Microtonal pedagogy

Hi again,

And, to start off in my new list, I have an eminently practical question.

If you were going to make a CD for students to listen to to sharpen
their discrimination and recognition of just-intonation (or other
microtonal) intervals, what would you put on it?

I'll tell you the answer I came up with, and I'm not crazy about it,
which is why I ask. When I first taught myself microtones 20 years
ago, I set up my computer sequencing program and user-tunable
synthesizer to alternate back and forth between subtly different
intervals for hours at a time: like, playing the sequence 1/1, 9/8,
1/1, 10/9 over and over for hours until I could sing, hear, and feel
the difference to my own satisfaction. So for my "Arithmetic of
Listening" alternative tuning class I made a CD with similar sets of
intervals played ad nauseam. The half-hour sequence I compiled was as
follows:

In electric piano tones:
Track 1. 9/8, 10/9
" 2. 10/9, 9/8, 8/7
" 3. 7/6, 6/5, 11/9, 5/4, 9/7
" 4. 21/16, 4/3, 11/8, 7/5
" 5. 3/2, 14/9, 8/5
" 6. 5/3, 27/16, 12/7, 7/4
" 7. 3/2, 14/9, 8/5
" 8. 7/4, 16/9, 9/5
" 9. 9/5, 11/6, 15/8, 27/14, 63/32
" 10. Harmonics 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, interspersed with 1/1

In sustained reed-instrument tones:
" 11. Equal-tempered Major triad versus a pure 4:5:6 Major Triad
" 12. 3/2, 40/27
" 13. Triads with 7/6, 6/5, 11/9, 5/4 as the third
" 14. Equal-tempered dominant 7th versus a pure 4:5:6:7 dom. 7th
" 15. 7-limit minor 7th (1/1, 7/6, 3/2, 7/4) versus a 5-limit minor
7th (1/1, 6/5, 3/2, 9/5)

In each case I first alternated the note with 1/1 (F below middle C),
then played them simultaneously, and in some cases I harmonized
entire chords to make the harmonic flavor (I thought) clearer. But as
I warned my students, listening to a disc of these repeating
intervals is not vastly different from Chinese water torture, and I
have doubts whether many of them will spend much time training their
ears with it. (I advertised it as a device for slowly driving your
roommate insane.) I'm thinking maybe a web page with mp3s of the
intervals might be better, in allowing them to control the repetition
and comparison of intervals.

Has anyone tried something like this? Has anyone had any success with
recorded teaching materials for microtonal discrimination? Of course,
I think the best thing is to let them get hands-on experience with a
tunable synth, but it's complicated giving 20 students access to my
office and DX-7 IIFD. Is there a JI ear-training disc out there that
I don't know about?

Thanks for your thoughts,

Kyle

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

Kyle,

If your students are running macs, they'd have an easy time running Bill
Alves' Just Intonatin Ear Trainer:

http://thuban.ac.hmc.edu/~alves/jiet.html

It lets you select as many pitches as you like from Partch's 43-note scale,
then it plays them one at a time (melodically or harmonically, your choice)
and allows you to select which interval you think it is. For learning to
discriminate between really close intervals, you could select those two or
three or whatever intervals only, so you can focus on them. It basically
does what you're talking about in the form of a quiz. I've used it a little
myself, and it definitely helped to focus my ear and get me to hear things
in a new way.

Enjoy,

-Andrew

p.s. Minority platform or not, macs are great, and I'm not giving mine up
anytime soon.

--- Kyle Gann <kgann@...> wrote:
> Hi again,
>
> And, to start off in my new list, I have an eminently practical question.
>
> If you were going to make a CD for students to listen to to sharpen
> their discrimination and recognition of just-intonation (or other
> microtonal) intervals, what would you put on it?
>
> I'll tell you the answer I came up with, and I'm not crazy about it,
> which is why I ask. When I first taught myself microtones 20 years
> ago, I set up my computer sequencing program and user-tunable
> synthesizer to alternate back and forth between subtly different
> intervals for hours at a time: like, playing the sequence 1/1, 9/8,
> 1/1, 10/9 over and over for hours until I could sing, hear, and feel
> the difference to my own satisfaction. So for my "Arithmetic of
> Listening" alternative tuning class I made a CD with similar sets of
> intervals played ad nauseam. The half-hour sequence I compiled was as
> follows:
>
> In electric piano tones:
> Track 1. 9/8, 10/9
> " 2. 10/9, 9/8, 8/7
> " 3. 7/6, 6/5, 11/9, 5/4, 9/7
> " 4. 21/16, 4/3, 11/8, 7/5
> " 5. 3/2, 14/9, 8/5
> " 6. 5/3, 27/16, 12/7, 7/4
> " 7. 3/2, 14/9, 8/5
> " 8. 7/4, 16/9, 9/5
> " 9. 9/5, 11/6, 15/8, 27/14, 63/32
> " 10. Harmonics 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, interspersed with 1/1
>
> In sustained reed-instrument tones:
> " 11. Equal-tempered Major triad versus a pure 4:5:6 Major Triad
> " 12. 3/2, 40/27
> " 13. Triads with 7/6, 6/5, 11/9, 5/4 as the third
> " 14. Equal-tempered dominant 7th versus a pure 4:5:6:7 dom. 7th
> " 15. 7-limit minor 7th (1/1, 7/6, 3/2, 7/4) versus a 5-limit minor
> 7th (1/1, 6/5, 3/2, 9/5)
>
> In each case I first alternated the note with 1/1 (F below middle C),
> then played them simultaneously, and in some cases I harmonized
> entire chords to make the harmonic flavor (I thought) clearer. But as
> I warned my students, listening to a disc of these repeating
> intervals is not vastly different from Chinese water torture, and I
> have doubts whether many of them will spend much time training their
> ears with it. (I advertised it as a device for slowly driving your
> roommate insane.) I'm thinking maybe a web page with mp3s of the
> intervals might be better, in allowing them to control the repetition
> and comparison of intervals.
>
> Has anyone tried something like this? Has anyone had any success with
> recorded teaching materials for microtonal discrimination? Of course,
> I think the best thing is to let them get hands-on experience with a
> tunable synth, but it's complicated giving 20 students access to my
> office and DX-7 IIFD. Is there a JI ear-training disc out there that
> I don't know about?
>
> Thanks for your thoughts,
>
> Kyle
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>

__________________________________
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On Tue, Apr 13, 2004 at 10:37:11PM -0400, Kyle Gann wrote:
> If you were going to make a CD for students to listen to to sharpen
> their discrimination and recognition of just-intonation (or other
> microtonal) intervals, what would you put on it?

one of the more interesting listening experiments i've tried is
running through harmonic progressions in just intonation such
that commas are run smack into... as in many examples from the book
'the harmonic experience'. it's enlightening to follow through a
seemingly normal harmonic progression and find the melody note
suddenly sharp or flat when it wouldn't be in 12-equal temperment..

that may be the main theme of that book -- to understand the harmonic
differrence between, say, C# and Db.. :)

pfly
ps, majority platform? ...purchased from walmart too? ;)

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Kyle Gann <kgann@e...> wrote:
> Hi again,
>
> And, to start off in my new list, I have an eminently practical
question.
>
> If you were going to make a CD for students to listen to to sharpen
> their discrimination and recognition of just-intonation (or other
> microtonal) intervals, what would you put on it?

Back in high school, I trained myself to recognize (separately) any
interval in 22-equal, and any interval in 31-equal.

I wrote a computer program that would randomly play an interval from
the ET -- I could set it to be melodic, harmonic, or both -- and I
would have to name the interval. I would immediately be told whether
I was right or wrong.

After a while, I never made any mistakes. I think 98% of the
population could do just as well given enough time to train
themselves.

I think the random approach will work better than a pre-recorded CD,
and be less like water torture. But I suppose a long enough CD could
be made to resemble the random approach to some extent.

Finally, Joe Maneri runs a 72-equal ear training course at New
England Conservatory (open to the public). His approach, needless to
say, is more interactive than either a CD or a simplistic computer
program. And all the JI consonances through the 11-limit (Partch's 29
Diamond ratios) are extremely close to 72-equal intervals, so this
kind of ear training can prepare one fairly well for other "common"
microtonal environments/requirements.

-Paul

On Wednesday, April 14, 2004, at 06:28 , MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com wrote:

> Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 20:56:18 -0700
> From: Rick McGowan <rick@...>
> Subject: Re: Microtonal pedagogy
>
>> Sorry, there are no versions for the Apple Mac
>> Aaaarrrggghhhh! And most of my music students have Macs.
>
> Oh, sorry about that. That's the bummer with using a minority platform,
> unfortunately
>
> But, take heart. There are some tunable Mac VSTi synths that are
> tunable... I just don't know which they are offhand. It might also be
> possible to run Virtual PC on the Mac and have these Windows things > work?
> Someone else might know the answer to that...

This is not quite the case, at least not any more. Macs running OS X, especially new fast machines with OS X v10.3.x run more applications than *any* other computing platform on this planet.

Also, Apple's (superior) Audiounits has pretty much replaced VST on the Mac.

'The ultimate Mac OS X audio resource'
http://osxaudio.com/

http://www.audio-units.com

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/audio/

And there is Apple's GarageBand software for musicians, audio, midi, softsynths, effects, etc., free with new Macs.
http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/

The best option for students interested in exploring harmonics may be student priced FM7 (in particular) & Pro53 from Native Instruments. http://www.nativeinstruments.de

Cheers,
Joel

Andrew,

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Andrew Heathwaite <gtrpkt@y...>
wrote:
> Kyle,
>
> If your students are running macs, they'd have an easy time running Bill
> Alves' Just Intonatin Ear Trainer:
>
> http://thuban.ac.hmc.edu/~alves/jiet.html
>
> It lets you select as many pitches as you like from Partch's 43-note
scale,
> then it plays them one at a time (melodically or harmonically, your
choice)
> and allows you to select which interval you think it is.

This looks intriguing, but I downloaded it onto my Mac (OS X), and my
computer can't figure out what application to open it with. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Kyle

> This looks intriguing, but I downloaded it onto my Mac (OS X), and my
> computer can't figure out what application to open it with. Any ideas?

I run OS9 and forget that I'm becoming incompatible even with other macs.
The JI Ear Trainer requires "Hypercard" or "Hypercard Player" to work, and
it looks like those are not being made available for OSX. It seems there is
a program called "Revolution" that is supposed to run Hypercard Stacks,
which I think means it would play the JI Ear Trainer.

This is the website explaining that feature of Revolution:

http://www.macmegasite.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=91

The link there is broken, but I found:

http://www.macnn.com/news/20786

I have no clue if it works with the JI Ear Trainer or not. There doesn't
seem to be a demo, and the simplest version of Revolution costs $75.
Doesn't look very promising, unless you have $75 to randomly throw at
things. If anyone else has a better lead, it might be helpful about now.

-Andrew

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Andrew (and Kyle),

{you wrote...}
>The JI Ear Trainer requires "Hypercard" or "Hypercard Player" to work...
>
>If anyone else has a better lead, it might be helpful about now.

Bill Alves is a member of both this list and tuning. While he posts very infrequently, you could shout out to him publically on the list, or click on his name in the "Members" section and email him to see if he has, or has plans for, an updated version of the Trainer.

Cheers,
Jon

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Kyle Gann <kgann@e...> wrote:

/makemicromusic/topicId_6018.html#6018

>
> Has anyone tried something like this? Has anyone had any success
with
> recorded teaching materials for microtonal discrimination? Of
course,
> I think the best thing is to let them get hands-on experience with
a
> tunable synth, but it's complicated giving 20 students access to my
> office and DX-7 IIFD. Is there a JI ear-training disc out there
that
> I don't know about?
>
> Thanks for your thoughts,
>

***With all of my "Blackjack" pieces I have included ear-training on
CD, which consists of alternating semi-tones, quarter-tones, sixth-
tones, and twelfth-tones...

Of course, Blackjack is not *absolute* JI per-se, but is a "near-JI"
scale...

And, also, there are pitfalls... One presenter (who will remain
unnamed) thought that the ear-training tracks on the CD were the
actual piece, not bothering to read the score... :)

JP

> ***With all of my "Blackjack" pieces I have included ear-training on
> CD, which consists of alternating semi-tones, quarter-tones, sixth-
> tones, and twelfth-tones...
>
> Of course, Blackjack is not *absolute* JI per-se, but is a "near-JI"
> scale...
>
> And, also, there are pitfalls... One presenter (who will remain
> unnamed) thought that the ear-training tracks on the CD were the
> actual piece, not bothering to read the score... :)
>
> JP

Well, that's an interesting thought, Joe. Not many people seem to like
my music.... Maybe if I slap a catchy title and some hip cover art on
the ear-training CD, I'll have better luck with that! :^D

Kyle

On Wed, 14 Apr 2004 03:31:59 -0000 Kyle wrote.

> Great idea - I was thinking too much "inside the box," and requiring
> software as a textbook is an inspiration. But, when I click on
> Midicode, just as I start to wet my pants with excitement, I get
> stopped short by the message:

> "Linux and Mac Versions
> "Sorry, there are no versions for the Apple Mac or for Linux at this
> time or in the immediate future."

> Aaaarrrggghhhh! And most of my music students have Macs. I recommend
> Scala all the time too, but I can't use it myself (no Mac version),
> and only one of my students has benefitted from it.

Sorry about that Kyle.

I have been working mainly with PCs since 1986 so I don't have the
knowledge to port to other platforms, nor do I have the time or
resources. I would like to do Linux and Mac versions but I
can't see it happening. :(

But see following message ...

Peter
www.midicode.com

On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 20:56:18 -0700 Rick wrote

> But, take heart. There are some tunable Mac VSTi synths that are
> tunable... I just don't know which they are offhand. It might also be
> possible to run Virtual PC on the Mac and have these Windows things work?
> Someone else might know the answer to that...

I haven't tried this but I wouldn't hope for too much. The timing can be very
critical and the additional load of the Virtual PC emulator would be likely
to introduce additional latency and possibly intolerable breakup of the
sound.

Also, with my software, there may be problems with the copy protection
mechanism. However, if anyone would like to try it I will support them as
best I can.

Peter
www.midicode.com

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Joseph Pehrson"
<jpehrson@r...> wrote:

> ***With all of my "Blackjack" pieces I have included ear-training on
> CD, which consists of alternating semi-tones, quarter-tones, sixth-
> tones, and twelfth-tones...

Joe,

Could you amplify this for me a little? For example, do you alternate
semitones with quarter-tones? Do you give verbal information
identifying interval sizes? Do you arrange the semitones, sixth-tones,
etc., in scales? Do you present the intervals slowly enough to sing
back with? repetitively? I'm curious to find what people have tried
and what might work.

Thanks,

Kyle

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "kylegann1955" <kgann@e...>

/makemicromusic/topicId_6018.html#6102

wrote:
> --- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Joseph Pehrson"
> <jpehrson@r...> wrote:
>
> > ***With all of my "Blackjack" pieces I have included ear-training
on
> > CD, which consists of alternating semi-tones, quarter-tones,
sixth-
> > tones, and twelfth-tones...
>
> Joe,
>
> Could you amplify this for me a little? For example, do you
alternate
> semitones with quarter-tones? Do you give verbal information
> identifying interval sizes? Do you arrange the semitones, sixth-
tones,
> etc., in scales? Do you present the intervals slowly enough to sing
> back with? repetitively? I'm curious to find what people have tried
> and what might work.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Kyle

***Hi Kyle,

Well, I'll take this from the "instructions" for _Blackjack_, the
cello/electronics piece:

The description begins telling the player how Blackjack is close to
JI (up to the 11 limit, within 2 or 3 cents) and how it is,
basically, easy to play because it uses 72-tET notation, i.e. our
basic 12-equal pitches, PLUS, quartertones, 1/6th tones, and 1/12th
tone alterations.

Then it shows the symbols I use (in this particular piece I am using
the Ezra Sims, symbols... since then I have a modified form of George
Secor's "sagittal" which seems even better)

1/6 tones being approximately 33 cents deviation high and low from
the 12-equal pitches and

1/12th tones being approximately 16 cents up and down from the 12-
equal pitches.

Since those are the only accidentals (besides quartertones) necessary
in Blackjack, that's pretty simple..

On the first track of the accompanying CD I have "Blackjack note
practice." Each example is repeated twice, and there is space
between the examples. They go as follows: (I also indicate TIMINGS
on the CD so that a person knows *for sure* what pitch he/she is
on!) Essentially I just follow the 12-equal chromatic scale with
this, including the deviations that are necessary for the Blackjack
scale. Each pitch is about 2 or 3 seconds in length. These are the
comparisions:

0:00 C natural

0:13 C#, C# 12th tone low

0:58 Db, Db 12th tone high

1:44 D natural, D 6th tone high

2:31 Eb, Eb 12th tone high

3:19 E natural, E quarter tone low

4:11 E natural, E 6th tone high

5:09 F natural, F 6th tone low

6:01 F natural, F quarter tone high

6:56 F#, F# 12th tone low

7:49 G natural, G 6th tone low

8:43 G#, G# 12th tone low

9:39 Ab, Ab 12th tone high

10:38 A natural, A 6th tone high

11:34 Bb, Bb 12th tone high

12:30 B natural, B quarter tone low

13:28 B natural, B 12th tone low

14:24 C natural, C 6th tone low

15:16 C natural (one octave about original...)

****

Then, TRACK 2 of the CD, is the 21-note blackjack scale through a one
octave range, ascending and descending. It is played twice... I
note that there are essentially only *two* different step sizes in
Blackjack, one 83 cents (five 72-tET units) and the other 33 cents
(two 72-tET units)

Then I show a graphic of the scale (that was a bitch to import in
from Sibelius, but I hear they've improved graphic import to Word by
now... :) with the "S" and "L" labels for the intervals indicated
between the notes...

TRACK 3: is the cello part ALONE. I had been asked to have this
kind of track from instrumentalists before, so they could practice
their intonation only against the one line...

TRACK 4: This is the piece WITH a MIDI realization of the cello
part, for practice purposes only...

TRACK 5: Finally, this is the track that will be performed in
concert... the MIDI accompaniment *without* the cello part. I put
this last on the CD for obvious reasons: that way there will be
nothing after it in case the engineer messes up and forgets to turn
the CD off... :) (that's happened, of course)...

That's basically it, and I've been using a similar procedure for all
my solo Blackjack pieces... although it's been somewhat "refined" as
I went along...

best,

Joe Pehrson

> > Uh... thanks, Jon... mmmm... uh... what, uh, what's "a flexible
> > front-end" exactly? Is it Mac-compatible?
> > Kyle
>
> ***Sounds like something a little medicine from Pfizer might cure,
> but in the meantime I think Jon means the software that would *host*
> these softsynth plugins (like Sonar for the PC)
>
> JP

I'll admit my front end is sometimes a little more flexible than I'd
like, but I didn't expect anyone to bring it up on MMM! Jesus, flamed
again!

:^P

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Joseph Pehrson"
<jpehrson@r...> wrote:
> On the first track of the accompanying CD I have "Blackjack note
> practice." Each example is repeated twice, and there is space
> between the examples. They go as follows: (I also indicate TIMINGS
> on the CD so that a person knows *for sure* what pitch he/she is
> on!) Essentially I just follow the 12-equal chromatic scale with
> this, including the deviations that are necessary for the Blackjack
> scale. Each pitch is about 2 or 3 seconds in length. These are the
> comparisions:
>
> 0:00 C natural
>
> 0:13 C#, C# 12th tone low
>
> 0:58 Db, Db 12th tone high
etc. [snip]

Joe,

This sounds like your Track 1 is roughly similar to what I did, only
with silences in-between - for the performer to tune to the pitches, I
guess? Maybe I could try that format for having people learn to play
or sing the intervals. My goal is to someday be able to give a
listening test and have students distinguish 12/7, 27/16, and so on by
ear. Don't know if it's doable, given the student population.

Thanks,

Kyle :^D

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "kylegann1955" <kgann@e...>

/makemicromusic/topicId_6018.html#6109

wrote:
> > > Uh... thanks, Jon... mmmm... uh... what, uh, what's "a flexible
> > > front-end" exactly? Is it Mac-compatible?
> > > Kyle
> >
> > ***Sounds like something a little medicine from Pfizer might
cure,
> > but in the meantime I think Jon means the software that would
*host*
> > these softsynth plugins (like Sonar for the PC)
> >
> > JP
>
> I'll admit my front end is sometimes a little more flexible than I'd
> like, but I didn't expect anyone to bring it up on MMM! Jesus,
flamed
> again!
>
> :^P
>

***No, Kyle, this was only a joke... and, pls. note, that the
original reference had nothing to do with *yourself*, specifically

:)

JP

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "kylegann1955" <kgann@e...>

/makemicromusic/topicId_6018.html#6109

> Joe,
>
> This sounds like your Track 1 is roughly similar to what I did, only
> with silences in-between - for the performer to tune to the
pitches, I
> guess?

***Well, partially that, but, of course, not really necessary on the
cello. It's also a *perceptual* issue... just keeping things apart
so that everything doesn't get "muddled up" and confused before the
differences "sink in..." At least, it seemed advantageous that was
if *I* were to be learning this stuff....

JP

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Joseph Pehrson"
<jpehrson@r...> wrote:

> > I'll admit my front end is sometimes a little more flexible than I'd
> > like, but I didn't expect anyone to bring it up on MMM! Jesus,
> flamed
> > again!
> >
> > :^P
> >
>
> ***No, Kyle, this was only a joke... and, pls. note, that the
> original reference had nothing to do with *yourself*, specifically

Yes, yes, yes, I got the joke and made another, but it strikes me that
there's a limit to the number of smileys two educated people should
allow in an e-mail exchange. :^) :^D <:^D |^D

Cheers, %^D

Kyle (:^)

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "kylegann1955" <kgann@e...>

/makemicromusic/topicId_6018.html#6112

wrote:
> --- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Joseph Pehrson"
> <jpehrson@r...> wrote:
>
> > > I'll admit my front end is sometimes a little more flexible
than I'd
> > > like, but I didn't expect anyone to bring it up on MMM! Jesus,
> > flamed
> > > again!
> > >
> > > :^P
> > >
> >
> > ***No, Kyle, this was only a joke... and, pls. note, that the
> > original reference had nothing to do with *yourself*, specifically
>
> Yes, yes, yes, I got the joke and made another, but it strikes me
that
> there's a limit to the number of smileys two educated people should
> allow in an e-mail exchange. :^) :^D <:^D |^D
>
> Cheers, %^D
>
> Kyle (:^)

***Yes, but your smiley :-) was a "tonguie" :^P and that had me
confused :~/

signed, Elvis

5:-)

(that's what *my* reference says, anyway.. *<|:-)

Kyle,

for the scopes of pedagogy, you may want to try my tuning program, which I called "Organum" as its original scope was for pipe organ tuning. It is not available on the internet, and runs on Mac OS9; I don't know how it works in the "Classic" environment under OSX.
If you want to try it I will be happy to send you a copy; please drop an e-mail.

Regards from Italy
Leonardo Perretti