Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup mills-tuning-list Some thought on alternate tunings

I have been exploring alternate tunings via synthesizers for about 1/2 year
so far (mainly 19 tone and 88CET so far). There seems to be a
"hyperrealism" effect that comes from the double nature of a tuning like,
say, 88CET. The double nature is that the tuning is "close enough" to
sound fairly "normal" is one wants. The basic feelings involved in chord
progressions, voice leading, cadence, etc, can be close enough to normal to
pass for familar. In fact, wholly normal progressions can be created. The
effect of this is to bring the listner into a familar world -- not
something strange and uncertain, but the concrete "reality" of "normal
music". The traditional music effects involving expectation, tension,
release, consonance and dissonance, are in effect. But 88CET is not 12TET,
and in addition to "normal" (ie, 12TET-like) sonorities, one can also
create a wide range of unfamilar and unusual sounds. The quality of these
ranges from sounding like "slightly wrong 12TET" to "wholly dissonant" (in
fact, sounding "more than possibly dissonant"). And the effect of these
non-12TET sounds depends on their particular relation to 12TET. If one
sticks a slightly "off" sound into a more or less 12TET-like framework, the
result is, of course, a feeling of "offness in an otherwise clear world.
"Normalacy" is given an edge, which can feel slightly unsettling, unstable,
wrong, or poignant. If the unusual is brought out more, there is a feeling
of modulation *from* "normal musical reality" into an unfamilar and
disruptive world. Sustained exploration of the more radically non-12TET
aspects of a tuning like 88CET tend toward the abstract. When the listener
cannot relate their experience to 12TET, if the links between this musical
world and one's traditional world are few, the whole experience becomes
"abstract". It becomes more on par with "noise as sound" (ie, each sound
has to be taken "as is", without the large rich body of tradition, which
colors and concreticizes most music we hear). Therefore, it is the
transistional areas *between* 12-TET-like and fully non-12TET-like that are
most interesting to me. And it is in this area where the term
*hyperrealism* seems appropriate.

It was my experience of some specific effects regarding 88CET that made me
think of the relation to hyperrealism (a link to photorealism and computer
graphics in my mind). For example, I noticed when one write blaring
consonant "triumphant" chords in 88CET, it is easy to make use of slightly
"off" consonances, like the "major octave". One of the features of
88CET is that is has no octave or 2 octave intervals (only multiples of 3
octaves). Instead, it has two intervals that sit on either side of the
octave, what I will call a minor octave and a major octave. Played alone,
they both sound awful. They are very dissonant and produce ugly beatings.
But within the context of a loud triumphant chord (especially in a
"blaring" timbre), perhaps at the end of a major key cadence, a chord with
a major octave sounds very consonant, even thought the off octave is
clearly audible. The result, rather than dissonance, is the feeling of
unstability in the consonance, and the "stretched" nature of the octave
makes it sound as if the music cannot quite contain itself and "oversteps"
its goal a little. This feeling of "over-eagerness" is an example of my
interpreation of hyperrealism: The music is not simply running through
traditional progressions and cadences like other music -- it is doing it
with such force as to strain the intervals themselves! So it is not an
"alternate tuning" one heard with these slight "offnesses", but music on
the verge of losing control, that is, hyper-expressive music.

This "on the verge of being out of control" is a major feature of this use
of 88CET (or many other alternate tunings). When a more or less "normal"
chord progression is "interrupted" by a few "unusual chords" before
returning to "normalacy", the result can be a feeling of actual loss of
control. What was progressing alright suddenly veered off into "wrongness"
for a moment. It shows that the illusion of "everything being normal" is
just that -- an illusion. And it shows that the music is quite capable of
"going dreadfully wrong". This effect can be used to give a sense of
struggle and energy -- as if the music itself is truggling to maintain
"normalacy", but cannot always do it, and sometimes loses its grip, so to
speak. This "struggle" between "everything going as expected" and
"everything going dreadfully wrong" is *the* main feature of my interest in
alternate tunings. The give and take between the expected and the
unexpected is what breathes life into music, it has always been. This is,
in part, the force behind the long exploration of dissonance in Western
music. But today, even the most glaring dissonances of 12TET sound glaring
and dissonant in a familar and expected manner. It is a tuning that has
been so thoroughly explored and listend to over the last several centuries
that today it is near impossible to bring out some new and strange harmony
in it. And this "saturation" of 12TET in our culture, the overwhelming
bias for 12TET music that we are programmed for from a very young age, is
exactly the situation in which a tuning like 88CET can work like magic.
For this is a bias that is so ingrained that most people are not even aware
that there are alternatives! The experience of 88CET in such a situation
can be practically paradoxical. It can be the destroyer of paradimes.
People on this tuning forum have occasionally expressed a desire to "spread
the word" of alternate tunings. This seems to be a feeling that the
general ignorance of alternate tunings is detrimental to the work of
composers exploring alternate tunings. I would like to suggest that the
degree of understanding of alternate tunings among general listeners is,
more or less, unimportant. The use of alternate tunings is not a *style*,
like be-bop or techno (although styles might require alternate tunings
(like gamelon music)) -- it is a tool, more like the use of a new musical
instrument, like the saxophone. People might like the sound of a
saxophone, or of an altnerate tuning, in an abstract, non-musical sense.
But until good music is written with new tools, there is no impetus to
listen to music written with these tools. One might "spread the word" of a
new tool to composers, but as far as listeners are concerned, one wants to
spread "good music", regardless of the tools. And the point is that new
tools often make it easier for compoers to write good music. The new tools
allow the exploration of new sonorities, new discoveries, they allow easier
access to that magical zone between expected and unexpected music. All too
often, music that is "different" in some specific way is advertised as
such, thereby limited the appeal of the music to people who are interested
in that certain characteristic of the music. A good example of this is
"gay music". For a gay musical act to cross over and become successful at
large is seen as a rare and sought after phenomenon. Good music is not
good because of one particular aspect, be it its lyrical meaning, its
instrumentation, or its tuning. Good music transcends its various
characteristics -- and to advertise one or another characteristic of it is
to miss the point entirely, to reduce the music to some *non-musical*
aspect of limited interest. Why play music for someone and say beforehand,
"listen to this weird tuning", thereby focusing them *away* from the deeper
aspect of good music? John Coltrane is not particularly interesting
because he played the saxophone, he is interesting because his music
*works*. And it works in a way that, while fundamentally tied to
instrumentation, transcends it.

But to return to the discussion of 88CET, there are a few more examples of
hyperreality that I would like the mention. If *hyperreal* means "more
real than real", then it is an appropriate word to describe musical events
that "go beyond" what they are "supposed" to do. Chord progression and
modulation in 88CET seem to display this kind of thing often. Because of
the asymmetrical octave nature of 88CET, chord progression tend to sound
relatively normal, but might end up someplace unexpected -- either too high
or too low. An upward modulation that somehow ends up "too high", or a
downward modulation that ends up "too low", but otherwise sounding more or
less like its "expected to", resulted in a sense of skewed musical space.
A feeling of "going beyond normal", being realer than real. These feeling
would not be as poignant as they are if it were not for our overwhelming
bias for 12TET dimensions. And that is the effect of this "skewing of
musical space" -- poignancy. If done well, this technique can increase the
particular mood, be it triumphant, bittersweet, or whatever -- if the
harmonies are "going a little beyond" the expected, so too will the emotion
-- the music will be "overly expressive". Suddenly old techniques of
harmonies -- basic cadences, passing tones, suspensions, etc -- are free of
their 12TET incarnations (those basic "licks" our culture is saturated with
beyond the point of cliche) and useful once again as basic building blocks
of new sounds.

One final reason why I enjoy working in 88CET so much -- the exploration of
uncharted realms. What a joy to work with progressions and modulation that
have never been heard before. To be a participant in the discovery of an
entirely new world. People seem to think that in today's modern world
there is nothing left to explore. People seek out the deepest, most remote
caves and underwatern trenches in search of the "lost frontier". The same
feelings of this lost frontier are perceivable in the arts. Was not art
brought to (and beyond) the ultimate frontiers in the 1960s? Is not art
today retrospective and lost? How could this be when unthinkably vast
realms of totally unexplored musical worlds lie at our feet, asking for
pioneers? And this in the field of alternate tunings alone. There are
similar vast frontiers visible in electronic music, to name just one other
example. Just as the heliocentric theory and thetheory of evoultion
redefined our notions of the Earth and humanity as small subsets of
infinities of possibility, so too have alternate tunings (And electronics,
etc) redefined western music, placing it within a small set dwarfed by the
infinity of possibility. And who says it is difficult to be original?? If
the unexplored was any more obvious, it would be biting our legs.

--
Paul Fly | Our deeds travel with us from afar
pfly@nyx.cs.du.edu | And what we've been makes us what we are

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Some thought on alternate tunings

🔗pfly@nyx.net (Paul Fly)

🔗gxla12@udcf.gla.ac.uk (Kerr Jamieson)

🔗Paul Hahn <Paul-Hahn@...>

🔗Gary <71670.2576@...>