Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup makemicromusic Re: various - any tuning is potentially a good tuning

Hi Gene,

I think the idea that any tuning is a good tuning
doesn't mean that if anyone throws a tuning at
a composer then he or she has to be able
to make something of it. I can understand why
one might take it that way but I would be surprised
if anyone were to take up that position.

But - - well I understand it myself as saying
that if you make a tuning, even a random one,
it is possible that some composer somewhere
may find it inspirational. Or oneself on some
occasion or other if not necessarily right now.

It is a bit like that mathematical conundrum
about the first uninteresting number -
for those who don't know it the thing is you ask
someone - What is the first uninteresting number?

They then have a bit to time to think about it
and answer it, so you have to name your first
uninteresting number,
then
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,,
,
So, what is interesting about that number?
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
- Well the interesting thing about it is that it is the
first uninteresting number :-).

I should think actually that it is probably very hard to think of a small
number (say less than 1000 or so)
that some mathematician somewhere probably
hasn't spent a few years studying in some context
or other.

I think one could make interesting music in octaves
- in fact I remember doing an improvisation on
acoustic piano in octaves that I rather liked - was
only part of a larger improvisation but
I thought it had its interests. Sorry can't remember
it now but could imagine doing the
same again.

Random scales - yes also found scales.
E.g. pick up a bicycle wheel and make
music using the found scale of the tunings
of the cycle spokes - quite fun to do.

Thanks,

Robert

🔗Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@...>

🔗Jacob <jbarton@...>

Regarding 1-equal, I'm obliged to mention Gyorgy Ligeti's Musica Ricerata, movement
1. Despite the fact that it does cheat and finally resolve at the end. And the other
movements, in regard to using very limited systems and making great music.

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <gwsmith@s...>
wrote:
>I reserve the right, in other
> words, to be bored by 5-equal, or to find some kinds of sound upsetting.

A tuning by itself has no sound...right? It is only when you tune a specific instrument
and timbre to it and play specific music on it. Being bored by 5-equal in general is
like being bored by eighth notes in general.

Personally, I find improvising the way that I do on a piano patch in 5-equal (with the
keys C-D-F-G-Bb mapped to the five notes) has limited appeal. However I find Bill
Sethares' latest composition plenty enjoyable (although don't you think the beat
should swing a little more? Too straight).

In any case some concrete context is helpful. Gene when you say, for example, that
15-equal is on the borderline, how specifically are you trying 15? I'm curious.

Jacob

🔗Daniel Wolf <djwolf1@...>

Robert Walker wrote:

> Hi Gene,
>
> I think the idea that any tuning is a good tuning
> doesn't mean that if anyone throws a tuning at
> a composer then he or she has to be able
> to make something of it.

Utility is the key here; let me explain with a culinary metaphor. I have the ability to consume and enjoy consuming large amounts and wide varieties of capiscum. I would characterize capiscum as among my essential foodstuffs. My wife cannot consume or enjoy large quantities of capiscum. I doubt that she would even call capiscum a spice, let alone a foodstuff. But somehow, we have managed to find a way of integrating our varied palates within a single kitchen and at the same table. I find that Capiscum has a quality shared with musical tuning systems: they both directly address our relatives senses, preferences, and capacities for pleasure or pain!

The question of "any tuning" and how an individual composer or listener is going to deal with it is far from simple and practically bound to be contentious. This is due to the immediacy of the problem of a getting a useful handle on the huge number and variety of known and potential tunings. But this is also because music itself is far from simple, as music is made from a volatile mix of sonic pleasure and pain, which mixture has varied over time and geography, and the thresholds of which differ from artist to artist as well as from listener to listener. Our immediate problem, as a community of musicians committed to opening a Pandora's box of intonational alternatives: how do we maintain civility in our discourse about music -- and musical tunings -- when our musical values or tastes appear to differ so greatly? The classification and characterization of a tuning can be loaded with assumptions about what music is or does, and we might well benefit as a community from being honest about those assumptions. I have learned much from research in the natural sciences about music, but at the same time I have often been highly skeptical about the particularity and universality of that research. On the one hand, knowing what the average listener does when she listens can be useful, but I'm not at all certain that I compose for the "average listener". I'd rather compose for the extraordinary listener, someone who is willing to stretch her ears and imagination. I'd like more research about potential abilities than existing and average abilities! On the other hand, any research that seems to confirm the universal superiority of musical characteristics unique to the European (or the Chinese or the Indian or the...) tradition, I can only identify as worthless.

Nevertheless, when the best current neuroscience indicates that among sounds with harmonic spectra, we have a preference for a small set of simple ratios, in that the brain apparently processes these with greater facility than more complex structures (and within certain neighborhoods of tolerance, insists when possible on a reading as simple ratios), increasing the pleasure of the listeners, this strikes me as both musically reasonable and a useful way into organizing my approach to any given tuning. But -- and again, this is just me speaking -- it's not the abundance of the pleasurable that makes a tuning musically useful, it's the distribution and balance between the pleasurable and the painful. Consonance and dissonance are qualities that define themselves only relative to one another. I remember that Erv Wilson did not become particularly enthusiastic about 72-tet until he realized that it had not only good representations of small integer ratios through the 11-limit, but that it also had an excellent representation of Phi, the ratio perhaps furthest away from the JI pleasure garden. At the same time, those who object most strenuously to quantitative analysis of tunings should also recognize that the quantitative information is useful to other musicians, and if they are indeed committed to an anti-numerical program, they owe the rest of us some insight into what that program might be like, or just silence on the topics we find useful. In my opnion it is insufficient if not meaningless to simply say -- as Ivor Darreg did -- that each tuning has its own "mood". 12-tet surely has many "moods", and I will even predict that the potential for new moods within 12-tet is as yet unexhausted, moreover I will even contend that "mood" is more essentially an attribute of composition than of material. But let's say for the moment that we wish to embrace the Darregerian typology head on: what speech acts can we usefully bring to our descriptions other than those embracing numbers or mathematically describeable spaces? (I write "speech acts" here because the issue irritating this community, now, really concerns the contents in a mailing list, executed mostly in some form of English or another). Even if we were to agree to a particular distribution of adjectives among the tunings most familiar to this community, I submit that our supply of adjectives will be swiftly depleted, by the number and variety of tuning environments we wish to characterize. Or, failing exhaustion, the list will be reduced to a kind of poetry, or to a non-technical discussion that rapidly addresses every topic but the music itself (a la "rock journalism"). I don't reckon that many of us are particularily gifted poets and such a peripheral discussion is missing the point about tuning systems -- they are material for music making and independent of any genre. Put another way, one of the reasons that there are so many postings to the various tuning lists with mathematical contents is simply because mathematically oriented discussions are well-suited to the format. Announcements about concerts, pointers to web pages or recordings, descriptions of instruments or notations, and a bit of history all fit, too.

With deepest apologies for the prolixity,

Daniel Wolf

🔗kylegann1955 <kgann@...>

🔗Jonathan M. Szanto <JSZANTO@...>

🔗kylegann1955 <kgann@...>

🔗Rick McGowan <rick@...>

Kyle wrote...

> Maybe we should institute a prize for the worst tuning -
> but you have to write a piece in it.

Heh heh... It's not hard to come up with a tuning that's not very easy to
work with. I was even thinking this morning of Gene's "random tuning". I
don't really believe that a random collection of frequencies constitutes a
"tuning system" -- there's more to a "system" than that.

But in any case, early this a.m. I wrote a program to generate a
pseudo-random tuning table in the ".tun" format. The basic parameters are
that no adjacent interval is smaller than 21 cents, none larger than 170
cents. The system is ascending on the keyboard (i.e., not randomly
ordered). Here's an example.

Anyone care to write some music?

Cheers,
Rick

------------------------------ snip and save ".tun" file --------
; Random Tuning:
; min interval = 21 cents; max = 170 cents
[Tuning]
note 0=0
note 1=105
note 2=269
note 3=343
note 4=469
note 5=493
note 6=608
note 7=780
note 8=912
note 9=1052
note 10=1133
note 11=1237
note 12=1354
note 13=1523
note 14=1668
note 15=1739
note 16=1948
note 17=1971
note 18=2071
note 19=2234
note 20=2326
note 21=2404
note 22=2446
note 23=2536
note 24=2666
note 25=2743
note 26=2894
note 27=3038
note 28=3233
note 29=3343
note 30=3552
note 31=3710
note 32=3883
note 33=4090
note 34=4296
note 35=4330
note 36=4365
note 37=4497
note 38=4585
note 39=4617
note 40=4731
note 41=4763
note 42=4972
note 43=5164
note 44=5317
note 45=5482
note 46=5516
note 47=5679
note 48=5804
note 49=5935
note 50=6010
note 51=6183
note 52=6233
note 53=6353
note 54=6387
note 55=6425
note 56=6559
note 57=6701
note 58=6797
note 59=6928
note 60=7009
note 61=7033
note 62=7123
note 63=7248
note 64=7408
note 65=7545
note 66=7690
note 67=7838
note 68=7918
note 69=8028
note 70=8158
note 71=8246
note 72=8295
note 73=8452
note 74=8473
note 75=8625
note 76=8789
note 77=8883
note 78=9019
note 79=9178
note 80=9361
note 81=9509
note 82=9717
note 83=9811
note 84=9963
note 85=10032
note 86=10234
note 87=10413
note 88=10599
note 89=10670
note 90=10846
note 91=10993
note 92=11016
note 93=11178
note 94=11205
note 95=11250
note 96=11289
note 97=11462
note 98=11494
note 99=11654
note 100=11711
note 101=11895
note 102=11949
note 103=12089
note 104=12226
note 105=12350
note 106=12556
note 107=12660
note 108=12729
note 109=12935
note 110=13094
note 111=13201
note 112=13350
note 113=13380
note 114=13548
note 115=13591
note 116=13791
note 117=13824
note 118=13889
note 119=13960
note 120=14152
note 121=14359
note 122=14505
note 123=14663
note 124=14814
note 125=15012
note 126=15060
note 127=15207
-------------------------- end snip and save ".tun" file --------

🔗Paul Erlich <perlich@...>

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Daniel Wolf <djwolf1@a...>
wrote:

> But -- and again, this is just me
> speaking -- it's not the abundance of the pleasurable that makes a
> tuning musically useful, it's the distribution and balance between
the
> pleasurable and the painful.

On this I agree fully.

> Consonance and dissonance are qualities
> that define themselves only relative to one another. I remember
that
> Erv Wilson did not become particularly enthusiastic about 72-tet
until
> he realized that it had not only good representations of small
integer
> ratios through the 11-limit, but that it also had an excellent
> representation of Phi, the ratio perhaps furthest away from the JI
> pleasure garden.

On this I have to express some reservations, though of course Erv has
the right to be enthusiastic or unenthusiastic about whatever he
wishes.

Most importantly, my *experience* shows that, even trying lots of
different harmonic timbres, I fail to notice any special 'dissonance'
or 'painfulness' at or around Phi (833.09 cents).

To me, the most dissonant or painful intervals are concentrated in a
region between a sixth-tone and a semitone, though this can vary
somewhat as a function of register and timbre. There are similar
bands of dissonant/painful intervals around the sharp and flat
octave, the sharp and flat fifth, etc.

When trying equal tuning systems with large numbers of notes per
octave, there is no significant difference between their abilities to
capture these most discordant intervals.

Therefore, among such systems, the maximum potential for contrast,
resolution, etc. is to be had in the ones with the best
approximations of the concordant intervals: the octave, the fifth,
and the other simple-integer frequency ratios.

It's true that Phi is "the most irrational number" in many
mathematical and even physical senses. But this is meaningless to the
musician unless it's tied to how we hear. According to every model of
*psychoacoustic* intervallic concordance/discordance that I've seen,
including my own harmonic entropy model, Phi is not any kind of
maximum of discordance, while out-of-tune unisons, octaves, etc.
certainly are.

If anyone has any empirical observations about Phi to share, either
contradicting or corroborating what I say, this would be a good place
to put them -- especially if accompanied by audible examples. I know
a *scale* of Phi intervals has some special properties, with first-
order difference tones coinciding with lower scale notes, but that's
a different issue. Theoretical arguments about Phi, though, would
probably best be continued on one of the other lists.

🔗Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@...>

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Erlich" <perlich@a...>
wrote:

> On this I have to express some reservations, though of course Erv
has
> the right to be enthusiastic or unenthusiastic about whatever he
> wishes.
>
> Most importantly, my *experience* shows that, even trying lots of
> different harmonic timbres, I fail to notice any
special 'dissonance'
> or 'painfulness' at or around Phi (833.09 cents).

Phi is the least well approximated number, and hence low-integer-
ratio approximations cluster around it. It is close to 8/5, even
closer to 13/8, and closer yet to 21/13. None of this suggests pain
to me, nor does there seem to be any point in trying for
approximations of algebraic numbers per se, since there seems to be
nothing in our mechanism of hearing which picks them out. A timbre
synthesized to have only Fibonacci overtones would be interesting
from a phi point of view, however. If we used only 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13,
21 as our partials, the critical band dissonance would have a pattern
very different than that of most periodic timbres.

> To me, the most dissonant or painful intervals are concentrated in
a
> region between a sixth-tone and a semitone, though this can vary
> somewhat as a function of register and timbre. There are similar
> bands of dissonant/painful intervals around the sharp and flat
> octave, the sharp and flat fifth, etc.

I agree; the maximum of dissonance seems to me to be about a quarter
tone.

🔗Joseph Pehrson <jpehrson@...>

🔗kylegann1955 <kgann@...>

🔗Paul Erlich <perlich@...>

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "kylegann1955" <kgann@e...>
wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Wishing no offense to anyone, I will venture to say I'm a little
> nonplussed by all the talk about which ET is a good one to start off
> with in learning microtonality. I've been teaching a tuning class
> since January, and we've learned all the JI 3-limit intervals,
> 5-limit, 7-limit, 11-limit, and now we're on 13, 17, and 19. Next
> week, after three months, we'll finally look at some ET tunings and
> see which ones offer what intervals we've already learned. I can't
> imagine going about it backwards and teaching 17tet, 19tet, 22tet,
and
> so on first - it would feel like teaching people to read first and
> then the alphabet later. I can't figure how you'd explain the
> advantages and disadvantages of an ET without first knowing what the
> different intervals *mean*.
> Even within the little microtonal universe there are different
> worlds.... To each his own. :^)

For what it's worth, my belief is that intervals mean different
things in different contexts, no matter how they're tuned. And no
interval means any more or any less than any other -- it's just that
some intervals and chords are harmonically *clearer* than others.

When you get up to scales, even this clarity criterion no longer
*necessarily* maximized by JI tuning. IMHO.

Well wishes,
Paul

🔗Paul Erlich <perlich@...>

🔗Daniel Wolf <djwolf1@...>

Paul Erlich wrote:

> > he realized that it had not only good representations of small
> integer
> > ratios through the 11-limit, but that it also had an excellent
> > representation of Phi, the ratio perhaps furthest away from the JI
> > pleasure garden.
>
> On this I have to express some reservations, though of course Erv has
> the right to be enthusiastic or unenthusiastic about whatever he
> wishes.
>
> Most importantly, my *experience* shows that, even trying lots of
> different harmonic timbres, I fail to notice any special 'dissonance'
> or 'painfulness' at or around Phi (833.09 cents).
>
> To me, the most dissonant or painful intervals are concentrated in a
> region between a sixth-tone and a semitone, though this can vary
> somewhat as a function of register and timbre. There are similar
> bands of dissonant/painful intervals around the sharp and flat
> octave, the sharp and flat fifth, etc.

Paul,

Personally, and with harmonic timbres, the interval phi by itself is the least descript, most anonymous interval I have encountered (I think Tenney did his "barbershop pole" piece "For Ann Rising" based on this interval; the all-portamento movement of my strong trio also features this). However, scales built from phi are definitely painful with plenty of intervals close to or smaller than a semitone.

DJW

🔗ZipZapPooZoo <chris@...>

Why do we keep assuming that dissonance causes "pain"?

I mean, from where is the claim coming that beating causes pain?

Has anyone hear listened to Alvin Lucier? There's lots of beating
in that music. . . . but I find it very pleasurable to listen to.
The moments when there isn't beating are actually quite flat and
boring, but as soon as the ole' glissando moves along and beats are
flying out at me. . . it sound great. No pain there.

Even music with big clusters. . . I don't find it "painful".

When music causes me to have a "headache" or to feel pain, it's
usually "cognitive" pain, as opposed to "physical" pain. In other
words, not due to the sensation of individual intervals, but
rather, to not being able to follow the music, in terms of form or
harmonic rhythm, or whatever.

thus when "lay folk" hate the Webern Symphony, or Cage's Concert for
Prepared Piano (a piece I still find very difficult to follow), I
suspect that it's less because of the "minor ninths" or other
dissonances, than it is because they just have no way of following
it, of making sense of it.

🔗Daniel Wolf <djwolf1@...>

ZipZapPooZoo wrote:

> Why do we keep assuming that dissonance causes "pain"?
>
> I mean, from where is the claim coming that beating causes pain?
>
> Has anyone hear listened to Alvin Lucier? There's lots of beating
> in that music. . . . but I find it very pleasurable to listen to. > The moments when there isn't beating are actually quite flat and
> boring, but as soon as the ole' glissando moves along and beats are
> flying out at me. . . it sound great. No pain there.
>
> Even music with big clusters. . . I don't find it "painful".
>
> When music causes me to have a "headache" or to feel pain, it's
> usually "cognitive" pain, as opposed to "physical" pain. In other
> words, not due to the sensation of individual intervals, but
> rather, to not being able to follow the music, in terms of form or
> harmonic rhythm, or whatever. >
>

In my postings, I refered to a sensory pain, precisely like that when one eats chili peppers. People have strong and widely varying opinions on the desireability and proportion of chili peppers in their diet, likewise on dissonance in music. I happen to be as disastisfied with bland food as with bland harmony. (And "bland" is itself contextual -- a 12-(or 13- or 14- ...) tone piece with an undifferentiated surface* may be just as bland as a chorale composed only of the simplest triads).

I have no doubt that the "cognitive" dimension is also important, and in the right settings, perhaps more important. One feature in some early works of Satie is a reversal in the consonance/dissonance classification of vertical intervals; thirds, fifths, sixths occur on weak beats and "resolve" into fourths, seconds and sevenths. Whether through compositional skill or sleight-of-hand, he appeals to cognition over sensation and manages to overide the usual consonance/dissonance regime. But I have to say this with a caveat -- part of my enjoyment of Satie is recognizing that he is subverting the usual order of things, but in my recognition of that subversion, am I not simultaneously reifying that usual order?

Alvin Lucier was my dissertation advisor, so your description strikes me as right on -- but isn't it the contrast to the flatness of the unisons that makes the beating so vivid?

DJW

* This is more an observation for the SpecMus list than for here, but could it be that the greatest failing in a lot of 12-tone music is its egodic character: any random sample is going to sound statistically pretty much like any other sample; in contrast, in a work of La Monte Young or Alvin Lucier, the focus on the most local scale of activity forces the listener to locate contrasts more readily. So the paradox of the working containing everything becoming more boring with longer exposure, while the work with nearly nothing just gets more interesting all the time!

Re: various - any tuning is potentially a good tuning - for someone.

🔗Robert Walker <robertwalker@...>

🔗Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@...>

🔗Jacob <jbarton@...>

🔗Daniel Wolf <djwolf1@...>

🔗kylegann1955 <kgann@...>

🔗Jonathan M. Szanto <JSZANTO@...>

🔗kylegann1955 <kgann@...>

🔗Rick McGowan <rick@...>

🔗Paul Erlich <perlich@...>

🔗Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@...>

🔗Joseph Pehrson <jpehrson@...>

🔗Joseph Pehrson <jpehrson@...>

🔗kylegann1955 <kgann@...>

🔗Paul Erlich <perlich@...>

🔗Paul Erlich <perlich@...>

🔗Daniel Wolf <djwolf1@...>

🔗ZipZapPooZoo <chris@...>

🔗Daniel Wolf <djwolf1@...>

🔗Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@...>

🔗Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@...>

🔗Joseph Pehrson <jpehrson@...>