TUNING digest 1184

At 03:34 AM 20/09/97 -0300, you wrote:

>Mark Nowitzky writes:
>
>> My own pet theory is that as you listen to music, your ears accept the
>> imperfections in tuning that are presented to them, and knows what was
>> "meant". So the same idea/emotion/whatever comes across, whether=
you're
>> using equal temperament/meantone temperament/just intonation/whatever.



AND DFinnamore@aol.com ANSWER ...

>Well, it might just be me - I hope not, since I'm basing mood-setting
>compositions on it - but I find that the mood of a peice can shift through=
a
>wide range of... call 'em "colors," for lack of a better term, when it is
>played back repeatedly using a variety of tunings. I'm talking about only=
a
>few cents one way or the other on each note of the scale, like using 27/16
>instead of 5/3, or even as subtle as 19/16 instead of 6/5. To me, each of
>the prime numbers has a fundamental character that exudes through the=
feeling
>of any interval that uses it, so that, e.g., 11/7 sort of synergizes the
>mood-setting characteristics of both 11/8 and 8/7. It also seems to me=
that,
>in general, the higher the prime number, the stronger its color. That=
holds
>at least through 13.
>
>I've even found that, when my synth is tuned to a 12-note, octave-repeating
>tuning using a single mathematical (integral) device, all of the 84 church
>modes that can be played with it tend to have a common thread in the colors
>of the moods they convey. "The colors of the moods they convey" is poorly
>stated - I wish I could think of a more exact way to say it.
>
>Remember, every time you change the tuning of even one note of a scale, its
>relationship to each of the other notes changes. When you change the=
tuning
>of, say, four of the seven notes of a modal melody, you're changing a whole
>bunch of intervalic relationships. As long as the relationships still make
>some kind of mathematical good sense for purposes of tonality, the effect,=
in
>my experience, can be pretty dramatic, on par with the differences that
>dynamics can make to tone on an acousitc instrument.
>


DFinnamore :


Set 28/ 97 must be remembered as the day where a very important Chapter of
the Tune-List's tuners begins . This Chapter could be called "Microtonal
ELEMENTS of the Musical Emotion". I believe that many Tuners have thought to
study or have written something about it (as I did). And I propose that
somebody could recopilate the information so that all tuners would be able
to contribute to the cause.=20
This mater is VERY IMPORTANT because generally the ears of the musicians
are closed to the Microtonalism concepts.=20
I know that there are many opinions about this matter displayed from the
beginning of the List, but on this occasion it is adecuate to begin, because
for some people the music is more or less the SAME, not depending on the
Gamut, and I understand this is the PRINCIPAL trouble we must fight.

We must not be afraid to try to define with our words what kind of emotion
we feel, because we think "we are not a Psychologist", and to know also that
each time we hear the same music the "quantity" and "quality" of our
emotion or of our feeling must be different.
To begin is to begin. =20
----------------------------------

Another matter I want to make a reference, is the fact that in my country,
at least, all musicians think that the western music is based on 12tET and
I would like to know which acoustic instruments have been tuned or played in
such a way. There must be some now and also in other times but at all times,
would be the exception. On the other side it can be said that "the piano is
tuned approximately at 12tET", and I answer "why don't we say the piano is
aprox. Pythagoric ?", because the 12tET can be defined by a row of fifths
minimized in one irracional Skhisma. =20
And why do I say all of that ?, Because to promote the Microtonalism is
necesary first to clean our house and to substitute the paradigm of the
"12tET" by the actual "Microtonalism", because

ALL THE MUSIC IS MICROTONAL =20


and this is not only a point of view or a way to classify the music
because from the study of ALL the music, each piece of music appertains to
some microtonal scale. =20
The word Microtonal (and related) was coined by Julian Carrillo, I never
read his original work but I believe he used this term for intervals smaller
(let's say) than 256/243.
And why do we call Microtonal to a scale like any 8/Oct ? , because at
least any of the notes are appart in a microtone from its match note of the
Pythagoric criteria.

And so on.


Eduardo =20
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eduardo S=E1bat-Garibaldi e-mail : esabat@adinet.com.uy
Home: Sim=F3n Bolivar 1260 Office FAX-Phone : 598 2 900353
11300 Montevideo Home Phone : 598 2 780952 =20
Uruguay