lap steel, bar slants and the surrogate kithara

Steven Rezsutek wrote:
>I tried playing my 22tet guitar, which is tuned to an open minor
>tetrad, "lap steel style", and I think I could get into it. It
>certainly solves some of my problems with fingering ;-) I feel a bit
>ashamed that until now I never really looked into it before.

Get a good, rounded steel bar to play with. A standard technique for lap
steel is to slant the bar to get notes at two different frets. This doesn't
work well unless you have a properly shaped bar. Most music stores carry
the Ernie Ball bar, which is adequate.

Some bar slants can actually get properly tuned notes at 3 different frets,
but more often the intonation of those slants is bad. Choose triad slants
very carefully - remember that the frets are not equally spaced!

>Thank you, Bobby Lee, for drawing our attention to a most wonderful
>instrument.

You're very welcome. I'm a bit of a steel evangelist, and I see the
microtonal crowd as a great new market for the instrument. There are
currently about 20,000 steel players in the world, but I'd bet that those
doing classical and experimental music number less than 100. I know of less
than 10.

Partch's "surrogate kithara" is a steel guitar of sorts, but it is not
played well in any of Partch's music. If Patch had paid any attention to
standard steel guitar techniques of his time, his string sounds could have
been every bit as spactacular as his percussion. Instead, he ended up with
sound effects where there could have been legitimate string music (only my
opinion, of course).

People interested in classical steel guitar should pick up Mike Perlowin's
"Firebird Suite" CD. While Mike usually plays in 12 tone ET, his choice of
material is nonetheless an exciting development in the steel guitar world.
He tells me that he has a Partch project on the horizon. I only hope that
he doesn't try to duplicate those miserable kithara parts!

-b0b-
-----
quasar@wco.com (Bobby Lee)
http://wco.com/~quasar/


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From: Aline Surman
Subject: Danielou, Touma
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>I know I've posed this question before, but since no one answered, I
>want to try again...several folks have mentioned that Danielou's book on
>Indian/Chinese music was flawed; could someone explain why, and just what
>is correct.

Danielou is an ethnomusicologist from a less empirical era. Most criticism
of his writings that I have seen focus on the fact that the justifications
for his derivations of scales and tunings are based on his own mystical
precepts and not actual practice. (Danielou denied this, claiming that
modern practice supported his theories, but Mark Levy pretty clearly showed
that this was not the case in his empirical study of North Indian
intonation.)

That in itself doesn't make Danielou's theories worthless or even "wrong."
In many cultures, including historical India, music theory is less about
describing practice than about creating a consistent philosophy of music
showing the relationship of sound to the cosmos. Certainly Danielou fits
better into the latter category, though many of his ideas were his own and
unrelated to those of previous Indian theorists.

Here are some excerpts about how Levy describes and critiques Danielou:

"While Danielou presents a number of mystical and acoustical justifications
for the division of the octave into 22 parts, he formulates his own much
more elaborate expanded system of 66 srutis, by means of which he
interprets the intonation of the modern Indian ragas.

"The author constructs a 'universal harmonic scale' which he believes
contains all intervals used in Chinese, Hindu, Arabic, and ancient Greek
music. [Note: elsewhere Danielou claims that Western music is essentially a
22-tone system that has become 12-tone through the conflation of
enharmonics.]...

"From all these pitches, Danielou chooses 53 which are 'acceptable
harmonically,' eliminating others which in his opinion are
'unacceptable.'...To these 53 pitches Danielou, in succeeding publications,
added 12 more obtained by dividing each disjunction [step sizes larger than
a comma] in half. This results in 65 pitches, or if the octave itself is
included, 66. He states that these are the 66 srutis described by Kohala...

"Danielou's theory contains a number of inconsistencies, and seems
contrived to confirm certain preconceived conclusions....Danielou states
that in his sytem there are only 2 sizes of intervals, a 'comma' of 20
cents and a 'disjunction' of 32 cents....Furthermore, there are numerous
discrepancies between the 53 pitches which Danielou presents in 1943 and
those presented in 1969, which the author again leaves unexplained."

Levy provides a table showing that, since Danielou has defined his
intervals in just intonation, such consistent step sizes are obviously not
found. In fact, Danielou describes step sizes ranging from 19.6 to 29.6 as
being "commas" of 20 cents, and step sizes ranging from 21.5 to 29.6 as
being "disjunctions" of 32 cents.

I should point out, too, that actual tuning ratios are not found in Indian
music theory until the late 17th century, and that it is rare to find two
treatises that agree. Bhatkhande (early 20th century) is the only theorist
Levy mentions who even considers 22TET, though he still does not consider
it representative of actual practice. As Levy considers both North and
South Indian treatises pretty comprehensively (though only North Indian
practice), I am unable to find the source of Gregg Gibson's claim that
22TET is somehow standard in the South.

Danielou's scale is still very interesting, and there is even an instrument
tuned to his 53-tone JI. You can find out more about it and him through the
web site dedicated to him. I don't have the URL handy, but there's a link
off the JI network's links page: http://www.dnai.com/~jinetwk/other.html

Bill

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^ Bill Alves email: alves@hmc.edu ^
^ Harvey Mudd College URL: http://www2.hmc.edu/~alves/ ^
^ 301 E. Twelfth St. (909)607-4170 (office) ^
^ Claremont CA 91711 USA (909)607-7600 (fax) ^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


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From: Gregg Gibson
Subject: Re: Paul Ehrlich
PostedDate: 23-12-97 20:26:33
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