Gamelan Selunding

I�m repreating a request I sent out to the Gamelan list:

Does anyone have tuning data (beyond Kunst and McPhee) on the Balinese
seven tone Gamelan Selunding (variations in spelling: Slonding, Salonding,
Selundung etc.)?

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Interesting. Did they specify what they meant by "out of tune"?

I suppose it's worth cautioning the impressionable out there that, as with
the debate we've witnessed over whether the ear tends to gravitate toward Just
or stretched octaves, just because such a study suggests that we have some sort
of innate tuning preference, doesn't mean that other tunings aren't equally
useful.

After all, similar studies have suggested that babies have an innate fear of
falling, but that doesn't seem to stop humans from hopping into rollercoasters
and bunjee jumping, and such.


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I find it interesting that tunners on this list cannot tell when music
is out of tune.

I was asked once after I played for a wedding, he often could tell
violinists playing out of tune. He was sure that the violinists
themselves could tell it too. But what he could never understand was
why those violinists never tried to correct it.

One Christmas when my baby was very small, I was carrying her walking
pass a shopping arcade. The loudspeakers were playing some carols by
some adults-pretending-like-kids. In order not let my daughter hear
out-of-tune singing, I sang into her ears myself along with the
carols. And the sales-girls in the shops came out to see who was
singing.

My daughter won 3rd prize in grade 1 piano competition at 4,
3rd prize in grade 2 at 5, 2nd prize in grade 3 at six, in the
open schools music festival open competition here. The last
competition has 54 competitors, she was of course the youngest.
She cannot read music. But she can play all notes and harmony just
listening to the pieces a few times. She began to compose her
little pieces at three.

My daughter will not listen to other violinists. I brought her
to one violin concert, and I dare not bring her to another because
her complaining (for the violinist playing out of tune) will disturb
the other audiences. I sometimes would try to let her guest if it
is I playing or someone else. Before I could ask, she would scream
and shout, "shut it off, its terrible."

The Linus Liu intonation is for music.

ftp: kahless.isca.uiowa.edu in
/pub/algo-comp/LinusLiu.

Linus Liu.

> Interesting. Did they specify what they meant by "out of tune"?
>
> I suppose it's worth cautioning the impressionable out there that, as with
>the debate we've witnessed over whether the ear tends to gravitate toward Just
>or stretched octaves, just because such a study suggests that we have some sort
>of innate tuning preference, doesn't mean that other tunings aren't equally
>useful.
>
> After all, similar studies have suggested that babies have an innate fear of
>falling, but that doesn't seem to stop humans from hopping into rollercoasters
>and bunjee jumping, and such.

Thats why we do sliding on the violin.


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> I find it interesting that tunners on this list cannot tell when music
> is out of tune.

I'd say that it's not so much a matter of telling when a note is out of tune
as devising a strict mathematically rigorous definition - or even a general
qualitative definition - of what constitutes being in-tune. Every careful
studies I'm aware of suggests that singers players of indefinite-pitch
instruments don't consistently follow any one particular standard.

And then you have to answer the question of whether an exactly perfect 9:7
third (for example) should be considered in-tune or out-of-tune. It's out of
tune if 2^4/12 or 5:4 is your basis for deciding, but, by definition, it's
exactly in-tune if 9:7 is your goal.

We probably need a few more words or phrases to describe these new concepts.


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Oh, yes, it is. We first aware that listeners feels notes being in tune or
out, and then tell it. That is why there is this tuning list, right?

To explain why is another matter.

Any interval can be in tune if that interval can be and is used properly
in music. Therefore:

do 10/9 re 10/9 me 27/25 fa 9/8 so 10/9 la 10/9 te 27/25 do

is a good scale because 1. identical tetrachords 2. same size whole tones
adjacent to each other in each tetrachord 3. tetrachords a 3/2 good fifth
apart. And:

do 9/8 re 9/8 me 16/15 fa 10/9 so 9/8 la 9/8 te 16/15 do

is also a good scale (Chinese scale) because of the very same reasons, plus
the fact that the interval 9/8 is only 0.3 cent away from the tempered
1221.5 cent per octave mean tone (you call it equal tempered, 101.8
cent per half-tone) scale. 9/8 = 203.9 cents vs 101.8 x 2 = 0.3 cent
difference.

You put half each scale from each to make a new scale, then you get a
lousy scale.

When playing music FOR the Chinese scale, the intervals 81/64 (do-me),
32/27 (me-so), and 5/4 (fa-la) are all good intervals in the same
music.

Linus Liu.

> I'd say that it's not so much a matter of telling when a note is out of tune
>as devising a strict mathematically rigorous definition - or even a general
>qualitative definition - of what constitutes being in-tune. Every careful
>studies I'm aware of suggests that singers players of indefinite-pitch
>instruments don't consistently follow any one particular standard.
>
> And then you have to answer the question of whether an exactly perfect 9:7
>third (for example) should be considered in-tune or out-of-tune. It's out of
>tune if 2^4/12 or 5:4 is your basis for deciding, but, by definition, it's
>exactly in-tune if 9:7 is your goal.
>
> We probably need a few more words or phrases to describe these new concepts.
>
>


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I have delved up the contribution in Nature about the babies experiment:
Marcel R. Zentner & Jerome Kagan: Perception of music by infants,
Nature, vol. 383, 5 september 1996, p. 29.
It is a letter to the editor. Firstly the newpaper report I mentioned
made the mistake of mixing up "dissonant" with "out of tune" (vals).
The experiment contains the playing of two different unfamiliar
melodies of 35-second duration in a consonant and a dissonant version
for a total of four trials to 32 infants. A computer program
controlled a synthesizer. The dissonant version of the melody was
composed in parallel minor seconds and the consonant version of
parallel thirds. The babies were carefully monitored and showed more
fixation to the consonant version.
The conclusion was "Although less extreme forms of
consonance/dissonance might be subject to cultural influence, we
suggest that the human infant may possess a biological preparedness
that makes consonance perceptually more attractive than dissonance."
They wrote further that "it has been argued repeatedly that
consonance judgements are acquired through exposure to the music of a
particular culture", but that biological preparedness has never been
demonstrated.
I think only two intervals are not a broad basis to talk about
consonance and dissonance in general so one might conclude from this
experiment more cautiously that babies prefer parallel thirds over
minor seconds.

Manuel Op de Coul coul@ezh.nl

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