microtonal counterpoint

> thinking about earlier: how do you guys handle counterpoint in other
> tunings? Depending on the tuning system, the traditional counterpoint

Well, nothing wrong with just making up your own set of rules, composing
something, and hearing how they sound, and then modifying them if they
sound like ass.

One approach I've taken is to simply limit the allowable consonant
formations. For example, if you're in 22-tet, you might say, "the only
legal consonances are the (6?) tetrads outlined in Paul's article." Then
of course, you have to write themes and counter-themes that will "line up"
to produce these harmonies.

You could also allow for circumscribed dissonance a la
rennaisance--passing tones, suspensions, etc., whereby dissonance is
free pitch-wise (dissonances are not differentiated from one another), but
very constained rhythmically (weak beats, strong beats). No reason those
couldn't apply in a ET or JI scale.

So that would be a kind of traditional consonance/dissonance based,
probably at least vaguely tonal (or modal) counterpoint.

I can't remember exactly how, but I also applied this reasoning to a
little JI piece I did (with some tetrachords out of Divisions of the
Tetrachord) at http://music.columbia.edu/~chris/sounds/lou.mp3 .

;
;
;

Often I write counterpoint of serial rows, and I end up lining them up to
form a very circumscribed set of harmonies.

In this case, it's only one harmony, a 8:9:10:12:13:14 (translated into
19-tet):
http://music.columbia.edu/~chris/diss.familiar.htm#serial
See especially:
http://music.columbia.edu/~chris/diss.familiar.htm#sensitive

;
;
;

Both of these are just translating older procedures into
microtonal terms.

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Christopher Bailey <chris@m...>
wrote:
>
> Well, nothing wrong with just making up your own set of rules,
> composing something, and hearing how they sound, and then modifying
> them if they sound like ass.
>

Yes - or just composing without rules, than check what sounds good and
make rules out of it. This is the way I am tending to go with harmony,
too. (I am tempted to call this the "MakeMicroMusic approach", as
opposed to the "tuning-math approach"... *runningawayfast*)

>
> Often I write counterpoint of serial rows, and I end up lining them
up to
> form a very circumscribed set of harmonies.
>
> In this case, it's only one harmony, a 8:9:10:12:13:14 (translated
into
> 19-tet):
> http://music.columbia.edu/~chris/diss.familiar.htm#serial
> See especially:
> http://music.columbia.edu/~chris/diss.familiar.htm#sensitive
>

Interesting stuff. Yes - microtonal serialism is another field again...
--
Hans Straub
http://home.datacomm.ch/straub