notations/Fonville

Reply to Jonathan Walker's comment:

That's an interesting point about Fonville's misunderstanding of the
OT/UT concept; it's especially funny to me since this is the very point
on which I was just corrected by David Doty regarding my new article in
1/1, to be found in the next issue (whenever that comes out).

I stand by my recommendation, however, that John Fonville's
"Perspectives" artcile is the best introduction on Johnston's notation
written so far. In spite of his confusion with labeling intervals as
"otonal" or "utonal", it is a concise and clear introduction to Just
Intonation as Ben applies it, and especially to his notational
system--the best which I have found so far for extended JI (excluding
Dan Wolf's alterations to this system, which seem to be worthy of
canonization except that it seems to me that if one uses Ben's notation,
then it is easier to use Ben's performers. Perhaps Dan should explain
his take on the whole thing (using a 3-limit focus instead of Ben's
5-limit bias; if Dan doesn't remember our conversation, perhaps he can think
back to Krems an die Donau... he taught me quite a bit an a late-night
steak house). Fonvilles small article is certainly clearer than Von
Gunden's book, and also more concise than Doty's, which spreads JI and
extended JI over many chapters.

My biggest problems with this notation involve complicated chains of
accidentals, and I'm trying to figure out a good way to use key signatures.

If you have a real gripe and would like to set Fonville straight, I
suggest that you write him at San Diego State University before he
completes his large book on Ben's quartets, which will certainly include
a
chapter on this subject.

As soon as I check out your material on generalizing this notation for
meantone, perhaps we can discuss this off-the-list. I'm not very well
versed in meantones, though.

Yours,
Adam

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