Posts from Gary Morrison

Gary is on vacation and asked me if I would post these messages for him.
--------------- Forwarded Messages ---------------

From: Gary Morrison, 71670,2576
To: Tuning List, >INTERNET:tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Date: 10 Sep 1996 , 3:40 PM

RE: Reply to Gary Morrison

> >Oh, no, not particularly. I was pointing out that a 4:5:6:7 dominant 7th
> >chord provides a completely effective authentic cadence, although a
9:5 or
> >16:9 seventh works better, all in all.
>
> Yes, but the rest of your post argued that smaller stepwise motion produced
> a more effective cadence.

Yeah, that's why I said "all in all". I suspect that all factors
considered
across a variety of musical contexts, the comparative discord of the sharper
seventh will produce a stronger desire to resolve. But I have witnessed
cases,
especially in choral-like settings, where the inevitability of that small
melodic motion more than offset the comparatively self-satisfied feeling of
4:5:6:7.

However, when in a recent experiment I keep the seventh at 7:4, and raised
the 5:4 to 9:7, I found that the resulting chord was a FAR more effective
dissonance than either of those two possibilities, both because it is more
discordant than the 4:5:6 with a sharper seventh and because it now had two
small melodic movements to increase the sense of inevitability.

I only experimented with that progression for about 20 minutes or so, with
only a handful of timbres and voice-leading possibilities (e.g., direct
simultaneous resolution compared to suspending one or the other tone).
(Well...
I guess retaining the 9:7 into the following chord wouldn't technically
be a
suspension since it resolves upward instead of downward, but whatever...)

I encourage others to explore that chord resolution, by the way. I found
that chord (1:1, 9:7, 3:2, 7:4) to be an positively deliciously
horrific-sounding chord for diatonic environments. It'll get your audience's
attention; that's for sure!


From: Gary Morrison, 71670,2576
To: Tuning List, >INTERNET:tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Date: 10 Sep 1996 , 3:40 PM

RE: RE: Re: Babies and tuning

> Some post just revealed (was it Gary?) that violinist who claim to play
> tempered in fact does not do anywhere close to tempered. So how come
> so many of you, and others still believe so much that violinist try to
> imitate the intonation of the accompanying instruments?

If it was me, then I doubt if I said anything like "nowhere close".
Despite
the small level of detail we discuss such matters on the tuning list, at the
level of practicalities of normal-speed music on indefinite-pitched
instruments, JI, 12TET, and meantone (for example) are really quite
similar. They certainly are by all means very clearly distinguishible,
especially if held to strictly over entire phrases in the music, but
practical inidealities can easily blur those distinctions.

Carl Seashore in the Psychology of Music (I think that book contained the
study I read - it's been a while) concluded that no simple mathematical
formula
could adequately predict how a singer or violinist (or a woodwind or brass
player for that matter) would choose pitches. They choose notes based on
such
factors as:
- How the harmony sounds relative to the rest of the instruments playing at
the time.
- How the melodic step from the previous note sounds.
- How they tuned other recent previous occurances of that same note.
- How an instrument-specific mechanism tends to bias the note.
- How their fingers feel on the neck (or whatever).
- How skilled they are.
- How much time they have to correct (if needed) the pitch.
- How much vibrato obscures the pitch.
- Experiences during practice sessions.
Most of these mechanisms can easily produce 10-cent variations from 12TET
or JI
ideals. In most cases, the differences between the two tunings just
aren't a
whole lot bigger than that.


From: Gary Morrison, 71670,2576
To: Tuning List, >INTERNET:tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Date: 10 Sep 1996 , 3:40 PM

RE: List

FYI: I'll be unable to answer E-mail for about the next week or so,
so I'm
temporarily unsubscribing from the tuning list for that time. But I'll
definitely be back on line after about a week and a half or so.

But in the meantime, if you have any messages in response to my inquiries,
or that you otherwise suspect that I'd be especially interested in,
please do me a favor and copy me (71670.2576@compuserve.com) on the
message. No need to do so after the Monday 23 Sept. I'll definitely be
back on line by then.

Thanks y'all!



From: Gary Morrison, 71670,2576
To: Tuning List, >INTERNET:tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Date: 10 Sep 1996 , 3:40 PM


RE: Survey Partial Results

The survey answers are still trickling in, and I certainly encourage those
of you who haven't responded to keep 'em comin'.

But anyway, among those who have responded, there is a definite bias
toward
musicianhood away from theoreticianhood. A skeptic might criticize that
"bias"
is an especially appropriate word. That in the sense that what spurred this
was Brian M's lament that he perceives that only a very few list
subscribers are musicians. Since most of us probably viewed that lament
to have a mildly
disgusted tone, it's not impossible that musicians may have perceived
there to
be a greater need to refute that claim by responding more avidly than
theoreticians. But I certainly don't know that for sure.

I purposely phrased the survey questions with as much leeway for
interpretation as I could, to try to cut down on the pigeon-holing
effect. I
suppose it's still worth noting that three of the 24 respondents (so far)
found
even that too restrictive. Regarding the first question, one joked that
it was
kind of like asking whether you prefer eating or sleeping!

I certainly understand and sympathize with that concern, but it's pretty
difficult to gather statistics on 20-word descriptions, each of which
approaches the topic differently. You pretty much need concrete answers,
and to do that respondents have to quantize themselves one way or the
other. And also, in interpreting the results, we you have to understand
that few respondents considered themselves purely one way or the other.

But if anything, I'd say that the questions were too vague. As you may
recall, I had to send out a qualifier to question #1 (about what "musician"
involves). But I think it's worth noting one ... I think important ... point
of vagueness that, were I to start the survey over, I would want to
correct. That is, in questions 2 and 3, how to interpret the phrase
"played live".

I intended that to mean "for an audience". I would then want to
narrow that
down even further to something like "for a paying audience", or "for an
audience of more than 5 people", or "for an audience at least two members
of which you'd never met before". But I figured that every word I added
to the question after about 20 or so, would mean one less respondent not
wanting to wade through the legalistic verbage, so I did what I could to
keep the questions short.

Similarly, I should definitely have put some sort of time limit on the
sorts
of activities that would qualify. In the extreme case of both of these
concerns, one could respond something like this: "Well, let's see, when I
was 6
years old, I played Chopsticks, Mary Had a Little Lamb, and Old McDonald
in a
piano recital for my mother, and lord knows, even though I haven't played the
piano for 38 since then, I probably practiced for more than 15 minutes
for that
recital, so yeah, I've performed more than 15 minutes of live music!" I
seriously doubt if an of the respondents actually answered "yes" in that sort
of context, but suffice it to say that the image I had in my mind was
something
more like the Reinhard/Haverstick/Catler sort of experience!

But anyway, here are the results so far, and if you haven't responded,
then
please do:


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Partial Survey Results:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Do you consider yourself more of a theoretician or more of a musician?
(I'll let each of you decide how to define those terms, except to say
I'm refering to the sort of theory that involves such constructs as
digits
to the right of the decimal point, and logarithms. Musician should
involve
some form of composition, performance, or improvisation.)

Theoretician: 4

Musician: 18

2. Is the total play-time of music - in any tuning - that you've recorded,
played live, or scored on paper, greater than 15 minutes? Again, I'll
let you use your own judgement for what to count as "music", except to
stipulate that it be intended for artistic expression. Freshman harmony
exercises, for example, don't count.

Yes: 21

No: 3

3. Is the total play-time of such music, specifically in unusual tunings,
greater than 15 minutes?

Yes: 16

No: 8
------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I'll send out an update in a week or so.


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