Re: [MMM] Re: commatic drifting music?

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

NM stands for Neo-Medieval; they were provided by Margo Schulter. This
chord notation was inspired by the "partitions" of Jacobus of Liège,
specifying first the outer interval of the sonority, and then the adjacent
intervals in ascending order, cf.
outer|lower-upper or outer|lower-middle-upper

BP means Bohlen-Pierce.

Manuel

spigot@... wrote:

> 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...

Speaking for a cappella singers, the many amateur and pro singers that I
have met tend to know very little if anything at all about drift. They
just sing to the best of their (and the director's) ability and often
produce wonderful music. I know that the Hilliard's are noused up on
tuning because I heard them doing Machaut's Mass with some serious
Pythagorean thirds and I have read an article by one director which
discussed how he treats commatic shift. As for string quartets, Kronos
come immediately to mind.

>
> 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.

And so it is for all of us. We plough a lonely furrow.

Awareness of the technical details of the music is often completely
absent in performers. As a young teenager I could play virtually the
whole Bach repertoire on guitar but got a bit confused when my teacher
started waffling about dominant sevenths and counter subjects. So the
good news is that a good ear and some determination are quite
sufficient. Have you read W.A. Mathieu's book "Harmonic Experience". I
would strongly recommend the singing/ear training procedures there to
anyone who wishes to sensitise themselves to Just Intonation (Daniel
might want to take a peep as well : )

Kind Regards
a.m.

>

Alison,

{you wrote...}
>Speaking for a cappella singers, the many amateur and pro singers that I >have met tend to know very little if anything at all about drift. They >just sing to the best of their (and the director's) ability and often >produce wonderful music.

...and later...

>Awareness of the technical details of the music is often completely absent >in performers.

One of the things that has always baffled me about the tuning list(s) is the nearly complete disconnect between the thoughts presented and the real world. I see all kinds of prognostications about how people hear, how they perform music, how they can do this or that, and virtually every case it is by someone who works with their computer, reads a lot, and doesn't have anything more than a cursory brush with the act of rehearsing and performing music.

Johnny Reinhard is one of the rare exceptions, but even he ends up in a niche because he has worked so long with a small and dedicated core group of performers, it once again becomes 'not' like the bulk of performers. And when someone who *has* worked with professional and non-professional players/singers offers anecdotal evidence of something, it is usually call *way* into question, with continual requests for documentation to back them up.

I've always wished the proponents of 'clean room tuning theory' could go out for a couple of months, get their hands dirty making music, and see if all of what they've talked about has a basis in the outside world.

Damn, I need some more coffee...

Cheers,
Jon

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Jonathan M. Szanto" <JSZANTO@A...> wrote:

> One of the things that has always baffled me about the tuning list(s) is
> the nearly complete disconnect between the thoughts presented and the real
> world. I see all kinds of prognostications about how people hear, how they
> perform music, how they can do this or that, and virtually every case it is
> by someone who works with their computer, reads a lot, and doesn't have
> anything more than a cursory brush with the act of rehearsing and
> performing music.

Why is that the real world, and computers an unreal world?

Gene,

{you wrote...}
>--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Jonathan M. Szanto" <JSZANTO@A...> >wrote:
> > One of the things that has always baffled me about the tuning list(s) is
> > the nearly complete disconnect between the thoughts presented and the real
> > world. I see all kinds of prognostications about how people hear, how they
> > perform music, how they can do this or that, and virtually every case > it is
> > by someone who works with their computer, reads a lot, and doesn't have
> > anything more than a cursory brush with the act of rehearsing and
> > performing music.
>
>Why is that the real world, and computers an unreal world?

Hmmm. Poor choice of wording on my part. What I *meant* to convey is that in the *virtual* world of software/hardware synthesis, we've reached a point where - albeit with quite a bit of work - one can get pretty specific in terms of microtonal composition and actually hear it _as intended_.

In the 'real' (non-virtual) world of composers --> compositions --> performers, one can spend a lot of time working on intricate microtonal material and still be very much at the mercy of the human animal. This isn't always a bad thing! :) But frequently the 'disconnect' I've seen is when people speculate on "this" being playable/hearable, or "that" being the way that performers 'must' be thinking/hearing when they are playing, or "the other" must have been how people performed 'back then'.

And, quite often, these people have little or no experience in the process of getting an ensemble of performers to tackle the difficulties of a newly tuned music. Just ask Alison Monteith; just ask Joe Pehrson; and etc.

I'm not diatribing, mind you. I've put all that behind me a long time ago when the frustration was getting the better of me. But if one focuses, as you are, on the emulation/creation of music using computational tools, you won't experience the frustration of the process of getting your work to sound as intended. Or the various positive elements that would come out of a non-virtual experience.

Hope that's clearer. Real vs. non-real wasn't intended as a slight!

Cheers,
Jon