George Secor's 17-tone Well Temperment

A while back,Bob Lee asked about Well-Temperments.He got a fine series
of responses about the historical tunings,explaining their circulating
nature and the differences in color between keys.It was emphasized that
the historical temps were 12 notes to the octave.
I seem to remember hearing that George Secor of Scalatron fame had
developed a 17-tone WT.Could any Forum member detail this tuning and
its characteristics?Also whether it has ever been used for performance
or recording?
Thanks in advance and thanks to the Forum members who have been such
a great help to me in the past (Chalmers,Rappoport,Starrett,Morrison,
and a special thanks to His Dudeness, Mr. Haverstick).
Best,Bob

On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, Loffink, John wrote:
> > From: Paul Hahn
[snip]
> > feeding a basic drone through a filter that's set just below ringing,
> > then sweeping the filter up slowly so that it "brings out" successive
> > partials one after another. The partials are of course in small integer
> > ratios to one another, so one could think of this as very rudimentary
> > JI.
> >
> [Loffink, John] I would not call this microtonal. It is just the
> common filter sweep used by all "space music" artists. The partials are
> harmonic, but the chords that underly them never are.

I hadn't known it was that common. I don't have much time to
listen to new music these days (or at least I haven't been); must do
something about that.

I agree that the one sound is not enough to make the composition
microtonal; however, it may help to get the sound of the just intervals
in people's ears.

--pH http://library.wustl.edu/~manynote
O
/\ "You just ran nine racks but you won't give me a spot?"
-\-\-- o "I can't; I haven't seen you shoot yet."

NOTE: dehyphenate node to remove spamblock. <*>

The fact that so few examples have been given of mictrotonal soundtracks
proves my point that they are very rare, at least for Anglophone films.
In desperation, someone even mentioned a TV programme. Well, two can play
at that game. Listen to the very start of the Teletubbies theme -- and
before long most of the world will be able to. There's loads of pitch
bending going on. Not systematically mictrotonal, and it doesn't last for
long, but a pretty good start. Get 'em young and all. I think it's this
that was a no.1 single in the UK as well.

I'm sure the incidental music in The Story of Qui Ju is non-12, because
some of the tunings I try remind me of it. Also, the most successful
foreign language film in Britain (Farewell My Concubine) must have non-12
music in it. I mean, all that opera?

All of which proves nothing, of course. My point about the conservatism
of producers is that they will use composers who have already proved
themselves at writing film music. Those composers may get away with a bit
of microtonality, but the director will hardly demand it. As schedules
are pretty tight, tuning is one of the things that will usually be
ignored. Although a movie budget could easily stretch to the kind of
musicians who can play mictrotonally, I don't expect the producer will
sanction the money to be spent. It's even less likely that the film's
release will be postponed to fit in all the extra rehearsals. So, we're
stuck with synthesised music.

It is significant that a lot of the (possible) non-12 music under
discussion _wasn't_ recorded for the films it ended up in.


The Genesis sequence from that Star Trek film is also famous for being the
first popular use of fractal graphics. To be honest, I haven't seen the
film since I knew that.

Now here's a thing... In the Piano, when Ada tries out the piano to
confirm that it's been tuned, she hits a chord and it really rings out.
Too well, I reckon, to be equally tempered. So, can anyone with better
ears than me say exactly how that chord's tuned? To be authentic, it
should be some kind of well temperament. But anyone who thinks a
broadwood piano would sink in water obviously wouldn't know that.


Turning to the world's largest movie industry. I've seen a few of these
films. and I'm sure the playback singers have good enough intonation not
to sing in 12-equal. Although the songs are all written at keyboards of
some kind. On Bollywood Roundup one of the composers was singing a song
to an auto accompaniment. I didn't sound that good, but I could tell it
would be when it was recorded properly. There is a trend at the moment,
though, to use synths in the final mix. So, everything has to fit in with
them. This may be why I don't like that particular sub-genre of music.
Now, if A R Rahman were to take up the cause of microtuning, we'd be in
business.


It isn't that expensive to put out a CD. CD-R drives are now less than
$1000. People with well payed jobs can easily subsidise a print run of
1000. Films are a different matter. Unless you want to compromise with
VHS or Super8. In which case, very few people will watch it, however
imaginative it is. It's no good saying movies would be an ideal vehicle
for alternative tunings if there's no way of getting the music onto them.

Actually, this is something I'm interested in. I may work my way up from
the bottom, but I've got other things to do at the moment.


Graham

Check out www.cix.co.uk/~gbreed/ now with MIDI!!!!!!

On Wed, 8 Apr 1998, Graham Breed wrote:
> The fact that so few examples have been given of mictrotonal soundtracks
> proves my point that they are very rare, at least for Anglophone films.

Was that your point? If so, I don't think anybody was disputing it. I
think for most of us the fact that at least a few microtonal works have
made their way into film scores is cause for hope, however slight.

> In desperation, someone even mentioned a TV programme.

I'm not sure I appreciate my actions being described as desperate--in
terms of the actual work, there's not a whole lot of difference between
film scoring and TV scoring. And considering that the audience for TV
is even greater than that for movies, I don't see that it's
inappropriate, since this thread began when someone mentioned that film
scores would be a great way to propagate microtonal music to a wider
audience.

BTW, if we consider blues to microtonal (to tie into another thread)
plenty of blues has been used in film and TV scores. And the music for
NBC's _Third Rock From the Sun_ has lots of pitchbending going on too,
though it's obviously for the weirdness effect rather than anything
systematic.

> All of which proves nothing, of course. My point about the conservatism
> of producers is that they will use composers who have already proved
> themselves at writing film music. Those composers may get away with a bit
> of microtonality, but the director will hardly demand it.

It's not his job to demand it. It's the composer's job to provide the
music, and while the director certainly has a lot of say as to what kind
of music he wants, the composer hardly has to wait for the director or
producer to ask for microtonality (or any particular compositional
option) before he can use some.

> [rearrange] It's no good saying movies would be an ideal vehicle
> for alternative tunings if there's no way of getting the music onto them.

But that assertion ("there's no way of getting the music onto them")
simply isn't true, which was the whole point of mentioning examples. It
_is_ true that it's very hard--but "no way" is overstating the case.

> Turning to the world's largest movie industry. [snip]

Actually, the world's largest movie industry (at least in terms of the
number of films produced) is India's. Given the classical Indian
tradition of non-12TET, just _imagine_ all the xenharmonic film scores
that are going on over there!

--pH http://library.wustl.edu/~manynote
O
/\ "You just ran nine racks but you won't give me a spot?"
-\-\-- o "I can't; I haven't seen you shoot yet."

NOTE: dehyphenate node to remove spamblock. <*>