re-Lousy Antennae

On Sun, 23 Mar 1997 11:37:55 -0800 Atlas Eclipticalis said:
>Well you know, my dad can produce an exact 440Hz at will ever since
>interfacing with a flying tire on Hwy101 in South San Jose which detatched
>his sinus cavity, which just happens to resonate at 440Hz. I guess that
>really tuned him up.
>rick
>
This begs the question: If your dad (or anyone else....) were to dynamically
interface with a flying tire (tyre) in Europe, would he then resonate at
442 Hz?
-- Brian B.

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John Chalmers wrote:

'' What other
culture deliberatively writes unsingable melodies, uses unplayable
(and undanceable) rhythms, and specifies unnatural intervals? ''

While I do agree that western Art musics have gone to extremes in this
direction, I think that there are plenty of examples of cultures where the
''unsingable'' is a constituent part of instrumental music, or more
precisely, where instrumental realizations of song become ''unsingable''.
The most virtuosic Mbira music is one example. Chinese, Korean, and
Japanese court musics often fall into this category with marked differences
between the sung and instrumental versions of a work; the legal limitations
on music making (e.g. forbidding melodies from exceeding a seventh) at
certain points in their histories certainly turned melodies into
''unsingable''. There are also instrumental traditions which are
constructed on relatively abstract bases (Balophone playing based on
patterns, the Balinese ritual 7-tone orchestras whose melodies are
extracted mechanically from the vowels of texts).

The question of ''unplayable'' musics, on the other hand, is much more
complicated. Perhaps from San Diego, John, you might be better able to
disambiguate what the Ferneyhoughites have in mind when notating a rhythm
that is impossible to perform accurately - do they want the failed
performance (a kind of improvisation on the composer's notation), or is
there an ideal performance which is to be eventually achieved? I suspect
that the general disinterest by the complexity folk in computer
realizations (a significant difference from Babbitt, by the way) indicates
that they are more interested in failure...

Could you perhaps be more specific about what you mean by ''unnatural
intervals''? (I assume that it requires mature and consenting pitches).

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John Chalmers wrote:
>Frankly, just because something is old doesn't make it right.
>Astrology developed during Hellenistic times largely on the basis
>of earlier Babylonian astronomy and only makes sense if one believed
>that the planets are gods. Since we now know that they are material
>bodies, this justification is removed.

OTOH, just because something is old doesn't mean that it is wrong.
Actually Babylonian astrology and astronomy was very good. The Greeks
bastardised it (astrology) for roughly the equivalent of trash
horoscopes in women's magazines today. It does not require the planets
to be gods, only to influence life on earth. It may even be that the
idea that they are gods came from the scientific observation that they
do influence life.

If you doubt this, I recommend that you read Michel Gaquelin's books.
In his second book (or maybe later) he addresses the issue of Babylonian
astrology. He does this because his truly scientific study showed that
some ancient astrology was right and some wrong. On tracing the errors
back he found that they were introduced in Greek times but he did
require new and careful translations of some ancient texts. It is all
based on good scholarship. Gauquelin's work has been confirmed in
multiple studies with samples of about 30,000 each in several countries.
The same significant results were found each time.

-- Ray Tomes -- rtomes@kcbbs.gen.nz -- Harmonics Theory --
http://www.kcbbs.gen.nz/users/rtomes/rt-home.htm

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On Wed, 26 Mar 1997 03:37:34 -0800 Ray Tomes said:
> . . . Michel Gaquelin's books.
> . . . It is all
>based on good scholarship. . . .

While I doubt the foundation of this claimed scholarship, I second a post
of a few days ago that requests that this current debate go elsewhere.
Unless it can be steered clearly back to Tuning issues, it really doesn't
fit here. Let's get back to tuning, and leave the hocus pocus of
astrology to the dial-in 900 Psycic Hotline (I'm thinking of starting
my own service; the money is reported to be great. Besides, my wife --
Queen Sophia of the Gypsies -- is in tune with spirits that really
control our lives. For $10, she'll tell you your true future!)
-- Brian B.

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On Mon, 24 Mar 1997, John Chalmers wrote:
>
> Bruce: Could you give some examples of mystical givens in science?
> I'll stipulate that I, you, and the rest of the universe exist and
> neither it or we are entirely irrational and chaotic....
>

Oh, I was thinking of things like the existence of particles, time,
conservation of mass/energy, that a repeatable observation has any bearing
on the nature of the universe. Any axiomatic principle that forms the
basis of scientific observation and experimentation has its existence in
some "mystical" insight, whether acknowledged or "self-evident", IMHO.

Thanks for your thoughts-they are always thorough and stretch my thinking.

Bruce Kanzelmeyer


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