From: mclaren
Subject: WWW and microtonality
--
Well, I just had my first experience surfing
the WWW for 4 hours straight at the local
library.
What a mess.
People...it's fifty times *worse* than I ever
imagined.
Here are the hard numbers:
Tried 6 search engines: Alta Vista, Yahoo,
HotBot, Lycos, Magellan, Accufind. Searched for the word
"microtonality." Defaults only.
Worst result: 6 hits. (Accufind.) "Best" result: 168 hits
(HotBot).
Ah, but those 168 "hits" are deceptive, kiddlies...
Of all those 168 "hits," exactly 4 URLs led to useful
websites: the Piet Oostrum's site, the JIN
Store, Zia's site, and the Mills microtonal discography/
bibliography.
Every other "hit" led either to wild garbage--
including some truly amazing wackiness about
"quantified astrological fields"--or irrelevant
fragments (someone somewhere thought it would
be a smart idea to spatter bits and pieces of
microtonal CD reviews and miscellaneous e-mail
from the Mills tuning forum across the
web by turning them into hhtp links, and the
end result is positively hallucinogenic), or
dead "404 -- FILE NOT FOUND" messages. (Also
plenty of 403s, same difference.)
Artificial intelligence has never impressed
me, and 40 years of LISP code seems to have
produced a truly monogoloid spate of
WWW search engines, all of them deeply &
desperately & unspeakably *bad* at finding
anything in the way of useful info.
Plus, fraud. HotBot clearly ups its number of "hits"
by including all dead URLs in its list. (Other
search engines appear to weed 'em out.) Thus,
while HotBot scored the largest number of
"hits" in a search for the word "microtonality,"
it does so at the cost of including vast
numbers of 404 URLs. Roughly 25% of all the
HotBot hits were dead URLs. Every link to
the Harry Partch Society 404'd, every link to
CERN 404'd. Attempts to find the new URLs
failed in every case. Gave up.
Even worse, *no* WWW search engine
turned up a basic list of elementary info
you'd want to find out if you were a micro-
tonalist just starting out:
Namely, what kind of non-12 tunings exist?
How is microtonal music being made?
Where is it being made?
What's the history of non-12 tuning?
Why is microtonal music being made?
This is truly impressive. These are the BASIC
questions any microtonal beginner would ask,
and answers to 'em are *nowhere* available
on the web.
--
So let's see what we've got here:
[1] The WWW is a swirling maelstrom
of junk littered with dumb-and-dumber
search engines and non-stop 404s.
About 98% of the search "hits" on the
word "microtonality" turned up pure
garbage--essays by grad students about
burning pianos that happen to mention
the word "microtonality," random
dissociated fragments of Mills Tuning
Forum e-mail someone pasted into the
web...last and best, innumerable LINK NOT FOUND
dead ends.
[2] None of this so-called "information" on
"microtonality" had much to do with
microtonality, with the exception of
Manuel Op de Coul's discography and the
Mills bibliography. The typical
"hit" on an Alta Vista or Yahoo list was
something like "Post Modern Notation
And Its Implications For Tutti-Fruiti
Ice Cream" with the word "microtonal"
squirreled away somewhere in the body
of the text for snob appeal.
[3] There is no single web page anywhere,
at any time, in any way that offers any
kind of general introduction to microtonality
for the beginner. There is also no single
web page anywhere that offers any kind
of *context* for people who know something
about microtonality and want to know more.
Ideally, we should have 3 levels of web
pages about microtonality: (1) BEGINNERS START
HERE. (2) IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT
MICROTONALITY AND WANT TO KNOW MORE,
START HERE. (3) EXPERTS ONLY--ADVANCED
TOPICS IN MICROTONALITY.
In effect, there is zero useful information
available about microtonality on the web.
[4] Because most of the URLs blow out with
404s, it's incredibly frustrating--almost
*no one* seems to be bright enough to realize
that all URLs very quickly fry & die as
the Internet addressing scheme is changed
to accomodate the explosive growth of the
web....therefore, the most sensible thing
to do is assume the URLs are DOA and
include a snail mail address for each URL
(all of which will be 404 soon anyway).
--
So my worst nightmares turned out to be
*mild* in comparison with the truth.
I already knew the Internet was a chaotic
mess of bad info and gossip, but I'd assumed
there was at least *a little* smidgen of
useful information hidden away somewhere,
available to extremely persistent web surfers.
Silly me.
Turns out the WWW is a vast whirlwind of
junkthink, misinformation, snobtalk, gossip,
rumors, fantasy and nonsense. The web's
democratic, all right--just like the incurable
ward at Bellevue.
There's no context for anything, no way to
make sense of any information, no place for
beginners to start, no way to sort out garbage
misinformation from solid info. Among other gems
I encountered an essay which discussed
Thaddeus Cahill's trautonium (I like it! Cahill
did *not* invent the trautonium, he invented
the telharmonium, a totally different instrument
from a totally different era). Ah, but best of all:
I searched the WWW for the word "tuning" & got 20
websites about "tuning your server" but not *one*
*single* *website* about microtonality.
Impressive, eh?
All told, the experience of surfing the web
in quest of information about microtonality
was like being beaten by 12 dwarfs with baseball
bats underwater while blindfolded on LSD.
Utter, raving, wild chaos. No way
to make sense of anything. No context. No place
to start. No reliable info (except for Manuel's
web pages and few scraps of the Mills Tuning
Forum placed on the web but wayyyyyy out of
context and thus incomprehensible to anyone
likely to read 'em).
--
If I were a beginner looking for info on
microtonality, what would I find by searching
the world wide web?
[1] Huge amounts of information about industrial
music, pomo music theory, computer music,
some mystifying references to a guy named
Harry Partch all of which lead to dead URLs
that give "404 -- file not found" messages.
Weird fragments about some guy named
Haverstick who made a CD, a couple of files
about how to tune your guitar *to 12-tet*,
and--best of all--plenty of references to
university music courses on 20th century
music, all of which mention microtonality
as something a couple of European guys did
back in the 1920s.
Riiiiiiiight.
This is good.
We're really doing well here, people.
If I were a beginner searching for info
on microtonalty...after surfing the web
for a couple three hours I'd run screaming
back to the 12-tet conservatory, where
at least *some* hard info on *something*
would be available.
--
Between all the hundreds of dead-end 404
URLs and the lengthy essays on "notational
implications of MIDI" (nary a mention of
microtonality) and the odd "quantified
astrological field" references (another
of my favorite "hits" from a search for
the word "microtonality"), if I were a
microtnal beginner searching the web,
after about 3 or 4 hours I'd be ready
for some heavy-duty electroconvulsive
therapy.
Alas, one thing I would *NOT* be ready to
do after surfing the WWW in search of
useful info on microtonality, is: contact
*any* of the major
microtonal organizations (JIN,
Frog Peak, Artifact Records, Pointless
Music, ReR, BHPS, Xenharmonikon,
ReR Quarterly, Boston Microtonal
Society, AFMM, etc.)
or be equipped to understand even the
most elementary basic fundamental
concepts of microtonality.
--
So it's one huge incredible mess out there.
Far worse than I ever imagined. The web is
not "the nervous system of the human race,"
it's a giant dumpster full of out-of-date
astrology ads and ungrammatical essays. Not
only will beginners wind up baffled by
their attempts to find info on microtonality,
but they'll probably get the impression
that [A] there *isn't* any useful info
on microtonality, it's just a chaotic
jumble of gibberish; [B] somebody named
Harry Partch did something in connection
with microtonality, but he's obviously not
worth bothering with because no info is
available about him; [C] contemporary
microtonality is mostly about pomo
music theory with a smattering of
industrial music, feedback guitar
techniques, and "post-classic" pop
music; [D] the most important
microtonalists in music history are:
Glenn Branca, the Velvet Underground,
Brian Eno and Gavin Bryars.
--
Wow.
What can I say?
Just...Wow.
--
Okay. So here's this giant mess...what do we
do about it?
First: you people need to LEARN HOW TO DESIGN
A WEBSITE.
Let's start at the beginning.
All search engines seem to operate by chewing
on the cumulative text of a website and tallying
up the total number of times your search word
is mentioned. The first 25 words or so of a website
are typically digested into a tag line that serves
as the search listing. So what is the most
important part of any website?
*THE FIRST 25 WORDS.*
Hello.
Anyone there???
When you design your website you *must*
do the following:
[1] ALWAYS strip off mail header garbage
if it's a re-post linked to the WWW. Otherwise
the listing will show up as incomprehensible
stuff like BDHJ110101-10112@#128999198.111
What the hell is that???
If you surfed to Alta Vista and your "hits"
were a bunch of listings like
1. 8989283.292#9202002=JJKDBD
2.===!~~~*(988.2392983DJDJDM.DLLL
3.&**@_)WWJWJ/WWW9989.2929298@ZOB
would *you* bother to read these "hits"?
Of course you wouldn't, you can't even tell
what the hell is *in* these websites.
[2] BOIL DOWN THE ESSENCE OF YOUR WEBSITE
TO 25 WORDS OR LESS. THEN START WITH THOSE
25 WORDS, pure and simple. I can't begin to
count the number of websites whose Yahoo
or Alta Vista or HotBot listing started off
something like this: "Hi, Jo Blow Here, this
is my attempt at doing a website which...."
WRONG!!!
If the website is about microtonal notation
for traditional instruments, here is
how your website should look:
MICROTONAL NOTATION

for traditional acoustic instruments.

This website contains the following
specific information:

..
This website would show up on a Yahoo
search list as
1. MICROTONAL NOTATION for traditional
instruments. This website contains the following....
and this is *exactly* the way you want it to
show up, because this tells a websurfing visitor
*precisely* what is in your website as
clearly and simply and succintly as possible.
--
Here is how NOT to design the same website:
(Big huge graphic that takes 5 minutes
to download and tells the websurfer nothing--
hey....how about a picture of me? Yeah! That'll do!)

This is JOE BLOW'S WEBSITE designed
with PageMill version 3.01. This web page
was last updated on (blah-blah woof-woof).
If you have any new information or corrections,
please e-mail (myaddress@swarb.gink.zoid)

Fancy interactive JAVA program

Dead URL

This web page is a first stab at an
attempt to describe a meta-theory involving
certain aspects of microtonal notation
which...
--
This would show up in a Yahoo or Alta Vista
or HotBot search list as:
"This is JOE BLOW'S WEBSITE designed
with PageMill version 3.01. This web page
was last updated on (blah-blah woof-woof).
If you have any new information or corrections,
please e-mail (myaddress@swarb.gink.zoid)"
--
Guess what?
It's impossible to tell what this web page
is *about* by looking at the Yahoo listing.
Good job!
--
Second important point:
When you design a web page, *forget* about
fancy graphics. After a half hour of websurfing
I learned the hard way that Netscape downloads
text first--then goes back to fill in graphics.
So as soon as the text fills in I learned to
click on STOP. This kills the graphics
downloads and lets me scroll through
the body of the webpage to see if there's
any useful content there (usually not).
The alternative is to sit around for 10
minutes reading Aristotle's "Rhetoric"
(my constant companion) while a useless
picture of something or someone creeps across
the screen like a mailman with Parkinson's.
Here's a hint, people:
Graphics are garbage. They're content-free.
Sound files are garbage. They take wayyyyy
too long to download, last only a few seconds,
are wayyyyy too low-fi, and most computers
won't be set up to play 'em anyway.
JAVA programs never run. DEC is always
upgrading JAVA, so the bottom line is that
all JAVA interpreters are beta (if not alpha)
code and they all crash and burn, no exception.
--
So the second thing you need to know when
you folks design web pages is: leave out
the graphics, don't bother with sound files,
forget about fancy interactive animations,
kiss off the JAVA programs.
As a websurfer I want one thing and one
thing only: content. Also content. And
by the way, did I mention content?
That means text, text, more text, and even
*more* text. It means BE CONCISE. It
means TELL 'EM WHAT YOU'RE GONNA TELL
'EM, TELL 'EM, THEN TELL 'EM WHAT YOU TOLD
'EM.
AT* fill the damn background
of your web pages with fancy patterns. This
makes the web page *unreadable.*
Also, please do *NOT* do something tricky
like making your text fluorescent green
against a picture of a black starry sky
scanned from a Hubble satellite photo.
Any sensible user will click on STOP long
before the background graphic downloads...
Which leaves the hapless reader with unreadable
fluorescent green text against a gray background.
Ai caramba!
--
Here are 3 horrible examples of what
I'm talking about:
[1] "

Two CD reviews

DMB5561719@aol.com

Sat, 1 Apr 95 17:49:18-0800

Message sorted by [date][thread][subject]
[author]
Next messages John H. Chalmers: "Another
post from McLaren"

Previous message: John H. Chalmers "Post
from Brian"

In tuning digest I never see enough reviews
of microtonal rcordsings. Here is my
contribution, a few things I haven't seen
anywhere else.
(etc.)
--
That was the verbatim text of the start of an
actual web page.
First, look at the uninformative header:
"Two CD reviews." What KIND of CDs?
Second: look at all the header junk. Who
cares about the internet adress, who cares
about the date? Post that crud--if you have
to--at the *end* of the website, *not*
the first couple of lines.
Third: look at all the garbage! "Messages
sorted by..." "Next message..." "Previous
message..." Totally content-free!
And even in the body of the website
we get vaguely worded mush that tells
the average person nothing: "In tuning
digest I never see enough reviews of
microtona recordings. Here is my
contribution, a few things I haven't..."
yadda-yadda-yadda.
Imagine it--10 lines of text, and the
web surfer *still* doesn't have the
faintest idea WHAT THE HELL THIS
WEB PAGE IS SPECIFICALLY ABOUT.
--
Horrible example 2: check out Zusaan
Kali Fasteau's web page. She's a fine
performer, an innovative microtonalist,
etc., etc., okay, fine, she's peachy-keen
'n dandy, love her music, she's the
greatest thing since squeezed cheese.
Fine.
But the very first thing on her web
page is a *monster* graphic that takes
10 minutes to download.
I clicked STOP, dumped the graphic,
aborted the web page and scooted.
ZKF offers a perfect example of how *not*
to design a web page.
CONTENT FIRST, and superfluous glitz
later (if at all). Put your graphics at
the *end* of the web page, if you must
include them at all. And as for scanned
photos of yourselves--people, I hate to
let you in on a little secret here, but
nobody cares what you look like. "On
the Internet, no one knows you're a dog"
as the cartoon goes.
Content is what matters on the web.
Pure distilled info. Everything else
is piffle.
--
Third horrible example:
Wendy Carlos put up a web page with a
mail box. Never got around to reading it.
Wendy is a genius, a wonderful person,
a superb musician, yadda-yadda-yadda.
But her web site is a *disaster.*
The background is some textured Mayan
hieroglyphic something-or-other, and
it is just plain *impossible* to make
out black text against it.
At first, I thought I had eye trouble.
--
Here's the bottom line:
Dark black text against a light
uniform background is highly readable.
Anything else is probably UNreadable.
Stick to *dark black text* against a
*light uniform background.*
--
Okay. That takes care of basics. Common
sense should have told you all of this,
but apparently these revelations come
as a startling epiphany to those of you who
design web pages.
This leaves the issue of content.
Clearly none of you are capable of putting
together a concise comprehensive web
page that introduces beginners to the
fundamental elmentary terms and ideas
of microtonality.
Clearly none of you are able or willing
to design a web page that gives oodles 'n
oodles of snail mail addresses of
places like the JIN and the British
Harry Partch Society and Frog Peak
and ReR and Pointless Music and
the Electronic Music Foundation.
Clearly none of you other than Manuel
are able or willing to design a web page
that contains titles of basic essential
references like Mandelbaum's thesis,
Partch's Genesis of a Music, Blackwood's
Structure of Recognizable Diatonic
Tunings, Darreg's Xenharmonic Bulletins,
Bosanquet's book, and the Corpus Microtonale
score library, and the addresses at which
to get these documents. (Snail mail--remember,
all URLs go 404 within a couple of months
nowadays.)
--
So, obviously, as usual, I'll have to do it.
Amazing. Just amazing. You people have
got enough collective brainpower and knowledge
about microtonality to move Mars out of its
orbit, and after 3 years you *still* haven't put
even a single minimally adequate microtonal
web page anywhere in the world where beginners
can find basic necessary info on microtonality.
What's that?
Oh. Sorry.
Did I wake you folks up?
Never mind, go back to sleep. It's nothing.
--mclaren

Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl
with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Tue, 12 Nov 1996 19:46 +0100
Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA01610; Tue, 12 Nov 1996 19:47:41 +0100
Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA01608
Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI)
for id KAA05568; Tue, 12 Nov 1996 10:47:38 -0800
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 10:47:38 -0800
Message-Id:
Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu
Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu

🔗John Chalmers <non12@...>

From: mclaren
Subject: a blizzard of misinformation
--
Paul Erlich is a very smart fellow who has done
commendable work in looking up valuable references.
Alas, Paul often has a tendency to shoot from
the hip, based on incomplete or out-of-date info.
Such an example occurred when Paul Erlich
wrote that "the preference for stretched
intervals only occurs in melodic, not harmonic,
intervals" (or words to that effect).
This is a common enough canard, and it turns
out to be untrue. In actual fact unbiased listeners
uniformly tend to hear *both* melodic *and*
vertical intervals which are stretched as
"pure" and "just," while they tend to hear
unstretched small-integer ratio harmonic
*and* melodic intervals as "too narrow" and
"impure."
(I mention "unbiased" because it is always
possible to train yourself to recognize any
kind of interval from its beat structure if
you confine yourself to a narrow range
of very restricted integer-harmonic timbres.
This is why A-B-X tests using a wide variety
of different timbres in an objective psychoacoustic
experiment are so important. Simply setting
up a synthesizer and playing such-and-such
and interval and saying, "Oh, I can hear that
the interval is [fill in the blank]" is useless
in probing the human auditory system, since
you know what to listen for and thus have
unwittingly biased yourself.)
The evidence that listeners hear *both*
stretched harmonic *and* melodic intervals as
"pure" is cumulative, the data have been confirmed
by hundreds of experiments, and the evidence goes
back more than 160 years. C.J. Delezenne
in "Memoires sur les valeurs numeriques des
notes de la gamme," in Recueil des travaux
de la Societe des Sciences de Lille, 1826-1827,
was the first researcher to identify *both*
melodic *and* harmonic preference for
stretched intervals. Delezenne used an
adjustable monochord and meticulously
recorded the values his test subjects
heard as "pure" intervals in terms of
fractions of a Pythagorean comma (cents
were not yet a measurement in use).
The next researchers who duplicated these
results were Cornu and Mercadier, who used
a phonautograph (as scholars, you know what
this instrument is and require no explanation)
and by examination of the tracings on the
lampblack-coated camphorated cellulose
strips Mssrs. C & M were able to calculate
with precision the frequency of sounds impinging
on the phonautograph. Cornu & Mercadier
found that the mean intonation for a vertical
dyad heard as a "pure" major third was
1.251, close to but sharper than the just
5/4; a consecutive-tone series of tests on
musical subjects yielded the much sharper
value of 1.2666 for melodic "just" thirds.
See Cornu & Mercadier, "Sur les intervalles
musicaux," Comptes Rendus de l'Academie
Royale des Sciences, 1869a, pp. 301-308
for proof.
In 1876 Preyer found that vertical intervals
as large as 397 cents were still identified
by some subjects as "pure major thirds."
Preyer's results are suggestive, but not
conclusive, since he gave his data in terms
of an "index of sensitivity" to intervals
rather than in terms of analysis of variance,
as would be done today. Preyer's value
for the "pure" major third represents a
weighted average of the minimum and maximum
values cited by test subjects. For details, see
Preyer, W. T., Ueber die Grezen der Tonwahremung,
Jena, 1876.
In 1897-8 the extremely underrated acoustician
and music theorist Carl Stumpf studied perception
of the minor third by test subject under 3
conditions: melodic ascending, melodic descending,
and simultaneous dyad. His results show a marked
asymmetry in the spread of sharp vs. flat intervals
judged "pure." For the minor third, this means that
the test subjects were more inclined to accept
considerable flatting that slight sharping. Stumpf
concluded that the "point of subjective purity"
shifted toward flat minor thirds.
He conducted the same series of tests with major
thirds and found exactly the opposite tendency.
For major thirds, the point of subjective purity shifted
toward sharp thirds. Melodic intervals had to be tuned
significantly sharper to be perceived as "pure"
than simultaneous dyad major thirds, but *both*
had to be sharper than just to be perceived as
"pure." See Stumpf, C., and H. F. Meyer,
"Massbestimmungen ueber die Rienheit
consonanter Intergvals," in Beitraege zur
Akustik und Musikwissenschaft, Vol. 2, 1898,
for full details.
Moran and Pratt tested melodic and vertical
intervals but didn't give detailed breakdowns:
they state merely that there is an average error
of 18 cents for the intervals of the 12-TET scale.
They did, however, find that subjects were more
likely to hear intervals chosen from equal
temperament as "pure" and "just" than intervals
chosen because they exhibited small integer
ratios. It's unclear whether this was due to
the effect of familiarity with 12-tet, however.
See Moran , H. and C. C. Pratt, "Variability of
Judgments On Musical Intervals," J. Exp. Psych.,
Vol. 9, 1926, for more info--but not much more.
The article is very short on details, alas.
P.C. Greene cites exhaustive stats shows a
marker preference for melodic Pythaogrean
thirds: see Greene, P.C., "Violin Performance
with Reference to Tempered, natural and
Pythaogrean Intonation," Iowa Studies in
Muisc, Vol. 4, pp. 232-251, 1937, also
see Greene's JASA study published in the
same year.
Incidentally the entire University of Iowa
Studies series supervised by Seashore remain
a remarkable resource. I heartily recommend
these to *every* microtonalist as a compendium
of what performers actually *do*, as opposed
to the intervals they *claim* they play.
The second world war pretty much shut down
psychoacoustic research, so the next
significant papers on the subject are from
the late 1940s and the 1950s.
J. F. Nickerson, in "A Comparison of Performance
of the Same Melody in Solo and in Ensemble with
Reference to Equi-Tempered, Just and,
Pythagorean Intonation," PhD thesis, University
of Minnesota, 1948, found the same perception of
stretched melodic *and* harmonic intervals as
"pure" (although as usual melodic intervals had
to be stretched more widely than vertical
dyads before they were heard as "pure" or "just"
or "in tune.").
There are so many studies from the 1950s
and 1960s and 1970s that I will cite only
3 more: Ward, W. D., "Music Perception" in
Foundations of Modern Auditory Theory, Ed.
J. V. Tobias, 1970--more support for my
statement and more contradiction of Paul
Erlich's claim that listeners do not perceive
stretched vertical dyads as "just" and just
vertical dyads as "too narrow" and "impure."
In 1975 Terhardt and Zick published an
extremely interesting paper which links
the accompaniment of a melody with the
intervals heard as "pure." Some types
of accompaniment required intervals
be stretched to be heard as "pure," while
other types of accompiment required that
all intervals be contracted to be heard
as "pure." This applies to the vertical
intervals of the accompaniment as well
as to the consecutive intervals of the melody.
See Tehardt, E., & Zick, M., "Evaluation of
the Tempered Tone Scale in Normal,
Stretched and Contracted Intonation,"
Acustica, Vol. 32, 1975, pp. 268-274.
The most recent reference which refutes
Paul Erlich's claims and proves my
statement of fact is Sundberg, Johan,
"The Science of Musical Sounds,"
The Academic Press: New York, 1991,
page104: "In the case of the octave,
the craving for stretching has been
noticed for both dyads and melodic
intervals." Table 4.12 on Sundberg's page
102 gives "Average sizes and standard
deviations for dyads between vibrato
tones adjusted by musically experienced
listeners." Average for M2nd is 199 cents,
for Major third was 402 cents, for perfect
fifth 704 cents, for octave 1204 cents.
Notice that these are in fact dyads.
As mentioned, Paul Erlich is a smart
fellow with good intentions but occasionally
he does miss the mark by making a claim
which isn't based on fact. His posts contain
more errors than other people's posts merely
because Erlich posts more useful information
than most other subscribers. The total amount
of incorrect information in Erlich's posts as
a percentage is actually quite low.
--mclaren

Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl
with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sun, 17 Nov 1996 23:09 +0100
Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA11043; Sun, 17 Nov 1996 23:10:31 +0100
Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA13095
Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI)
for id OAA19919; Sun, 17 Nov 1996 14:10:29 -0800
Date: Sun, 17 Nov 1996 14:10:29 -0800
Message-Id: <961117170850_1419612455@emout19.mail.aol.com>
Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu
Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu

🔗John Chalmers <non12@...>

From: mclaren
Subject: Paul Erlich's suggestions for teaching
intonation
--
Paul Erlich on 15 August offered a suggested
curriculum for a 15-week course in tunings.
This took a lot of courage on his part, and
also a lot of careful thought. Kudos are due
to him on both counts, since in setting down
plenty of hard details and carefully-thought-out
ideas, he laid himself open to the verbal assaults
so beloved of an unfortunate minority on this tuning
forum.
Paul Erlich's proposed 15-week course in
tuning seems excellent--*if* the purpose is
to indoctrinate the student in Pythagorean
tuning theory, with other tunings considered
as deviations therefrom.
This might not be the best way to introduce
students to tuning theory, insofar as they
are already brainwashed into the Pythagorean
mindset. Our overwhelmingly Pythagorean
music notation and terminology pretty
much assure that by the time students reach
Erlich's putative course, they'll have long since
followed Alexander Pope's dictum: "A little
knowledge is a dangerous thing; drink deep or
foreswear that Pierian spring."
If we are going to teach people about tuning
theory we may want to give them a sense that
other structures and harmonies are possible than
those considered standard in western Pythagorean
musical paradigms.
Who knows? We might even to reveal to them (gasp!)
that most of the world's musical cultures are
*not* based on Pythagorean paradigms.
However, if Pythagorean zombification is the intent,
the course seems well structured *except* for
the strange introduction of "7-TET representations
of pentatonic scales allowing modulational freedom."
Alas, 7-TET *cannot* be understand in Pythagorean
terms. Attempts to force the neutral triad typical
of and the sole consonant harmony in 7-TET into
a Pythagorean mold produces Easley Blackwood's
unfortunate gaffes: EB states that "the only
consonant harmony in 20-TET is a kind of sixth
chord," untrue, since the neutral chord (which cannot
be explained in a Ptyhagorean framework) is one
of only 2 consonant triadic structures in 20-TET.
Blackwood also states that "there is no
consonant vertical triad in 17-TET," also untrue.
In both cases the primary consonant vertical
triad is a *neutral chord*--the *same* kind of
structure which forms the *sole consonant
vertical triadic structure* in 7-TET.
In 17-TET the neutral triad occurs on
scale degrees 1-6-11; in 20-TET the neutral
triad occurs on scale degrees 1-7-13; in
7-TET the neutral triad occurs on scale degrees
1-3-5. (Numbering scale degrees from 1 to
N where N is the equal tempered division of
the octave.)
If we approach these equal temperaments in
Pythagorean terms we cannot recognize or
acknowledge the existence of neutral triads
or neutral modes, since Pythagorean 3-limit
theory has no place for the 11-limit neutral
comma.
(See my upcoming serialized set of posts
which set forth my article "The Sound and
Structure of the Equal Temperaments," in
which the neutral comma is defined,
quantified, and used to describe the
properties of scales like 7-TET which
can be understood or approach in 3-
or 5-limit terms.)
Clearly 7-TET is completely out of place
in any discussion of Pythagorean tunings.
--
Introducing NJ NET scales between
a discussion of the Pythagorean comma
and schismatic tunings of the late middle
ages also seems strange. NJ NET scales
come out of left field, then vanish.
Perhaps they would be better placed off by
themseves as a separate block?
Paul Erlich's "10. Just intonation--
Indian Music" propounds the pervasive
and dubious claim that "Indian
music" is based small integer ratios.
In fact there are at least two kinds
of "indian music"--Karnatic music,
which uses 9 of 22 just srutis theoretically
but does not appear to follow them at all in
actual practice; and Indian music,
which uses 12 tweaked pitches (*NOT* the
same as those in western music) with
extensive highly microtonal inflexions around
these pitches.
Some highly respected Indian musical
scholars claim that the 9 of 22 sruti model
is universal in Indian music, but it is
not clear whether they are talking about
the prescriptions of the classic Indian
musical texts from hundreds (often
thousands) of years ago, or whether they
are describing what most Indian musicians
actually do *today.*
There is so much controversy, so many
dubious claims, and so much bad data about
both types of "Indian music" that it would
be better to leave this topic off entirely.
It is clear that western theorists do *not*
understand the nature of the intonation
used in either North or South Indian music,
if indeed a single type of intonation is
used in either (there may be as many
intonations as there are pandits). In fact
there is violent and ongoing controversy
among both North and South Indian music
theorists, as well as *between* them,
primarily because of the British Raj.
Whole generations of South & North Indian
music theorists and researchers travelled
to Britain to absorb a "modern" education
and in the process they were brainwashed
by the very strong British just intonation
movement of the 1910s-1930s. (B.
Chaitandra Deva is the most glaring
example, but there are many others.) Thus
a great many of the texts written by
Indian music theorists about Indian music
in English between the 1930s and the 1970s
are in fact regurgitations of the British just
intonation theories by way of Perronet Thompson,
Kathleen Schlesinger, Poole, et alii.
I've read the texts of these Anglicized Indian music
theorists *and* those of foreigners who claim to
"explain" the "true" intonation system used in
North or South India. The purported "limit" and number
of pitches used in Indian JI is in every case different
(Danielou claims 11-limit, B. C. Deva claims 31-limit,
Dudon claims 7-limit, Jhairazbhoy claims it's non-JI,
and so on). For a convincing debunking of these "just
intonation Indian tuning" claims, read "Intonation in
present day North Indian Classical music," Bulletin
of the School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London, 1963, vol. 26, pp. 118-132.
For an equally convincing and authoritative description
of the classical just 9 of 22 sruti Indian tuning
system by an eminent Indian scholar, see the web
page for Indian music. (I won't give you the URL
because it is of course dead with a 404 by now.
At the rate telcos are being taken over, URLs
last about 2 weeks nowadays.)
Alas, B. C. Deva's text "Psychoacoustics
and Music" provides no experimental or
theoretical justification for his claim of
a 31-limit JI North Indian classic tuning,
though it does provide strong evidence for
a link between the timbre of the tambura
drone and the pitches of the scale.
Deva's book could be the result of his
absorption in Britain of British ji theories
about India. Or it might be an accurate and
factual description. "Perceptual, Acoustical and Musical
Apsects of the Tambura Drone" is perhaps the
best serious and worthwhile modern study
using scientific methods (Carterette et al. in
"Music Perception," 7(2), 1989, 75-108) written
in English by an Indian music theorist. Krumhansl's
"studies" on North Indian classical music are worthless
inasmuch as Prof. Krumhansl claims that the 7
modal pitches of North Indian classic music
are identical to the 7 white keys of the piano.
Right.
Put on *your* CDs of North Indian classical
music, and tell me *you* believe that.
The only conclusive result of all these studies and
claims and theories is that no one, Anglo-Saxon
or Indian, has made a convincing case
for just intonation or any other specific
intonational model in the actual performance
of contemporary present-day Indian music. The
measured data from oscillographs and
melographs, where they exist, (in the Jairazbhoy
1963 article, in particular) systematically
contradict all the proposed intonational
models.
In "12. Equal-tempered versions of meantone,"
Paul Erlich has gotten very close. However,
31-TET (1/4-comma meantone) and 19-TET
(Salinas' 1/3-comma meantone) should be
supplemented with 55-TET, which the German
composers considered the acme of intonational
perfection. Froberger, Handel and in particular
Georg Philip Telemann considered a subset of 55-TET
supremely musical: Georg Andreas Sorge mentions
Telemann by name in his 1748 text "Gespra"ch
zwischen einem musico theoretico und einmen
studioso musices" (Conversation between a
music theorist and a student of music):
"Besser gefa"llt mir das beru"hmten Herrn
Capellmeister Telemanns `Systema Intervallorum'
also welcher die Octav in 55. geometrische
Beschnitte (commata) die von Stufe zu
Stufe keiner werdern, theilet." (A rough
translation: "The well-known Herr Cappelmeister
Telemann's `Systema intervallorum' pleases me
better, in which the octave is sliced up into 55
units [commata] which become smaller from
top to bottom.")
Erlich's idea of comparing 22-equal with the
22 theoretical ji sruti is excellent. Side-by-
side *audible* comparison are *extremely*
important; words on a page or figures
on a chart are cold and deaf and silent.
Words & diagrams don't do nearly as much as
sound examples to clarify these musically
important differences.
The progression from "introduce the 7-limit
consonances" in #17 to "equal-tempered
representations of higher consonances"
in #20 to "inharmonic timbres" and then
"non-octave scales" seems haphazard, but
perhaps given a Pythagorean model there is
no straightforward way to proceed from the
7-limit to inharmonic non-Pythagorean
anti-western models of harmony/melody.
--
Overall, Paul Erlich's proposed course would
prove useful in teaching students about
harmony from a western Pythagorean
viewpoint and then gently extending it
in modest ways.
As far as breaking students out of their
Pythagorean zombification and leading them
to discover alternative melodic and
harmonic paradigms, Erlich's might not be
the best curriculum.
--
An alternative curriculum could be
constructed historically. Starting
with the neolithic bone flute recently
discovered in an archaeological dig
in France, microtonality could be
shown to predate the invention of
writing, and xenharmonics could
be demonstrated as one of the oldest
human activities (the 15,000-year-old
bone flutes do not appear to have used
12 equal tempered tones. Gosh, what a
surprise, eh?).
>From there, reference could be made to
the picture of the mouth bow in the
10,000-yr-old paintings on the Trois Freres
caves, and subsequently Otto Neugebauer's
"The Exact Sciences In Antiquity" could
be used along with examples of tunings
from Side 2 of tablet U7/80 of the British
Museum.
(This tuning, written in Old Babylonian
is, conveniently, Pythagorean. Say that
five times fast!)
>From there, reference could be made
to 5th-century Greek theories of music--
specifically Artistoxenos' advocacy
of equal temperament contrasted with
the Pythagorean enthusiasm for 3-limit.
(John Chalmers will no doubt point out
that Aristoxenos' famous quotation is
ambiguous, to which I must respond
that there are still UFO conspiracy theories
about JFK's assassination. No evidence
is 100% completely totally unambiguous.
The gist, however, seems clear.)
Then tetrachords, tonoi, genera, and
onward to the drastic change in limit
from 3 or 7 or11 or 13-limit Greek paradigms
(depending of whether or not you buy
Kathleeen Schlesinger's fanciful ideas,
and how you date the collection of tunings
compiled by Ptolemy) all the way
down to 3-limit 7th-century tunings
as specified in Boethius ca. 600 A.D.
The controversy over dividing the
whole tone could be dealt with as
a continuation of the Aristoxenian/
Pythagorean conflict--these two
attitudes toward music are diametrically
opposed and cannot be resolved; the
Pythagorean view elevates pure theory
and numbers as source of valid intonation,
while the Aristoxenian view elevates
the evidence of the senses as the
supreme arbiter of intonation. In fact
these are more than attitudes toward music,
they are fundamental to the antipodally
opposing approaches to science in the western
world--namely, applied science vs. pure
theoretical science.
The vehement controversy between the
followers of Walter of Odington and
the neo-Pythagoreans could be detailed
throughout the 14th century, not neglecting
to mention the role of Odo of Cluny, and
the rich history of Renaissance tunings
(19, 31, 34, 55, many different meantones,
as well as pure ji as advocated by di Doni
and others) following the introduction of
Napier's logarithms could be dealt with.
The supremacy of meantone and its
reign in European music until the 1840s
should be mentioned, as well as the importance
of the Maudslay lathe in dethroning meantone.
(Since you are scholars the connection will
be obvious.) The role of Helmholtz and
his followers should be contrasted with
the British and American ji movements
in the western hemisphere and the
controversy twixt Russian advocates of
pure ji and xenharmonic equal temperaments
in the GKHN during the 1920s. (Since you
are scholars you are of course familiar
with the roles played by Sabaneev and
Avraamov in Russian microtonality during
the 1920s and 1930s, as well as Alexei
Stepanovich Ogolevets' anticipation of Krahenbuehl
& Schmidt in his 1948 text "An Introduction to
Contemporary Musical Thought," which itself
elaborates on Yasser's historical-determination
theory of tunings but in a direction which leads
to 17- & 22-TET rather than 19-TET as the "4th
stage" of musical evolution.)
>From there the path would be clear to discuss
the modern history of tuning, which is
inherently polyintonational. The days of
"one tuning ueber alles" are over, despite the
best efforts of the dunderheads at Lincoln
Center. (They should put an iron gate in front
of the door engraved with the words ARBEIT
MACHT FREI.)
--
Jose Antonio-Martin Salinas wanted to know
whether it was appropriate to spend an
entire hour of a 15-hour lecture on tuning
theory discussing non-octave tunings.
Of course it is not at all appropriate to
spend so little time on non-octave tunings;
a full three or four hours should be spent on
non-octave tunings, inasmuch as the set
of non-octave ETs perceptually include all
of the octave = 2.0 scales. (See my paper
"The Uses and Characteristics of Non-Octave
Scales" in Xenharmonikon 14 for more details.)
In all justice, 5 hours ought to be spent on
nj net scales particularly in other cultures
(Balinese, Javanese, African, Guatamalan,
etc.) and 5 hours should to be lavished on
just intonations greater than 3-limit,
with the remaining 5 hours dealing with
octave = 2 and octave <> 2 equal temperaments.
That is, 5 hours each on NJ NET, ET and
ji tunings.
The importance of non-octave scales is
so vast that I would keep the theory to
a minimum and spend most of the time
immersing students in the exotic, delicious
sound of various Nth root of K non-octave
scales. Once they've experienced the richness
and acoustic beauty of non-octave scales,
they'll be irrevocably hooked--it's like living in
a monochromatic desert all your life and
suddenly being transported to the middle of
a technicolor rain forest. Yes, non-octave scales
are *at least* that important.
--mclaren

Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl
with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Wed, 20 Nov 1996 19:55 +0100
Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA01019; Wed, 20 Nov 1996 19:56:26 +0100
Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA01017
Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI)
for id KAA10174; Wed, 20 Nov 1996 10:56:18 -0800
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 10:56:18 -0800
Message-Id: <9611201850.AA03662@sunfish.musclefish.com>
Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu
Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu

🔗John Chalmers <non12@...>

From: mclaren
Subject: sensory versus musical consonance
--
Kami Rousseau has suggested stretching just
intonation scales so that the octaves will be
heard as perceptual octaves, the fifths as
perceptually "pure" fifths, and so on. This
idea is interesting and innovative. However,
it's important to point out a source of
possible confusion here.
My posts on pyschoacoustics have described
in detail the fact that the mathematical and
perceptual octave are different entities,
especially when the octave is heard as an
isolated interval. Psychoacoustic experiments
do indeed show that isolated intervals are
heard as "too flat" and "too narrow" and "impure"
when they are tuned to a precise 2:1 ratio,
whereas an interval of approximately 1208-1215
cents is heard as "pure" and "in tune" and "just."
However, what we are discussing here is
*sensory consonance.* This is consonance
as measured by psychoacoustic experiments.
It is the consonance perceived by observers
under experimental conditions. It is consonance
of isolated intervals in a non-musical setting.
This is not necessarily the same thing
as *musical consonance.*
Musical consonance is dependent on *context*.
It is judged in a musical setting. Musical
consonance is dependent not only on timbre
and beats and the width of the critical band,
it is also dependent on the preceding harmonies,
the nature of the music's melodic stucture,
and most importantly it is determined by the
intonation itself.
It is very important to make this distinction
between *sensory consonance* and *musical
consonance* because the two are not generally
distinguished in music theory. In fact Hermann
Helmholtz intentionally and purposely conflated
the two--Helmholtz claimed that sensory
consonance was completely equivalent to
musical consonance.
Yet it is clear that this is often not the case.
One of the best examples is the stretched Balinese
octave. Heard as an isolated interval, this 1215-cent
octave can sound questionable. But it is never
played in isolation in Balinese music.
When a Balinese gamelan plays, there's a constant
tinkling shimmering gonging interplay of partials
that make the partials seem to sizzle in the air,
and the beats thus produced are integral to the
musical effect. Individual intervals sound quite
different in terms of their consonance from the
same intervals played in rhythmic counterpoint
with mass masses of other notes, whose timbre
blends into one huge shimmering klangfarbenmelodie.
Indonesian gamelan tuners know this so well that
they point out that an individual metallophone cannot
be fully tuned until the entire gamelan has been
rough-tuned; the entire timbral wash is needed
to fine-tune any one metallophone in the
ensemble.
This is a *very* important point.
Our ears have a remarkable ability to
pick up on the structure embedded within
an intonation and to fit various harmonic
and melodic progressions into that
embedded structure. A great deal of
subconscious processing goes on when
we listen to music; our ear/brain system
is extraordinarily sophisticated at
extracting and recognizing patterns
buried in the intonation of the music
to which we listen.
The net result is that we must be careful
not to pursue sensory consonance at the
expense of musical consonance. While
as Johan Sundberg points out it is vital
not to mistake mathematical for perceptual
intervals, it is even more vital *not* to
give up musical consonance in the pursuit
of sensory consonance.
Thus Kami's suggestion of stretching just
intonation tunings makes good sense as
far as increasing the sensory consonance
of the intervals. However, stretching the
intervals in a just array disarranges most
of the mathematical relationships between
the octave and the component just intervals.
This can be a significant loss if those
relationships are used musically. Moreover,
this is not just a matter of mathematics;
the ear can hear the musical structure
embedded with a just intonation scale.
Disjointing this structure for the sake of
improving sensory consonance might prove
musically successful--or it might not. My
guess is that it will depend on the musical
context.
--
On another point:
An extremely superficial understanding of
my criticisms of theories of just intonation
on this forum leads to the false conclusion
that I am out to debunk just intonation.
Nothing could be further from the truth. If
this is what people have come away with
by reading my posts on psychoacoustics
then they have completely misunderstood
my point.
Instead, my point is that the arguments used
by JI advocates in favor of just intonation do
not hold water. Hermann Helmholtz and
Partch (following Helmholtz's lead) both
tried to claim that western music was based
on the harmonic series, and that therefore
sensory consonance could be directly equated
to musical consonance, and that therefore
just intonation is musically superior and
musically preferable to any other system
because just intonation offers maximal
sensory consonance and direct use of the
harmonic series in music.
These arguments in favor of just intonation
have actually been extremely damaging to
the cause of JI. As psychoacoustics and
digital synthesis have progressed by leaps
and bounds, it has become increasingly
clear over the last 100 years that sensory
consonance is not at all necessarily the same
thing as musical consonance, and that as a
result many exotic and beuatiful yet
inharmonic timbres and intonations can
be developed which nonetheless sound
musically effective and very beautiful.
The problem with the Helmholtz/Partch/
Johnston/Doty argument in favor of just
intonation is that it creates a Manichean
dichotomy: once we accept the premise that
the harmonic series is the end-and and the
be-all of music, all musical structures not
based on the harmonic/subharmonic series
must be regarded as musically inferior, to
be purged, expurgated, reviled, cast down
into darkness.
This is a big problem because it immediately
puts the listener in the position of having to
revile and abjure all the music s/he has
heard over a lifetime...since virtually all of
the music all of us hear while we grow up
is, of course, 12 tone equal temperament.
Yet anyone interested enough to spend years
studying music theory must love 12-tet music
dearly indeed. So this creates a huge problem
for the just intonation advocate: you are now
in the position to having to convince your
audience that all the music they love is
a debased abomination, a falling-away from
the true faith of the harmonic series.
This is not a good way to attract converts
and gain followers.
The sensory consonance argument for JI
is also lethally flawed, because anyone
with a reasonable knowledge of pyschoacoustics
can destroy it by citing the experimental
evidence. For that matter, you can utterly
annihilate the Helmholtz/Partch sensory
consonance argument simply by playing
pieces of music by Risset, Chowning,
Dashow, Harvey, et al. which use extremely
inharmonic timbres but which nonetheless
sounds beautiful.
Inharmonic digitally-generated timbres and
computer-produced and -controlled inharmonic
series could not be heard prior to the mid-1970s.
The computer power to produce such music was
simply not available. Now that everyone can hear
and experiment with such musical timbres and
inharmonic series tunings, it has become starkly
apparent that arguments for just intonation on
the basis of sensory consonance do *not*
necessarily lead to the harmonic series, and
(conversely) that the harmonic series does *not*
necessarily lead to sensory consonance. (Inharmonic
timbres with harmonic series chords produce musical
effects completely *unlike* those of just intonation.
John R. Pierce, Max Mathews, William Sethares,
myself and many others have produced demonstation
tapes showing this effect.)
The point of all this is that my systematic
demolition of the sensory consonance argument
for just intonation is in fact necessary to create
a firm foundation for the musical use of JI.
Otherwise, we are building on a foundation of
quicksand. As for the the claim that the harmonic
series is the basis of all consonance intervals
and timbres, and that sensory consonance can
best be obtained from the members of the
harmonic series, and that therefore JI is
the most musical intonation because it
maximizes sensory consonance... Well, as
we have seen, all of these arguments are
incorrect because all of the premises are
false. And so, to use these lethally flawed
arguments for just intonation is merely to
create a wonderful oportunity for those
hostile to new music to shoot down just
intonation wthout even hearing it.
A much more powerful argument for just
intonation is the "Mount Everest" argument.
Like Everest, just intonation is there--
why not explore it?
While it's extremely easy for any narrow-
minded conservative hater of new music
like the abysmally ignorant Paul Griffiths
(current music critic for the New Yorker)
to demolish the "natural interval" or
"harmonic series" or "sensory consonance"
justification of JI, it's extremely hard
for even the most narrow-minded musical
reactionary to convince anyone that we'd
all be better off if we didn't open our
ears and explore potentially beautiful new
JI harmonies and melodies.
This argument for JI puts the shoe on the
other foot--reactionaries like Griffiths must
now show their true colors and argue against open-
mindedness if they want to prevent anyone
from trying JI on this basis.
--
To return to the original point, then, Kami's
idea of stretching JI scales is an interesting
one. However, it's important not to confuse
sensory consonance with musical consonance,
and not to confuse either of those with
musical concordance.
Stretching a JI scale might heighten the
perceptual purity of intervals while lowering
the musical utility of those intervals. If
stretching the scale warps or destroys the
internal structure of the intonation,
sensory consonance might be enhanced at
the price of creating musical discordance.
As always, all three quantities must be
balanced, and they are inextricably bound
up with the musical context in which
this occurs.
It would be nice to give a simpler or shorter
evaluation of Kami's idea...but given the
complexity of human hearing and the subtlety
of even the simplest-sounding intonation,
that just isn't possible.
--mclaren

Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl
with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Tue, 26 Nov 1996 17:27 +0100
Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA08530; Tue, 26 Nov 1996 17:29:21 +0100
Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA08622
Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI)
for id IAA27803; Tue, 26 Nov 1996 08:29:18 -0800
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 1996 08:29:18 -0800
Message-Id:
Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu
Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu

🔗John Chalmers <non12@...>

From: mclaren
Subject: Muddy thinking, the scientific method and John
Cage - part 2 of 2
--
In the previous post, I mentioned that
the scientific method is crucially important in
microtonality. As Aristotle points out in the Rhetoric:
"A speech has two parts. You must state you case,
and you must prove it. You cannot either state your
case and omit to prove it, or prove it without
having first stated it." This is clearly an alien
concept to Eric Lyon and Greg Taylor: but to the
rest of us, it's obvious.
So here's concrete proof of my claim for the importance
of the scientific method in dealing with microtonality.
Tune up an open "fifth" in which the fifth has the ratio
2^[3/5]. This is an interval of 720 cents. If you play
this interval bare using a timbre with integer harmonics
and plenty of high overtones, the interval will be hard
to take. It may even grate on your ears.
Now, however, play the progression I-IV-V-I in such
bare fifths, same timbre, but with I, IV, V and I in
15-TET. You will suddenly discover that the interval
which sounded grating in the first instance now sounds
remarkably euphonious and concordant.
The ear, in short, readily accepts the 720-cent "perfect"
fifth as part of a multiple-of-5/oct equal tempered
microtonal scale.
This example can be repeated with 7-TET "perfect" fifths,
which are nearly as far from just fifths (685.4 cents)
as is the flagrantly non-just 720-cent fifth of 5-TET,
yet which in the context of the 7-TET scale sound
astonishingly euphonius and perfectly acceptable.
Now tune up the 19-tet perfect fifth and play the
progression I-IV-V-I. You'll discover that the
progression sounds all but indistinguishable from the
same progression in 12-tet, except that if you
use full triads the chords sounds slightly smoother
in 19-tet.
Yet theorists condemned 19-tet throughout the 19th
century because of its supposedly "unacceptable"
7-cent-flat perfect fifths. Barbour dismissed
19-tet as "musically useless" for this reason--
yet he never even *heard* music in 19-tet.
Without experiment to serve as a check on our purely
mathematical calculations, we cannot even begin to
approach microtonality in an intelligent way.
Instead, we would find ourselves flailing like bugs
stuck in yogurt, as Eric Lyon and Greg Taylor have
done repeatedly on this tuning forum. Without physical
and psychoacoustic experiment to back up our claims,
we would make foolish unproven statements which turn
out to be nonsense--as Eric Lyon and Greg Taylor have
done repeatedly on this tuning forum.
--
It's worth taking two posts to discuss the various
remarkably feeble defenses offered in service of
John Cage, charlatan, because these wan and etiolated
arguments in favor of Cage are symptomatic of the
faulty reasoning and fuzzy grasp of fact found all
too often on this tuning forum and throughout society
in general (I'm talking about American society here
--I can't speak for Europe).
Yes, ladies 'n gents, there's a *REASON* why
psychic help phone lines are so popular
in America nowadays...
Fuzzy thinking and slipshod logic lead to a pervasive
abuse of words, a wanton violation of their recognized
meanings, a disdain and a contempt for precision
in the use of the English language.
To use a word so fundamental to the outlook of modern
western culture as "experimental" (in the way Cage
does) and willfully pervert its recognized meaning is
to grossly and culpably misuse the word "experimental."
This, both Cage and Lyon have done by claiming that
it means something other than its dictionary definition
as soon as we kidnap the poor word "experiment," jam
a hood over its head, stick a gun in its back, and
frog-march it into the realm of modern music.
Of course, if we want to make up the meaning of the
words we use, we are certainly free to do so. Thus I can
refer to Eric Lyon as a slubberdegullion and explain by
this that slubberdegullion means "fine fellow."
If we choose to go this route, we will quickly come
a-cropper, and our discourse will degenerate into
pure nonsense. We will straightways wind up talking
about the importance of sofas in swimming pools
("sofa" here means "mathematics," while "swimming
pool" in this context means "tuning system") and so on.
The only alternative, ladies and gentlement, is to
think clearly and use words with some concern for
their recognized meanings.
--
This points up the Bengal Tiger trap hidden in my
previous post, and into which Eric Lyon so fulsomely
tumbled.
"A man may take to drink because he feels himself to
be a failure, and then fail all the more completely
because he drinks. It is rather the same thing [with]
the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate
because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of
our language makes it easier for us to have foolish
thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible."
[Orwell, George, "Orwell: The Complete Essays, 1963,
pg. 163]
Alas, careless and sloppy use of words--particularly
of terms borrowed from the sciences--is a chronic
problem in music theory and indeed in all post-1945
art theory. While John Cage was irremediably sloppy
and careless in his use of words, he is far from
atypical of modern art theorists; in fact Cage's
incoherenece and murkiness is symptomic of a
larger problem. As Orwell points out, "In certain
kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism
and literary criticism, it is normal to come across
long passages which are almost completely lacking
in meaning." [Orwell, op cit., pg. 168]
--Also in modernist postwar music theory, one needs
must add. The culprit, again, is the willfull misuse
and shameless abuse of scientific terms.
Eric Lyon himself touches on this important problem
when he states "indeed the confusion of artistic and
scientific methodologies is one major reason that
many American university music departments have
become somewhat inhospitable for artists."
To put it bluntly, if you propose to use terms borrowed
from the sciences you had better use them properly
and with some understanding. Cage did not.
Eric Lyon does not. Most modern "music theorists"
do not.
If you fail to properly use terms borrowed from
the sciences, you are practicing pseudo-science.
Another word for a person who practices
pseudo-science is "charlatan"--
which the American College Dictionary defines as
"1. One who pretends to more knowledge than he
has; a quack." John Cage and his rivals at Darmstadt,
along with PIerre Boulez' group in Paris were,
by dictionary definition, charlatans one and all.
They spouted meaningless pseudo-scientific
drivel, and the intent of their "theories" appears
to have been to obfuscate and impress, rather than to
elucidate and specify.
This is the charge made against John Cage in my
topic 3 of TD 803, and the charge stands. Eric
Lyon has not refuted the charge, since clearly
he does not understand the dictionary definition
of "experimental" any better than John Cage
did.
I don't blame Eric Lyon for this, any more than I
hold Greg Taylor responsible for the fractured logic
and twisted reasoning of his posts. Clearly these
people are the victims of an educational system
which has turned out college graduates who can't
locate England on a world map and who think
Neville Chamberlain was a basketball player.
Because they have never been taught to think
clearly or trouble themselves about the meaning
of the words they use, these casualties of a failed
system of so-called "higher" education are singularly
vulnerable to argument by authority and proof
by assertion.
Lyon tries his hand at the latter when he states
"The most cursory glance at Cage's writings
displays his obvious intelligence and musical
knowledge."
This is an attempt at proof by mere unsubstantiated
claim. As we all know, this is no proof at all.
Countless crackpots have uttered unsubstantiated
claims with great conviction... which claims turn
out to be utter bilge.
The most memorable example? Cyrus Teed.
This 19th century cult leader claimed that the
earth was not spherical but hollow and that we
all live on the inside. Teed stated that the
convexity of the earth's surface was due to
"an unfortunate optical illusion."
Teed made his claim with great authority,
enough to convince hundreds of followers.
Need I say more?
Perhaps I do. Lyon speaks of what we learn from
"the most cursory glance at the writings of John
Cage."
Fine. Let's take a cursory glance.
Cage writes:
"Does being musical make one automatically stupid and unable
to listen? Then don't you think one should put a stop to studying
music? Where are your thinking caps?" [Cage, John, "Silence,"
page 49]
Let's see:
Studying music must...therefore "make one automatically stupid."
Right.
--
Again:
"For in this new music nothing takes place but sounds: those
that are notated and those that not." [Cage, John, "Silence,"
page 7]
This is true of *all* music. And so what? A fine example
of a meaningless truism, since music by definition involves
sounds, and all sounds performed in a musical concert are
either notated, or not notated.
This like saying "The visual arts involve optical aesthetic
objects" or "the defining quality of a circle is its circularity."
In short, this is trivial crap dolled up in pompous
language to pass as profundity. Typical of Cage's writing.
--
Again:
"What might have given rise, by reason of
the high degree of indeterminacy, to no
matter what eventuality (to a process)
becomes productive as a time-object."
[Cage, J., "Silence," pg. 28]
A simpler way to say this is: "shit happens."
Why didn't Cage say that? Could it be because
if he did, we would realize how assininely
otiose the statement is?
Any "thing" which "gives rise" to "no matter
what eventuality" eventually becomes "a
time-object" in music. This is as true
as it is meaningless.
--
Again:
"Musical habits include...the study of the
timbres, single and in combination of a limited
number of sound-producing mechanisms. In
mathematical terms these all concern discrete
steps." [Cage, John, "Silence," page 9]
Here Cage makes the ignorant blunder of
claiming that all sounds have spectra which
can be described in "discrete steps." This
is completely wrong. In fact, many acoustic sounds
have continuous spectra--all noisy sounds do.
Cymbals, fricatives, plosives, whispered
speech, flute multiphonics, loud brass notes, sul
ponticello violin or viola or bass or 'cello
notes; shaken thunder sheets, guiros,
guajiras, shakers, rasps, drums, brushed
metal plates, banged rocks, tambourines, etc.
Only a very few instruments exhibit
anything *like* discrete overtones
and even then--as Xavier Sera showed in his
Stanford doctoral thesis--*all* sounds
have an acoustically important stochastic
(contuous spectrum, essentially a noise)
component, which (if left out) renders the
resynthesis much more "artificial" and harf proof by authority.
The Bible states that the earth was created in
seven days. Who wants to argue in favor of this
claim? This "authoritative" claim contradicts all
available fossil evidence, all available radiocarbon
evidence, isotoptic-proportion evidence, evidence
from the microwave background radiation of the universe,
evidence from radial red shifts of distant galaxies,
ad infinitum.
Proof by authority might have passed muster back
when the Inquisition was burning witches, but
that method of proof doesn't cut it nowadays,
Eric.
In fact, authorities, as history shows, are usually
*wrong.*
Aristotle is a superb example.
Aristotle claimed that ice floats because its shape
does not pierce the surface of water, while iron
sinks because iron objects' shape do pierce the
surface of water.
Aristotle's authoritative statement was believed
for thousands of years, simply because Aristotle
was THE AUTHORITY. No one dared question THE
AUITHORITY...until Galileo in the 1550s placed a
thin iron needle on the surface of a pan of water
and showed that the iron needle floated; then
he pushed a piece of ice under the water and
showed that even though its shape pierced the
surface of the water the piece of ice inevitably
rose to the surface.
In short, proof by authority is meaningless
because *no* authority is omniscient. No matter
how prestigious any high panjandrum, s/he
can be utterly and completely wrong. An excellent
modern example is Linus Pauling's proposed structure
for the DNA molecule. Pauling's model used 3 strands
of nucleic acid, a structure which could not have
held together at the molecular level. Pauling was
a genius, a Nobel prize winner, an authority on
chemistry, and he was also 100% dead wrong.
If we wish to separate truth from nonsense and
gibberish from meaningful statements, we must
have recourse to evidence from the physical
world. Nothing else will do.
So please, people, stop quoting authority figures.
I don't give a fat rat's ass what Milton Babbitt
or John Cage or Bach or Beethoven or the King of
Siam or Allah or Boddhisatva says, this means
*NOTHING* to me.
I'm from Missouri. I have to be shown. Authority
figures mean *zero*. If you claim there will
be a dawn tomorrow, your unsubstantiated
opinion is amusing and no doubt charmingly
naive; but if you want anyone to *believe*
that there will be a dawn tomorrow, you had better
run us through orbital dynamics and observed
measurement of the planets' orbits, Newton's
law of gravitation and the 3 laws of motion
along with plenty of experimental evidence for
'em and (just to be on the safe side) an extensive
computer simulation of the solar system to
make sure it doesn't exhibit radically chaotic
behavior. *Then* we'll believe there *might* be
a dawn tomorrow.
Otherwise, your statements amount to meaningless
unproven gibberish--exactly like the statements
of Eric Lyon and John Cage.
--
Sadly, Eric Lyons' arguments conform to the
tried and true principles of pseudo-science.
Instead of proof, he offers only assertion;
instead of reference to physical evidence,
he genuflects to authority figures; and
instead of using precisely defined terms
clearly and coherently, he grossly misuses
recognized scientific terms. (Viz., the word
"experiment.")
Thus, predictably, Lyon offers no evidence to
back up his unsubstantiated claim that "the most
cursory glance at Cage's writings displays his
obvious intelligence and musical knowledge"
other than testimony to that effect by Milton
Babbitt. Since Babbitt is (if possible) even
more musically and scientifically and
mathematically incompetent than John Cage,
this is like using the testimony of a witch
doctor to back up the claims of a dowser.
In fact, the most cursory glance at Cage's
writings demonstrates 4 qualities:
[1] Disdain for the recognized meaning
of words; [2] incoherent reasoning
and disjointed logic; [3] contempt for
scientifically demonstrated facts; [4] a profound
ignorance of music, mathematics, science,
statistics and the laws of probability.
--
Unlike Eric Lyon and so many other casualties of
our intellectually bankrupt system of higher
education who've attempted in vain to rescue
John Cage from the consequences of his own gross
incompetence, I propose to substantiate my
claims that John Cage is a charlatan. I will
demonstrate quote by quote and fact by fact
that John Cage is a musical swindler "who pretends
to more knowledge than he has; a quack." (The
dictionary definition of a charlatan.)
And in fact the proof is set forth in a series
of 16 posts on John Cage coming up directly.
This constant knee-jerk defense of John Cage's
scientific illiteracies is no surprise; this is
typical, usual, standard, ordinary and quotidian
for the academic establishment and those whose
reasoning capacities have been blunted by extensive
exposure to it.
And so the persistent defense of Cage's idiocies
and quackeries on this forum is not alarming at all.
It is to be expected. Having never been taught to
think, what else can most of the forum subscribers
do other than hysterically deny obvious facts?
What *is* alarming is the uniformly low quality
of reasoning and the utter lack of hard evidence
produced by John Cage's defenders on this forum.
Their feeble efforts serve as a brutal indictment of
our failed system of "higher "education, and in particular
of college professors' complete failure to teach
students to think clearly, respect evidence, instill
scholarship and inculcate a respect for logic.
Indeed, "A bill of indictment for the professors'
crimes against higher education would be lengthy.
"Here is a partial one:
*They are overpaid, grotesquely underworked, and
the architects of academia's vast empire of waste.
*They have abandoned their teaching responsibilities
and their students. (..)
*In pursuit of their own interests--research, academic
politicking, cushier grants--they have left the nation's
students in the care of an ill-trained, ill-paid, and bitter
academic underclass.
*They have distorted university curriculums to accomodate
their own narrow and selfish interests rather than the
interests of their students.
*They have created a culture in which bad teaching goes
unnoticed...and good teaching is penalized.
*They insist that their obligations to research justify
their flight from the college classroom despite the fact
that fewer than one in ten ever makes any significant
contribution to their field. (..)
*They have cloaked their scholarship in stupefying,
inscrutable jurgon. This conceals the fact that much of
what passes for research is inane.
*In tens of thousands of books and hundreds of thousands
of journal articles, they have perverted the system of
academic publishing into a shceme that serves only to
advance academic careers and bloat libraries with masses
of unread, unreadable, and worthless pablum.
*They have twisted the ideals of academic freedom into
a system in which they are accountable to no one, while
they employ their own rigid methods of thought control
to stamp out original thinkers and dissenters.
*In the liberal arts, the professors' obsession with
trendy theory--which is financially rewarding--has
transformed the humanities into models of inhumanity
and literature into departments of illiteracy.
*In the social sciences, professors have created cults
of pseudo-science packed with what one critic calls
"sorcerors clad in the paraphenalia of science...woolly-
minded lost souls yearning for gurus," more concerned
with methodology and mindless quantification than
with addressing any significant social questions.
(..) *In schools of education, their disdain for
teaching and the arrogance with which they treat
their student has turned the universities into the
home office of educational mediocrity, poisoning the
entire educational system from top to bottom.
*They have constructed machinery that so far has
frustrated or sabotaged every effort at meaningful
reform that might interfere with their boondoggle.
*Finally, it has been the professors' relentless drive
for advancement that has turned American universities
into vast factories of junkthink, the byproduct of academe's
endless capacity to take even the richest elements of
civilization and disfigure them..." [Sykes, Charles J.,
Profscam: Professors and the Demise of Higher
Education. Regnery Gateway: Washington DC, 1988,
pp. 6-7]
Thus, it ill behooves me to criticize those like Eric Lyons
and Greg Taylor, since they are merely the symptoms
of the disease--namely, those "vast factories of junkthink"
called univerities.
Obsessed with defending intellectually bankrupt charlatans
like John Cage, the music professors in the universities of the
world have no time to explore new microtonal realms. And
so it's no surprise that J.A.M. Salinas complains of a grossly
inadequate university education which purports to have
familiarized him every aspect of avant-garde music and yet
left him uniformed about even the barest elements of
microtonality.
Since microtonality is the cutting edge of today's music,
it demands the utmost in clear thinking and the highest
regard for acoustics and mathematics if we are to come to
terms with the subject. This leaves most university professors
of modern music completely out of the picture, since like
John Cage himself and all too many of his would-be defenders
on this tuning forum, nearly all university music professors
are pervasively ignorant of acoustics, physics and mathematics,
consistently unable to write or think clearly, systematically
unaware of and disdainful of the facts of modern psychoacoustics,
and almost universally incompetent in and ignorant of basic
music theory and music history. (The few exceptions--Allan
Strange, Brian Belet, William Alves, William Schottstaedt,
Chris Chafe, John Chowning, et alii--merely prove this rule.)
This is why it's so important to examine close up the full
depth of Cage's charlatanry, and to contrast it at every turn
with the manifold theoretical and acoustical depths of
microtonality. Cage's swindles and perversions of 12-TET
music theory are the disease; microtonality is the cure.
--mclaren

Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl
with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Thu, 28 Nov 1996 18:43 +0100
Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA11103; Thu, 28 Nov 1996 18:45:09 +0100
Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA11186
Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI)
for id JAA04509; Thu, 28 Nov 1996 09:45:06 -0800
Date: Thu, 28 Nov 1996 09:45:06 -0800
Message-Id:
Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu
Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu

🔗John Chalmers <non12@...>

From: mclaren
Subject: Paul Erlich's "tonalness"
algorithm, the purported "central
pitch processor," etc. - 1 of 2
--
In Topic 3 of Digest 848 Paul Erlich
made some provocative general remarks about
psychoacoustics. "The central pitch
processor is the mechanism by which we
perceive a set of harmonic partials as
a signle note -- the virtual pitch -- with
an associated pitch. (..) Whether this process
is inborn or acquired, some claim prenatally,
is a matter of debate. Its existence is
not."
Erlich's meaning is not entirely clear. He
might be saying that the existence of
the central pitch processor is not open to
debate. If so, he confutes the *process* of
pitch perception with the *hypothesis*
of a purported "central pitch
processor." In this case his claim
is naturally false.
The existence of some centralized high-level
mechanism of pitch detection far inside the
brain has been demonstrated pretty conclusively.
Houtsma and Goldstein conducted a series of
experiments in which they showed that any
of a set of the first 10 harmonics produced a
virtual pitch even when each of a pair of those
first 10 harmonics was presented dichotically
(this is, one to each ear).
Since there was no opportunity for those
two tones to interact except in the brain,
some higher-level mechanism of pitch
perception must have been at work for
thos tones.
If this is what Paul Erlich means when
he says "there can be no doubt" about
the existence of a central pitch processor,
he is surely correct.
However, if what Paul E. means is that
"there can be no doubt of the existence
of Goldstein's postulated mechanism of
central processor pitch detection," alas,
this is incorrect.
While there is no doubt about the
reality of the *observed effect* (virtual
pitch) there's strong doubt as to the hypothesized
cause (Goldstein's specific "central processor")
which might or might not exist in the human
auditory system. In fact, Goldstein's and Wightman's
theories are outmoded and have been supplanted
by spectral network theories of pitch perception
based on wetware neural nets. Paul Erlich does
not mention the latest spectral network models
of pitch perception because he might not have
the space to do so in his posts...or he might be unfamiliar
with the full range of psychoacoustic literature.
Regardless, Erlich appears to have based his discussion
and his posts on a small subset of the psychoacoustic
literature dating from the 1970s-early 1980s, some of
which is outdated. As it happens, there is strong
evidence against Wightman's and Goldstein's specific
"central processor" models, but Erlich does not
mention it. This might be because Erlich may
be entirely conversant with the all the aspects
of the psychoacoustic literature dealing with
inharmonic tones.
When Erlich states "there can be no debate" about
this or that hypothetical auditory mechanism,
he is not talking about psychoacoustics.
*Almost all* aspects of modern psychoacoustics
are subject to debate because most of the evidence
is contradictory. Some experiments strongly
support certain hypotheses about how the ear/brain
system works, while other psychoacoustic
experiments strongly support *other* hypotheses.
Some of the evidence contradicts *all* available
hypotheses.
Worst of all, the human ear/brain system is pretty
much a black box. We can't saw open someone's skull
and start slicing out brain tissue and zapping the
poor subject with electrical impulses because that
would be unethical. It might tell us a good deal about
the precise wetware mechanisms which allow us to
extract pitch, but at present we can only view the
human brain as a sealed system and we can't muck
around punching in wires and burning out parts of the
brain to see what effect this has. As a result,
psychoacoustics is more like astronomy than
acoustics: in astronomy you can look but you can't
touch. It's impossible for an astronomer to arrange
for galaxies to collide to see what happens--
the best you can do is try to find two galaxies that
probably collided and figure out what might have
happened. The same is true in the human auditory
system--deaf subjects and stroke victims have
provided some of the most useful info about ear/brain
wetware.
This observation is nothing new. It's an old truism.
James Clerk Maxwell pointed out in his Rede Lecture
in 1878 that what we would now call
psychoacoustics is "that untrodden wild between
acoustics and music, that Serbonian bog where
whole armies of scientific musicians and musical
men of science have sunk without filling it up."
Unlike so many earlier microtonal theorists,
Paul Erlich knows some hard facts about psychoacoustics,
and he has clearly gone to the trouble of looking up
some of the actual literature. This is important,
because (and I'm speaking to the rest of you) you *must*
read the full text of the original papers to understand
the full range of ambiguity of psychoacoustic results,
and the full complexity of the human auditory system.
However, Paul Erlich may rely to an unwarrented degree
on the theories of a few researchers--Terhardt,
Wightman, and Goldstein--whose theories conflict
with the results a number of important psychoacoustic
experiments.
Terhardt has gained plenty of attention and a hefty
rep by performing a lot of experiments which back
up his mathematical place-theory model of human
hearing. This is fine as far as it goes, but the problem
is that Terhardt has *not* bothered to mention the
not-so-negligible evidence which casts *doubt* on
his place theory of hearing.
In Terhardt's theory, the primary action of the human
auditory system is Fourier analysis of
incoming sounds into sinusoids on the basilar
membrane of the inner ear. Other effects--such as
virtual pitch--are considered by Terhardt to
constitute "secondary sensations" derived from
the primary Fourier analysis.
What are the problems with this theory?
First, Terhardt's mathematical model gives predictions
which conflict with a signifcant amount of psychoacoustic
data.
For one thing, Terhardt's theory stumbles on the
minor triad, as Richard Parncutt has pointed out.
For another thing:
In "Hearing A Mistuned Harmonic In An
Otherwise Periodic Complex Tone," William
Morris Hartmann, Stephen McAdams and Bennett
K. Smith point out that "The predictions of the
algorithm, calculated from the formulas
given in Terhardt et al. (1982), are shown in Fig.
14. The figure shows predictions for -4% and
+4% mistuning; the predictions for other values
of mistuning actually used in our experiments lie
ebtween the curves for -4% and +4%. The algorithm
predicts a shift for zero mistuning (harmonic
complex), approximately midway between curves for
-4%R and +4%, although Peters et al. (1983) did not
find such shifts.
"Comparing the predicted shifts with the observed
shifts shows that he algorithm correctly predicts
the trends of the data when the mistuning is positive.
When te mistuning is negative, however, the algorithm
fails completely. Experimentally, negative mistuning
usually leads to negative pitch shifts. By contrast,
the algorithm predicts positive pitch shifts for negative
mistuning. (..) The fact that [Terhardt's] algorithm fails
so badly for negative mistuning suggests that there is
something quite wrong with the idea that pitch shifts
are mainly determined by partial masking." [Hartmann,
W. M., McAdamas, S., and Smith, B. K., "Hearing a Mistuned
Harmonic In An Otherwise Periodic Complex Tone,"
J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 88, No. 4, 1990, pg. 1722]
--
Partial masking is at the center of Terhardt's theory,
and these data strike a serious blow at partial
masking in pitch perception. Paul Erlich does not mention
this because he may not be aware of it: his grasp of
the psychoacoustic literature might be incomplete, or
perhaps he simply didn't space in his post.
(For the other experiment in which Terhardt's
theory failed to accurately predict results, see
"Pitch of Components of a Complex Tone," Peters,
R. W., Moore, B. C. J., and Glasberg, B.R., Journal of
the Acoustical Soc. Am., Vol. 73, 1983, pp. 924-929.)
So not only does Terhardt's theory fail several basic
psychoacoustic experiments badly, the entire
theory of virtual pitch as a secondary effect
derived from the operation of the basilar membrane
ignores a significant body of evidence pointing to
the operation of temporal mechanisms of pitch
perception and timbral resolution, as well as
a large amount of evidence *against* the place
theory throughout much of the musical range.
--
Why, for instance, doesn't the ear seem to use
basilar membrane information to detect pitch
below about 500 Herz?
David M. Green pointed out in 1970 that "Pairs of
waveforms having identical energy spectra were
generated using a technique developed by Huffman.
A pair of such waveform differ only in their
phase spectra. The discriminability of such
waveforms was measured under various
conditions. (..) The results of these experiments
suggest that the ear can discriminate differences
in temporal order as small as 2.5 msec." [Green,
D. M. and Patterson J. H., "Discrimination of Transient
Signals Having Identical Energy Spectra," J. Acoust.
Soc. Am., Vol. 48, No. 4, pp. 894-905]
If the ear can reliably discriminate between a waveform
and its inverse, clearly the ear is not in that frequency
range operating according to spectral analysis--since
a waveform and its inverse have exactly identical
Fourier magnitude spectra. See Pierce, J.R., "The
Science of Musical Sound," 2nd ed., 1992, pg. 149.
See also "Tone Segregation by Phase: On the Phase
Sensitivity of the Single Ear," Kubovy and Jordan,
J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 66, No. 1, 1979, pp. 100-
106.
As Kubovy and Jordan point out, "This tone-segregation
by phase raises doubts concerning several current
theories of pitch perception. (..) Insofar as these
results support temporal fine-structure theories
of pitch perception, they are incompatible with
the theories of pitch perception we cited
at the beginning of this paper (Goldstein, 1973;
Terhardt, 1973; Wightman 1973b)." [op cit., pp. 102-3]
Notice that Kubovy and Martin*specifically* identify
Terhardt's, Wightman's and Goldstein's models
(the latter 2 are papers which conjecture the
existence of a "central pitch processor") as
*incompatible* with their experimental results.
Other embarrassing problems include an unwonted
sensivity to the phase of high harmonics in
determining the virtual pitch of the tone complex.
According to Terhardt's theory, the ear/brains system
should ignore phase, but in fact phase is vitally
important to determining fundamental pitch below
500 Hz and above about 5000 Hz.
--
John R. Pierce points out in "Periodicity and Pitch
Perception" that "Investigations of just noticeable
differences (jnd's) of pitch continue to indicate the
plausibility of two 'pitch mechanisms,' the first
operating on resolved harmonics, and the second
'periodicity pitch' mechanism on unresolved
clusters of harmonics (Houtsma and Smurzynski, 1990)
as discussed earlier by de Boer (1976). (..)
"The shape of the curve of jnd versus pulse rate suggests
a transition between two mechanisms between 62.5
and 500 pulses per second.
"Such a transition is supported by experiments on
matches between periodic all-positive pulses and
periodic patterns of positive and negative pulses,
carried out by Flanagan and Guttman (1960), Guttman
et al. (1964), and Rosenberg (1966). At low frequencies
the match is on pulse rate; at higher frequencies the '
match is on fundamental frequency." [Pierce, J. R.,
"Periodicity and Pitch Perception," J. Acoust. Soc.
Am., 90 (4), October 1991, pg. 1989]
The failure of the ear's Fourier analysis below
500 Hz to account for observed pitch perception
is a long-standing weakness of place theories of
hearing, and Terhardt's theory does not solve
this problem. Terhardt's paper never mention
or explain the results of Gutman & Newman's
1960 experiments, but they're also crucial because
they also provide hard evidence for periodicity
mechanisms of pitch perception.
One of the most serious problems for a theory
of place-type pitch perception like Terhart's
(in which periodicity mechanisms of pitch
perception are conjured away) is that while central
processor models are forced on us by the finding that
dichotic harmonics 3, 4 and 5 are most important to
virtual pitch (Ritsma, R. J., "Frequencies Dominant in the
Perception of the Pitch of Complex Sounds," J. Acoust.
Soc. Am., Vol. 42, 1967, pp. 191-198; also Plomp, R.,
"Pitch of Complx Tones, J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 41,
1967, pp. 1526-1533) and particularly the finding
by Houtsma and Goldstein (1972) that 2 successive
simultaneous harmonics with frequencies nf[o] and
(n+1)f[o] are presented to different ears they evoke
a fundamental pitch percept equally as effect as
a monotic or diotic presentation of the same two
harmonics, *nonetheless* phase is crucially important
to the perception of pitch below 500Hz and above
5000 Hz. Whenever phase becomes crucial in
pitch perception, by definition the mechanism
must be temporal and not spectral.
Moreover, in an intriguing experiment in which "the
perception of musical pitch was investigated in
postlinguistically deaf subjects with cochlear implants,"
the pure periodicity theory of hearing received a shot
in the arm. "Within a range of low pulse rates, subjects
defined the intervals mediated by electrical pulse
rate by the same ratios which govern musical intervals
of tonal frequencies in normal-hearing listeners.
It may be concluded that tempral cues are sufficient
for the mediation of musical pitch, at least for
the lower half of the range of fundamental frequencies
commonly used in music." [Pijl, S., and Schwartz, D. W. F.,
"Melody Recognition and Musical Interval Perception by
Deaf Subjects Stimulated with Electrical Pulse Trains
Through Single Cochlear Implant Electrodes," J. Acoust.
Soc. Am., 98(2), August 1995, pg. 886]
This provides strong evidence in favor of a strictly
temporal mechanism of pitch perception at frequencies
below about 500 Hz and at least a plausible mechanism
for temporal explanations of consonance throughout
the auditory range (though there are also problems
with purely temporal models of pitch perception above
5 khz--nerve-coding theories shouldn't work at frequencies
that high because the volley rate has topped out!) As
I mentioned, there is a lot of data for *and against*
ALL the proposed models of pitch perception.
As of 1993, most references on psychoacoustics considered
UNRESOLVED the question of whether place or periodicity
mechanisms are primary in the human ear/brain system.
Despite Paul Erlich's emphasis on the theories of Terhardt,
Goldstein and Wightman, there's vigorous & ongoing & unresolved
debate between place theories of pitch perception like
Terhardt's *and* temporal periodicity theories of pitch
perception, *and* combination theories which seek to
combine elements of both. "Several theories have been
proposed to account for residue pitch. Theories prior
to 1980 may be divided into two broad classes. The first,
spectral theories, propose that the perception of the
pitch of a complex involves [Fourier analysis followed
by] a pattern recognizer which determines the pitch
of the complex from the frequencies of the unresolved
components (Goldstein 1973; Terhardt 1974). (..)
"The alternative, temporal theories, assume that pitch
is based on the time pattern of the waveform at a
point on the basilar membrane responding to the higher
harmonics. (..) For these theories, the upper unresolved
harmonics should determine the pitch that is heard.
"Some recent theories (spectro-temporal theories)
assume that both frequency analysis and time-pattern
analysis are involved in pitch perception (Moore 1982,
1989; Srulovicz and Goldstein 1983; Patterson 1987;
Yost and Sheft, Chapter 6." [Yost, William A., Arthur N.
Popper and Richard R. Fay, "Human Psychophysics,"
Springer-Verlag, New York, 1993, pg. 98]
The references for these more recent spectro-temporal
theories of pitch perception are:
Moore, B.C.J., "An Introduction to the Psychology of
Hearing," 2nd Ed., London: Academic Press, 1982.
Moore, B.C.J., ditto, 3rd edition, 1989.
Srulovicz, P. and J. L. Goldstein, "A central spectrum
model: A synthesis of auditory-nerve timing
and place cues in monaural communication of
frequency spectrum," J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol.
73, pp. 1266-1276, 1983
Patterson, R.D., "A pulse ribbon model of monaural
phase perception," J. ACoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 82, pp.
1560-1586, 1987
Hall, J. W., Haggard, M.P., and Fernandes, M. A.,
"Detection in noise by spectro-temporal pattern
analysis," J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 76, No. 1, July
1984, pp. 50-56
Cohen, M. A., Grossberg, S., and Wyse, L. L., "A
Spectral Network Model of Pitch Perception,"
J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 98, No. 2, August 1995,
pp. 862-879.
--Notice that J. L. Goldstein is the same author
Erlich quotes in the earlier "central processor"
paper of 1973. Goldstein cooked up his subsequent
spectro-temporal theory to patch the glaring holes
in his 1973 central processor theory--namely,
its complete inability to explain experiments like
those summarized in David M. Green's 1970 paper.
--mclaren

Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl
with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Tue, 3 Dec 1996 23:21 +0100
Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA16009; Tue, 3 Dec 1996 23:23:18 +0100
Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA16092
Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI)
for id OAA11879; Tue, 3 Dec 1996 14:23:15 -0800
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 1996 14:23:15 -0800
Message-Id:
Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu
Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu

🔗John Chalmers <non12@...>

From: mclaren
Subject: "experimental" music
--
In sharp contrast with the dismal pseudo-
science and incoherent reasoning employed
by a minority of forum subscribers in a
remarkably feeble effort to "disprove" my
criticism of the misuse of the term "experimental"
in modern music, Steve Curtin made some cogent
points about the term.
"Experimental music" was used according to its
correct dictionary meaning by Lejaren Hiller. If you
read Hiller's 1956 text "Experimental Music,"
you discover that Hiller employed the term
carefully. He called the output of his
stochastic composition programs "Experiment 1,"
"Experiment 2," etc. Notably, Hiller was careful
*not* to call the output of his computer programs
"music."
Rather, he viewed these experiments (which formed
the movements of the Illiac Quartet) as systematic
investigations of mathematical models of human
musical cognition.
I did some research on Markov analysis and it turns
out that it was originally used in chemistry to
measure mean free paths of molecules in chemical
reactions between collisions. Thus it's obvious why
Markov analysis failed miserably as a music
composition tool: a hydrogen atom is a hydrogen
atom no matter where it occurs, but a JI minor third
played in the deep bass is a grinding sensory dissonance
while a JI minor third played in the high treble is
a smooth sensory consonance. Atoms
are interchangeable and identical; musical intervals
are not.
If you read Hiller's 1956 book carefully, you will
realize that Hiller himself understood that his
experiments demonstrated the failure of his
mathematical model of human musical cognition.
Hiller claims that he was not interested in the
aesthetic result of his "experiments," but if you
read between his lines you can detect the clear
disappointment he felt in not producing more
human-sounding music (or, to put it another way,
the ease with which listeners could tell that
the music went nowhere).
Little has been remarked on Hiller's subsequent
efforts in this area; however, HIller's own writings
about his subsquent "Computer Cantata" (and a
listen to the work in question) prove enlightening
even today.
Unlike John Cage, Lejaren Hiller understood and
respected the meaning of the term "experimental."
Unlike John Cage, Hiller recognized that science
demands hard numbers in order for an experiment
to be meaningfully called an experiment. Unlike
John Cage, Lejaren Hiller formulated a mental
model of a physical process (composition as
filtered noise subjected to modus ponens
logic in the form of a rule-set); unlike Cage,
Hiller reduced his mental model to mathematics
(encapsulated in a computer program); unlike
Cage, HIller generated a testable hypothesis
from his mathematical equations (composition
can be generated using such a computer program
which is both statistically and perceptually
indistinguishable from compositions produced
by humans); unlike Cage, Hiller tested his
hypothesis (set up a quartet to perform the
composition, and recorded the reactions of
people who listened to it); unlike Cage, Hiller's
music could therefore be meaningfully called
"experimental."
--
By the way, no doubt some of you will object
to my use of the term "computer composition"
in a recent post critical of that genre.
Many of you will claim that my post denies
the validity of all "computer compositions,"
and since many "computer composers" (Larry
Polansky, Carter Scholz, John Bischoff, etc.)
have produced interesting and worthwhile
music, my post is purportedly incorrect.
In fact this boils down to a controversy over
the meaning of the phrase "computer
composition."
What is a "computer composition"?
Is a string quartet written out by hand and
using a computer only to print the score an
"computer composition"? Since the
composer did not specify the exact number of
1/300ths of an inch border around the staves,
these proportions were generated outside of the
composer's direct control, by means of
algorithms. Is such a quartet score therefore
an example of "computer composition"?
Clearly not.
Let us then consider a rock band whose
manager schedules performances using
a computer (with scheduling algorithms).
Is this "computer composition"?
Clearly not.
How about a keyboardist who performs
from written scores and uses a computer
to load different timbres into hi/r synthesizer
during the performance? Is this an example
of "computer composition"?
Clearly not.
Let us then move on to consider a composer who
uses elaborate mathematics to generate timbres
and chords during the course of a composition.
Over his shoulder, the composer has an idiot
savant watching who observes which notes
the composer plays and calculates rapidly in
hi/r head the resulting notes and timbres
according to the composer's mathematical
procedures. (One such prodigy, Johan Zacharias
Dase, boasted such astounding powers of
mental calculation that he calculated pi in
his head to 400 decimal places over the course
of 2 months. Thus it is humanly possible, while
rare, to perform such elaborate mental
calculations.)
Is this an "algorithmic computer composition"?
I would say not, since it can be performed by
a human. To think of it another way, the elaborate
mathematics of the composer can surely be
boiled down to a set of charts and tables which
can be memorized. Now if we observe that the
elaborate mathematics of which I speak might
well be figured bass notation of the Baroque
period (which, if reduced to a computer program,
would require a great deal of calculation to
interpret correctly in any key signature as the
music modulates), we realize that this
is a pretty standard human musical operation
couched in deliberately arcane terminology.
Obviously, it's not "computer composition"
if humans were performing it in the 18th century
as a matter of routine musical practice.
Now suppose we have a computer program like
Lejaren Hiller's which performs many millions
of calculations to obtain each note. The mathematics
recirculate, requiring some of the output to feed
back into the input. Many millions of numbers must
be multiplied by weights, sieved with thousands
of rules, and random numbers must be generated
by multiple 32-bit numbers by one another to
obtain overflow and then shifting them right or
left by some larger number of bits.
This seems a clear case of "computer
composition" because the process is too elaborate
to be performed by any conceivable human in any
reasonable amount of time.
--
What do all these cases have in common?
Clearly, we make distinctions here depending
on the proportion of the computer's input to
the process of composition.
If the proportion is very high, we can speak
meaningfully of "computer
composition." If the proportion of computer
input is low, clearly we are talking
only about computer-aided composition.
Thus, true "computer composition" occurs only
when the process of composition *demands*
a computer and *exclusively* a computer. If a
human can perform the same operations, this
is not "algorithmic computer composition," it's
merely ordinary composition *aided by computer.*
This leads us to a clear distinction between
*computer-aided composition* and *algorithmic
computer composition.*
"Algorithmic computer composition" only occurs
when the overwhelming bulk of the compositional
process takes place in the computer.
If most of the compositional process is human,
and the computer is used merely to keep track
of vectors in ratio space, or display morphological
shapes, etc., then we are clearly speaking of
"computer-aided composition."
My comments in my recent post referred *only* to
computer composition--that is, to composition in
which the composer sets up a computer program,
lets it go, and walks away.
Computer-aided composition is a whole different
kettle of fish, since it is de facto human composition
in which the computer is used as a convenient aid.
The line between the two is of course blurry; as
the proportion of human effort to computer
interpretation approaches 1:1, it becomes hard
to say whether the computer or the human is
composing.
My earlier comments should therefore not
be taken as an argument against the validity of
all composition involving computers, but rather
against the validity of compositions produced mainly
by unaided computer operations. To put it bluntly,
winding up a computer and letting it spit out music
on its own didn't work in 1956 and has failed miserably
to produce any interesting musical results in the
ensuing 40 years. Changing the number of tones per
octave does not promise to improve that track record.
However, computer-aided microtonal composition is
a wide-open field, and promises many fascinating
and aesthetically worthwhile results as new
approaches are tried and new algorithms developed.
In particular, computer *aided* composition might
prove very helpful in harmonizing a melody line in
an exotic microtonal intonation with too many notes
per octave for humans to navigate easily.
--mclaren

Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl
with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Fri, 6 Dec 1996 04:15 +0100
Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA22244; Thu, 5 Dec 1996 15:49:44 +0100
Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA22105
Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI)
for id GAA21370; Thu, 5 Dec 1996 06:49:35 -0800
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 1996 06:49:35 -0800
Message-Id: <199612050946_MC1-CBC-A5EC@compuserve.com>
Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu
Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu

Randy's reply

🔗"Solomon, Gerald V." <gvsolomo@...>

🔗John Chalmers <non12@...>

for traditional acoustic instruments.

This is JOE BLOW'S WEBSITE designed
with PageMill version 3.01. This web page
was last updated on (blah-blah woof-woof).
If you have any new information or corrections,
please e-mail (myaddress@swarb.gink.zoid)

Two CD reviews

🔗John Chalmers <non12@...>

🔗John Chalmers <non12@...>

🔗John Chalmers <non12@...>

🔗John Chalmers <non12@...>

🔗John Chalmers <non12@...>

🔗John Chalmers <non12@...>

🔗John Chalmers <non12@...>

Randy's reply

🔗"Solomon, Gerald V." <gvsolomo@...>

🔗John Chalmers <non12@...>

for traditional acoustic instruments.

This is JOE BLOW'S WEBSITE designedwith PageMill version 3.01. This web pagewas last updated on (blah-blah woof-woof).If you have any new information or corrections,please e-mail (myaddress@swarb.gink.zoid)

Two CD reviews

🔗John Chalmers <non12@...>

🔗John Chalmers <non12@...>

🔗John Chalmers <non12@...>

🔗John Chalmers <non12@...>

🔗John Chalmers <non12@...>

🔗John Chalmers <non12@...>

🔗John Chalmers <non12@...>

This is JOE BLOW'S WEBSITE designed
with PageMill version 3.01. This web page
was last updated on (blah-blah woof-woof).
If you have any new information or corrections,
please e-mail (myaddress@swarb.gink.zoid)