What? No lectures on ratios?

Someone asked via e-mail about how I'd do a "Traditional Values"
non12TET program and what I was planning to run. I thought I'd
mention what I've pretty much completely decided to do because I've
realized in a flash that my engagements *here* have had some sort
of effect on the content.

As it currently stands, I've made the decision to be *extremely*
clear that what I've chosen to broadcast is in no way a "canonical"
view - it's an arbitrary circle drawn according to the recordings
I could easily acquire, listener requests, etc. I'd also initially thought
that I'd bombard listeners with *lots* of little example pieces - but
I've opted instead to go for much longer performances which ought to
include ample time for the novice ear to start responding in a more
comfortable fashion. Finally, I think I've managed to get my hands on
a copy of LaMonte's "The Turtle - His Dreams and Journeys" on the
positively ancient Jazz Edition X label (yep - the one with Jon Hassell
and Tony Conrad, et. al.) - it seems a shame *not* to present a good
chunk of it, given its archival interest. So the program will pretty much
break up into looking at a couple of "kinds" of microtonalists - the
"outsiders" like Harry and Ivor (a tip of the hat to Ives here), some work
from those awful "academic" sorts who actually worked in the stuff
(Ben J. and Easley B. - hey, that sounds like a rap group!), and some
stuff from LaMonte and Terry (with a nod to the influence of Pandit
Pran Nath and non-western sources in general) as exemplars of the
20 or 30-year-old experimental/minimal wing. I can keep one of my
long-time listeners who's pestered me to hear the Columbia discs of
Partch's "Delusion of the Fury" happy, too.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I think that part of this program is
starting rather to drift from a position of polemic (that is, an exercise
in the didactic) toward one in which we let the listener's *ears* do the
initial work, and then suggest in program #2 (*you* lot) that this isn't
merely a kind of historically fenced curiousity, but instead a field in which
there's considerable idiosyncracy and range. I think that #3 is now cruising
toward contemporary performances of the older works (Ted Mook's Partch disc,
the Dean Drummond stuff) in addition to non-western musics outside of 12tET.

One of the interesting things about this broadcast thing involves watching a
given idea of collection of works "drift." I honestly think that I might have
had something considerably more didactic in mind - suggested by the recent
exchange of "course notes," perhaps. But what seems to be emerging is more
something more for the ears. Does this mean that my choice to foreground the
WORK rather than the ideas and equations mean that I'm channelling Brian?

:-)

Gregory

_
When I pronounce the word Future,/the first syllable already belongs to the
past./When I pronounce the word Silence,/I destroy it./When I pronounce the
word Nothing,/I make something no nonbeing can hold./ (Wislawa Szymborska)
Gregory Taylor, Heurikon Corp.
http://www.msn.fullfeed.com/~gtaylor/home.html



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