another self-unmasking

Hi tuners!
I found non-twelve intervals at St John's College (the Great Books
school) during freshman lab, while studying the monochord. It was
immediately obvious to me that many deliscious notes were being absolutely
ignored. I spent the bulk of the time allotted to the monochord
listening to such lovely intervals as 8/7 7/6 12/11 7/4 etc. But I was
not satisfied with hearing them in stark isolation, so I built a simple
lyre to have a few of them in relation to one another. Since then I have
built several other lyres, a movable-fretted long-necked lute (which I
call "saz" the normal turkish name for this sort of thing-- I really
ought to call it "pandura"...), and a tetrahedral double zither: all
of which I tune up in more-or-less exotic versions of just intonation.
I recently bought an old DX-7 with the E! card, so there is a wholly
new set of approaches to microtonality opening up: it's real exciting!
When I play wind instruments, I am drawn to the exotic intervals, like
the neutral third which a recorder gives when you ignore the "normal"
forked fingerings. I especially like to treat it as a neutral second 12/11
by shifting the "do" or "sa". I am quite fond of Indian music, both
classical and folk; this spills over into fondness for drone-based highly
melodic styles. In 1980 I had the great fortune to hear a series of
lectures/concerts of Erv Wilson, Ivor Darreg, Johnny Glasier, et al. in
San Diego. I played for a single semester in the Partch Ensemble at
San Diego State, but did not manage the transition from St John's (pop.
300) to SDSU (pop. 30,000) at all well. I have continued playing in
small ensembles and listening to all the xenharmonic sounds I can find.
I have recently sung Lou Harrison's "Koro Sutro" *twice*. The first time
changed my life in an unexpected direction: it kindled my love of Esperanto
the international language. I am sure that many of you detwelvulators know
that Lou Harrison is a longtime advocate of Esperanto, but how many are
aware that Ivor Darreg also was an Esperantist? [John Chalmers told me
this.] I know that at least one other lurker has some experience with
this fresh, new language. I suspect that there is a kind of kinship
between the sense of discovery of fresh terrain which links new tunings
and this new language. I am beginning to integrate the two strains by
composing songs with Esperanto texts using xenharmonic modes. I am most
struck by the elegant simplicity of several of the pentatonic scales
described in Harrison's "Music Primer". Although I like to hear others'
works in dense fields of little intervals, I enjoy the spaciousness of
the pentatonic and hexatonic modes. This tuning list has been a constant
source of delight for me, especially the enthusiastic ravings of Brian
McLaren. I wish that the anti-Brian crowd would just learn to use a kill
file and stop complaining! I am deeply disturbed by suggestions of
censorship....
Keep those wild tunings happening!
Amike salutas vin
Miko.


Miko SLOPER elna@netcom.com USA (510) 653 0998
Direktoro de la ftp.netcom.com:/pub/el/elna fax (510) 653 1468
Centra Oficejo de la Learn Esperanto! Free lessons: e-mail/snail-mail
Esperanto-Ligo de N.A. Write to above address or call 1-888-2-ESPERANTO

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