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Systematizing Tuning Again

🔗Gary Morrison <71670.2576@...>

12/21/1996 9:50:20 AM
As I was wading through my past messages, I came upon those I sent
regarding the question of whether there's value in systematizing tunings.
That as opposed to playing whatever pitch you need at the moment. As I did
saw them, an analogy to why I think there is value in systematizing tuning
came to mind.

It may be analogy that some list subscribers can relate to, perhaps
others not, since it is an analogy to particle physics. (And of course,
this is just my opinion; others might disagree entirely.)

In one of my favorites from my video library, a particle physicist said
the following (this is an approximate quote anyway), "The standard model of
the Universe is very powerful. It explains so much, but it's not complete.
It's main flaw is an asthetic flaw: it's too complicated. Ever since the
ancient Greeks put us on our current line of inquire, we've had this
prejudice that there's something simple underlying it all. Well, six
quarks and six leptons, coming in different 'colors', and in their
antiparticle forms, is too complicated."

In short, what they're fighting is the sense they have that, if they
ever encounter anything they can't explain, they just patch up their theory
by contriving a new particle, rather than finding a way that
well-understood particles or forces can explain that phenomenon. (Of
course, those particles are not contrived though in the sense that that
particle must actually be detected in a particle accelerator before it is
accepted to exist.)

In analogy, using a coherent system of pitches rather than just
inventing a new pitch whenever you run into a new compositional problem to
solve, I believe can lead to more meaningful musical results.

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Date: Sat, 21 Dec 1996 13:18:34 -0800
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