time you have promised new and revolutionary music just around
> the corner. And when this list got around the corner with you before
> we found had the fate of the coyote and not the road runner. And the
> coyote always slams his head on into a rock wall.
>
> Chris

True..
Future will tell.
But thanks for keeping an open mind.

-Marcel

🔗jonszanto <jszanto@...>

🔗Marcel <m.develde@...>

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

🔗Aaron Krister Johnson <aaron@...>

Who/where are the moderators, anyway? I thought Marcel was already banned as
a flaming troll long ago....

Ideally, I don't agree with the policy of banning anyone except folks who
spam. I think Marcel is spam, but <cough cough> apparantly <cough> not
everyone around here thinks the same way. Probably just as well, more
powerful to ignore him anyway. Unfortunately, talking about Marcel is a hot
topic, which says something about the nadir that MMM is experiencing these
days.

How about Marcel takes the people who are interested in his theories and
form another private list to discuss them so that we get less noise? That
way, no one gets hurt and we can have our signal to noise ratio back....

AKJ

On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 1:17 PM, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 2:03 PM, jonszanto <jszanto@...> wrote:
> >
> > Igs,
> >
> > --- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...>
> wrote:
> > > Which brings me to my point: the ONLY ways to get rid of bothersome
> people on internet forums is to ban or ignore them. Since the mods here seem
> too lax to ban Marcel, I think the only thing to be done about him is to
> ignore him. He WILL go away when he realizes he can't get a rise out of
> anyone anymore. And then, gods be praised, the tuning community will be shut
> of him, for he has nowhere left to go.
> >
> > The very unfortunate part is that without the assistance of the
> moderators, there is one element we can't foresee: new people joining the
> list, and taking the bait. It has happened in this latest go-around. I don't
> see a way out unless one can convince the list owner(s) of a change being
> needed.
>
> I for some reason thought you were the moderator here. I say you should do
> it.
>
> -Mike
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

--
Aaron Krister Johnson
http://www.akjmusic.com
http://www.untwelve.org

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

JI question

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🔗Marcel <m.develde@...>

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