TUNING digest 1073

Gary Morrison writes:

> ETs and JI can both limit your vocabulary. But limits are good. Limits
> stimulate rather than stiffle creativity. If you have unlimited
> flexibility to solve a compositional problem, then the solution will be
> arbitrarily easy to devise, and that's boring. When you operate within
> limits, you have to devise clever and exciting solutions to compositional
> tasks, which is much more interesting. And more fun too.

That's profound. The principle of limits being valuable and stimulating
creativity is one I agree with and have championed in certain arenas. I had
never thought of it in connection with scale usage.

It may be helpful to think of limits in terms of _arbitrary_ and _necessary_.
Limits perceived to be necessary would be included in the latter category.
E.g., Danielou believed that the human ear had difficulty resolving
intervals based on whole numbers greater than 5. On that basis he explained
Indian scales, and developed his own brand of JI theory. While I disagree
with his premise, I have much greater respect for his principle-based
approach than I would have had if, for instance, he had decided to limit
himself to 5 just so he wouldn't have to fool with the more numbers.

We'll always have limits of some kind. If technology frees us to explore
areas we haven't been to before, let's go first chance we get, huh? "Oh
please, can't I face just a little bit of the peril?" :-)

David J. Finnamore
Just tune it!

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