Deliberately using temperaments to adaptively intone categorical structures

On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 11:37 AM, genewardsmith
<genewardsmith@...> wrote:
>
> I'm beginning to wonder if part of what's screwing up microtonal music is the guitar. What if, instead of tossing out his 19edo guitar, Igs tossed out all of them, and started over with an instrument which didn't require you to play in a low-sized edo? As a bonus one on which it is impossible to shred or sound like a badass.

I assume that the idea here is that there's an entire musical world
out there in larger and/or unequal tunings, and this world completely
inaccessible if you stick to an instrument like a guitar.

Well, I agree. But, here's the question: if we're using computers,
which let us do anything, then why pay any heed to the limitation to
stick with fixed-pitch systems? For example, half the time we talk
about the merits and demerits of a tuning system like 22-EDO, which
has a 3/2's that's like 7 cents sharp or so. But if you're writing a
piece in 22-EDO for a string quartet or orchestra, they're obviously
going to do as good a job as they possibly can of playing in adaptive
JI, just like they do in 12-EDO, and improve on the intonation a bit.

So why not write in adaptive-22 or adaptive-17? If we're ditching
notions of practicality at all, then there's no requirement to focus
exclusively on fixed-pitch systems, right?

The following are things I think would be nice to explore

1) Adaptive JI
2) Deliberately using temperaments as intonational mechanisms for
coarser categorical or scalar structures

The second one is what more "intuitive" composers sometimes do with
JI: they're obviously playing around some kind of diatonic or
chromatic scale imprint in their heads, but intoning everything with
nice JI ratios and either embracing the comma issues or hiding them as
best they can. Why not experiment with that? For example, you could
deliberately use a porcupine scalar template to intone something like
Zeus temperament. Except instead of adaptive-JI, you're now doing
adaptive-[some temperament], so you can still take advantage of comma
pumps and all that.

Most importantly, I think that this might lead to the effect that your
categories are "subcategorized" in some very subtle, intonationally
consistent way, which might create a really neat layered
categorization effect, perhaps something like auditory parallax.

-Mike

You need to compose in some kind of notation. The ones we think up tend to correspond to regular temperaments. Adaptive tuning is then a software problem that you can look at if you like. You could start with ABC or LilyPond or one of the composition environments less tied to notation.
You can write adaptively directly in Csound. For example, define pitches as three numbers: two to define the meantone pitch and another for the commas. You can specify intermediate pitches with fractions of a comma.

Graham

------Original message------
From: Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>
To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Wednesday, January 4, 2012 9:27:40 PM GMT-0500
Subject: [tuning] Deliberately using temperaments to adaptively intone categorical structures

On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 11:37 AM, genewardsmith
<genewardsmith@...> wrote:
>
> I'm beginning to wonder if part of what's screwing up microtonal music is the guitar. What if, instead of tossing out his 19edo guitar, Igs tossed out all of them, and started over with an instrument which didn't require you to play in a low-sized edo? As a bonus one on which it is impossible to shred or sound like a badass.

I assume that the idea here is that there's an entire musical world
out there in larger and/or unequal tunings, and this world completely
inaccessible if you stick to an instrument like a guitar.

Well, I agree. But, here's the question: if we're using computers,
which let us do anything, then why pay any heed to the limitation to
stick with fixed-pitch systems? For example, half the time we talk
about the merits and demerits of a tuning system like 22-EDO, which
has a 3/2's that's like 7 cents sharp or so. But if you're writing a
piece in 22-EDO for a string quartet or orchestra, they're obviously
going to do as good a job as they possibly can of playing in adaptive
JI, just like they do in 12-EDO, and improve on the intonation a bit.

So why not write in adaptive-22 or adaptive-17? If we're ditching
notions of practicality at all, then there's no requirement to focus
exclusively on fixed-pitch systems, right?

The following are things I think would be nice to explore

1) Adaptive JI
2) Deliberately using temperaments as intonational mechanisms for
coarser categorical or scalar structures

The second one is what more "intuitive" composers sometimes do with
JI: they're obviously playing around some kind of diatonic or
chromatic scale imprint in their heads, but intoning everything with
nice JI ratios and either embracing the comma issues or hiding them as
best they can. Why not experiment with that? For example, you could
deliberately use a porcupine scalar template to intone something like
Zeus temperament. Except instead of adaptive-JI, you're now doing
adaptive-[some temperament], so you can still take advantage of comma
pumps and all that.

Most importantly, I think that this might lead to the effect that your
categories are "subcategorized" in some very subtle, intonationally
consistent way, which might create a really neat layered
categorization effect, perhaps something like auditory parallax.

-Mike

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On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 2:29 AM, gbreed@... <gbreed@...> wrote:
>
> You need to compose in some kind of notation. The ones we think up tend to correspond to regular temperaments.

In what sense? Surely you admit that there are an infinitude of ways
to map JI onto any scale, and hence any notation system...

> Adaptive tuning is then a software problem that you can look at if you like. You could start with ABC or LilyPond or one of the composition environments less tied to notation.
> You can write adaptively directly in Csound. For example, define pitches as three numbers: two to define the meantone pitch and another for the commas. You can specify intermediate pitches with fractions of a comma.

I'll check it out in Lilypond at some point. In general, however, it's
a good concept to consider. For example, there's the school of thought
that says that it's okay just deliberately write music in 5-limit JI,
but sort of pretend that it's the diatonic scale, and just embrace the
comma shifts as having some regular structure that is the hallmark of
JI. OK, well why not do the same thing built around 1L6s instead of
5L2s then? Just go find the periodicity block corresponding to 250/243
and 25/24, and use that as your basis for the overarching scale rather
than 81/80 and 25/24.

I find particularly appealing as a unifying theme the notion of using
regular temperaments as "adaptive intonation schemes" for coarser
categorical structures.

-Mike