commatic drifting music?

hello!

i haven't written to this list in a long while, being busy with
Other Things. but recently i've been thinking and working with
music and tuning again and have a question.

has anyone written music that takes advantage of commatic drift?
forgive me if i misuse terms, i still feel like an amateur when
it comes to tuning theory, but here's the idea. my understanding
is that commatic drift occurs when a harmonic progression moves
through a comma, but doesn't "take it into account" and just goes
on as if the pitch arrived at is the tonic. so the "comma pump"
example of I-vi-ii-V-I in just intonation would result in the
pitch of the overall system dropping by 81:80 every time through.
i've only seen this described as "undesireable" -- it is even
one of the sources of "pain" defined by John deLaubenfels (via
Joe Monzo's tuning dictionary).

i have been wondering if this effect might not be exploited rather
than avoided. if a piece of music had a theme that kept dropping
in pitch, lower and lower and lower -- yet the harmonic logic implied
it shouldn't, might this have a striking effect, maybe a perplexing
or even unnverving one? maybe it would be hard to pull off "well",
but i've been thinking it is worth trying, and wondering if anyone else
has explored this. i thought for a while that this is what "adaptive JI"
is -- but on exploring more, i don't think that is the case. adaptive JI
seems to avoid commatic drift too.

i appreciate the idea of harmonic "pain", and the effort to minimize it.
but on the otehr hand, some of my personal favorite moments in music are
incredibly painful. the big clashing dissonant chord at the end of strauss's
"salome" comes to mind. i also understand why commatic drift would usually
be something to be avoided, for many reasons, but couldn't it be used
to achieve an interesting effect as well?

also, i wanted to say -- i've been away from the tuning community for a while,
and on coming back, i've been delighted to find it thriving! joe monzo's
dictionary has grown and is full of information. and Manuel Op de Coul's
scala -- well, i couldn't believe what it's become! as i started working
on music again, i was using the old installation of scala on a unix machine
i used to use, mostly just making use of the CALC command. eventually i
went to the online help pages, and after a while looked at the main scala page
and saw *screenshots*. screenshots?! within an hour i had downloaded the
new scala to my pc and was listening to NM tredecimal middle split fifth chords
and other such things. wonderful, wonderful!

paul

--
. . . p f l y . . .
http://www.neuron.net/~pfly/duckapus.html
...the debut pfly CD...

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, spigot@n... wrote:
> hello!
>
> i haven't written to this list in a long while, being busy with
> Other Things. but recently i've been thinking and working with
> music and tuning again and have a question.
>
> has anyone written music that takes advantage of commatic drift?

ben johnston wrote a piece that exploits it, and ends up dividing the
octave into 53 unequal "commas" as a result of such an effect -- so
one only returns to the tonic after 53 such drifts have been
compounded . . . or something like that. hopefully someone more
knowledgeable about ben johnston's music can be more specific here.
actually, i think it's mentioned in the online ben johnston
interview . . .

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "wallyesterpaulrus
<wallyesterpaulrus@y...>" <wallyesterpaulrus@y...> wrote:
> --- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, spigot@n... wrote:
> > hello!
> >
> > i haven't written to this list in a long while, being busy with
> > Other Things. but recently i've been thinking and working with
> > music and tuning again and have a question.
> >
> > has anyone written music that takes advantage of commatic drift?
>
> ben johnston wrote a piece that exploits it, and ends up dividing
the
> octave into 53 unequal "commas" as a result of such an effect -- so
> one only returns to the tonic after 53 such drifts have been
> compounded . . . or something like that. hopefully someone more
> knowledgeable about ben johnston's music can be more specific here.
> actually, i think it's mentioned in the online ben johnston
> interview . . .

. . . well, i couldn't find it, but i also remember some piece that
carl lumma played for me, off the just intonation network disc or
something like that, where the comma was used as a structural
feature -- in other words, progressions were deliberately constructed
so that certain melodic pitches naturally ended up moving by a comma.

both deliberate comma shifts and deliberate comma drifts can be
aesthetically useful effects for the microtonal ji composer. the
reason that john delaubenfels and others have advocated their
elimination is that they are not working in the microtonal field per
se at all -- rather, their goal is to render traditional, DIATONIC
music as pure, strong, and painless as possible. as you say, pain can
be very useful, and certainly non-diatonic elements are what interest
most of us here. but the diatonic scale as a basic musical gestalt is
indeed a powerful feature for much of the world's most beloved music,
and for such purposes, preserving the scale's integrity (by avoiding
comma shifts), purifying its harmony (by "springing" toward ji
chords), and maintaining a steady pitch level on the long scale (by
avoiding comma drifts) certainly seem desirable goals for, say, a
string quartet, or a computer midi-retuning program.

if you are indeed going to make structural use of comma-sized
intervals in your music, you should remain aware of the overall
scalar gestalt you're projecting. comma-sized intervals can easily
turn into "oopses" rather than "scale steps" if the music is not
constructed to bring such small intervals into focus. julia werntz
actually has some very interesting things to say about this
under "relativity of interval size . . ." in the very good second
part of her paper "adding pitches . . ." in PNM . . .

> has anyone written music that takes advantage of commatic drift?

Gesualdo, in late Renaissance Naples; perhaps. He wrote extremely
chromatic polyphonic vocal music, and scholars have calculated that
if one sings it in just intonation often by the end the pitch has
shifted two or three steps. Whether or not one SHOULD sing it in
strict just intonation, of course, is subject to debate. I myself am
of the school that thinks the bass line should pretty much stick to
fixed pitches. to keep everybody else 'honest'.

judy

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, judithconrad@m... wrote:
> > has anyone written music that takes advantage of commatic drift?
>
> Gesualdo, in late Renaissance Naples; perhaps. He wrote extremely
> chromatic polyphonic vocal music, and scholars have calculated that
> if one sings it in just intonation often by the end the pitch has
> shifted two or three steps. Whether or not one SHOULD sing it in
> strict just intonation, of course, is subject to debate. I myself
am
> of the school that thinks the bass line should pretty much stick to
> fixed pitches. to keep everybody else 'honest'.
>
> judy

judith,

even mozart's music typically drifts by several steps if performed in
strict just intonation. there is nothing special about gesualdo, or
extremely chromatic polyphony, in this respect. i see no reason why
it should be presumed that mozart, gesualdo, or anyone else wrote
their music specifically to drift . . . unless they explicitly said
so, i would assume that particular note name signifies the same pitch
(roughly -- to within 10 cents or so) whether at the beginning of the
piece or at the end!

gesualdo's music is a perfect candidate for *adaptive* just
intonation treatment (as are the compositions of lasso and josquin,
as monz has demonstrated recently on the tuning list) since adaptive
ji comes out melodically quite similar to 1/4-comma meantone, and
this was the preferred keyboard tuning of the era . . .

-paul

> even mozart's music typically drifts by several steps if performed in > strict just intonation. there is nothing special about gesualdo, or
> extremely chromatic polyphony, in this respect. i see no reason why
> it should be presumed that mozart, gesualdo, or anyone else wrote
> their music specifically to drift

We know that Mozart wrote his music largely at a keyboard tuned in
the prevailing tuning of the day, and often to be playrd on and/or
with such instruments; and we have no reason to think he questioned
that tuning. But Gesualdo -- he wrote exactly one short piece which
is thought to perhaps be a keyboard piece, everything else he wrote
was apparently for unaccompanied voices. And he had an archicembalo
built for himself, 31-notes to an octave I believe? Obviously he
questioned prevailing ideas of tuning in a big way.

Judy

Hello Paul,

Welcome back! Is your CD microtonal by the way?

Manuel

Hi Manuel! thanks for the welcome :) and thanks for scala,
i'm impressed!

> Welcome back! Is your CD microtonal by the way?

some of it is. there are a few JI sections that use ratios
up to 13-limit. many of the tunes are 12-tet, although in
many parts the music breaks down so much that 'harmony'
and 'tuning' become a little irrelevant. :)

a lot of the CD is algorithmic to one degree or another,
and in many of those parts, one could argue that there is
just intonation tuning going on -- but the focus is often
on timbre rather than pitch.

i have some mp3s from it up at
www.neuron.net/~pfly/duckapus/

thanks again! paul

--
. . . p f l y . . .
http://www.neuron.net/~pfly/duckapus.html
...the debut pfly CD...

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, judithconrad@m... wrote:
> > even mozart's music typically drifts by several steps if
performed in > strict just intonation. there is nothing special about
gesualdo, or
> > extremely chromatic polyphony, in this respect. i see no reason
why
> > it should be presumed that mozart, gesualdo, or anyone else wrote
> > their music specifically to drift
>
> We know that Mozart wrote his music largely at a keyboard tuned in
> the prevailing tuning of the day, and often to be playrd on and/or
> with such instruments; and we have no reason to think he questioned
> that tuning. But Gesualdo -- he wrote exactly one short piece which
> is thought to perhaps be a keyboard piece, everything else he wrote
> was apparently for unaccompanied voices. And he had an archicembalo
> built for himself, 31-notes to an octave I believe? Obviously he
> questioned prevailing ideas of tuning in a big way.
>
> Judy

perhaps, though a 31-note instrument would not be challenging
prevailing ideas of tuning in the renaissance, just extending them in
a logical manner -- since 31 is a meantone tuning, and since the
syntonic comma vanishes (i.e., no drift) on such an instrument . . .

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, spigot@n... wrote:
> Hi Manuel! thanks for the welcome :) and thanks for scala,
> i'm impressed!
>
> > Welcome back! Is your CD microtonal by the way?
>
> some of it is. there are a few JI sections that use ratios
> up to 13-limit. many of the tunes are 12-tet, although in
> many parts the music breaks down so much that 'harmony'
> and 'tuning' become a little irrelevant. :)
>
> a lot of the CD is algorithmic to one degree or another,
> and in many of those parts, one could argue that there is
> just intonation tuning going on -- but the focus is often
> on timbre rather than pitch.
>
> i have some mp3s from it up at
> www.neuron.net/~pfly/duckapus/
>
> thanks again! paul

hi paul,

if you like JI and algorithmic composition, check out the work of
prent rodgers (a member of this list) -- he's put together some
amazing examples using CSound, and usually draws his pitches from the
11-limit tonality diamond.

also, if you have Excel, check out this interactive spreadsheet from
dave keenan:
http://www.uq.net.au/~zzdkeena/Music/StereoDekany.htm
an algorithmic composition that *you* can play with . . .
endlessly . . .

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "wallyesterpaulrus
<wallyesterpaulrus@y...>" <wallyesterpaulrus@y...> wrote:

> also, if you have Excel, check out this interactive spreadsheet
from
> dave keenan:
> http://www.uq.net.au/~zzdkeena/Music/StereoDekany.htm
> an algorithmic composition that *you* can play with . . .
> endlessly . . .

hi paul . . .

just wanted to add two things, if you end up running this spreadsheet:

1. bump the Zero-Vol-Distance to 180

2. i thought this might be of particular interest to you since you're
so interested in geometry -- the figure here is a highly symmetrical
figure in 4 dimensions, and what you're seeing is the figure rotating
in all its planes, projected down to 3 dimensions, with the vertices
corresponding to notes, and the distance from the viewer
corresponding to decreasing volume . . .

-paul

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, spigot@n... wrote:

> has anyone written music that takes advantage of commatic drift?

As I remarked last time this came up, yes, but not in the last 20 years. One fun game you can play is to use oozing chord sequences involving 10:12:14:17 chords and utonal version, 1/10:1/12:1/14:1/17 chords. One can ooze by commas like 50/49, 51/50, 120/119; or do a seemingly stationary ooze by 2500/2499.

within an hour i had downloaded the
> new scala to my pc and was listening to NM tredecimal middle split fifth chords
> and other such things. wonderful, wonderful!

Can anyone tell me what "NM" means? It shows up a lot, like "BP", but I don't have it translated.

> <wallyesterpaulrus@y...>" <wallyesterpaulrus@y...> wrote:
> both deliberate comma shifts and deliberate comma drifts can be
> aesthetically useful effects for the microtonal ji composer. the
> reason that john delaubenfels and others have advocated their
> elimination is that they are not working in the microtonal field per
> se at all -- rather, their goal is to render traditional, DIATONIC
> music as pure, strong, and painless as possible. as you say, pain can
> be very useful, and certainly non-diatonic elements are what interest
> most of us here. but the diatonic scale as a basic musical gestalt is
> indeed a powerful feature for much of the world's most beloved music,
> and for such purposes, preserving the scale's integrity (by avoiding
> comma shifts), purifying its harmony (by "springing" toward ji
> chords), and maintaining a steady pitch level on the long scale (by
> avoiding comma drifts) certainly seem desirable goals for, say, a
> string quartet, or a computer midi-retuning program.

thanks for writing this. as much as i knew that many people who are
interested in tuning are not *composers* per se, my natural bias and
interest in making new and unusual music makes me forget that. i've
often found myself confused when reading various posts and websites
when i forget that not everyone's goal is creating original music or
exploring unorthodox harmonies.

it seems to be an easy thing for me to do -- to forget that not everyone
is like me. :) it always amazes me when i discover a friend *wants* to
be something other than a artist, creating new and unusual works. i even
have friends who are lawyers! :) or worse... programmers! ;)
i have a hard time remembering that they are not really artists --
just because i myself find law boring and programming painful...

also, while i knew some tuning-enthusists were interested in early music,
i think i assumed they were interested in accurately reproducing early
music as it was played at the time. i hadn't much considered
that adaptive JI type techniques could be used to "purify" a lot of
diatonic music, whether or not the results would be "historically
accurate". it makes sense that that would be a goal worth pursuing.

it makes me wonder how much string quartet musicians (and other
"continuous pitch" musicians, like a capella singers) are aware of
things like commatic drift and the tension between wanting to play
in pure resonance with each other vs. the various "painful" pitfalls...
i would guess "very aware". being basically a keyboard/piano player,
the whole notion of resonance, just intonation, commas, and so on,
was very alien. piano players rarely tune their own pianos, and
can't range their pitch. it's taken me years to even start to wrap
my ears around it all.

so, thanks again for the perspective.

paul

--
. . . p f l y . . .
http://www.neuron.net/~pfly/duckapus.html
...the debut pfly CD...