Beginner hits comma, survives crash.

I've been having an off-list discussion with Paul E about 22TET, and
as part of that discussion he had me try to execute an I-IV-ii-V-I
progression in 22. To satisfy my own curiousity, I decided to try it
in several tunings back to back, and see how they compared.
[Actually, I had done I-IV-ii-V-i the first time. I later went back
and did everything to end on I, and then added the JI experiment.]
Paul thought that my impressions of the effect of the tunings I used
might make an interesting seed for discussion, so here they are.


Neither 12 or 19 presented a comma problem, but the sound or mood of the
scales were quite different, and I personally preferred 19. I found
12 to be somewhat blunt and somewhat jarring in impact, yet sharp or
edgy in quality; metal chains came to mind. 19 on the other hand,
sounded sweet and lush, and suggested rain forest or some other dense
vegetation. This makes me wonder whether 19 is "better" for diatonic
music that 12? [I know there's plenty of more complex music that
could be done in both, but I'm not there yet, as I'm still slowly
working my way toward musicianship.]


Next up was 22. I used the tones necessary to construct a proper
minor triad, and, as I was about to discover in a big way, this
resulted in comma shifts in both outer voices, which is what Paul was
hoping to illustrate to me. The result, as I described it to him last
week, was "as close as a sound has ever come to conveying nausea to
me". The first time I heard it, the sensation was almost physical,
and this was true on a couple of repeated listening as well, if I were
relaxed and letting myself get lost in the sound. If I were being
more the engineer about it, is simply sounded disturbing and out of
tune.


Lastly was the solution I had worked out in solving the puzzle Paul
had given me. By taking the ii as a diminished triad, everything fell
nicely into place. The overall effect was pretty close to what I felt
in the 12 or 19 versions, but there was more contrast, and an added
tension I hadn't heard before. Rather that wet, lush forest, this was
a semi-alien landscape, not sparse by any means, but more intense, and
with a broader spectrum of colors. I described it to Paul as being
like a cactus garden, but there's more to it than that. I guess this
is what it feels like to discover a "new" world, as opposed to a
different rendition of familiar things?


Since then, I followed up and tried the progression in 5-limit JI as
well. It was not nearly so bad as the comma-ridden version in 22, more
like a sour grape in a fruit salad, but the comma shift still made the
chords sound "wrong" somehow. I presume it was more tolerable because
the commas were only half as large as in the 22TET rendition. Can
anyone offer an explanation for this?


I'm sure this is old hat for most of you, but I got quite a first hand
education from it, and I'm hoping it'll result in some discussion
nonetheless. I feel like I've found that unknown something that I was
looking for in 22, so I'm pretty excited, and giving thought to having
an instrument built.


Thanks for listening,

Steve




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> Seriously, I don't think most folks listen to what tuning a piece
> of music is in, they listen, on whatever level, to the music, and
> that should come first. If it piques them somehow, they'll buy it.
> If what piques them is something that can't be reproduced in 12,
> *then* you might have a "convert".

I think that Steven is right here with three caveats:
1. There are other musical markets than pop, not to suggest for a moment
that
addressing the pop market isn't deadly critical. For example, one
other
market I personally think also very valuable to pounce on is film
music.
2. Within the pop market there's a 2-5% or so residual that would find
even
moderately subtle differences (like strictly diatonic music implemented
in
19 compared to 12) curious-sounding. A valuable strategy, I believe,
is
to use the other 95-98% to bouy up a xenharmonic song's popularity so
that
it can propagate to the attention of the target 2-5%. Within other
markets, where subtlty is more of a way of life (like classical, jazz,
or
the assorted "artsy" forms) there is a much bigger % awareness.
Obviously
in the case of movie music the awareness would be mostly subconscious.
3. It certainly is possible to make xenharmony very difficult to miss.
Microtonal chromatic runs (e.g., successive 34ths of an octave) make
unusual tunings a whole lot harder to miss than sticking with diatonic
melody. For example, starting on a diatonically-credible leading tone
and
then delaying resolution through several intermediate upward microtonal

steps, will get a lot of peoples' attention!

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