Acquired tastes

I've been on a whole new trip for a while. This is where I'm at now:

http://www.ronsword.com/sounds/Ron%20Sword%20-%2016-tone%20acoustic%20improvisation.mp3

When I hear stuff like this, I feel like that if major 7 chords in
16-equal can sound good, the whole paradigm of what sounds "good"
needs a shift. Furthermore, the whole thing fits together into some
kind of beautifully relaxing 16-tone chromatic superstructure that is
quite foreign and xenharmonic (xentonal, perhaps), that is
comprehensible and makes sense. It's a success, it's great, it's the
first thing I've ever heard that just "clicks" like that, it's what I
wanted when I joined the list.

"And I'm sure you'll agree too."

.....
.....

Well, actually, probably not. Some of you will listen to the above
example and just not hear the same thing at all. You'll say "no part
of my paradigm needs a shift. Major 7 chords don't sound good in this.
In fact, the whole thing sounds like shit, and I still hate mavila." I
expect some of us will effectively disagree on whether or not above
example sounds "Good." But rather than go down that road again, I
wanted to try a different approach and ask "why are we disagreeing at
all?" Well, I can only report my own experience on that.

When I first started listening to mavila, I thought that the fifths
sounded -awful-. And I also thought that the 375 cent major thirds
were flatter than hell. But something about Ron's example intrigued
me, particularly the way that the fifths didn't sound like a Stanley
Kubrick movie score as they did in Scala, so I kept plowing into it. I
bought an iPhone, got the SSquares app, set the shorter axis to 3\16
and the longer axis to 2\16, and played it every time I thought about
it. I used a square wave, so there was no beating. After like two
weeks of that, I didn't even notice the fifths anymore.

As for categorical perception, the flat fifths stopped sounding like
they were uncomfortably encroaching slightly onto "tritone" territory.
The 3/2's started sounding more or less indistinguishable in character
and "quality" from those in 12-equal, except a little narrower if you
think about it and definitely a bit more "relaxed" and less overtly
colorful-sounding. But they don't sound jarring or dirty or "wrong" or
anything like that. What is really noticeable is that a bunch of
stacked 3/2's starts to lead you somewhere completely different than
you'd expect, but not in a bad way.

And as for Harmonic Entropy, VF perception and HE doesn't seem to
matter at all now that I've got the hang of it. What matters seems to
be "functions." Given the proper musical context, even the 150 cent
"9/8's" seem to assume their proper and familiar "function," in that
they "sound like 9/8." 1050 cents sounds like it could equally be a
major 7th, as in the chord 0-375-675-1050, or it could be the root of
IV/IV, as in Bbmaj -> Fmaj -> Cmaj. And the fact that I know that the
5/4's are accessible via three 4/3's up has -REALLY- changed the color
of the major thirds in a really pleasant way. They taste like citrus
now!

Anyway, the point is, it took me about a month or two of actually
playing mavila on an AXiS and on my iPhone for me to completely throw
away almost everything I had learned about how music works. Learning
seems to be far more important than I had anticipated, and I have to
say that I'm enjoying the benefits of the omnitetrachordal,
Miller-limit compliant, diatonic-sized, 3/2-generated Mavila MOS's as
a result. Despite that even the most basic components of JI logic
completely fail in 16 (10/9 is larger than 9/8, for example, and 10/9
and 8/7 are equated, and three 10/9's makes a 3/2), and that the whole
thing just doesn't make any sense at all at first, at the end of the
day it's just a new set of rules to learn and a new set of categorical
perceptions to develop. And once you get the gist of it, it's by far
the most rewarding system that I've found yet (with porcupine coming
up close behind). So hey, try it, you might enjoy it.

-Mike

    To me...the whole Mavilla musical example sounds "stable but stresses/squeezed"...and I can definitely notice the flat fifths, but still feel a very intelligent stability to the entire construct. 

>"Given the proper musical context, even the 150 cent "9/8's" seem to assume their proper and familiar "function," in that they "sound like 9/8." "

  I agree on this completely.  And there are some cases where using HE to define what "sounds alike" simply doesn't work or even cases where one interval (IE 9/7) will sound much more like a fourth in one scale and much more like a third in another due to context.
  This again hints back to my argument "there are three types of chords: those that only function as resolved chords, more flexible ones
that can function as resolved or tense, and those that can only function as tense/"dissonant" chords".  And my hunch is...Mavilla MOS's tend to have a lot of the "flexible" type of chords..even is some of those are still a bit too dissonant for a non-accustomed listener to think of as true resolve points.