New Post from Brian

From: mclaren
Subject: miscellany
--
Paul Erlich's problems with his VFX-SD seem
vaguely similar to glitches in my VFX before
it was returned to the factory for a ROM
upgrade. The initial ROMs on the early VFXs
had some bugs in the INTERPOLATE function:
prior to the ROM upgrade, my VFX produced some
extremely bizarre scales during INTERPOLATE
and EXTRAPOLATE. Perhaps a ROM upgrade?
Steve Curtin can tell you how to find out the
ROM version--the procedure involves holding
down a number of buttons at once, can't
recall which ones.
Because the VFX has a 1.5625 cent resolution,
but shows intervals in cents, some equal
temperaments won't exhibit accumulated
roundoff error at the octave after INTERPOLATE
(i.e., the ETs which divide nearly evenly into 768)
while others will.
As Steve Curtin points out, none of these minor
bugs are important. At worst, you can simply
enter the octave scale step by step into the synth
and then press EXTRAPOLATE.
The VFX sounds to these old ears like one of the
most sonically luxuriant synthesizers available.
The original VFX and the VFX-SD sound even more
impressive to me than the later-generation TS-10/12.
The VFX is one of the great classic synths--in a
class with the Arp 2600, the Moog 90x modular,
the Prophet 5, the Oberheim 4-voice, the DX-7,
the Synergy II+.
Steve Curtin is right on the money when he says
that Ensoniq makes the best-sounding fully
retunable wavetable synths. Nothing else
compares with the VFX/TS-10 series. And not
only do these Ensoniq synths sound great, they've
got *multiple tuning tables.* This is A HUGE
ADVANTAGE. JI composers/performers, take note:
with the TS-10's 16 different tuning tables,
you can do a *lot* of just intonation modulation
with no trouble at all.
--
In a post nasty, brutish and short, a certain
forum subscriber claimed for the Nth time that since
Bang On A Can now plays at Lincoln Center, this
somehow invalidates my criticism of the Alice Tully
Hall/Lincoln Center/Juilliard Conservatory 12-TET
mindset.
Hello?
Was there a visit from the Brain Fairy? Did someone
find a quarter under hi/r pillow and daylight shining
through both ears?
In fact Bang On A Can moved to Lincoln Center *very*
recently, *despite* the vociferous protests of the
Mostly Mozart fans (who have found their programs
of moldy mediocre music suddenly curtailed).
For most of its life, the Bang On A Can festival
took place in grotty little clubs and dingy basements.
The Bang On A Can concerts *only* moved to Lincoln
Center because of the overwhelming demand by
the hoi polloi who couldn't get into the SRO
concerts in grungy closet-sized "art galleries"
& basement "performance spaces."
(Q: What do you call a bathroom in New York?
A: Performance art space.)
Given the hostility of the Lincoln Center establishment,
Bang On A Can will likely vanish from Alice Tully
Hall any day now.
Naturally this does not *in any way* invalidate my
criticism of the Alice Tully Hall/Lincoln Center/
Juilliard Conservatory 12-TET mindset.
The specimen of warped logic according to which my
posts on this subject were criticized is a classic case
of the reductive fallacy, equivalent to saying that because
a few Jews escaped Hitler's gas chambers, there
was no Holocaust.
Logic 101, anyone?
"All rocks are living organisms;
All animals are rocks;
Therefore...all animals are living organisms!"
Marvellous!
Merely because one lone group which *sometimes*
plays microtonal music was forced into Lincoln
Center by popular demand does *not* mean that
Juilliard Conservatory has stopped brainwashing
its students into playing 12, always 12, only
12, forever 12.
Merely because a few microtonalists sneak in the
back door of Alice Tully Hall does *not* mean that
the directors and concert managers and 99.99999+ of
the musical programs in Alice Tully Hall are no
longer locked rigidly into 12, always 12, only 12,
forever 12.
Merely because three of Harry Partch's instruments
appeared once in one (count it, 1) composition by
Julia Wolfe at Lincoln Center does *not* mean that
all of the prestigious uptown music venues in New
York no longer freeze out microtonalists and no longer
concentrate with unholy fervor on music in
12, always 12, only 12, forever 12.
Ye gods.
Is that what passes for reasoning in college
nowadays?
I thought I'd heard it all when Brooke Shields chirped
"Smoking can kill you, and if you're killed you've lost
the most important part of your life," but the twisted
logic behind this kind of criticism is a new low.
A single black person escapes lynching, therefore
there's no oppression of blacks in the deep South...?
A handful of microtonalists sneak into Lincoln
Center, therefore there's no prejudice against
and systematic refusal to program non-12 music
throughout New York symphony halls...?
For sheer warped twists of bizarre illogic, this kind
of wacky reasoning takes first prize.
As Molly Ivins has pointed out, instead of
making English the official language throughout
the U.S., we ought to make sanity the official method
of reasoning.
A word to the wise, folks--the book "Clear Thinking"
was written by Hyman Ruchlis and published by
Prometheus Press in 1990.
Do us all a favor. Pick up a copy.
--
In a similar vein, various people claim my critique
of the12-TET academic/symphonic/conservatory
mindset constitutes some sort of "conspiracy
theory" on my part.
A forum subscriber who need not be named has
for more than a year persistently and flagrantly
made this constant error in reasoning.
And so (since no one else seems to want to stand
up for clear thinking) as usual it's up to me to
expose the obvious fallacy.
There are two logical errors here.
The first is the conclusion that because a
pervasive and profoundly damaging mindset
exists throughout our culture, therefore some
sort of "conspiracy" exists.
The latter does not necessarily follow from the
former.
No "conspiracy" is required for a damaging
and ruthless and universally shared mindset
to exist & flourish & oppress. Think back a
moment to the early 60s, when all those
repulsive fat Southern sheriffs waddled up
to Northern news reporters while black people
were being lynched, shot, hosed, clubbed and
savaged with dogs for demanding equal rights
under the constitution. The fat white Southern
sheriff would invariably tip back his hat,
stare at the reporter, and drawl, "What are you,
boyyyyy? Y'all some kinda CONSPIRACY THEORIST?
Ain't no CONSPIRACY down here, boyyyy. We
all just good ole folks down heahhhh."
No evidence suggests that all southerners
met in weekly groups and asked eached other "Hey,
how can we oppress them niggers this week?"
A conspiracy was *unnecessary*...
Because white people in the deep south had a
*mindset* according to which black people
were inferior, dangerous, smelly, vicious,
and subhuman.
And so the net effect was the same as though
there had been a conspiracy. The net effect
was that black people were systematically
oppressed by white Southerners from 1865 until
1965.
This is the second logical error: confusing
cause with effect. Simply because a presumed
cause is not present does not invalidate the
existence of an observed effect. All it means
is that the presumed cause was wrongly
hypothesized. It does not conjure out of
existence the observable and clearly obvious
effect.
Thus, simply because there is no "conspiracy"
among symphony directors and college
music teachers and conservatory teachers
does *NOT* mean that microtonalists aren't
systematically marginalized, oppressed,
denied recognition and refused performance
venues.
Rather, this merely means that microtonalists
suffer from systematic prejudice and oppression
because of a pervasive mindset, rather than some
sort of conspiracy.
And so what?
C'mon, people...elementary logic here. This isn't
quantum mechanics. You can reason it out.
Does it matter AT ALL whether microtonalists
are being marginalized and denied recognition
because of a conspiracy, or because of a mindset,
or for some other exotic reason?
Who cares *why* it's happening?
The point is, IT'S HAPPENING.
The fact exists that microtonalists are systematically
refused space in music textbooks, systematically
refused time at concerts, systematically refused
performance opportunities, systematically refused,
denied, prevented, shut out, marginalized, excluded,
locked out, silenced.
Get a clue. The *result* is what matters. Not the
presumptive cause.
Ai caramba. Don't they teach elementary logic in the
universities any more...?
The goal of higher education is supposed to be to
train people how to *think.* In that case, we
might as well close all the universities tomorrow
and turn 'em into hot dog stands. Because the goal is
*nowhere* in sight.
--
Some time back I stated that "In the era of
wooden machines (viz., the piano, the harpsichord)
it would have been impossibly difficult &
expensive to build a 5-octave instrument with
31 equal tones to the octave. If such an instrument
could have been built, its keys would have been
too narrow to be fingered; and the instrument
itself would have been too mechanically complex
and too fragile to survive an actual performance."
-- mclaren
Manuel Op de Coul responded: "No no. More expensive yes,
impossible to build not and well playable. See my post of
13 aug. 1994..." Manuel goes on to describe a harpsichord
with 6 manuals of 37 keys tuned in 31-TET and built
in 1796, for which Mozart wrote some little pieces.
While this is fascinating, the wretched lack of pictures
on the Internet (a crude stone-age communcations medium
*far* more low-tech than the letter, which at least allows
xeroxes of photographs to be included) puts me at a loss
here.
Manuel, how far are the key rows situated from one another
vertically?
Could, for instance, Beethoven's Hammerklavier sonata be
performed on it? How about highly chromatic polyphonic
passages? Could you play Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue
on this 1796 31-TET contraption?
How easily can 31-TET chromatic passages be performed? Or
is this keyboard you mentioned useful only for playing 12-out-of
31-TET?
My examination of the pre-Maudslay-lathe technology of the 1700s
tells me that exotic non-12 harpsichords/pianos/clavichords with
lots of keys had to be either [A] so complex that their wooden
key-actions wouldn't work for long without repair, or [B] due
to mechanical considerations, the keys were so awkwardly arranged
as to either prevent truly chromatic microtonal passages, or
performance of standard 12-TET works.
Any details you could give in this regard, Manuel, would be most
interesting. (I mention Maudslay because of course his lathe,
invented in the 1840s, was the start of the modern machine
tool revolution and thus of the modern symphony orchestra,
whose instruments cannot be tuned accurately sans precision
machine tools. Since you're all scholars, you have of course
never heard of Henry Maudslay, nor has anyone mentioned or noticed
his importance to the growth of the modern symphony orchestra.)
--
The redoubtable Paul Erlich posted in digest 755:
"There is indeed a tonality diamond on p. 22 of `The Musician's
Arithmetic.' It gives cents values for all 16 seven-limit intervals,
transposed to within one octave. Of course, four of these intervals
are 0 cents. So Partch most likely did get the idea from Meyer, but
he rotated it 90 degrees counterclockwise." -- Paul Erlich
Erlich is one of the few members of this tuning forum to actually
show some gumption and study some references. Most of you
prefer to sit around with your fingers stuck in your noses, posting
trivial nitpicks on this or that item of minutia--rather than
getting the "Exposition" did not admit undertones
as the source of intervals, and therefore it implies that
earlier drafts of the "Exposition" did not contain the
Tonality Diamond.
Because of the timing of the Meyer and Cowell books, either
one could have influenced Partch in his discovery of the
Tonality Diamond--or both.
The plot thickens because (as John Chalmers pointed out)
the Meyer text was published as a part of a special series
not available in most libraries. Did Partch have access to
a library in which the Meyer text was available?
We don't know.
It seems impossible to determine which of the two
texts had most influence on Partch. It does seem clear,
given Partch's redaction of his typewritten text of 1933,
that the idea of the Tonality Diamond was already present
in the back of his mind. Thus both the Meyer and Cowell books
likely did not give him the idea directly, but rather served
as midwives to an inspiration already present and waiting
to be born. (My guess is that Partch read both books prior
to 1931, but this is only a guess.)
This is one among a number of new data presented in an
article titled "The Evolution of Harry Partch's Tuning
System." Naturally, it will when published be treated
with the utmost contempt and disdain, and thus I look
forward to yet another important article never
being cited, never being mentioned, never being noticed.
Gosh. What a surprise. Folks, it's easy to tell who the
significant composers and theorists are in any generation--
they're the ones who are *never mentioned in the presitigious
journals*, *never cited in the music theory literature*, *never
heard*, *never acknowledged.* Thus, the one composer most
completely rendered an Orwellian unperson by the musical
establishment of the 1950s-1970s (Harry Partch) is accurately
described by Kyle Gann in his latest Village Voice article
as "the central American composer" of the last half of the
20th century.
Naturally!
Typically!
Inevitably!
Is there a limit to human stupidity? Is there some boundary
to human obtuseness?
Is not the most convincing proof of the existence of intelligent
life elsewhere in the universe the fact that none of it has tried
to contact us?
--
Incidentally, those of you curious about the number of pitches
of an n by n Tonality Diamond need wonder no longer. The
number of pitches is n^2 - n. Thus, the 6 x 6 Tonality
Diamond has 36 - 6 = 29 essential utonal/otonal pitches.
Notice that this is *not* the same as giving the answer
to the question: "How many pitches are there in an n-limit
Tonality Diamond?" This latter question cannot be
computed in closed form because specifying the limit
of the Diamond does not necessarily specify the number
of n by n rows/columns of the Diamond.
For example, a 17-limit Tonality Diamond could be
built from the generator row 3 5 7 11 13 1 7 and
the generator column /3 /5 /7 /11 /13 /17.
Buboth
utonalities and otonalities.
--mclaren






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