Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup makemicromusic Tuning systems

Gene,

{you wrote...}
>It seems to me we should be willing to accept that tuning systems do >differ and that this is a practical consideration. The proposition that >all tuning systems are equally usable is *theory*. My objection to it is >not theoretical but practical--to my ears, it just ain't so.

It is your last statement that gives it all away. Those are *your* ears, which aren't necessarily universally suited to judge *all* music, but more especially a given composers intentions or desires when picking a tuning.

If you seem willing to accept that tuning systems do differ, then allow composers to use whatever tuning they wish without projecting your 'values' on their choice of tuning. I think this is a very important concern for me, and very much to the point of *this* particular forum. If someone asks for a different, or better, or easier, or more pragmatic tuning, then people are free to send their thoughts out. But linguistics, difficult as they may be, need care, and how we offer feedback to postings of music is very much on my mind.

This place needs to be a resource, a forum, and a supportive endeavor. Let us all keep this in mind.

Cheers,
Jon

🔗Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@...>

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Jonathan M. Szanto"
<JSZANTO@A...> wrote:
> Gene,
>
> {you wrote...}
> >It seems to me we should be willing to accept that tuning systems
do
> >differ and that this is a practical consideration. The proposition
that
> >all tuning systems are equally usable is *theory*. My objection to
it is
> >not theoretical but practical--to my ears, it just ain't so.
>
> It is your last statement that gives it all away. Those are *your*
ears,
> which aren't necessarily universally suited to judge *all* music,
but more
> especially a given composers intentions or desires when picking a
tuning.

It seems to me there is a word for someone who cannot tell the
difference between any tuning system and any other--tone-deaf. Of
course the same is not true of someone who merely thinks they are all
equally valuable, but there is no use pretending they are the *same*.

> If you seem willing to accept that tuning systems do differ, then
allow
> composers to use whatever tuning they wish without projecting
your 'values'
> on their choice of tuning.

I allow composers to do what they like. Will you allow me to have the
opinions I like?

> This place needs to be a resource, a forum, and a supportive
endeavor. Let
> us all keep this in mind.

I'm not a big fan of group-think. For some inscrutible selfish
reason, I prefer to do my own thinking. It so happens that you do
also, and sometimes your thinking gets directed my way, please recall-
-even in connection with tuning.

🔗Jonathan M. Szanto <JSZANTO@...>

🔗Aaron K. Johnson <akjmicro@...>

Hey tuners,

It seems to me that every tuning system has it's own mood and use, a
contention of Ivor Darreg's that makes perfect sense to me.

Now, personal taste is another matter. 14-tet *is* rather harsh sounding; but
what I've learned is that one can also pick mellow timbres (sine or near-sine
waves) to mitigate this somewhat, and end up with very aien but listenable
music in almost any tuning....

Of course, I do prefer for reasons of history, etc. those systems that are
most popular (19,31,22,JI), precisely for the consonances that are available.
But, I also think that *newness* of consonance/dissonance is
appealing...although I've only sketched in 22-tet, and it's not my most
comfortable medium, the sharp 5ths and 2nds for instance have an interesting
'otherness' and 'bite' to them. They sound near-eastern, or Indian to me.
Another example: playing with a fourth root of 36/7 pentatonic scale I
devised, I now feel that I can enjoy 9/7 thirds *without* the rest of the
lower primes, in certain contexts/timbres, where before I couldn't.

It's sort of like learning to like the taste of certain exotic foods, or beer.
The very reason to use these tunings, at least for me, is they sound slippery
and non-traditional, or allow a subtler take on traditional melodic/harmonic
sense, or are more resonant, and make the ear appreciate a certain sensuality
that was absent in 12-tet *not* because it wasn't there, but because we are
so used to it, we barely notice it. Hopefully that won't happen to the newer
systems, but at some point, they will be estabished and it will. We will get
bored, and perhaps (some of us--there are always those 'tradition only'
types) as a culture, slowly start to hear what we now hear as dissonant as
the newest piquant expression of newness. Or not... ;)

I think there's no reason to be a fundamentalist, (and to me there is nothing
more fundamentalist than 'only JI please' or 'JI approximations only
please'--I agree with Darreg) esp. since we see what that does in religion,
to which we can attribute 95% of the worlds ills. Why do that to tuning?

The irony is that *part* of me is attracted to JI fundamentalism--but then I
remember that I've enjoyed plenty of music (most of the music I've heard in
my life) that had little to do with JI, or where JI was irrelevant (e.g.
Gamelan, Javenese or Balinese, 'Silver Apples of the Moon', pure percussion
music, noise-based stuff, etc.)

Thankfully, life is large, and the borders for what is art for me are faraway
from where I stand, and there is a lot of new territory to cover !!! I like
it llike that.

Best,
Aaron Krister Johnson
http://www.dividebypi.com
http://www.akjmusic.com

🔗Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@...>

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron K. Johnson"
<akjmicro@c...> wrote:
> Hey tuners,
>
> It seems to me that every tuning system has it's own mood and use,
a
> contention of Ivor Darreg's that makes perfect sense to me.
>
> Now, personal taste is another matter. 14-tet *is* rather harsh
sounding; but
> what I've learned is that one can also pick mellow timbres (sine or
near-sine
> waves) to mitigate this somewhat, and end up with very aien but
listenable
> music in almost any tuning....

Or you can go one better and use your tuning system and additive
synthesis to create timbres suitable for it.

> Of course, I do prefer for reasons of history, etc. those systems
that are
> most popular (19,31,22,JI), precisely for the consonances that are
available.
> But, I also think that *newness* of consonance/dissonance is
> appealing...although I've only sketched in 22-tet, and it's not my
most
> comfortable medium, the sharp 5ths and 2nds for instance have an
interesting
> 'otherness' and 'bite' to them. They sound near-eastern, or Indian
to me.

One thing I've noticed is that the fifths of 22 or 19, 7 cents sharp
(resp flat) sound OK to me, but 27 seems too much. While there is a
nice theoretical argument that higher limit intervals need to be
tuned at least as well if not better than lower limit ones, my ears
tell me that octaves need to be tuned more exactly than 7 cents,
fifths can get away with 7 cent errors but not much more, and thirds
can be even worse. Maybe TOP has the right idea.

> Another example: playing with a fourth root of 36/7 pentatonic
scale I
> devised, I now feel that I can enjoy 9/7 thirds *without* the rest
of the
> lower primes, in certain contexts/timbres, where before I couldn't.

This does not surprise me; 9/7 and (even more, I think) 7/6 is quite
usable, though I mostly use them in triads or tetrads.

> I think there's no reason to be a fundamentalist, (and to me there
is nothing
> more fundamentalist than 'only JI please' or 'JI approximations
only
> please'--I agree with Darreg) esp. since we see what that does in
religion,
> to which we can attribute 95% of the worlds ills. Why do that to
tuning?

Liking what I like is not fundamentalism. I stick with what my ears
like, and that seems to involve some degree of JI approximation.

> The irony is that *part* of me is attracted to JI fundamentalism--
but then I
> remember that I've enjoyed plenty of music (most of the music I've
heard in
> my life) that had little to do with JI, or where JI was irrelevant
(e.g.
> Gamelan, Javenese or Balinese, 'Silver Apples of the Moon', pure
percussion
> music, noise-based stuff, etc.)

I like gamelan, but not Subotnick. Is there theory hiding in that?

🔗Paul Erlich <perlich@...>

As long as the volume is kept fairly quiet, and there are no
simultaneous third-tone dyads or the like, I find this is pretty much
true.

> Of course, I do prefer for reasons of history, etc. those systems
that are
> most popular (19,31,22,JI), precisely for the consonances that are
available.

Pursuing this a bit more closely (my apologies to this list), of
these, 22 has been *by far* the least popular in the West because
81:80 (the syntonic comma) doesn't vanish (as it does in 12, 19, or
31), or pass with relatively little notice (as it can in JI, at 21.5
cents), but is greatly inflated to the more-than-noticeable size of
54.5 cents. I mention this because if anyone out there making
microtonal music wishes to pursue a non-Western-tonal/non-common-
practice path while employing the consonances you refer to, 22 would
be an excellent system for them to try. I think Blackwood did quite a
good job of this sort of thing in his 15-tone and 16-tone etudes but
missed the boat big time in his 22-tone one.

I know this isn't really on point, but may I ask you a question?

Just out of curiosity.

Can you hear the difference between the fourth root of 36/7
pentatonic scale you devised, and the chain-of-fifths pentatonic in
22-equal? I sure can't (fractions of a cent!) . . .

> It's sort of like learning to like the taste of certain exotic
>foods, or beer.

Exactly. This is a very apt analogy, perhaps the best way there is of
explaining this experience.

> I think there's no reason to be a fundamentalist, (and to me there
>is nothing
> more fundamentalist than 'only JI please' or 'JI approximations
>only
> please'--I agree with Darreg) esp. since we see what that does in
>religion,
> to which we can attribute 95% of the worlds ills. Why do that to
>tuning?

I sympathize with this greatly. My feelings about JI fundamentalism
are well-documented elsewhere, so I won't repeat them here. I've
fought tooth and nail against the ill effects of JI fundamentalism,
while at the same time defending JI and its practitioners from those
would paint it as both a musical dead-end and as theoretical folly.
Between the latter group and the JI fundamentalists, there is an
insuperable gulf which has parts of the alternative tuning community
in a virtual civil war, further impeding a unified "assault" on the
mainstream stuck-in-12-equal Western world. Does striking out on an
unconventional musical path necessarily deafen one to the aesthetics,
logic, and worth of those would would take a different unconventional
musical path? (sigh)

Anyway, there are many senses in which a tuning can approximate JI,
and if you combine these senses together end-to-end, it becomes
virtually impossible to find a tuning that *can't* be thought of in
this way. This line of argument caused Dave Keenan a lot of
consternation, but causes my tuning vistas to be very wide at the
moment, despite the fact that I am, for the moment, pursuing the 'JI
approximations' path -- only partly because there's strong recent
neurobiological evidence that this is how we hear, and partly because
musical history has struck out partway along this path and I feel an
obligation to continue. The recent Mavila tuning that I posted here
is a case in point -- it 'approximates' 5-limit JI as best it can
while having 135:128 vanish. The result is that it sounds *very*
exotic -- much like Pelog, in fact -- while being much simpler to
navigate than JI. And it "works" -- the harmonies sound like
*harmonies* -- with several of the timbres already in our keyboards,
even including some bowed string sounds. If one allows nudging the
timbre to better match the tuning, one could get away with even
larger deviations. And also employing adaptive retuning (notes change
pitch very slightly according to context) would allow tuning schemes
with still further deviations from JI to act as 'approximations of
JI' in a sense.

> Thankfully, life is large, and the borders for what is art for me
are faraway
> from where I stand, and there is a lot of new territory to
cover !!! I like
> it llike that.

This is, indeed, the important point. Almost any alternative tuning
is a great breath of fresh air to work with -- one doesn't have to
worry about avoiding cliches. This is surely the way forward in our
culture -- even this many years after Stravinsky said so:

Robert Craft: 'Is any musical element still susceptible to radical
exploitation and development?'
Igor Stravinsky: 'Yes: pitch. I even risk a prediction that pitch
will comprise the main difference between the "music of the future"
and our music, and I consider that the most important aspect of
electronic music is the fact that it can manufacture pitch. Our mid-
twentieth-century situation, in regard to pitch, might perhaps be
compared to that of the mid-sixteenth century, when, after Willaert
and others had proved the necessity of equal temperament, the great
pitch experiments began--Zarlino's quarter-tone instrument,
Vincentino's thirty-nine-tones-to-the-octave archicembalo, and
others. These instruments failed, of course, and the well-tempered
clavier was established (though at least three hundred years before
Bach), but our ears are more ready for such experiments now--mine
are, at any rate. I had been watching the Kuramatengu play in Osaka
one afternoon recently and had become accustomed to the Noh flute.
Later, in a restaurant, I suddenly heard an ordinary flute, playing
ordinary (well-tempered) music. I was shocked, music apart--I think I
could keep the music apart anyway--by the expressive poverty of the
tuning.'

Tuning systems

🔗Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@...>

🔗Jonathan M. Szanto <JSZANTO@...>

🔗Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@...>

🔗Jonathan M. Szanto <JSZANTO@...>

🔗Aaron K. Johnson <akjmicro@...>

🔗Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@...>

🔗Paul Erlich <perlich@...>

🔗Andrew Heathwaite <gtrpkt@...>

🔗Aaron K. Johnson <akjmicro@...>

🔗Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@...>