My "Self-Denying Ordinance"

Hello, there, Jacob and everyone, and thank you for giving me the
opportunity to announce what I might call a "self-denying ordinance"
in response to your very topical and practical post about 15-tET.

That personal policy is that, generally, I'll refrain in MMM from
giving advice, attempting detailed evaluations, or proposing
counterpoint guidelines (always implying a stylistic viewpoint or
preference, of course) for tunings that I haven't actually used.

While I could discuss my experience with 20-tET, a "related" tuning
which shares the 5-tET set, lots of the other intervals are different,
and also your stylistic intentions or preferences might be quite
different from mine.

In another forum, or in private e-mail, I might offer some guesses as
to progressions you might try in 15, based on what I've done in 20, or
what looks theoretically interesting (to me) -- say, using some of the
thirds in 15 to write an adaptation of a 16th-century cadence or the
like. Here, I'd prefer to stick what I've done -- or, at least, am
about to try in a tuning with which I'm at least a little acquainted.

By the way, my decision at present to provide ASCII notation rather
than sound files for my examples in 14-tET is only because of my
technical situation. While I can use Scala to produce MIDI files
by coding an ASCII text file with commands for things like note
numbers in a given scale and duration, and then use the "example"
command in Scala to generate a MIDI file and proofread the output with
a utility rendering an ASCII "translation" plus a GNU Emacs Calc
routine to translate pitchbend messages into cents, the system I'm
using doesn't have any sound card or the like. With a timbre-sensitive
tuning like 14-tET as applied to a neo-medieval style with fifths and
fourths as perfect concords, I'd prefer not to post something in a
registration that I haven't heard.

Obviously I'd much prefer to put the sound itself out there, with the
notation as a supplement for those who might want it rather than a
much inferior substitute (hearing my synthesizer timbre might also
saying something about how much beating I'm willing to take in stride
or what my notion of "reasonably smooth concord" is).

This has meant making a cassette recording, and sending it out to
someone helpful who can translate it into a sound file -- with very
high artistry in the case of someone like Jacky Ligon.

Anyway, in dealing with this situation at the moment, I can at least
stick on MMM to discussing tunings that I've actually used -- adding,
in the case of 15-tET, that composers such as Easley Blackwood and
Brian McLaren have used it and recorded pieces in it.

Most appreciatively,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@...