Reading this post will make you happy

First he says...
>the really closed-minded century has been our own, with its Hitlerian
>insistence on the 12-tone equal temperament.

And then he says...
>Those who refuse to decide on a universal tuning, and consider the
>notion tyrannical, closed-minded, limiting, etc will merely have the
>choice of a universal tuning made _for_ them, most probably in favor of
>12-tone equal, but one day, most probably, in favor of 19-tone equal.

That's a nice bit of doublethink. But to either way he's thinking right=
now:

Why, oh why can't tuning be a resource to the musician, like dynamics? Ivor
had pioneered this idea so long ago. I am sorry to find it hasn't been
taken further since.

>In reaction to this, we now suffer (a few of us) from the opposite error
>to having a closed mind, which is to cherish a mind so flaccidly open
>that one denies all universal principles, or the possibility of such
>principles. To make (for once) a sweeping statement, such an attitude is
>abhorrent to art, and would have been viewed with horror and disdain by
>every Great Western (or Eastern) Composer who has ever lived.

Behold, he can channel dead spirits! While your at it, let us in on how
Mozart would feel about Eggo waffles.

Your understanding of art is quite infantile. Music is organized sound.
This sound organized in such a way that it can communicate a message. The
message is rhythm, built into whatever structure is there.

A morse code button has only two sounds: on and off. But it can make music.
Add a third sound, and multiple rhythms can now exist simultaneously, on
different levels, in the relationships between the sounds. A good drum
offers a wider selection. In the western orchestra, rhythms are built on an
amazing large lattice of intervals taken from the 5-limit.

The only guiding principle needed in tuning is one that can keep the
intervals distinct. Because of the nature of the sounds made by most
instruments, and because of the nature of the ear (which has evolved to pick
apart such sounds), the most powerful guiding principle is the harmonic
series -- Just Intonation.

There is another effect, which is considered muchly in Indian music, and
that is the physical effect of intervals. How does the body react? This is
a different consideration than the one I address in the above paragraph.
While I don't care to think about it like I do the above issue, identifying
liver lines and such, I can certainly feel it, and can confirm that there's
really "something to it".

Despite the excellent work done on consistency, etc, our understanding of
how the interval structures of equal temperaments compares to those of Just
Intonation is primitive. If you are trying to further this understanding,
you have been unsucessful.

Your efforts in this matter are based the already established 5-limit school
of thought, and some ideas about "melody". Melody is a complicated thing.
There's part that stays the same despite changes to notes in it within plus
or minus 50 cents. There's a different part that stays despite changes p or
m 30 cents. There's a part that notices differences within 1 cent. Then,
as Bill Alves said in the beginning...

>The same is true if I change tones by 100 cents. In other words, if I put
>"Happy Birthday" into a minor key, people will still recognize it as "Happy
>Birthday," albeit with a rather different sound. The same is true for much
>smaller intervals. The psychological mechanisms for recognizing melodies
>depends on a lot more than the absolute sizes of successive intervals.
>Anyway, I do not choose tuning systems to make sure that a melody is
>perceived as different if I choose a slightly altered set of intervals.

..there's the part that's just rhythm (that's traditional rhythm, only a
part of the rhythm I mention above).

Even if you had something useful to say about the 60-cent-indifferent part,
you haven't done it. Within this part, you'd have to be specific about how
many of the notes could stand a change to say something useful. The effect
of changing one note by 30 cents and that of changing every-other note by 30
cents is quite different. You'd no doubt have to weight by duration, not to
mention meter (we all know how the notes of downbeats are different from
others). Both of these weightings would be very difficult to work out, it
would probably take several very good math and music gurus over a year to
work out something even reasonably good.

>Each musical artist would then have to reinvent his own musical language
from >scratch.=20

Not from scratch, but speed the day! Imagine guys getting together to jam
and setting up a tuning first! When knowledge of tuning can be made
commonplace, musicians will be real badasses.

>This is as if each poet had to invent his own language.

Maybe the day will come when poets are cool enough to do this. Even now
they beat us, having several hundred languages to choose from.

>We should then perhaps have strange new poetries =97 most of them
pathetically >valueless and inept, a few of them perhaps (within a narrow
sphere) exquisitely >beautiful. But the latter class of languages and
poetries would be precisely >those that most closely imitate some one (or
several) of the 'natural' >languages and known cultures.

In the context of what I say above, they would only be valueless if the
message is valueless. This is what seperates bad artists from good artists.
The good artist puts his message into everything he can, however much or
little of it a given medium can hold, and in whatever way it can hold it.
The bad artist has no message, and so even the most powerful medium holds
nothing.

>On the list, I believe someone =97 by no means devoid of understanding =97
>said that "Gibson's preference for mean-tone temperaments is
>well-established" as if there are any others worth discussing (for
>long). Well, there is just intonation and Pythagoreanism, but they are
>not temperaments. There are 22- 29- 41- & 53-tone equal, but I do hope
>that by now I have explained why these 'temperaments' are valueless, for
>they cast out the consonant thirds from their tonal fabric as soon as
>one tries to preserve the consonant fifths.

If 5/4 is your consonant third, as you claim, then 22TET has better thirds
than 19TET. Your problem is you insist that a third be four fifths above
the tonic.

>Some may imagine that =97 falling into that habit of the human mind which
>causes us to become passionately attached to whatever we much use,

I don't imagine, I know. That nasty habit! This is how behavior works, you
dolt! Why do you think I said "listen to Bach until you like it"?

>Finally, I wish to state again that the masses, although seemingly
>ignorant of and indifferent to tuning questions, are, like it or not,
>our masters.

Your view is disgusting. Those who listen are the audience. If the masses
listen, the masses are the audience. There is no master in the equation.

Likes and dislikes are products of behavior. If you play joe shmo a Cd of
Honeggar, the chances of him liking it are about half as good as if he saw
the same work performed live. To make music to fit somebody's likes or
dislikes is a neat trick, one which I can do rather well. But to change
somebody's likes or dislikes, that is art. To bring somebody something they
hadn't thought of. To rock their world.

Carl


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