tuning in musical styles

>The important issue, as I see it, is what sort of musical STYLES do certain
>tunings fit? I mean, this all gets back to why 12/eq came about in the
>first place...purely tuned scales are, for all practical purposes, very
>limited in their applications...as soon as you want to move a lot of chords
>around, it's all over for just intonation. Thus, jazz, "classical", most
>"pop" music, and many other styles around the world cannot use JI, no
>matter what people prefer...if you prefer JI over eq (and, of course,
>which eq are we talking about), you ain't gonna be hearing it in bluegrass
>any time soon, or just about any other music except modal based stuff.

Why not bluegrass? I hear that Mark Rankin, inheritor/distributor of the
Novatone interchangeable fretboards, has a JI banjo and demonstrated some
bluegrass tunes on it. The 19 tone rock pieces by the Catler brothers sound
appropriate, and LaMonte Young's "Forever Bad Blues Band" bands rocks the
house. Wendy Carlos' Switched on Brandenburgs and Bach 2000 show that
well-tuning Classical is well worth it (pun intended :). I cringe when we
start talking about certain tunings only being applicable for certain types
of music.

For styles that modulate, adaptive tuning systems such as the Hermode tuning
package used in the Waldorf Microwave are starting to come in. Does anybody
have direct experience with using the Microwave for tuning?

regards,

Steve Curtin
Ensoniq Corp


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