Multituning Composition

I was thinking about Brian M's comment about the reservations I mentioned
about composing several tunings at the same time: In short, that the pitch
relationships between the notes can become very difficult to predict. Brian
mentioned in particular that Ivor Darreg would called that concern a
pseudoproblem.

Well, first of all, he's right about that in particular: Ivor Darreg would
almost certainly have used that exact word to describe those reservations.

But I think that they would be better characterized as a limitation of
certain traditional compositional methods that I use. In particular the method
wherein you train your ears well enough to be able to hear written music in your
head, conjure up a composition in your head, write down what you hear, and then
get it all performed.

Neither Ivor nor Brian usually work/ed that way. Although both have done
plenty of carefully preplanned methodical composition, the bulk of their music
is improvisational in nature. There's nothing wrong with that of course.
Preplanned composition and improvised composition each have their strengths,
preplanned compositions usually being more complex and in-depth, improvised
composition being more free and spontaneous, and often more exciting.

But my stated concerns strike me as certainly true though: Predicting the
specific character of a chord whose notes are chosen from two or more tuning
schemes can be a complex proposition, and that certainly does make composing in
your head a bit complicated. But Brian mentioned some useful suggestions for
getting around them.

>Javanese tune their octave out (distinguishing their gamelan practice
>from Balinese, which does not).

This is not really true. The Balinese have detuned octaves as well. Because
they endeavor to keep the rate of beats constant throughout the ensemble,
detuned octaves are unavoidable. For example, if they want to have beats of
7 hz (a common frequency), bars on a pair of metallophones might be tuned
to, say, 200 and 207 hz. If they had true octaves, the frequencies would be
400 and 414, doubling the beat frequency. Instead, they are likely to have
something in the neighborhood of 403 and 410.

>The Javanese are the exception that
>proves the rule (since they certainly know what octaves are)

This is certainly true. The Javanese view detuned octaves as just that, not
as separate intervals. While I don't doubt that someone might possibly be
able to tell gamelan apart by their octave detuning, the detuned octave is
not consistent in any of the gamelan I've studied or seen measurements of.
Instead, the octaves below the middle range tend to be compressed and those
above it stretched. Also, it's worth noting that not all gamelan have
detuned octaves. There do exist a few with pure octaves, known as pleng to
tuners.

Bill

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^ Bill Alves email: alves@hmc.edu ^
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