TUNING digest 1270

I admit I am finding the current discourse surrounding 19-TET and
melodic limens fascinating. Gregg's has been extremely informative
concerning 19-TET, and I greatly appreciate his contributions. However,
I agree with those who suggest that he is trying to substitute one "ET"
"tyranny" for another. Gregg says that you can't properly reproduce
many rock songs on the piano, because these songs are in 19-TET. But it
is also obvious that the rock musicians are using a complex combination
of tuning systems, represented by the mix of diverse instrument timbres
and tempering inclinations. If you listen to lots of music from
different parts of the world, like I do (since I teach "world music"
courses--and in this I include Western music!), you will be hard to be
convinced that all people around the world veer towards a common
temperament. Close, maybe. But the differences are critical; indeed it
is in large part due to these slender differences in timbre and tuning
that we can discern regional differences. We are unfortunately not
close to a comprehensive study of how people around the world really
work with pitch systems. Most studies from Seashore on are strongly
biased because of their Western-based sample. The very perceptions of
musical identities of pitches and melodies seem to vary around the
world. I noticed in my fieldwork in West Africa--and Gerhard Kubik has
published on this interesting phenomenon--that when harp and mbira
players retune their instruments (which, especially in the case of the
harps, go out of tune easily)--they sometimes come up with significantly
different tunings, changing what seems to be a "whole tone" scale, for
example, to something approximating a diatonic mode; and then they came
it is the "same tuning"! That is, indeed, they claim it is identical.
I've seen this. Despite Kubik's article, this phenomenon has not been
rigorously studied. I suggest, and I do not mean to chatise, because we
ethnomusicologists are also guilty, that most researchers in tuning and
temperament are too narrowly focussed on Western models to achieve
meaningful theoretical results. An organized world study can be done;
but it is yet to be done. I'd love to see some of the brilliant minds
on this list join forces and conduct such a study.


SMTPOriginator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
From: "Jonathan M. Szanto"
Subject: Re: Partch thesis
PostedDate: 17-12-97 22:09:31
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