Tomes's and Haverstick's universal patterns.

I tend to agree that the harmonic patterns may be able to
reveal many other patterns in the universe, yet I feel that
using WNR logic may be complicating matters, whereas a simple
spherical motion analysis a la Harrison may be more productive.

{Yes, I will get back to Matt N's comments, when I have run the
experiments and written up the methods that I use.}

In the 1700's John "Longitude" Harrison wrote a book about
musical tuning and navigation.
The biography of his life, "Longitude", by Dava Sobel is
currently in the worldwide bestsellers.

We have taken Harrison's musical ideas and used them to
produce a cassette album of microtuned world lullabies.

Every lullaby is traditional and instrumental.
Lyrics, sheetmusic. and teaching aids for music and geography
are included in the package.


You can download free sample loops of audio and find out more at:

["Wonderland In Orbit"]

http://www.wonderlandinorbit.com/projects/lullaby

(Free LucyTuned Lullaby loops, tech. info. on LucyTuning,
John "Longitude" Harrison's writings on musical tuning etc.)




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Will Grant wrote:

> ... Each time I tuned, I tried to find appropriate
> little personalities for each key. E and A were usually brilliant,
> and G and E-flat were usually sweet; but it was a game pursued
> for fun, and it was different every time.

Do you mean, perhaps, that the major thirds of the tonic triads in E
and A were closer to 81/64, whereas those in G and Eb were closer to
5/4? Or something along these lines?

> I think it is simply true that the well temperaments are
> attractive variations on ET, and they are indeed improvements
> upon ET.

The comparative merits of different tunings systems are relative to
the music you wish to play in them. 12TET would never have been
adopted as the normal keyboard tuning if well temperaments were
thought to be as suitable for Chopin as they were for Bach (I choose
Chopin because he explicitly demanded 12TET). Likewise, in the early
18th century, well-temperament would not have been adopted as a
keyboard norm if meantone temperaments answered all the needs of
musicians and composers at this time. No tuning is superior
simpliciter, but only superior (if at all) in relation to a specified
musical repertoire.

> ... in practice
> a well temperament is better even for serialism than a blank
> ET. It is true that one might want to retune keyboards in serial
> pieces from section to section, or even phrase to phrase, but
> that is no insurmountable problem with electronic instruments.

How so? What advantages could any well-temperament possibly offer for
serial music? Well-temperaments took the form they did because in the
period 1700-50 "white-notes" keys predominated, and modulations were
mainly local and not very far reaching, but the exceptions were
frequent enough for some compromise to be desirable (a compromise not
available within meantone systems, even given a couple of split keys).
Thus C major receives good (i.e. 5/4 or close) major thirds, while F#
major has to make do with near Pythagorean major thirds.
Well-temperaments were thus designed entirely to cope best with the
characteristics of the music of this period. Serial music shares none
of these characteristics; playing it on a well-tempered keyboard is no
doubt harmless fun, but to make claims that it _ought_ to be played
thus seem quite baseless.

--
Jonathan Walker
Queen's University Belfast
mailto:kollos@cavehill.dnet.co.uk
http://www.music.qub.ac.uk/~walker/


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On Mon, 3 Mar 1997, Jonathan Walker wrote:
> How so? What advantages could any well-temperament possibly offer for
> serial music?

One (at least) of the advantages of WT carries over pretty well from
tonal to serial music: because the intervallic relationships change
subtly as one modulates away from the home key (transposes the tonerow),
the formal structure of the music can be more easily heard.

--pH (manynote@library.wustl.edu or http://library.wustl.edu/~manynote)
O
/\ "Do you like to gamble, Eddie?
-\-\-- o Gamble money on pool games?"

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