TD 1558/ Danielou/ Brian Lee

re: Topic No. 1:

Brian Lee wrote:

>I am not a practising Indian Classical Musician (although I love the
>music) and when I said that the Indian Classical Musicians don't go
>along with Danielou's 5 limit ratio theory, all I was doing was
>reporting what the musicians themselves had said. There are ratio
>analyses of ICM which give prime limits up to 31 and if anyone's
>interested I'll be happy to dig out the references.

I'm extremely interested -- please, dig.

I should perhaps state that it is my belief (as expounded in my book)
that the original Indian tuning was a string of 22 4/3s and 3/2s, and
that because some of the resulting intervals were only a schisma
(roughly 2 cents) away from some 5-limit intervals which could be
inferred, the result in practice was damn close to a 5-limit system.

(Although I haven't done a serious study of Indian music, this
tuning does agree with the oldest Indian theoretical writings
I've read.)

>Secondly, I have no argument with the idea of the quality of prime
>numbers. Danielou's writing was the thing that got me into thinking
>in those terms.

I'm sorry if my posting made it sound like that was your position --
and glad to know that you agree with the idea of prime qualities.
I mentioned your name only because of what you reported about
the relevance of Danielou's work to actual Indian practice. Scott
Makeig's reference to Danielou was what got *me* into thinking
in terms of prime qualities.

My whole interest in just-intonation theory started because I
wanted to find a better way to notate the ratios. 16 years later,
it has evolved into something far deeper and broader than
that -- to the point where I feel that prime qualities, whether
actually present or merely implied by the tuning, are the
basic cognitive archtype behind the harmonic and melodic
aspects of music-making, whatever the actual tuning used
(be it just, 12- or other- equal, well-tempered, meantone,
non-octave, roots of pi, or other more exotic number-play).

This is not meant to be a dogmatic assertion that primes are
the only justifiable tuning system or analytical methodology,
but merely a statement that the feelings and sounds evoked
by the bewildering variety of intervals actually heard in music
are most *simply* analyzed by studying the prime qualities
present in or implied by those intervals, by reduction of the
frequency-ratios to prime factors and their exponents.

(Thanks to Paul Erlich's endless debates with me in his
pursuit of precision, that's the clearest statement of my
position I've ever come up with.)

>What I cannot go along with however in Danielou's work is that
>anything over prime 5 takes you into potentially dangerous areas
>metaphysically. There are many musical cultures which tune to
>higher prime limits than five.
>
>I hope this makes my position clearer.

My microtonal analysis of a Robert Johnson blues song (see my
website) was done by ear, and although I believe that I came as
close as I could in my MIDI sequence to what he actually sings
on the CD, I will admit that that some of the ratios in the vocals
may indeed be quite different from the ones I chose.

However, it is indisputable to me that Delta Blues guitar parts
implied 7, and vocal parts used 7, all over the place, and that the
vocals used primes far higher than that.

I wouldn't be so fast to discredit the idea that "anything over
prime 5 takes you into potentially dangerous areas metaphysically"
though -- perhaps that's exactly what makes the blues "the
Devil's music"! Although Danielou didn't accept 7, maybe he
was on to something here.

- Joe Monzo
joe_monzo@hotmail.com
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html

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