88CET #20: Traditional Harmony in 88CET

I noticed early-on in my investigation of 88CET that it could produce
traditional harmonies such as major and minor tenths, and of course perfect
fifths. It didn't take long before that lead to major, and minor triads, and
dominant seventh chords in certain voicings. That is of course in addition to
the more obvious nontraditional chords. Nevertheless, I was very surprised to
discover that 88CET can also produce traditional voice-leading between these
chords, and thereby traditional cadences. Amazingly enough, within a few
constraints, 88CET can produce very convincing renditions of almost any kind of
traditional harmony - progressions of diatonic, secondary dominant,
borrowed-chord, and even many of the traditional chromatically-altered chords.

Why would anybody ever want to produce traditional harmony 88CET? We hear
traditional harmony everywhere around us, so why try to attempt that in 88CET?
Well, that's exactly why - traditional harmony is everywhere, so it has a very
strong musical weight to it, and we can use that weight to our advantage. We
can use it for shock value for example - lull the audience into a false sense of
security with traditional harmony, and then bash them in the ears with a
supramajor triad. Or we can use it for the exact opposite purpose - to
introduce nontraditional possibilities slowly, and gently acclimate them.

But there's a more important general reason to use traditional harmony in
88CET: Greater overall harmonic variety. Exploring new harmonic possibilities
is very valuable, but there's no point in abandoning existing harmonies on
principle; they're very useful and powerful musical ideas. Also, on related
lines, exploring new harmony without a reference point in the traditional could
actually end up obscuring the character of the new harmony. Harmonic character
I have found to be absolute only to a certain point; without a reference point
in something familiar, all they hear is something nondescriptly weird. And
pretty soon it's not even all that weird anymore.

This is what I've mentioned before about "raising the ante": If your music
continues long enough above 3 on a harmonic intensity scale of 1 to 10, 3 starts
sounding like 1. Major tenths start sounding like perfect consonances,
subharmonic harmony starts sounding no more harmonically intense than major or
minor. Dave Hill once demonstrated this in reverse. He played me some music
from the earliest stages of the Renaissance, where thirds were still considered
enticing dissonances rather than basic consonances. After you listen to music
built around open fifth chords for five minutes or so, you start hearing it like
they did: They'll sing what has the harmonic impact of diminished seventh chord
in classical music (or modern popular music for that matter), and you almost
feel a chill going up your spine. That until you listen carefully and notice
that it's just a major triad!

The effect of traditional harmony in 88CET I like to describe as "reverse
shock therapy". Such harmonies become surprising in the same, but reverse,
sense that injecting supramajor thirds for example into traditional harmony is
surprising. The effect is somewhat analogous with the idea of accent by
silence: a quarter rest within a train of undifferentiated quarter notes is
accented.

On a more intellectual note, it's almost comical to produce such manifestly
"normal" effects in a tuning that is clearly derived with abnormality in mind.
I'm still amused that it was possible at all.


Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl
with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Mon, 16 Oct 1995 00:38 +0100
Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI)
for id PAA29625; Sun, 15 Oct 1995 15:37:54 -0700
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 1995 15:37:54 -0700
Message-Id: <9510151537.aa14798@cyber.cyber.net>
Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu
Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu