Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning The Mavila Experiments

A special thanks goes out to Graham Breed; his custom Lilypond code
and several weeks worth of gchat discussion are what made all of this
possible.

http://soundcloud.com/mikebattagliamusic/sets/the-mavila-experiments

For those who don't know: these musical examples are tuned to what is
known as "mavila" temperament. It is named after the Mavila village of
the Chopi people in southern Mozambique, where this tuning system was
first discovered by Kraig Grady.

Because of the structure of this unique tuning, it is true that every
existing piece of common practice music has a "shadow" version in
mavila temperament. That is, when Bach wrote Fur Elise, he actually
wrote two songs - the one that you know, and the anti-diatonic
equivalent in mavila temperament. It's only that the anti-diatonic
versions have never been heard before.

Mavila is a tuning system whereby four stacked perfect fifths, rather
than getting you to a major third, gets you to a minor third - meaning
that the fifths are flat. Conversely, four stacked perfect fourths
gets you to a major third, rather than a minor third. This has some
very strange implications for music. The mavila diatonic scale is
similar to the normal diatonic scale - except interval classes are
flipped. Wherever there was a major third, you'll find a minor third,
and vice versa. Half steps become whole steps and whole steps become
half steps (closer to neutral second range, however). When you sharpen
the leading tone in minor, you end up sharpening it down instead,
meaning you flatten it. Also, minor is now major - you end up with
three parallel natural/harmonic/melodic major scales, and only one
minor scale. Instead of a diminished triad in the major scale, there
is now an augmented triad.

In these examples, the chosen mavila temperament is 23-equal, which
was chosen to provide greater accuracy in approximating the harmonic
series. 16-equal is another good choice, with 9-equal also being good
enough for government work.

Welcome to bizarro world,
Mike

🔗Graham Breed <gbreed@...>

Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> A special thanks goes out to Graham Breed; his custom
> Lilypond code and several weeks worth of gchat discussion
> are what made all of this possible.
>
> http://soundcloud.com/mikebattagliamusic/sets/the-mavila-experiments

Behind this is a new script to convert the MIDI files
Lilypond produces to use MIDI Tuning Standard messages.
Here it is:

http://x31eq.com/addmts.py3

You need Python 3. (The binary file handling changed from
version 2, so it isn't trivially portable.) Say python3
addmts.py3 something.midi and you'll get a new file without
the restrictions of pitch bends.

Because of the stereotyped way Lilypond writes its pitch
bends, it's possible to reverse engineer the intended
tuning of each pitch. There's no need to split chords
into separate channels. There are still problems that
could occur but most Lilypond scores are going to work fine.

Graham

🔗genewardsmith <genewardsmith@...>

🔗Graham Breed <gbreed@...>

"genewardsmith" <genewardsmith@...> wrote:

> It would have been possible with Scala. What I'd like to
> know are what are the advantages of using Lilypond and
> Graham's program instead. Some sort of comparison seems
> to be in order.

What makes it easy with Lilypond is that there are a load
of scores at Mutopia already in Lilypond format (not always
MIDI-ready) and essentially specifying meantone intervals.
To compare with Scala — where do the sequences come from?

Graham

🔗genewardsmith <genewardsmith@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Graham Breed <gbreed@...> wrote:

> What makes it easy with Lilypond is that there are a load
> of scores at Mutopia already in Lilypond format (not always
> MIDI-ready) and essentially specifying meantone intervals.
> To compare with Scala â" where do the sequences come from?

In Scala, you get the sequences from midi files, which usually requires some amount of judgment when you want to see how it goes into extended meantone.

This business sounds interesting, but uninstalling Python 2.7 and installing Python 3 would mean, I presume, some stuff such as microcsound wouldn't work any more. I'd be interested to know how you turn the Lilypond score into actual microtonal music.

🔗Petr Parízek <petrparizek2000@...>

Hi Mike.

I've heard your mavila examples and I'm now coming to this conclusion:
If you retune a meantone piece to mavila, it's a different "kind of musical thinking" than if you retune mavila to meantone. As I currently don't know about any other piece originally composed in mavila, I tried it with mine. Interestingly enough, the mavila version reminded me of Javanese music, while after I retuned it to meantone, some portions sounded as if it came from China and others reminded me of 19th century European harmony.
Anyway, here they are:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8497979/mavila_original.mp3
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8497979/meantone_retuned.mp3

Petr

🔗Graham Breed <gbreed@...>

"genewardsmith" <genewardsmith@...> wrote:

> In Scala, you get the sequences from midi files, which
> usually requires some amount of judgment when you want to
> see how it goes into extended meantone.

That's the comparison, then. With Lilypond you can follow
the editor's judgment to get extended meantone. But the
MIDI interpretation will likely be awful.

> This business sounds interesting, but uninstalling Python
> 2.7 and installing Python 3 would mean, I presume, some
> stuff such as microcsound wouldn't work any more. I'd be
> interested to know how you turn the Lilypond score into
> actual microtonal music.

Who said anything about uninstalling Python 2.7?

What you do is add something like

tuning = #31
\include "regular.ly"

near the top of the Lilypond file. (Below any language
declarations but ahead of the music.) Then run Lilypond.

If it doesn't work, the score may have been written for an
ancient version of Lilypond. Deleting things it doesn't
understand seems to be safe.

If the MIDI output's lousy, you can tweak it. The first
thing is to set a tempo, which can be done like this:

\midi {
\context {
\Score
tempoWholesPerMinute = #(ly:make-moment 120 4)
}
}

(A midi{} block will already be there somewhere.) The next
step is to use articulate.ly, which has its own
documentation.

If the piece is written in independent melodic lines, you
can set each voice to a different MIDI channel, with code
like this:

\context {
\Staff
\remove "Staff_performer"
}
\context
{
\Voice
\remove Dynamic_performer
\consists "Staff_performer"
}

(There may be other steps you need to get the polyphony
separated out. Note that you need to do this with the
first movement of the Moonlight Sonata. Otherwise, a few
notes get lost, and you may notice that in the file Mike
put up :-S )

Or you can convert the pitch bends to MTS using my script.
And here it is in Python2 (verified with 2.6):

http://x31eq.com/addmts.py

At that point, what you have is a MIDI file that Timidity
seems to be happy with.

Graham

🔗Graham Breed <gbreed@...>

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

On Sun, Jun 19, 2011 at 5:36 AM, Petr Parízek <petrparizek2000@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Mike.
>
> I've heard your mavila examples and I'm now coming to this conclusion:
> If you retune a meantone piece to mavila, it's a different "kind of musical
> thinking" than if you retune mavila to meantone. As I currently don't know
> about any other piece originally composed in mavila, I tried it with mine.
> Interestingly enough, the mavila version reminded me of Javanese music,
> while after I retuned it to meantone, some portions sounded as if it came
> from China and others reminded me of 19th century European harmony.
> Anyway, here they are:
> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8497979/mavila_original.mp3
> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8497979/meantone_retuned.mp3
>
> Petr

WOW. That's ridiculous. Who'd have thought that this would work so
well? Did you ever think that when you were writing this piece, that
you ended up writing two good pieces? :)

My understanding of this so far is that meantone pieces don't exactly
retune perfectly to mavila, especially common practice ones. This is
because when you take a piece in minor and you want to sharpen the
leading tone, it ends up being major with a -flattened- leading tone
in mavila. That is, instead of the "neutral" 7th, which would be about
1050 cents in 16-equal, you end up with something closer to 7/4, 975
cents in 16-equal. So sharpening something ends up meaning flattening
it, which if you work the math out is because the apotome is reversed.

On the one hand, this means that the leading tone becomes the "rare"
interval in the scale - it becomes the large step, which is about 225
cents. On the other hand, it means that the leading tone is more
consonant, so perhaps the best way to treat this would be to still
sharpen the leading tone - despite that this algorithm will
automatically flatten it. Kalle and I have been discussing this for a
while in the other thread, so perhaps you might have some insights as
well. Either way, it certainly means that the diatonic structure is a
lot different.

-Mike

🔗genewardsmith <genewardsmith@...>

🔗Daniel Nielsen <nielsed@...>

🔗Petr Parízek <petrparizek2000@...>

Mike wrote:

> Did you ever think that when you were writing this piece, that
> you ended up writing two good pieces? :)

Certainly not at the time I was recording it. However, one day later, when I first got the idea of retunin it to meantone, it occurred to me that both versions can be essentially equally meaninful.

> My understanding of this so far is that meantone pieces don't exactly
> retune perfectly to mavila, especially common practice ones. This is
> because when you take a piece in minor and you want to sharpen the
> leading tone, it ends up being major with a -flattened- leading tone
> in mavila. That is, instead of the "neutral" 7th, which would be about
> 1050 cents in 16-equal, you end up with something closer to 7/4, 975
> cents in 16-equal. So sharpening something ends up meaning flattening
> it, which if you work the math out is because the apotome is reversed.

And for this reason, picardy thirds get messed up as well, which is maybe even stranger because finishing a major piece with a minor tonic is pretty weird. On the other hand, if a meantone piece in a major key uses a minor subdominant, retuning it to mavila turns the "warmer" feeling into apretty neutral one.

> On the one hand, this means that the leading tone becomes the "rare"
> interval in the scale - it becomes the large step, which is about 225
> cents. On the other hand, it means that the leading tone is more
> consonant, so perhaps the best way to treat this would be to still
> sharpen the leading tone - despite that this algorithm will
> automatically flatten it. Kalle and I have been discussing this for a
> while in the other thread, so perhaps you might have some insights as
> well. Either way, it certainly means that the diatonic structure is a
> lot different.

My view is that the patterns should be kept intact even if doing so changes a rising interval into a falling one. Both meantone and mavila use fifths as generators but meantone maps 25/24 to 7 generators while mavila maps it t -7 generators. The only case that I'm aware of where meantone fifths were replaced by mavil fourths was Gene's retuning of Couperin's "Les Barricades mysterieuses" -- I can't find it anywhere on the web right now, maybe I'll dig it out of my laptop one day (I think I've saved it there at the time it was online).

Petr

🔗genewardsmith <genewardsmith@...>

🔗Petr Parízek <petrparizek2000@...>

🔗Graham Breed <gbreed@...>

I've been having fun with Schubert's Impromptu in F minor,
D935-1. It's amazing how many different pieces he managed
to write all at once. There's so much more than Mavila!
Here's the Lilypond file with tuning capability built in:

http://x31eq.com/lilypond/SchubertF-D935-1-Impromptu.ly

Ladies and gentlemen at home may not have Lilypond
installed on their workstations, so here are some
MIDI files for 5, 7, 8, 9, 12, 17, 19, 23, 26, 31, and 43
steps to the octave:

http://x31eq.com/lilypond/D935-1.zip

You'll need a MIDI file player that supports the real time
MIDI Tuning Standard message . . . which probably means
Timidity. Set them up with your favorite piano soundfont,
and think about what movie such pieces would be the
soundtrack to.

Graham

🔗genewardsmith <genewardsmith@...>

🔗Graham Breed <gbreed@...>

"genewardsmith" <genewardsmith@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Graham Breed <gbreed@...>
> wrote:
>
> > Ladies and gentlemen at home may not have Lilypond
> > installed on their workstations, so here are some
> > MIDI files for 5, 7, 8, 9, 12, 17, 19, 23, 26, 31, and
> > 43 steps to the octave:
>
> How easy would it be to convert it to a seq file using,
> say, P31 notation?

To get a MIDI file, not that difficult -- and I'll look
into it. I'll leave the MIDI to seq conversion to you.

Graham