RE Brian's posts

Brian,

Since you are not on line with us, but receive our messages
later, there is some confusion in my mind how to address you.
It's as if you were not present in the room, but the
conversations were being taped for your later perusal.

I have been following your posts with interest. I respect your
scholarship, though I don't always agree with your point of view,
and I find your writings entertaining and useful, though the
phrasing could perhaps be somewhat gentler, on occasion.

>From your point of view, I am well connected to the internet, and
telephone, and therefore somewhat boring. You do have to admit
that paper mail leaves something to be desired when it comes to
the snappy comeback. :)

I lived in the mountains without even electricity for many years,
and I admit there are advantages, but I came to believe more in
the advantages of being connected.

As an advocate of Just Intonation for some thirty years, I found
your posts on the advantages of stretched intervals to be
somewhat disturbing. I even went so far as to stretch the
intervals in one of my compositions, and listen to the
difference. I was surprised at how little difference there was,
but I still preferred the just intonation version. I freely
admit that may be my own bias. I do agree that stretched
intervals seem more pleasant than compressed intervals.

My question is: Stretched from what? From your posts, I got the
impression that you were comparing the stretched fifth to the 3/2
fifth, and the stretched third to the 5/4. In that case, even if
you stretch the intervals, you are still basing your composition
on Just Intonation--stretched just intonation.

Just intonation, as implemented in the FasTrak sequencer is
easier than any other system of composition, at least for me, and
provides almost an infinite number of possibilities, even for the
limited tuning granularity of the Sound Blaster. I can simply
use one of several utilities to generate a scale. Experience has
led me to have a general understanding of what procedures will
lead to what kind of sound. Once I have generated the scale, I
can use more utilities to generate a chord logic. With about two
or three minutes work, I am able to begin composition. In less
than two hours, I have the finished product. If I am
dissatisfied with the tuning, I can change both the scale and the
chord selection in just a couple of minutes. If I want to
stretch the intervals, I can also do that in a couple of minutes.

As we all know the possibilities of 12ET are pretty thoroughly
explored by now, but any other ET temperament can offer only a
little more variety, and they can be quite tedious to master.
Witness the extensive postings on 88CET. All this just to learn
one scale? Perhaps its non-octave nature makes it more of a
challenge.

As for people preferring stretched intervals, despite all your
references, I am still not certain if this is really true, and if
it is true, I am not certain how much they care. Would it make
enough of a difference to get on the top forty? I imagine other
factors may be more important. When I listen to commercial music
of all types, I seem to hear a lot of JI.

I was under the impression that there was no proven way to
analyze music to determine the pitch of an individual instrument
in a polyphonic recording. If that is not true then several
seemingly very knowledgeable people in another forum have lead me
severely astray.

Anyway, thanks for the posts.

Marion

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