88CET #25: Recommendations

This is it. The end. The last one. The last in my series on 88CET. Of
course that doesn't mean that I will not be talking about it anymore, but it's
the last in this series serialized from my up-coming Xenharmonikon text. In
this one, I'll present you some suggestions for what you might want to do with
88CET tuning.

Unlike Lucy or Yasser, or to some degree Partch, I certainly don't claim that
88CET provides a revolutionary new framework in which to study xenharmonics.
But it certainly is a distinctive-sounding tuning with some powerful
capabilities. It's an efficient tuning in the sense that it provides a wide
variety of musical resources - traditional as well as nontraditional - from a
very small number of tones per octave.

88CET is certainly unusual, being a nonoctave-based, and having
nontraditional thirds. As such, it takes time to get comfortable with it. For
example, many find the 9:7 supramajor third very difficult to accept at first.
So, if you're looking for a tuning whose possibilities blossom into exciting new
music within a few hours, 88CET is definitely not for you. But 88CET certainly
produces surprising, tantalizing, and unique results, probably more than
average, once you work your way over that hurdle.

If you're looking for a tuning that works nicely on traditional instruments,
then you're in luck for certain types of instruments, but not others. It maps
very well to traditional keyboards, so it works great on electronic instruments.
It doesn't require you to spread an octave over a large span of the keyboard.
It can also map nicely to orchestral strings (21221 pattern spanning across a
perfect fifth), but it poses problems on many wind instruments.

Another question to ask is whether to approach 88CET using Bill Sethares'
mapped timbres or to leave the overtone spectra unmodified. Probably the most
important criterion for answering that question is whether you want to compose
for the somewhat bell-like qualities of these mapped timbres or for more
traditional instrument qualities. I have intentionally composed most of my
88CET work for simulations of traditional instruments, mostly to avoid changing
too many variables at once. At this early stage in exploring a new tuning,
there is a risk of the music being perceived as "nondescriptly strange".
Perhaps with these traditional-timbral works available, audiences hearing music
with additional unusual qualities will be able to separate out what oddness is
due to tuning and what are due to other factors.

The second most important criterion for deciding whether to compose for
traditional or mapped timbres is whether you want to build your music around the
14-step pseudo-octave. Clearly this significantly changes your approach to
harmonization.

But, whatever approach you take to 88CET, be patient, and try out the
particular ideas I've presented in these postings. It's alien territory, so
it's easy to stumble upon some really dreadful discords. It takes time to find
locate consonances, whether traditional or nontraditional, and figure out how to
use them. But once you do, I think you'll find it an intriguing tuning.


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Well John, it's pretty hopeless to ask a couple hundred tuning-heads to avoid
editorializing when somebody as authoritative as the Harvard guys say something
as ... "distasteful" I suppose ... as that!

Yeah, I've heard that Harvard definition of JI before ("any tuning that
incorporates five or more acoustically pure types of intervals within the
octave"). I personally doubt if it's refering to what it sounds like it's
refering, and it's certainly vague whatever it's refering to.

First of all, it never defined "acoustically pure". "Equal to an untempered
small whole number frequency ratio" would be a reasonable guess, but of course
then they'd have to define "small".

Second, it doesn't define "types" of intervals. Are the fifths from scale
steps 1-5 and 2-6 (regardless of their tuning) different "type"s, or is this
sort of typing independent of position in the scale? If it's independent of
position in the scale, is the fifth from 7-11(4) - a diminished fifth - of the
same "type" as the other fifths? Are all perfect consonances one type, major
another, and minor another?

Third, it doesn't clarify whether "within an octave" includes an octave or
not. That sounds nit-picky I know, but if you've got four other than the
octave, you've got to know the answer.

Here's how I suspect that definition came about: They got the number five
from the number of exact 3:2 perfect fifths in the circle forming the historical
Ptolemaic tuning. In that tuning, the fifths between scale-degrees 4-8(1), 1-5,
5-9(2), 6-10(3), and 3-7 are exact 3:2 fifths. 7-11(4) is not perfect, and 2-6
is where the circle breaks by inserting a comma-flat fifth. At that point, I
suspect they took that number 5 and, without thoroughly understanding the
question, wrapped what turned out to be deeply ambiguous words around it. I'm
speculating here of course.

But let me make one very important point: I suspect that it's difficult to
support the idea that the definition of just intonation has been invariant over
the centuries, and over the various schools of Western music. JI enthusiasts,
and most others knowledgible of tuning ideas, take it to mean - essentially -
the opposite of temperament. But one can probably argue fairly successfully
that the definition was far more narrow in earlier times. I doubt if Ptolemy's
followers would have viewed Monophony as just intonation. Considering that
(according to Dave Hill) Rameau rejected 7:4 as a basic harmonic building block,
I suspect that they probably would have viewed Monophony instead as more like
cacophony! Fortunately for Partch fans like me, the realm of musical
possibilities is far more experimental nowadays.

(I'm sorry John; I accidentally deleted your message before I got a chance
to answer - to you directly - the two specific questions you asked. If you'd
like me to answer them specifically, please resend them to me personally.)


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