Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning Moving on [to Cameron and others]

On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 5:00 PM, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> Now that we're on the same page about what's being said, does anyone know
> how does music works?

OK, so now that we're on the same page - Cameron, here's a question
for you. Listen to this Ligeti etude

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuUKVOlN_YQ

This piece is unlike anything I've ever heard in 12-EDO. I have slight
synesthesia and it causes my head to explode with all sorts of colors
and sounds. It seems to be like 90% tonal, 10% polytonal, and contains
two tonal centers which drift in and out of focus. Also, there's this
textural device that Ligeti keeps using, which is to slam on parallel
fifths to evoke the sound of metal being struck ("Fem" means "metal").
In contrast, I've heard pieces in a million tunings now which don't
really sound xenharmonic at all. They just sound like meantone, or
they sound diatonic, or I dunno - they sound something like that. Even
5-limit porcupine comma pumps sound that way once you get used to
them.

I don't know what definition of "xenharmonic" is popular now, but I
think that "novel beauty" != "not in 12-EDO." I don't even think it
means "breaking non-12-EDO categories." I think that it has to do with
the way that music IN some tuning is conceptually organized, such that
music in 12-EDO can be quite harmonically novel, and music in
porcupine can be quite harmonically mundane.

I don't know exactly what this conceptual organization, but it seems
to have to do with things like
- "Roots"
- "Tonal centers"
- The "mode" in the background at any point
- The "implied chords" that a string of notes or dyads causes you to imagine
- Chord progressions, for which we barely have any adequate theory at all

So I think that when you say that "intonation is intonation OF
________", you're talking about things like the above, or rather a
foundational concept which leads to all of those things.

And, when I think that when we're talking about what it means to "use
a temperament," the only right answer is "tune it up and play music in
it," because all of the answers given so far talk unnecessarily imply,
perhaps without realizing, only one sort of conceptual organization
that you can apply to a temperament.

The conversation has slowly and imperceptibly drifted over the course
of many years from mapping out what different TUNINGS are possible, to
mapping out what different conceptual organizations of notes IN
tunings are possible, including in 12-EDO. I think that a systematic
and careful study of this new, latter ideal will lead us closer to the
true essence of "xenharmonic," whatever it is, and will also include
useful ways to make 12 sound more xenharmonic (e.g. beautiful in a new
way).

Aside from philosophy, I think above is a good set of phenomena to get
us started. Does anyone have an idea for what a good way to model some
of this? I've been tossing around this notion of the mind associating
habitually paired stimuli together in "a schema" for a while, but
that's just insane - how do we possibly model all of the things being
schematically paired? That could include anything - scale positions,
ratios, commonly used chords, rhythms (the tonic is often on a strong
beat, right?) and God knows what else. I think algorithmic information
theory might help us out - a signal which has a lot of closely
correlated parts will be more compressible, lower in entropy, and
lower in Kolmogorov complexity. But how do we include parameters for
modeling what could hypothetically be an infinite amount of stimuli
with which to associate?

-Mike

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 6:35 PM, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> Aside from philosophy, I think above is a good set of phenomena to get
> us started. Does anyone have an idea for what a good way to model some
> of this? I've been tossing around this notion of the mind associating
> habitually paired stimuli together in "a schema" for a while, but
> that's just insane - how do we possibly model all of the things being
> schematically paired? That could include anything - scale positions,
> ratios, commonly used chords, rhythms (the tonic is often on a strong
> beat, right?) and God knows what else. I think algorithmic information
> theory might help us out - a signal which has a lot of closely
> correlated parts will be more compressible, lower in entropy, and
> lower in Kolmogorov complexity. But how do we include parameters for
> modeling what could hypothetically be an infinite amount of stimuli
> with which to associate?

The more I think about it, the more it seems like what's needed here
is a model of machine learning, perhaps a neural network, to really do
this approach right. A working model like that, while probably being
far too complex to be useful, will be at least something that we can
behaviorally study and extrapolate some simple theorems from, which we
can then model in very simple form, much like in the way that regular
mapping simplifies and draws on some of the insights from HE, which is
itself rather complicated to compute.

Another thing I'd like to do, as a useful theoretical starting point,
is to figure out what the absolute limits are on what music theory can
ever accomplish. For instance, you might decide it's a good idea to
model "a person" as a nondeterministic Turing machine, or perhaps a
very large array of many nondeterministic Turing machines working in
parallel. Some generalized analogue to the halting problem would then
apply to a suitably generalized Universal Theory of Music (UTM),
assuming that this model of a human being is valid.

Which it should be; a parallel nondeterministic Turing machine is
about as general as it could possibly get. It's like modeling a human
being as an infinite array of probabilistic computers. Any theorems
related to such models will probably be extremely relevant to real
people.

-Mike

🔗genewardsmith <genewardsmith@...>

🔗Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...>

Mike, other composers, notably Stravinsky and Debussy evoked other timbres,
or better said, implied other timbres.

La cathédrale engloutie is a famous example. "To begin the piece, Debussy
uses parallel fifths. The first chord of the piece is made up of sonorous
Gs and Ds (open fifths). The use of stark, open fifths here allude to the
idea of church bells that sound from the distance, across the ocean."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_cath%C3%A9drale_engloutie

Now, I was impressed with Ligeti's The Devil's Staircase to put a piece of
mine into stasis and immediately bought the CD with money I really
shouldn't be spending on such.

I just want to point out that Ligeti is not alone. At the end of the day,
you are certainly right, our goal is to write music of this quality - music
that transcends the tuning it uses could be one goal you are articulating.
Unfortunately in all likelihood only a relatively small number of us have a
chance of having that degree of compositional ability. But it is certainly
fun to try.

Chris

On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 6:35 PM, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>wrote:

> **
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 5:00 PM, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>
> wrote:
> >
> > Now that we're on the same page about what's being said, does anyone know
> > how does music works?
>
> OK, so now that we're on the same page - Cameron, here's a question
> for you. Listen to this Ligeti etude
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuUKVOlN_YQ
>
> This piece is unlike anything I've ever heard in 12-EDO. I have slight
> synesthesia and it causes my head to explode with all sorts of colors
> and sounds. It seems to be like 90% tonal, 10% polytonal, and contains
> two tonal centers which drift in and out of focus. Also, there's this
> textural device that Ligeti keeps using, which is to slam on parallel
> fifths to evoke the sound of metal being struck ("Fem" means "metal").
> In contrast, I've heard pieces in a million tunings now which don't
> really sound xenharmonic at all. They just sound like meantone, or
> they sound diatonic, or I dunno - they sound something like that. Even
> 5-limit porcupine comma pumps sound that way once you get used to
> them.
>
> I don't know what definition of "xenharmonic" is popular now, but I
> think that "novel beauty" != "not in 12-EDO." I don't even think it
> means "breaking non-12-EDO categories." I think that it has to do with
> the way that music IN some tuning is conceptually organized, such that
> music in 12-EDO can be quite harmonically novel, and music in
> porcupine can be quite harmonically mundane.
>
> I don't know exactly what this conceptual organization, but it seems
> to have to do with things like
> - "Roots"
> - "Tonal centers"
> - The "mode" in the background at any point
> - The "implied chords" that a string of notes or dyads causes you to
> imagine
> - Chord progressions, for which we barely have any adequate theory at all
>
> So I think that when you say that "intonation is intonation OF
> ________", you're talking about things like the above, or rather a
> foundational concept which leads to all of those things.
>
> And, when I think that when we're talking about what it means to "use
> a temperament," the only right answer is "tune it up and play music in
> it," because all of the answers given so far talk unnecessarily imply,
> perhaps without realizing, only one sort of conceptual organization
> that you can apply to a temperament.
>
>

🔗Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...>

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 8:00 PM, genewardsmith
<genewardsmith@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> >
> > OK, so now that we're on the same page - Cameron, here's a question
> > for you. Listen to this Ligeti etude
> >
> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuUKVOlN_YQ
> >
> > This piece is unlike anything I've ever heard in 12-EDO.
>
> You might say the same about Messiaen. But it's got 12ness all over. There's a limit to how xenharmonic it can sound with all that 12 12 12 12 12.

What Messiaen pieces sound as awesome as this? All of the Messiaen
stuff I've heard is atonal or borderline atonal, whereas the above I
think is beautifully tonal.

As for what you said about xenharmonic stuff in 12, I agree. Some of
it may also have to do with differing notions of what, exactly
constitutes the "xenharmonic" experience. But it did lead to a novel
form of beauty so I was happy with it. However, the other side of the
coin is also true: that it's possible to write something in a non-12
tuning that, despite being audibly less 12, is also audibly less novel
sounding.

I'm starting to feel that way about porcupine comma pumps now, which
could be said to equate bIII/bIII/bIII and IV/IV. From that
perspective, there's only so many times you can hear the chord
progression ||: I | bIII | bIII/bIII | bIII/bIII | IV :|| before your
brain adjusts to the new tonal structure and the whole thing starts to
sound "like meantone," in that aside from the slightly different
categories it has a lot of the same features that meantone does.

In contrast, this Ligeti piece required me to build no new categories,
but sounded different right off the bat.

-Mike

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 8:02 PM, genewardsmith
<genewardsmith@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> > Which it should be; a parallel nondeterministic Turing machine is
> > about as general as it could possibly get. It's like modeling a human
> > being as an infinite array of probabilistic computers. Any theorems
> > related to such models will probably be extremely relevant to real
> > people.
>
> I would be astonished if you got anything useful out of this, but don't let me stop you. Maybe we can figure out what music computers like.

You already know that there are theorems about how much one Turing
machine can ascertain about the behavior of another. So if we model a
person as a Turing machine, which takes in a piece of music as input
and either runs forever if it "likes it," or halts if it "doesn't like
it," we already know that a UTM won't be able to figure out for an
arbitrary person and an arbitrary song as input if the program will
like or halt. To "prove" this, all you have to do is work up the usual
proof of the Church-Turing thesis, except instead of introducing a
recursive program that deliberately doesn't do whatever the UTM says,
use flowery language to describe it like a snooty artist type who
deliberately doesn't like whatever a perfect theory of music says he's
supposed to like. Then come up with a clever statement that the
UTM/perfect theory of music will always be wrong about. (I can work
this out formally if people are interested.)

In real life, human behavior probably isn't best modeled as a Turing
machine. This is why I talked about nondeterministic Turing machines
which have an x% chance of responding one way to some input, and a y%
chance of responding another way to the same input, etc. And that's
also why I talked about considering a parallel computation model. And
if that's still not human enough, you can keep humanizing the system
more and more, using things like neural networks or even models that
haven't been invented yet.

So no matter how I decide to model "a person," you could always object
that this model is still too rigid and not human enough.

However, this is the total opposite of what you'd need to say to prove
that my point doesn't apply. A perfect theory of music which can run
on some computer would be a Turing machine. Assume we're stupidly
modeling a human as another Turing machine. If even under these
conditions there are limits on what one Turing machine can predict
about another, then by instead using more complex computing models to
model human beings, especially nondeterministic ones, it's likely that
these limits are increased, or at least that there are still limits at
all to know about.

For my point about hard limits on what music theory can accomplish to
not apply at all, you'd have to argue that not only is a Turing
machine too rigid to represent human behavior, but that some better
model exists for which, counterintuitively, every decision problem you
can formulate about its behavior in response to some arbitrary input
is Turing computable.

-Mike

🔗lobawad <lobawad@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 5:00 PM, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> >
> > Now that we're on the same page about what's being said, does anyone know
> > how does music works?
>
> OK, so now that we're on the same page - Cameron, here's a question
> for you. Listen to this Ligeti etude
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuUKVOlN_YQ
>
> This piece is unlike anything I've ever heard in 12-EDO. I have slight
> synesthesia and it causes my head to explode with all sorts of colors
> and sounds. It seems to be like 90% tonal, 10% polytonal, and contains
> two tonal centers which drift in and out of focus. Also, there's this
> textural device that Ligeti keeps using, which is to slam on parallel
> fifths to evoke the sound of metal being struck ("Fem" means "metal").
> In contrast, I've heard pieces in a million tunings now which don't
> really sound xenharmonic at all. They just sound like meantone, or
> they sound diatonic, or I dunno - they sound something like that. Even
> 5-limit porcupine comma pumps sound that way once you get used to
> them.

Does "xenharmonic" mean "sounds strange/unexpected to me personally"?
I think that is how the word is actually used in practice. This piece has zero "xenharmonicity" to me, by that definition.

I have decided to reject the word "xenharmonic" as an outmoded concept. YouTube alone has made the "xen-" part obsolete. When alien cultures are discovered, I'll call their music xenharmonic.

>
> I don't know what definition of "xenharmonic" is popular now, but I
> think that "novel beauty" != "not in 12-EDO." I don't even think it
> means "breaking non-12-EDO categories." I think that it has to do with
> the way that music IN some tuning is conceptually organized, such that
> music in 12-EDO can be quite harmonically novel, and music in
> porcupine can be quite harmonically mundane.

There are those who are strongly affected by variations in intervals themselves. There are any number of maqam ajnas which can (and often are) written very simplistically, C-D-E-F for example, but for who knows how many people (undoubtedly many millions, perhaps a billion or more?) are distinguished by microtonal variation.

For those who perceive such things and think in terms of things like mood, what is harmonically mundane when scanned in terms of notes rather than sounds may not be mundane at all.
>
> I don't know exactly what this conceptual organization, but it seems
> to have to do with things like
> - "Roots"
> - "Tonal centers"
> - The "mode" in the background at any point
> - The "implied chords" that a string of notes or dyads causes you to imagine
> - Chord progressions, for which we barely have any adequate theory at all

I'll try to post a reply to this asap, with a musical example.

>
> So I think that when you say that "intonation is intonation OF
> ________", you're talking about things like the above, or rather a
> foundational concept which leads to all of those things.

Yes that's the traditional concept of "just intonation". And, I think it was a big mistake for those working in rational structures to use the term for their work.

🔗cityoftheasleep <igliashon@...>

🔗Keenan Pepper <keenanpepper@...>

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 5:55 PM, lobawad <lobawad@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 5:00 PM, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> > >
> > > Now that we're on the same page about what's being said, does anyone know
> > > how does music works?
> >
> > OK, so now that we're on the same page - Cameron, here's a question
> > for you. Listen to this Ligeti etude
> >
> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuUKVOlN_YQ
>
> Does "xenharmonic" mean "sounds strange/unexpected to me personally"?
> I think that is how the word is actually used in practice. This piece has zero "xenharmonicity" to me, by that definition.
>
> I have decided to reject the word "xenharmonic" as an outmoded concept. YouTube alone has made the "xen-" part obsolete. When alien cultures are discovered, I'll call their music xenharmonic.

LOL, OK.

> > I don't know what definition of "xenharmonic" is popular now, but I
> > think that "novel beauty" != "not in 12-EDO." I don't even think it
> > means "breaking non-12-EDO categories." I think that it has to do with
> > the way that music IN some tuning is conceptually organized, such that
> > music in 12-EDO can be quite harmonically novel, and music in
> > porcupine can be quite harmonically mundane.
>
> There are those who are strongly affected by variations in intervals themselves. There are any number of maqam ajnas which can (and often are) written very simplistically, C-D-E-F for example, but for who knows how many people (undoubtedly many millions, perhaps a billion or more?) are distinguished by microtonal variation.
>
> For those who perceive such things and think in terms of things like mood, what is harmonically mundane when scanned in terms of notes rather than sounds may not be mundane at all.

I agree, that intonation of categories can be used to transmit
information. One can find examples of this even in the fact that some
clever people like to use 7/6 and 6/5 as minor thirds of subtly
varying moods.

> > I don't know exactly what this conceptual organization, but it seems
> > to have to do with things like
> > - "Roots"
> > - "Tonal centers"
> > - The "mode" in the background at any point
> > - The "implied chords" that a string of notes or dyads causes you to imagine
> > - Chord progressions, for which we barely have any adequate theory at all
>
> I'll try to post a reply to this asap, with a musical example.

Yay

> > So I think that when you say that "intonation is intonation OF
> > ________", you're talking about things like the above, or rather a
> > foundational concept which leads to all of those things.
>
> Yes that's the traditional concept of "just intonation". And, I think it was a big mistake for those working in rational structures to use the term for their work.

Huh? What does what I wrote have to do with JI? I'm saying that
"intonation is intonation of _______________." What is ____________?
Categories? Scale degrees? Magical non-ratio things?

-Mike

🔗cityoftheasleep <igliashon@...>

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

🔗lobawad <lobawad@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:

>
> > > So I think that when you say that "intonation is intonation OF
> > > ________", you're talking about things like the above, or rather a
> > > foundational concept which leads to all of those things.
> >
> > Yes that's the traditional concept of "just intonation". And, I think it was a big mistake for those working in rational structures to use the term for their work.
>
> Huh? What does what I wrote have to do with JI? I'm saying that
> "intonation is intonation of _______________." What is ____________?
> Categories? Scale degrees? Magical non-ratio things?
>
> -Mike

"Intonation is intonation of (x)" has everything to do with the traditional conception of JI. "Of" intervals which exist within the system.

It is very simple: in the traditional concept of JI, and really for the concept of "JI" to make sense, the intervals exist even if they are not Justly intoned.

Okay, a musical example making some comments on some things we have been talking about.

http://www.mediafire.com/?6mk5a3e523d41i5

First of all, something you must realize- when a musical idea seems valid to me, I try, sometimes for years, to demonstrate that it is incorrect.

Now, several of you guys jeered when I said that traditionally there is a distinction in function between a harmonically tuned seventh tune and a "dominant seventh". This is simply lack of knowledge- that 7:4 is traditionally considered an intonation of the augmented sixth is not something I "made up". But is this a holdover from 1/4-comma meantone, in which the augmented sixth is a well approximated 7:4, or something with a strong psychoacoustic base, as has been claimed by some through the last few centuries? For those who think this is the case, barbershop cadences must be distinct indeed.

So, this little piece ends on a harmonically tuned "I9". Does it "want" to then resolve to "fa"? To my ears, "sort of".

The question though is whether this piece really is in 11-limit Just Intonation, or is it in an 11-limit rational intervallic structure. If it is in 11-limit JI, we must be able to say what it is that is being Justly intoned. Can you hear a scale in this piece?

It was certainly not conceived with a scale in mind. The structure is simple: the highest tone throughout, marked by a bell, starts alone, then is harmonized as if it were an 11th partial, a 9th partial, a 7th partial, so on down to the last chord in which it is the fundamental. So the title Falling While Standing Still is descriptive.

I tried as much as possible to make full 4:5:6:7.9:11 chords, with some passing alterations using 5:6 at the bottom to keep it moving. Even with 29 discrete pitches in the octave, the pedal as the 9th partial is only touched upon and not fleshed out, I figured that's the one that can be slighted while maintaining the "falling".

Now, Mike- do you hear the "melting together"? Do you hear the portamento, or swooning, or whatever you'd like to call it, effects? At about 19-22 seconds for example. There is no portamento, all pitches are "straight", digital synthesizer straight.

🔗Keenan Pepper <keenanpepper@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Keenan Pepper" <keenanpepper@> wrote:
>
> > I need a word to use to talk to my friends about music that can't be played on their piano
> > and doesn't use the notes A, A#, B, C, etc.
> >
> > What am I supposed to say now, if not "xenharmonic"?
>
> Did they understand "xenharmonic" without a lengthy explanation of the origins and meaning of the word?

Yes - they only needed a brief definition.

> "Microtonal" is the only word I know of that gets the point across that "this music is not in standard 12-tone equal temperament" without a lengthy explanation, even though it has connotations of a focus on "small intervals" (usually quarter-tones). Most people accept "microtonal" to also mean all "ethnic" tunings, from Indian to Javanese, and all of my non-micro friends are most comfortable with using that term to describe what I do. "Alternative intonation", "alternative temperament", and "alternative equal division of the _______" also get the point across, but not always so clearly. And I like all of these better than "xenharmonic" because they are not defined according some nebulous and contentious audible quality of the music.

Who is defining "xenharmonic" that way? To me "xenharmonic" describes all music that could be entered in an untwelve competition; that is, anything that's not in 12edo or a closely related tuning (such as a circulating 12-tone temperament).

Who thinks it means something else?

> Yeah, I think I'm willing to go on record and say I officially hate the word "xenharmonic".

Okay, it's on record.

Keenan

🔗Keenan Pepper <keenanpepper@...>

🔗cityoftheasleep <igliashon@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Keenan Pepper" <keenanpepper@...> wrote:
> Because "in a different tuning system" is much longer, and not an adjective, so it makes
> certain things awkward. Would you really prefer "alliance for different tuning systems" to
> "xenharmonic alliance"? I demand a one-word adjective.

I would prefer "alliance for alternative tuning systems", yes. I think demanding a one-word adjective to describe all of JI, RI, RMP, ED_s, well-temperaments, irrational tunings (phi/pi whatever), meta-harmonic tunings, traditional "ethnic" scales, and who knows what other paradigm I'm forgetting, is a bit foolish. What's the point of rolling it all together? Seems to me like all that accomplishes is that it makes it easier for people to dismiss all of it in one go.

The way I see it, people already know what "microtonal" means. Those that are interested in it enough will be amenable to a more specific description ("this is in 13-limit JI", or "this is in porcupine temperament, a temperament where the perfect 4th is divided into 3 equal parts", etc.), and those that are not interested don't care that the word "microtonal" suggests an emphasis on small intervals and have probably already plugged their ears before you've got your next word out.

> Nobody ever said it was a genre - that would be stupid. It's not a genre in the same way > that "chromatic", "contrapuntal", and "polyrhythmic" are not genres.

We do kind of treat it like one, though..."oh, you like xenharmonic music? Here, this is xenharmonic, you'll like it!" Which is pretty much what would happen in the "Chromatic Alliance" or the "Contrapuntal Alliance"...but those alliances don't exist, because no one treats those compositional techniques as genres the way we do with "xenharmonic".

🔗Keenan Pepper <keenanpepper@...>

This definition seems totally fine to me. It's exactly as vague as it should be.

> So, what does it mean to not sound like 12-tone equal temperament? Haven't we had enough debates about this on XA to make it obvious that it's far from easy to reach consensus on that? There are some people who think that meantone doesn't sound like 12-tone equal temperament. There are others that think anything accurate in the 5-limit *does* sound like 12-tone equal temperament. Some might even say that accurate 7-limit music sounds like 12-TET--or is barbershop music xenharmonic? What about a circulating 12-note temperament where all the major 3rds are 5/4, 9/7, or 14/11, and all the minors 6/5, 7/6, or 13/11? Are Johnny Reinhard's overtone-series versions of classical pieces xenharmonic? What about 7-limit pieces in Injera or Pajara, two temperaments supported by 12-TET but not well-tuned in it? How about ripple[12]? Diminished[12] in 16-ED2, or augmented[12] in 15-ED2? What about diminished[12] in 28-ED2, or augmented[12] in 27-ED2?
>
> Personally, I don't know that I could confidently decide any of these cases. Part of me is not comfortable calling them xenharmonic, and part of me insists upon it. Therefore I think it sucks as a term for describing music.

None of this bothers me at all. Like most other English words, it doesn't have a mathematically precise meaning, which is fine.

The other words I mentioned like "polyrhythmic" don't have precise meanings either. You're not going to get anywhere near 100% agreement on whether every specific piece is or is not polyrhythmic. Does that mean it's a stupid word and should be abolished? No, because it labels a (vague) concept that people want to talk about. It saves them from having to describe the concept in a bunch of words every time, which is what you seem to want to do with "xenharmonic".

Keenan

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

🔗cityoftheasleep <igliashon@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Keenan Pepper" <keenanpepper@...> wrote:

> This definition seems totally fine to me. It's exactly as vague as it should be.

You're welcome to it, then. I still hate it and think it fails to convey what it's supposed to convey; it still requires an explanation, and to that end, *any* word could be used to stand in for the initial explanation for the purpose of facilitating discourse. I prefer "microtonal" a thousand times over, because it's no more flawed than "xenharmonic" and is already understood by pretty much everybody that I'd want to talk to about the subject. That, and it's easier to spell, easier to pronounce, and easier to modify (I like the sound of "microtonalist", "microtonally", "microtonality", etc. much better than "xenharmonist", "xenharmonically", "xenharmony", etc.).

> None of this bothers me at all. Like most other English words, it doesn't have a
> mathematically precise meaning, which is fine.
>
> The other words I mentioned like "polyrhythmic" don't have precise meanings either.
> You're not going to get anywhere near 100% agreement on whether every specific piece > is or is not polyrhythmic. Does that mean it's a stupid word and should be abolished?
> No, because it labels a (vague) concept that people want to talk about. It saves them
> from having to describe the concept in a bunch of words every time, which is what you
> seem to want to do with "xenharmonic".

If I were allowed, I could very slightly alter the definition of xenharmonic music to take all the needless subjectivity out of it and make it much more functional. It really wouldn't take much. Just cut out the "doesn't sound like 12-TET" and replace it with "is not composed for 12-TET". No room for debate there, except in matters of historical accuracy. Sure, that lets in some well-temperaments and meantone and all that, but they're *already* admitted under the previous definition, as long as someone can hear that they don't sound like 12-TET. This definition allows the composer's intent to be the deciding factor.

-Igs

🔗gdsecor <gdsecor@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Keenan Pepper" <keenanpepper@> wrote:
>
> > Who is defining "xenharmonic" that way?
>
> The man who coined the term! "This writer has proposed the term xenharmonic for music, melodies, scales, harmonies, instruments, and tuning-systems which do not sound like the 12-tone-equal temperament."
>
> So, what does it mean to not sound like 12-tone equal temperament? Haven't we had enough debates about this on XA to make it obvious that it's far from easy to reach consensus on that? There are some people who think that meantone doesn't sound like 12-tone equal temperament. There are others that think anything accurate in the 5-limit *does* sound like 12-tone equal temperament. Some might even say that accurate 7-limit music sounds like 12-TET--or is barbershop music xenharmonic? What about a circulating 12-note temperament where all the major 3rds are 5/4, 9/7, or 14/11, and all the minors 6/5, 7/6, or 13/11? Are Johnny Reinhard's overtone-series versions of classical pieces xenharmonic? What about 7-limit pieces in Injera or Pajara, two temperaments supported by 12-TET but not well-tuned in it? How about ripple[12]? Diminished[12] in 16-ED2, or augmented[12] in 15-ED2? What about diminished[12] in 28-ED2, or augmented[12] in 27-ED2?
>
> Personally, I don't know that I could confidently decide any of these cases. Part of me is not comfortable calling them xenharmonic, and part of me insists upon it. Therefore I think it sucks as a term for describing music.
>
> -Igs

As one who has read most of Ivor Darreg's writings, has corresponded with him numerous times, and has spoken with him face-to-face on more than a few occasions, I am probably as qualified as anyone to clarify the meaning of the term "xenharmonic" as he intended it to be used.

As I understand it, the term applies to any tuning (just, tempered, or whatever) that sounds significantly different from 12-equal. In practical terms this means that if you play an appropriate musical passage successively in 12-equal and tuning X (in unspecified order), if it's possible to distinguish one from the other by ear, then tuning X is xenharmonic. By "appropriate musical passage", I mean one that's not contrived to hide the differences, so you would not want to use a single melodic line consisting of only those intervals which differ by the least amount in the two tunings, but rather something with a harmonic texture that contains "usable" intervals that differ the most between tunings. (By "usable", I'm excluding the condition that "wolf" intervals or intervals a comma false be present in the tuning X example in cases where a composer or performer would be expected to avoid such intervals in an actual composition or performance.)

I don't make it a condition that *everybody* can tell the difference, only that the majority of those on a panel of educated listeners be able to identify correctly which one is 12-equal and which is tuning X.

Of course, it goes without saying that if tuning X is so drastically different from 12-equal that it's impossible to play a tuning X passage in 12-equal, then tuning X is clearly xenharmonic.

The term was coined because most of the tunings being used by those in the 1970's xenharmonic movement contained strange intervals that were foreign to 12-equal, and the already-existing term "microtonal" didn't cover tunings like 5-equal and 7-equal. Nevertheless, a xenharmonic tuning need not be strange- or foreign-sounding to be included under the label "xenharmonic", because then there would be the problem of deciding whether a given tuning would be strange enough to qualify.

Igs, with this explanation I believe that most of the examples you gave above (including barbershop and 1/4-comma meantone) are indeed xenharmonic.

--George

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 4:46 AM, lobawad <lobawad@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> >
> > Huh? What does what I wrote have to do with JI? I'm saying that
> > "intonation is intonation of _______________." What is ____________?
> > Categories? Scale degrees? Magical non-ratio things?
>
> "Intonation is intonation of (x)" has everything to do with the
> traditional conception of JI. "Of" intervals which exist within the system.

What if we're not talking about JI, but a temperament? Then the
tempered intervals are still ways to intone ________. But this doesn't
explain what other things might be perceptually relevant to the affect
of an interval existing within a system.

> Now, several of you guys jeered when I said that traditionally there is a
> distinction in function between a harmonically tuned seventh tune and a
> "dominant seventh". This is simply lack of knowledge- that 7:4 is
> traditionally considered an intonation of the augmented sixth is not
> something I "made up".

Strawman

> But is this a holdover from 1/4-comma meantone, in
> which the augmented sixth is a well approximated 7:4, or something with a
> strong psychoacoustic base, as has been claimed by some through the last few
> centuries? For those who think this is the case, barbershop cadences must be
> distinct indeed.
>
> So, this little piece ends on a harmonically tuned "I9". Does it "want" to
> then resolve to "fa"? To my ears, "sort of".

What does "l9" mean?

I can also hear a slight tendency to want to resolve at the end, I
suppose, and it's not like a new idea to me that a sharpened minor 7
vs something like a 4:5:6:7 makes it "want to resolve more" (the same
is also true if you sharpen the major third). The point is that these
both sound like different intonations of the same thing to me, which
is 10\12. Both the "augmented sixth" and the minor seventh correspond
to 10 steps in a nearly-equal 12-tone MOS of meantone anyway.

> The question though is whether this piece really is in 11-limit Just
> Intonation, or is it in an 11-limit rational intervallic structure. If it is
> in 11-limit JI, we must be able to say what it is that is being Justly
> intoned. Can you hear a scale in this piece?

Any scale I imagine in this piece is constantly changing with each new chord.

> or swooning, or whatever you'd like to call it, effects? At about 19-22
> seconds for example. There is no portamento, all pitches are "straight",
> digital synthesizer straight.

I hear a bit of warble on the entire string patch even when there's
just one note being played, so you should check your patch. But I do
hear the "buzzing" effect if that's what you're talking about at 0:20.
Is that what you mean?

-Mike

🔗lobawad <lobawad@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 4:46 AM, lobawad <lobawad@...> wrote:
> >
> > --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Huh? What does what I wrote have to do with JI? I'm saying that
> > > "intonation is intonation of _______________." What is ____________?
> > > Categories? Scale degrees? Magical non-ratio things?
> >
> > "Intonation is intonation of (x)" has everything to do with the
> > traditional conception of JI. "Of" intervals which exist within the system.
>
> What if we're not talking about JI, but a temperament? Then the
> tempered intervals are still ways to intone ________.

Obviously. Tempered intervals are ways to intone intervals within a system.

>But this doesn't
> explain what other things might be perceptually relevant to the >affect of an interval existing within a system.

Well we were not talking about that. Relative step sizes must be one factor, there must be many more.

>
>
> > Now, several of you guys jeered when I said that traditionally there is a
> > distinction in function between a harmonically tuned seventh tune and a
> > "dominant seventh". This is simply lack of knowledge- that 7:4 is
> > traditionally considered an intonation of the augmented sixth is not
> > something I "made up".
>
> Strawman

???

>
> > But is this a holdover from 1/4-comma meantone, in
> > which the augmented sixth is a well approximated 7:4, or something with a
> > strong psychoacoustic base, as has been claimed by some through the last few
> > centuries? For those who think this is the case, barbershop cadences must be
> > distinct indeed.
> >
> > So, this little piece ends on a harmonically tuned "I9". Does it "want" to
> > then resolve to "fa"? To my ears, "sort of".
>
> What does "l9" mean?

Sorry, I keep assuming that everyone here has at least a basic classical education. That's a capital I, not l- ninth chord on the tonic.

>
> I can also hear a slight tendency to want to resolve at the end, I
> suppose, and it's not like a new idea to me that a sharpened minor 7
> vs something like a 4:5:6:7 makes it "want to resolve more" (the same
> is also true if you sharpen the major third). The point is that these
> both sound like different intonations of the same thing to me, which
> is 10\12. Both the "augmented sixth" and the minor seventh correspond
> to 10 steps in a nearly-equal 12-tone MOS of meantone anyway.

Well, that's you. In common practice music, there is context to be considered. And I bet your ears are far more attuned than you think they are to how intervals tuned the same in 12-tET vary in function in c.p. music: consider the augmented second vs. minor third.

>
> > The question though is whether this piece really is in 11-limit Just
> > Intonation, or is it in an 11-limit rational intervallic structure. If it is
> > in 11-limit JI, we must be able to say what it is that is being Justly
> > intoned. Can you hear a scale in this piece?
>
> Any scale I imagine in this piece is constantly changing with each new chord.

Hey, that's an interesting take, but not surprising from a jazz improviser.

>
> > or swooning, or whatever you'd like to call it, effects? At about 19-22
> > seconds for example. There is no portamento, all pitches are "straight",
> > digital synthesizer straight.
>
> I hear a bit of warble on the entire string patch even when there's
> just one note being played, so you should check your patch. But I do
> hear the "buzzing" effect if that's what you're talking about at 0:20.
> Is that what you mean?

The patch has a wobble of +/- 3 cents. This makes the whole thing strikingly similar to be tuned in 53-edo, the obvious choice for extended pieces using this kind of approach, and I am not interested in effects that occur only with perfect rational intonation. I was talking about portamento. You don't hear the airplane-landing kind of sound?

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 11:01 PM, lobawad <lobawad@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> >
> >But this doesn't
> > explain what other things might be perceptually relevant to the >affect
> > of an interval existing within a system.
>
> Well we were not talking about that. Relative step sizes must be one
> factor, there must be many more.

That's what I'm talking about. There is some extremely important
component to the "affect" of an interval besides the ratio you intone
it as, and I don't know what it is.

> > > So, this little piece ends on a harmonically tuned "I9". Does it
> > > "want" to
> > > then resolve to "fa"? To my ears, "sort of".
> >
> > What does "l9" mean?
>
> Sorry, I keep assuming that everyone here has at least a basic classical
> education. That's a capital I, not l- ninth chord on the tonic.

Oh, I didn't realize that was an I. And unless you're a professor or
have a DMA or something, I probably have more of a "classical
education" than you do :)

> > I can also hear a slight tendency to want to resolve at the end, I
> > suppose, and it's not like a new idea to me that a sharpened minor 7
> > vs something like a 4:5:6:7 makes it "want to resolve more" (the same
> > is also true if you sharpen the major third). The point is that these
> > both sound like different intonations of the same thing to me, which
> > is 10\12. Both the "augmented sixth" and the minor seventh correspond
> > to 10 steps in a nearly-equal 12-tone MOS of meantone anyway.
>
> Well, that's you. In common practice music, there is context to be
> considered.

It's apparently most people, since barbershop quartets came up with
the bright idea to substitute 4:5:6:7 for dominant 7 chords, thus
indicating that they don't hear the two as radically different chords
in the same way that 10:12:15 and 4:5:6 are radically different
chords.

> And I bet your ears are far more attuned than you think they are
> to how intervals tuned the same in 12-tET vary in function in c.p. music:
> consider the augmented second vs. minor third.

Yes, but that's true even if the intervals are intoned exactly the
same, so I'm not sure how that relates to what you're saying here.

And I think that the reason that augmented seconds sound different
than minor thirds to me is that I tend to play augmented seconds in
chords like C E F# B D#. When I hear C-D#-E, I thus imagine that sort
of thing. It's the same sort of phenomenon as if I imagine C-B and
hear "perfect fifth + major third" or whatever, or if you hear 81/64
and imagine a circle of fifths, or if the people in Boomsliter and
Creel's paper hear 27/20 and like it better than 4/3 because they're
imagining it in reference to some 9/5 that was just played, or what
have you.

Diminished fourths notably don't sound different from major thirds in
the altered scale, C Db Eb Fb Gb Ab Bb C, commonly played over C7
going to minor in jazz circles. Same with diminished[8]. So I think
that has to do with context.

I have no problem with anyone writing a 7-limit piece and then using a
sharpened minor 7 as a cue that the thing is supposed to resolve,
which is an effect that'd probably be perceptually increased by the
fact that a sharper minor 7 is more dissonant than 4:5:6:7. However,
I'm also saying that you keep saying it like these are "fundamentally
different" things. And, I think that whether they're "fundamentally
different" or "variations of the same thing" is subjective.

> > Any scale I imagine in this piece is constantly changing with each new
> > chord.
>
> Hey, that's an interesting take, but not surprising from a jazz
> improviser.

Yeah, I mean, that's basically how I hear everything. Maybe just
because of my training. In general, if you play an interval, I imagine
other intervals surrounding it or that make it up or some "context"
for it something like that. I think some aspect of this behavior
exists for a lot of people, but mine is like the version on steroids.

> > I hear a bit of warble on the entire string patch even when there's
> > just one note being played, so you should check your patch. But I do
> > hear the "buzzing" effect if that's what you're talking about at 0:20.
> > Is that what you mean?
>
> The patch has a wobble of +/- 3 cents. This makes the whole thing
> strikingly similar to be tuned in 53-edo, the obvious choice for extended
> pieces using this kind of approach, and I am not interested in effects that
> occur only with perfect rational intonation. I was talking about portamento.
> You don't hear the airplane-landing kind of sound?

I hear at 0:20
- a sort of purring sound briefly, which is periodicity buzz
- the sound of the whole thing "locking in" and suddenly "expanding"
and getting "deeper," which after listening to it a few times I
realized was a virtual "E" note an octave below the lowest one
- all kinds of trippy associations with that last effect

I should note that the reverb + long release time + very slight wobble
made it difficult for me to precisely label some of the effects I was
feeling; the whole thing was kind of in a misty haze or something,
which I kind of liked about it. If you do another recording like this
with a drier tone, just for pedagogical purposes, I could probably say
more about it.

-Mike

🔗lobawad <lobawad@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 11:01 PM, lobawad <lobawad@...> wrote:
> >
> > --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@> wrote:
> > >
> > >But this doesn't
> > > explain what other things might be perceptually relevant to the >affect
> > > of an interval existing within a system.
> >
> > Well we were not talking about that. Relative step sizes must be one
> > factor, there must be many more.
>
> That's what I'm talking about. There is some extremely important
> component to the "affect" of an interval besides the ratio you intone
> it as, and I don't know what it is.

Well we are completely in agreement there. And there you see again why I keep insisting that JI is intonation "of" something, it's not "the rational proportions".

>
> > > > So, this little piece ends on a harmonically tuned "I9". Does it
> > > > "want" to
> > > > then resolve to "fa"? To my ears, "sort of".
> > >
> > > What does "l9" mean?
> >
> > Sorry, I keep assuming that everyone here has at least a basic classical
> > education. That's a capital I, not l- ninth chord on the tonic.
>
> Oh, I didn't realize that was an I. And unless you're a professor or
> have a DMA or something, I probably have more of a "classical
> education" than you do :)

Then I don't know what you're playing at when I bring up perfectly normal stuff like the traditional view of a 6-4 inversion as being ambiguously rooted and you argue with it.

>
> It's apparently most people, since barbershop quartets came up with
> the bright idea to substitute 4:5:6:7 for dominant 7 chords, thus
> indicating that they don't hear the two as radically different chords
> in the same way that 10:12:15 and 4:5:6 are radically different
> chords.

Barbershop is strikingly "different", a terrible example of "tonal music of most people".

>
> > And I bet your ears are far more attuned than you think they are
> > to how intervals tuned the same in 12-tET vary in function in c.p. music:
> > consider the augmented second vs. minor third.
>
> Yes, but that's true even if the intervals are intoned exactly the
> same, so I'm not sure how that relates to what you're saying here.

I'm just pointing out the power of context. Surely we're in agreement about that.

>
> I have no problem with anyone writing a 7-limit piece and then using a
> sharpened minor 7 as a cue that the thing is supposed to resolve,
> which is an effect that'd probably be perceptually increased by the
> fact that a sharper minor 7 is more dissonant than 4:5:6:7. However,
> I'm also saying that you keep saying it like these are "fundamentally
> different" things. And, I think that whether they're "fundamentally
> different" or "variations of the same thing" is subjective.

Oh but I did not say they are fundamentally different- I said that are traditionally considered fundamentally different. Whether I, personally, consider them fundamentally different is easily answered: it depends on the music.
>
> > > Any scale I imagine in this piece is constantly changing with each new
> > > chord.
> >
> > Hey, that's an interesting take, but not surprising from a jazz
> > improviser.
>
> Yeah, I mean, that's basically how I hear everything. Maybe just
> because of my training. In general, if you play an interval, I imagine
> other intervals surrounding it or that make it up or some "context"
> for it something like that. I think some aspect of this behavior
> exists for a lot of people, but mine is like the version on steroids.

A different scale for each chord is pretty specifically jazz thinking, though. I would interpret "hearing a scale" in a passage as a "red thread" scale running through the passage.

> >
> > The patch has a wobble of +/- 3 cents. This makes the whole thing
> > strikingly similar to be tuned in 53-edo, the obvious choice for extended
> > pieces using this kind of approach, and I am not interested in effects that
> > occur only with perfect rational intonation. I was talking about portamento.
> > You don't hear the airplane-landing kind of sound?
>
> I hear at 0:20
> - a sort of purring sound briefly, which is periodicity buzz
> - the sound of the whole thing "locking in" and suddenly "expanding"
> and getting "deeper," which after listening to it a few times I
> realized was a virtual "E" note an octave below the lowest one
> - all kinds of trippy associations with that last effect

Yes, there's periodicty buzz (it's there when tuned to 53-edo too) and your "expanding" and "getting deeper" must be same as the "diving down" I hear. I am certain that these effects are real in some kind of "objective" way, as I thought up the piece on a walk in the park and named it descriptively before realizing it and the effects are as predicted.

>
> I should note that the reverb + long release time + very slight wobble
> made it difficult for me to precisely label some of the effects I was
> feeling; the whole thing was kind of in a misty haze or something,
> which I kind of liked about it. If you do another recording like this
> with a drier tone, just for pedagogical purposes, I could probably say
> more about it.

If I get the time, I'll do a dry version. It'll be an interesting test of how far the horizontal carries into the vertical, as I assumed that what you call "expanding" requires a lot of vertical simultaneity, but I could be wrong.

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 12:10 AM, lobawad <lobawad@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> >
> > That's what I'm talking about. There is some extremely important
> > component to the "affect" of an interval besides the ratio you intone
> > it as, and I don't know what it is.
>
> Well we are completely in agreement there. And there you see again why I
> keep insisting that JI is intonation "of" something, it's not "the rational
> proportions".

OK, and I've repeatedly stated I agree with all that, and that I wish
we could get on with figuring out what it might be instead of talking
about terminology. It's the same thing as Igs' trying to define
"temperament." The phrase "JI" has also been used pretty
inconsistently. I'm happier at this point to let people use it however
they want, make sure we have a common understanding of definitions for
the purposes of any particular discussion, and then move onto the more
interesting conversation, which is what this other component is.

> > Oh, I didn't realize that was an I. And unless you're a professor or
> > have a DMA or something, I probably have more of a "classical
> > education" than you do :)
>
> Then I don't know what you're playing at when I bring up perfectly normal
> stuff like the traditional view of a 6-4 inversion as being ambiguously
> rooted and you argue with it.

Because I think it's only certain circumstances where it gets ambiguous.

> > It's apparently most people, since barbershop quartets came up with
> > the bright idea to substitute 4:5:6:7 for dominant 7 chords, thus
> > indicating that they don't hear the two as radically different chords
> > in the same way that 10:12:15 and 4:5:6 are radically different
> > chords.
>
> Barbershop is strikingly "different", a terrible example of "tonal music
> of most people".

It just sounds like normal music to me with some neat effect on it.
It's "different" in the same way that putting a leslie speaker on a B3
makes it sound "different," or putting distortion on a guitar makes it
sound "different."

> > Yes, but that's true even if the intervals are intoned exactly the
> > same, so I'm not sure how that relates to what you're saying here.
>
> I'm just pointing out the power of context. Surely we're in agreement
> about that.

OK.

> > I have no problem with anyone writing a 7-limit piece and then using a
> > sharpened minor 7 as a cue that the thing is supposed to resolve,
> > which is an effect that'd probably be perceptually increased by the
> > fact that a sharper minor 7 is more dissonant than 4:5:6:7. However,
> > I'm also saying that you keep saying it like these are "fundamentally
> > different" things. And, I think that whether they're "fundamentally
> > different" or "variations of the same thing" is subjective.
>
> Oh but I did not say they are fundamentally different- I said that are
> traditionally considered fundamentally different. Whether I, personally,
> consider them fundamentally different is easily answered: it depends on the
> music.

OK, good.

> > > Hey, that's an interesting take, but not surprising from a jazz
> > > improviser.
> >
> > Yeah, I mean, that's basically how I hear everything. Maybe just
> > because of my training. In general, if you play an interval, I imagine
> > other intervals surrounding it or that make it up or some "context"
> > for it something like that. I think some aspect of this behavior
> > exists for a lot of people, but mine is like the version on steroids.
>
> A different scale for each chord is pretty specifically jazz thinking,
> though. I would interpret "hearing a scale" in a passage as a "red thread"
> scale running through the passage.

What do you mean by red thread here?

> > I hear at 0:20
> > - a sort of purring sound briefly, which is periodicity buzz
> > - the sound of the whole thing "locking in" and suddenly "expanding"
> > and getting "deeper," which after listening to it a few times I
> > realized was a virtual "E" note an octave below the lowest one
> > - all kinds of trippy associations with that last effect
>
> Yes, there's periodicty buzz (it's there when tuned to 53-edo too) and
> your "expanding" and "getting deeper" must be same as the "diving down" I
> hear. I am certain that these effects are real in some kind of "objective"
> way, as I thought up the piece on a walk in the park and named it
> descriptively before realizing it and the effects are as predicted.

I responded to Igs' recently about the "objective" thing. What was
noteworthy here was my experience of the whole thing fusing into a
virtual fundamental, which doesn't happen too often for me with dyads.
There's some inter-subject variability with respect to things like
complex pitch perception, especially other than in obvious cases where
you're just playing an entire harmonic series and letting it fuse into
a single note. The Frere Jacques study I referenced is a good example
of how training can affect the whole thing:
http://jn.physiology.org/content/early/2011/10/28/jn.00804.2011.abstract

> > I should note that the reverb + long release time + very slight wobble
> > made it difficult for me to precisely label some of the effects I was
> > feeling; the whole thing was kind of in a misty haze or something,
> > which I kind of liked about it. If you do another recording like this
> > with a drier tone, just for pedagogical purposes, I could probably say
> > more about it.
>
> If I get the time, I'll do a dry version. It'll be an interesting test of
> how far the horizontal carries into the vertical, as I assumed that what you
> call "expanding" requires a lot of vertical simultaneity, but I could be
> wrong.

I think that learning is the mechanism by which the vertical carries
into the horizontal unless the horizontal takes up about 45ms:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12509016

-Mike

🔗lobawad <lobawad@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:

>
>
> > > Oh, I didn't realize that was an I. And unless you're a professor or
> > > have a DMA or something, I probably have more of a "classical
> > > education" than you do :)
> >
> > Then I don't know what you're playing at when I bring up perfectly normal
> > stuff like the traditional view of a 6-4 inversion as being ambiguously
> > rooted and you argue with it.
>
> Because I think it's only certain circumstances where it gets ambiguous.

But neither I nor the traditional view ever stated that it is *always* ambiguous.

>
> > > It's apparently most people, since barbershop quartets came up with
> > > the bright idea to substitute 4:5:6:7 for dominant 7 chords, thus
> > > indicating that they don't hear the two as radically different chords
> > > in the same way that 10:12:15 and 4:5:6 are radically different
> > > chords.
> >
> > Barbershop is strikingly "different", a terrible example of "tonal music
> > of most people".
>
> It just sounds like normal music to me with some neat effect on it.
> It's "different" in the same way that putting a leslie speaker on a B3
> makes it sound "different," or putting distortion on a guitar makes it
> sound "different."

My early years were in an unusually restricted environment of mostly classical music (and Eastern European folk music) and first heard barbershop quite late- 12, I think. The difference, the "xenharmonicity" of it, especially the cadences which melted together unexepectedly was simply radical, bizarre, humorous. I am most likely projecting some of my own experience, but I do not think I am wrong in maintaining that barbershop is distinct for many people. Certainly for those who have not sung in choirs, I can describe Just Intonation
simply by saying you know how barbershop quartets sound? and they get it right away. That melting together sound is real.

> > A different scale for each chord is pretty specifically jazz thinking,
> > though. I would interpret "hearing a scale" in a passage as a "red thread"
> > scale running through the passage.
>
> What do you mean by red thread here?

A common binding element running throughout.

>
> I responded to Igs' recently about the "objective" thing. What was
> noteworthy here was my experience of the whole thing fusing into a
> virtual fundamental, which doesn't happen too often for me with >dyads.
> There's some inter-subject variability with respect to things like
> complex pitch perception, especially other than in obvious cases where
> you're just playing an entire harmonic series and letting it fuse >into
> a single note.

The things that are objective about rational frequency relations are not necessarily important to a listener, or noticed by a listener, and certainly not necessarily liked by a listener. (Non)beating is not some language-based or fanciful thing, it is "real".

>The Frere Jacques study I referenced is a good example
> of how training can affect the whole thing:
> http://jn.physiology.org/content/early/2011/10/28/jn.00804.2011.abstract

The objective things I am talking about don't give a hoot about training- the harmonic series would continue to exist without any humans to hear it. I am NOT thereby assigning it magic powers! It's just a thing. But it is a thing.

>
> I think that learning is the mechanism by which the vertical carries
> into the horizontal unless the horizontal takes up about 45ms:
>
> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12509016
>
> -Mike
>

Yes, I have always read and heard that training (and inherited predisposition) accounts for wider windows of musical perception in some than others. Makes sense. But editing recordings, even from not terribly lively acoustic spaces, will show you that the horizontal carries literally, not just in perception, further than you might think.

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

> On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 12:10 AM, lobawad <lobawad@...> wrote:
>>
>> Oh but I did not say they are fundamentally different- I said that are
>> traditionally considered fundamentally different. Whether I, personally,
>> consider them fundamentally different is easily answered: it depends on the
>> music.

I should also add that, whatever the common practice theory literature
has to say on this subject (who are you reading, anyway? Bosanquet and
such?), I doubt that even the average listener in the meantone period
would hear them as being radically different. I have strong reasons to
believe that they heard meantone[12] itself as a sort of quasi-equal
scale. For instance, they seem to have treated the "wolf fifth" as
being a fifth which was undesirably out of tune. This perception must
have led to some frustration that they couldn't play songs in "every
key" on the keyboard, which in turn led to the notion that a useful
desideratum was to minimize the error of that wolf fifth and make it
more like the other ones, which finally led to the notion of spreading
the error out over many different fifths and finally equal
temperament.

The fifth and the wolf fifth differ by diesis, as do all of the
intervals sharing a generic interval class in meantone[12]. I'm not
entirely sure, from what I've read, that the average person treated
intervals differing by this interval as -categorically- different in
the same sense that they'd perceive a categorical difference between
intervals differing by the chromatic semitone. The fact that
everyone's first instinct was to run all over the keyboard playing
things in every key, and that the idea was that all of the keys
sounded like they had in-tune or out-of-tune versions of the same
underlying symbolic or schematic things, seems to seems to support
that hypothesis.

I'm not sure how much they perceived these intervals as being
different on that sort of level, except for perhaps the most highly
trained musicians, probably the same ones who hated things like
well-temperament and equal temperament. I do know that Mozart's dad
trained people to differentiate between the two types of minor second,
although it's pretty easy for me to differentiate between them in
19-EDO nowadays - but they're still both types of minor second to my
ear, whatever that means.

-Mike

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 2:30 AM, lobawad <lobawad@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> > >
> > > Then I don't know what you're playing at when I bring up perfectly
> > > normal
> > > stuff like the traditional view of a 6-4 inversion as being
> > > ambiguously
> > > rooted and you argue with it.
> >
> > Because I think it's only certain circumstances where it gets ambiguous.
>
> But neither I nor the traditional view ever stated that it is *always*
> ambiguous.

Sure, but then I think that chords in first inversion can be ambiguous
too then. Consider ||: Cmaj/E | Emaj :||. It's similar to ||: Am/E |
Emaj :||, with the same sort of ambiguous root/temporary
retonicization thing going on.

> > It just sounds like normal music to me with some neat effect on it.
> > It's "different" in the same way that putting a leslie speaker on a B3
> > makes it sound "different," or putting distortion on a guitar makes it
> > sound "different."
>
> My early years were in an unusually restricted environment of mostly
> classical music (and Eastern European folk music) and first heard barbershop
> quite late- 12, I think. The difference, the "xenharmonicity" of it,
> especially the cadences which melted together unexepectedly was simply
> radical, bizarre, humorous. I am most likely projecting some of my own
> experience, but I do not think I am wrong in maintaining that barbershop is
> distinct for many people. Certainly for those who have not sung in choirs, I
> can describe Just Intonation
> simply by saying you know how barbershop quartets sound? and they get it
> right away. That melting together sound is real.

Sure, it's real, but the distinctness doesn't end up filtering down to
the symbolic meaning of the intervals for me such that I perceive
these two intonations of minor seventh as actually being two different
intervals. And if you played someone a V7 chord at the end of a
progression going back to the tonic and didn't resolve it even in
barbershop, I'm sure people would still want it to resolve.

I don't know if this is really barbershop, but it definitely has that
sort of JI sound

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4NafK3NFhA

> > I responded to Igs' recently about the "objective" thing. What was
> > noteworthy here was my experience of the whole thing fusing into a
> > virtual fundamental, which doesn't happen too often for me with >dyads.
> > There's some inter-subject variability with respect to things like
> > complex pitch perception, especially other than in obvious cases where
> > you're just playing an entire harmonic series and letting it fuse >into
> > a single note.
>
> The things that are objective about rational frequency relations are not
> necessarily important to a listener, or noticed by a listener, and certainly
> not necessarily liked by a listener. (Non)beating is not some language-based
> or fanciful thing, it is "real".

Yeah, but I was talking about the virtual fundamental. All of those
effects we just mentioned were definitely not just a lack of beating.
I bet I'd have heard a bunch of them even if you'd used square waves
or even sines.

> >The Frere Jacques study I referenced is a good example
> > of how training can affect the whole thing:
> > http://jn.physiology.org/content/early/2011/10/28/jn.00804.2011.abstract
>
> The objective things I am talking about don't give a hoot about training-
> the harmonic series would continue to exist without any humans to hear it. I
> am NOT thereby assigning it magic powers! It's just a thing. But it is a
> thing.

My point is that the psychoacoustic qualities associated with this
thing aren't really "objective" because adaptation can train many of
them, sometimes in unknown and complex ways. The analogy again is that
they're as objective as being able to deadlift 300 pounds is
objective. Most people can objectively adapt to be able to do it, but
that's not just like an ability that anyone can do at any point in
time.

> Yes, I have always read and heard that training (and inherited
> predisposition) accounts for wider windows of musical perception in some
> than others. Makes sense.

This is just referring to this one psychoacoustic phenomenon though. I
think that the "windows" you're talking about here have to do with
some kind of learned, synthetic reification process. I don't think
that arpeggiated chords directly activate any of the psychoacoustic
phenomena we've mentioned so far, but that someone can learn to view
them as the musical equivalent of a search light tracing out a
background structure, for instance. I note that this sort of thing is
undeterred by things like passing tones and chromatic notes and so on.

It may be that psychoacoustics has some kind of basic "imprinting"
effect in the sort of structures that you recognize, which could
explain some of the recent confusion with Gene's example. I don't
really know. But I do think that there's a strong reification
component to this aspect of musical perception, and that it's learned,
and that it might be the same sort of process that allows one to reify
in "roots" and "tonal centers" and so on in heirarchical fashion
(which was my whole spiel about Schenkerian analysis).

> But editing recordings, even from not terribly
> lively acoustic spaces, will show you that the horizontal carries literally,
> not just in perception, further than you might think.

If you're talking about things like the impulse response of the room,
then I'd say that I don't think that's terribly important in
establishing the affect of chords, at least not to a trained listener,
because I tend to hear chord progressions just fine even if played on
a monophonic instrument with sawtooth waves and no reverb.

-Mike

🔗lobawad <lobawad@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 12:10 AM, lobawad <lobawad@...> wrote:
> >>
> >> Oh but I did not say they are fundamentally different- I said that are
> >> traditionally considered fundamentally different. Whether I, personally,
> >> consider them fundamentally different is easily answered: it depends on the
> >> music.
>
> I should also add that, whatever the common practice theory literature
> has to say on this subject (who are you reading, anyway? Bosanquet and
> such?), I doubt that even the average listener in the meantone period
> would hear them as being radically different. I have strong reasons to
> believe that they heard meantone[12] itself as a sort of quasi-equal
> scale. For instance, they seem to have treated the "wolf fifth" as
> being a fifth which was undesirably out of tune. This perception must
> have led to some frustration that they couldn't play songs in "every
> key" on the keyboard, which in turn led to the notion that a useful
> desideratum was to minimize the error of that wolf fifth and make it
> more like the other ones, which finally led to the notion of spreading
> the error out over many different fifths and finally equal
> temperament.
>
> The fifth and the wolf fifth differ by diesis, as do all of the
> intervals sharing a generic interval class in meantone[12]. I'm not
> entirely sure, from what I've read, that the average person treated
> intervals differing by this interval as -categorically- different in
> the same sense that they'd perceive a categorical difference between
> intervals differing by the chromatic semitone. The fact that
> everyone's first instinct was to run all over the keyboard playing
> things in every key, and that the idea was that all of the keys
> sounded like they had in-tune or out-of-tune versions of the same
> underlying symbolic or schematic things, seems to seems to support
> that hypothesis.

That "everyone's first instinct was to run all over the keyboard playing things in every key" seems a wild assertion, strongly contradicting centuries of notated music. Up through the Baroque, you'll find enharmonic modulation in orchestral works rather than keyboard works (dropping the harpsichord continue freed orchestras in this respect) which tend to "stay within reach", whether by not modulating too far in the first place or by using keys easily reached with a few tuning tweaks between pieces. Have a chat with a harpsichordist doing Scarlatti in meantone.

And speaking of Scarlatti, it is widely (but not universally, as far as I know) accepted that Scarlatti and others deliberated used the wolf as a wolf- a harpsichordist I was working with played me a passage clearly illustrating this (in Telemann, iirc) but I don't know examples off hand.

Keep in mind that conflating "keyboard music" and "Western music" is fair enough if we're looking at the last century or so, but it is simply wrong otherwise. Did you know that Helmholtz lists 11:10 as a "trumpet interval"? Instrumentalists have become masters of fudging, and I imagine that it is now common for brass players not even to be aware of the fact that they are continually altering the natural tones of their instruments in order to play 12-tET, but "proper" writing for brass still requires intimate knowledge of the harmonic series.

As far as reading, I read whatever I can get my hands on, have for decades. Of Bosanquet, I have only read what is available on JSTOR (divisions of the octave for example).

Well, gotta go, back later. By the way, the periodicity buzz using "laboratory" type tones for the little piece I just put up is absurd, obscene- my laptop almost fell off the table, LOL. Most of the effects remain even with an LPF'd triangle wave, but the specific portamento effect which I find most marked requires a certain amount of harmonic partials and disappears when the wave approaches a sine. I'll render an example as soon as I can.

🔗cityoftheasleep <igliashon@...>

🔗Charles Lucy <lucy@...>

🔗lobawad <lobawad@...>

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 5:52 AM, lobawad <lobawad@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> >
> > The fifth and the wolf fifth differ by diesis, as do all of the
> > intervals sharing a generic interval class in meantone[12]. I'm not
> > entirely sure, from what I've read, that the average person treated
> > intervals differing by this interval as -categorically- different in
> > the same sense that they'd perceive a categorical difference between
> > intervals differing by the chromatic semitone. The fact that
> > everyone's first instinct was to run all over the keyboard playing
> > things in every key, and that the idea was that all of the keys
> > sounded like they had in-tune or out-of-tune versions of the same
> > underlying symbolic or schematic things, seems to seems to support
> > that hypothesis.
>
> That "everyone's first instinct was to run all over the keyboard playing
> things in every key" seems a wild assertion, strongly contradicting
> centuries of notated music. Up through the Baroque, you'll find enharmonic
> modulation in orchestral works rather than keyboard works (dropping the
> harpsichord continue freed orchestras in this respect) which tend to "stay
> within reach", whether by not modulating too far in the first place or by
> using keys easily reached with a few tuning tweaks between pieces. Have a
> chat with a harpsichordist doing Scarlatti in meantone.

Yeah, but you know what I'm getting at here. It's the same concept of
"variations on the same fundamental thing" vs "different fundamental
things" again. I'm talking about what I believe is the way that
average listeners of the time heard it, which is that major triads in
"all keys" on the keyboard were "variations of the same schematic
thing," with some of the "more in-tune" variety and some of the "less
in-tune" variety. If this weren't the case, we'd never have had things
like Werckmeister temperament.

> And speaking of Scarlatti, it is widely (but not universally, as far as I
> know) accepted that Scarlatti and others deliberated used the wolf as a
> wolf- a harpsichordist I was working with played me a passage clearly
> illustrating this (in Telemann, iirc) but I don't know examples off hand.

I have no problem believing that someone like Scarlatti or Gesualdo
heard these as categorically different things, reachable by a
different path of the circle of fifths or something, or that the most
highly trained musicians would have also heard it that way. I'm
talking about the way that the average listener might have heard it.
And also, if Scarlatti uses a "wolf fifth" as a "deliberately out of
tune fifth," that would still be in line with what I'm talking about.

I happen to think this is a good principle to consider: quasi-equal
chromatic scales allow for regularity in melody and purer harmony than
the EDOs. Consider 19-EDO, for instance, which is often used as an
ambient enharmonic scale for meantone[12], with meantone[7] being used
as a prominent subset of that. One can do the same thing for 22-EDO
and use it as an ambient enharmonic scale for porcupine[15], with
porcupine[7] and porcupine[8] being used as prominent melodic and
diatonic subsets.

> Keep in mind that conflating "keyboard music" and "Western music" is fair
> enough if we're looking at the last century or so, but it is simply wrong
> otherwise. Did you know that Helmholtz lists 11:10 as a "trumpet interval"?
> Instrumentalists have become masters of fudging, and I imagine that it is
> now common for brass players not even to be aware of the fact that they are
> continually altering the natural tones of their instruments in order to play
> 12-tET, but "proper" writing for brass still requires intimate knowledge of
> the harmonic series.

I have no problem with any of this, I don't think we're on the same
page. My question is this:

You understand that the average Western listener of today tends to
hear minor and major thirds as being
symbolically/"schematically"/"categorically"/whatever different
intervals. Nobody that I know of hears them as just two ways to intone
the same fundamental interval.

And, when the Western listener of today tends to hear something in
meantone[7], they typically hear the 7/6 and 6/5 as being "two
different sizes of minor third," sometimes confusing the two at first.
It should be noted that while one is an "augmented second" and one is
a "minor third" under the meantone mapping, that as far as
meantone[12] is concerned, they're both types of "fourth" or what have
you.

The average Western listener can easily learn to distinguish between
these two "types of minor third." But the question is, does this
distinguishing reach that schematic level I was talking about? Is it
like they're now learning that 6/5 is a chair and 7/6 is a table, or
that 6/5 is a red chair and that 7/6 is a yellow chair?

Most people that I know of in this community still think of it in the
latter sense - like these are two types of the same thing. Maybe a few
differ. I'm not sure what sort of ear training might separate the two.

Now: in as much as the "intonation is intonation of ________" paradigm
is concerned, consider quasi-equal scales. When you listen to a
quasi-equal scale like tetracot[7], even though you can obviously tell
apart things like the 3/2 fifth and the sharp 3/2 fifth, distinctions
sometimes tend to blur together when you're playing melody or what
have you. It requires a bit of training to be able to tell apart
nearly ambiguous intervals in quasi-equal scales. (And if you don't
agree, just keep tuning the scale closer and closer to equal until you
do agree.)

Meantone[12] in quarter-comma, fifth-comma, sixth-comma meantone is
pretty quasi-equal, compared to something like meantone[7] in those
tunings, or compared to meantone[12] in 26-EDO, or what have you.
Leopold Mozart had to teach his students to distinguish between the
two sizes of semitone,
which indicates to me that this sense of quasi-equalness is somewhat
natural to experience - after all, intervals that differ by diesis
really are smaller than those that differ by chroma and so on. I don't
doubt that training can change this, or that Gesualdo didn't hear this
differently, only that it's natural in some sense to hear those two
types of half steps as being "different types of the same thing," at
least at first.

So my question is, do you think that the average listener in the
meantone era - not Scarlatti, not Gesualdo, but the average listener -
heard the two half steps, the two minor thirds, the two whatevers as
being totally different intervals with different feelings and
different schematic meanings and so on? Or do you think they heard
them tending to blend together, and distinguishing them primarily in
an intonational sense as variants of the same thing?

I think there's some reason to consider the latter view, given the
trend towards well-temperament and equal-temperament later, and that
the reason typically given for this trend was that "people didn't like
that all chords were playable in all keys."

-Mike

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 11:51 AM, cityoftheasleep <igliashon@...>
wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> > So no, I don't think even what I called "phenomena" are all that
> > objective.
>
> By "objective", I don't mean subject-independent, I just mean "based on
> some observable/measurable property". Which includes all the things you just
> mentioned above, though they do add a **significant** new layer to our
> understanding.

OK, I guess so. I like "phenomenal" or "psychoacoustic" better, but OK.

> > > Indeed! Or perhaps, what happens when we try to use regular
> > > temperaments to model different aspects of reality?
> >
> > We bulldoze all over that stuff and replace it with ratios.
>
> Or, in other words, we insist on building our model on the small group of
> people who have developed a comprehensive set of ratio-based musical
> categories?

No, not quite. That's only if you want to use regular temperaments to
model categories or schemas or what have you. This is probably a
rather natural way to do things at first, because newcomers haven't
yet experienced all of these crazy warped diatonic scale illusions and
hence come to a more nuanced understanding of what's going on. One can
also interpret HE that way as well, as the amount of cognitive
confusion resulting in the mind of someone who's developed different
schemas for just intervals, perhaps having played them in inverse
proportion to their complexity.

But you can also use all of this to model the phenomenal layer without
talking about categories at all. For instance, you can treat the
diatonic scale as the fundamental thing, and then treat regular
temperaments as ways to crunchify that scale or make it produce VFs or
what have you. You can treat HE the same way. This is Paul's preferred
interpretation of everything.

> So it's an open question then--what do we use instead of ratios?

I felt like I started answering this question in the exposition I just
wrote on context.

-Mike

🔗Ryan Avella <domeofatonement@...>

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 2:40 PM, Ryan Avella <domeofatonement@...>
wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> > The average Western listener can easily learn to distinguish between
> > these two "types of minor third." But the question is, does this
> > distinguishing reach that schematic level I was talking about? Is it
> > like they're now learning that 6/5 is a chair and 7/6 is a table, or
> > that 6/5 is a red chair and that 7/6 is a yellow chair?
>
> I couldn't disagree more. Who is this "average" western listener? Highly
> trained musicians are the only people I know who differentiate between minor
> thirds and major thirds.
>
> The only way to get an average Joe to hear the difference is to give him
> some intense training.
>
> Take this song as an example:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6eIzHvXGrE
>
> The melody is completely major and minor thirds. (there might be some
> sixths thrown in there too, but those are just inversions of the intended
> thirds)
>
> I am a trained musician, but even I can't pick out the major and minor
> thirds in this song. To me it just sounds like a bunch of parallel "thirds."
> I just hear a bunch of apples, not a combination of granny smith and golden
> delicious.

Yes, this is also true. I'll have to think hard about how to qualify
what I'm saying. It wasn't really about thirds in melody like that,
which I know most westerners can't do. If the thirds are fast enough,
I can't do it either, I'll just hear parallel thirds unless I go back
over it and transcribe everything.

It's also not the ability to say which thing that someone is
experiencing that I'm getting at, I know that that can also break down
even for instances where people actually do experience a difference
between major and minor, but can't say which.

I'll have to come back to this, as if I don't get some work done soon
I will surely starve. I'll leave you with this thought for now: if I
put this piece in a different mode, like I put it in minor instead of
major, or lydian augmented instead of major, but I still kept the
melody in parallel thirds, you'd definitely "experience a difference,"
whether you can tell what each individual third is or not. Instead of
considering really fast parallel thirds, consider the difference
between different thirds in the tonic triad in a segment of music.

-Mike

🔗genewardsmith <genewardsmith@...>

🔗gbreed@...

I like the way Magic twists these categories. 25:24 approximates to the interval class I call a 'semitoe'. 16:15 divides into two equal semitoes which makes the two intervals we normally call 'semitones' completely different.
The run of tones 9/8, 7/6, 6/5, 5/4, 9/7, 4/3 are all separated by semitoes and so become equally spaced in Magic temperaments. You can't say one pair are inflections of the same interval while another pair are different intervals.
For reasons like this a tempered piece may lose its character in JI even if it doesn't pump any commas.

Graham

------Original message------
From: Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>
To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Tuesday, February 21, 2012 1:57:23 PM GMT-0500
Subject: Re: [tuning] Re: Moving on [to Cameron and others]

I have no problem with any of this, I don't think we're on the same
page. My question is this:

-Mike

------------------------------------

You can configure your subscription by sending an empty email to one
of these addresses (from the address at which you receive the list):
tuning-subscribe@yahoogroups.com - join the tuning group.
tuning-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com - leave the group.
tuning-nomail@yahoogroups.com - turn off mail from the group.
tuning-digest@yahoogroups.com - set group to send daily digests.
tuning-normal@yahoogroups.com - set group to send individual emails.
tuning-help@yahoogroups.com - receive general help information.
Yahoo! Groups Links

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 4:07 PM, gbreed@... <gbreed@...> wrote:
>
> I like the way Magic twists these categories. 25:24 approximates to the
> interval class I call a 'semitoe'. 16:15 divides into two equal semitoes
> which makes the two intervals we normally call 'semitones' completely
> different.
> The run of tones 9/8, 7/6, 6/5, 5/4, 9/7, 4/3 are all separated by
> semitoes and so become equally spaced in Magic temperaments.

Yup, that's handy. I didn't realize magic had that property. So
245/243-tempering makes it so that 9/8 -> 7/6 -> 6/5 are separated by
the same chroma, and that 5/4 -> 9/7 -> 4/3 are separated by the same
chroma. And then 875/864-tempering makes it so that 7/6 -> 6/5 -> 5/4
-> 9/7 also have the same chroma, and they converge on magic. And, if
you want the string to also be 32/27 -> 6/5 -> 5/4 -> 81/64, that's
250/243-tempering, which when mixed with the above gives you 22-EDO.

Now that's handy stuff!

> You can't say
> one pair are inflections of the same interval while another pair are
> different intervals.
> For reasons like this a tempered piece may lose its character in JI even
> if it doesn't pump any commas.

To my stupid western brain, I do hear them that way. I'm still trying
to narrow down what the precise form of ear training is that changes
that. So far what's worked for me best is a combination of these two things:

1) Understanding the "munits" for which a certain interval is the
frame, aka the patterns of step sizes that can make up a
magic-tempered 5/4 (munits are like generalized tetrachords)
2) Understanding how intervals fit with other intervals to form larger
potential chords, aka figuring out the general harmonic lattice
structure and remembering and internalizing it

A good example of #2 would be learning in magic that what might sound
like a "flatter minor third" to you at first (7/6) can fit in with
other intervals in magic a certain way to make 4:5:6:7. And then also
learning that the "sharper minor thirds" (6/5) fit in differently.
Another good example would be learning in mavila that 5/2 is three
4/3's, and hearing 5/4 as something like a really sharp IV/IV/IV as
well as a non-sharp III. Or learning that 9/7 fits into 4:7:9 and
associating that sound with 435 cents. Or learning that 81/64 is two
9/8's, assuming you're accurate enough to discriminate between 408
cents and 386 cents when played melodically.

Or learning musical context in general, even if you hate my examples.

Or, if you don't want to "learn" musical context, to write a
composition that makes the new context explicit.

I've noted that the overwhelming amount of musical effects that I
experience seem to be well-handled by #1 and #2.

-Mike

🔗gbreed@...

The great adventure of alternative temperaments is that with enough exposure you'll come to hear the categories differently. It won't happen immediately but it's what I aim for.

Graham

------Original message------
From: Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>
To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Tuesday, February 21, 2012 4:22:09 PM GMT-0500
Subject: Re: Re: [tuning] Re: Moving on [to Cameron and others]

On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 4:07 PM, gbreed@gmail.com <gbreed@...> wrote:
>
> I like the way Magic twists these categories. 25:24 approximates to the
> interval class I call a 'semitoe'. 16:15 divides into two equal semitoes
> which makes the two intervals we normally call 'semitones' completely
> different.
> The run of tones 9/8, 7/6, 6/5, 5/4, 9/7, 4/3 are all separated by
> semitoes and so become equally spaced in Magic temperaments.

Now that's handy stuff!

Or learning musical context in general, even if you hate my examples.

Or, if you don't want to "learn" musical context, to write a
composition that makes the new context explicit.

I've noted that the overwhelming amount of musical effects that I
experience seem to be well-handled by #1 and #2.

-Mike

------------------------------------

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

🔗lobawad <lobawad@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 2:30 AM, lobawad <lobawad@...> wrote:
> >
> > --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Then I don't know what you're playing at when I bring up perfectly
> > > > normal
> > > > stuff like the traditional view of a 6-4 inversion as being
> > > > ambiguously
> > > > rooted and you argue with it.
> > >
> > > Because I think it's only certain circumstances where it gets ambiguous.
> >
> > But neither I nor the traditional view ever stated that it is *always*
> > ambiguous.
>
> Sure, but then I think that chords in first inversion can be ambiguous
> too then. Consider ||: Cmaj/E | Emaj :||. It's similar to ||: Am/E |
> Emaj :||, with the same sort of ambiguous root/temporary
> retonicization thing going on.

Yes, and in your examples you can see that the increasing use of harmonic movement by thirds/sixths during the celebrated "collapse of the tonal system" makes sense. My original point, which you are now further supporting, was that even in justly-intoned "5-limit", roots are not always automagically spelled out for us.

> Sure, it's real, but the distinctness doesn't end up filtering down >to
> the symbolic meaning of the intervals for me such that I perceive
> these two intonations of minor seventh as actually being two >different
> intervals. And if you played someone a V7 chord at the end of a
> progression going back to the tonic and didn't resolve it even in
> barbershop, I'm sure people would still want it to resolve.

Yes, but traditionally (which I took pains to point out was what I was talking about), function is contextual and an augmented sixth does not have the same function or resolution tendency as the minor seventh. How much of this is psychoacoustic and how much is a holdover from 1/4-comma thinking, I don't know (and would seriously doubt anyone who claims to "know"). I, personally, find it only weakly true that these tendencies are built in psychoacoustically; nevertheless, a solid enough phenomenon to consider the tradtional assignment of the 7th partial to aug. 6 and 3:2*6:5 to the 7th partial superior to what seems to me both 12-tET and naive thinking in lumping the two together at 7:4.

>
> I don't know if this is really barbershop, but it definitely has >that
> sort of JI sound
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4NafK3NFhA

Four Freshmen are awesome. Definitely Just vertical harmonies all over- the roots, it seems to me, are moving in 12-tET, don't you think?

>
> Yeah, but I was talking about the virtual fundamental. All of those
> effects we just mentioned were definitely not just a lack of beating.
> I bet I'd have heard a bunch of them even if you'd used square waves
> or even sines.

Yes, except the portamento effects, which are due to partial coincidences- I can plot these out in my head or on paper and they'll work as long there are enough partials to realize them.

> My point is that the psychoacoustic qualities associated with this
> thing aren't really "objective" because adaptation can train many of
> them, sometimes in unknown and complex ways. The analogy again is that
> they're as objective as being able to deadlift 300 pounds is
> objective. Most people can objectively adapt to be able to do it, but
> that's not just like an ability that anyone can do at any point in
> time.

I think this is a very poor analogy, because even if I were to discount thousands of years of testimony, except for one guy with pretty severe hearing damage, no one to whom I have presented examples, nay, none not once, has failed to immediately distinguish between "church/choir/ethnic/bluesy/sleepy/etc". intonation and 12-tET intonation. 300 lbs? More like 3 lbs.

I think you do not realize that contemporary Western academic musical training trains people to listen past these things.

>
> > Yes, I have always read and heard that training (and inherited
> > predisposition) accounts for wider windows of musical perception in some
> > than others. Makes sense.
>
> This is just referring to this one psychoacoustic phenomenon though. I
> think that the "windows" you're talking about here have to do with
> some kind of learned, synthetic reification process. I don't think
> that arpeggiated chords directly activate any of the psychoacoustic
> phenomena we've mentioned so far, but that someone can learn to view
> them as the musical equivalent of a search light tracing out a
> background structure, for instance. I note that this sort of thing is
> undeterred by things like passing tones and chromatic notes and so on.
>
> It may be that psychoacoustics has some kind of basic "imprinting"
> effect in the sort of structures that you recognize, which could
> explain some of the recent confusion with Gene's example. I don't
> really know. But I do think that there's a strong reification
> component to this aspect of musical perception, and that it's learned,
> and that it might be the same sort of process that allows one to reify
> in "roots" and "tonal centers" and so on in heirarchical fashion
> (which was my whole spiel about Schenkerian analysis).
>
> > But editing recordings, even from not terribly
> > lively acoustic spaces, will show you that the horizontal carries literally,
> > not just in perception, further than you might think.
>
> If you're talking about things like the impulse response of the room,
> then I'd say that I don't think that's terribly important in
> establishing the affect of chords, at least not to a trained listener,
> because I tend to hear chord progressions just fine even if played on
> a monophonic instrument with sawtooth waves and no reverb.
>
> -Mike
>

🔗lobawad <lobawad@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:

>
> Yeah, but you know what I'm getting at here. It's the same concept of
> "variations on the same fundamental thing" vs "different fundamental
> things" again. I'm talking about what I believe is the way that
> average listeners of the time heard it, which is that major triads in
> "all keys" on the keyboard were "variations of the same schematic
> thing," with some of the "more in-tune" variety and some of the "less
> in-tune" variety. If this weren't the case, we'd never have had things
> like Werckmeister temperament.

Something I've noticed over the years as that there is a great deal said about "modulation" and temperaments, but little (nothing that I can recall, actually) said about transposition. If we imagine what probably constituted a great and vital important part of the music of the latter half of the 19th century and early 20th century in the Western world, the era of the entrenchment of 12-tET, we will hear in our mind's eye family and friends gathered around a piano singing a hit tune- diatonic, modulating little if at all, and transposed to fit the ranges of the group. And, much "modulation" is effected by simple transposition. This remains de rigueur in sappy "folk" music, "country", in Europe and America.

>
> > And speaking of Scarlatti, it is widely (but not universally, as far as I
> > know) accepted that Scarlatti and others deliberated used the wolf as a
> > wolf- a harpsichordist I was working with played me a passage clearly
> > illustrating this (in Telemann, iirc) but I don't know examples off hand.
>
> I have no problem believing that someone like Scarlatti or Gesualdo
> heard these as categorically different things, reachable by a
> different path of the circle of fifths or something, or that the most
> highly trained musicians would have also heard it that way. I'm
> talking about the way that the average listener might have heard it.
> And also, if Scarlatti uses a "wolf fifth" as a "deliberately out of
> tune fifth," that would still be in line with what I'm talking about.

Something else to consider is the vast historical revision that takes place, for the most part unconsciously I am sure, in musicology or any other historical study in the arts. Did you know that the statuary of the ancient Greeks was brightly, garishly by today's standards, painted? The paint was deliberately scraped off by European collectors, there are even written records of scrapings. Enough remains in cracks and crevices to analize and recreate the orignal colors; an exhibition was held in Berlin a few years ago. I love it, many are shocked silly. But there is no serious question that the originals were painted, the fact is even mentioned in ancient literature (a woman stricken with some tragic emotion is described as pale as a statue without paint, in Homer iirc, for example).

Same jive happens in musicology, I could do a whole song and dance about the deliberate complete rewriting (westernization) of Eastern European music in the 19th century. A lot of what you- and I - learned about music history, tuning and temperament is probably best described as semi-true. The revisionism of the "JI" school, which is perpetuated on this list, is just as corny as the party line, beware.

>
> I happen to think this is a good principle to consider: quasi-equal
> chromatic scales allow for regularity in melody and purer harmony than
> the EDOs. Consider 19-EDO, for instance, which is often used as an
> ambient enharmonic scale for meantone[12], with meantone[7] being used
> as a prominent subset of that. One can do the same thing for 22-EDO
> and use it as an ambient enharmonic scale for porcupine[15], with
> porcupine[7] and porcupine[8] being used as prominent melodic and
> diatonic subsets.

Sure- can you put together some examples? Don't worry about making undying masterpieces, nobody whose opinion is worth considering is going to write you off for failing to write a tuning etude that doesn't save the whales and make your jimmy thicker.

>
> I have no problem with any of this, I don't think we're on the same
> page. My question is this:
>
> You understand that the average Western listener of today tends to
> hear minor and major thirds as being
> symbolically/"schematically"/"categorically"/whatever different
> intervals. Nobody that I know of hears them as just two ways to >intone
> the same fundamental interval.

Yes and no- they're both "thirds" after all.

>
> And, when the Western listener of today tends to hear something in
> meantone[7], they typically hear the 7/6 and 6/5 as being "two
> different sizes of minor third," sometimes confusing the two at >first.

Naive listeners, in my experience, distinguish strongly, immediately, on the level of "feel". One's bluesy, one is "normal", something like that.

>
> The average Western listener can easily learn to distinguish between
> these two "types of minor third." But the question is, does this
> distinguishing reach that schematic level I was talking about? Is it
> like they're now learning that 6/5 is a chair and 7/6 is a table, or
> that 6/5 is a red chair and that 7/6 is a yellow chair?

That must depend on the structure overall. In typical western structures I am sure that these intervals are heard as different flavors of the same thing. But, in a common practice piece an augmented second is distinct even if it is tuned exactly the same as the minor third. Distinguishing the tuning as well would make the distinction even more marked.

>
> Most people that I know of in this community still think of it in the
> latter sense - like these are two types of the same thing. Maybe a few
> differ. I'm not sure what sort of ear training might separate the two.

Listening in context.

>
> Now: in as much as the "intonation is intonation of ________" paradigm
> is concerned, consider quasi-equal scales. When you listen to a
> quasi-equal scale like tetracot[7], even though you can obviously tell
> apart things like the 3/2 fifth and the sharp 3/2 fifth, distinctions
> sometimes tend to blur together when you're playing melody or what
> have you. It requires a bit of training to be able to tell apart
> nearly ambiguous intervals in quasi-equal scales. (And if you don't
> agree, just keep tuning the scale closer and closer to equal until you
> do agree.)

Oh sure. I think that we need to be wary of things homologous to founding a school of visual thought based on Op-Art, though.

>
> Meantone[12] in quarter-comma, fifth-comma, sixth-comma meantone is
> pretty quasi-equal, compared to something like meantone[7] in those
> tunings, or compared to meantone[12] in 26-EDO, or what have you.
> Leopold Mozart had to teach his students to distinguish between the
> two sizes of semitone,
> which indicates to me that this sense of quasi-equalness is somewhat
> natural to experience - after all, intervals that differ by diesis
> really are smaller than those that differ by chroma and so on. I don't
> doubt that training can change this, or that Gesualdo didn't hear this
> differently, only that it's natural in some sense to hear those two
> types of half steps as being "different types of the same thing," at
> least at first.

Sure- my concern is that we don't get into "a taco is really just a variation of the hamburger, selah".

🔗lobawad <lobawad@...>

🔗gbreed@...

I didn't describe that consideration as random because I already said it all works with Magic. What I described as random was choosing the chords with on stated reasons, which is where there threads end up.
Equidistant spacing of sevenths works with the Schismatic family. From what you say, Schismatics should suit you. But when you actually posted a chord sequence I found it worked much better in Magic. Much better than it should have, in fact, which means there must have been difficulties in the chords you didn't transcribe.

Graham

------Original message------
From: lobawad <lobawad@yahoo.com>
To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 1:36:28 PM GMT-0000
Subject: [tuning] Re: Moving on [to Cameron and others]

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "gbreed@..." <gbreed@...> wrote:
>
> I like the way Magic twists these categories. 25:24 approximates to the interval class I call a 'semitoe'. 16:15 divides into two equal semitoes which makes the two intervals we normally call 'semitones' completely different.
> The run of tones 9/8, 7/6, 6/5, 5/4, 9/7, 4/3 are all separated by semitoes and so become equally spaced in Magic temperaments. You can't say one pair are inflections of the same interval while another pair are different intervals.
> For reasons like this a tempered piece may lose its character in JI even if it doesn't pump any commas.
>
> Graham

That these intervals are seperated by a consistent step was precisely the reason I used 41-edo in this piece:

http://soundcloud.com/cameron-bobro/eveninghorizon-cbobro

and a main reason in general why I use 41-edo. Notice that using this step it is easy to distinguish between 7:4 and 9:5, and seventh chords alternating these, as distinct entities. This consideration, however, you recently called "random", LOL.

------------------------------------

🔗lobawad <lobawad@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "gbreed@..." <gbreed@...> wrote:
>
> I didn't describe that consideration as random because I already said it all works with Magic. What I described as random was choosing the chords with on stated reasons, which is where there threads end up.
> Equidistant spacing of sevenths works with the Schismatic family. From what you say, Schismatics should suit you. But when you actually posted a chord sequence I found it worked much better in Magic. Much better than it should have, in fact, which means there must have been difficulties in the chords you didn't transcribe.

Obviously we are not understanding each other, because the reason I stated was, in short, distinguishing 3/2*7/6 from 3/2*6/5. Tempering 36/35 and 25/24 to the same interval is something I've brought up before, maybe you didn't see that.

I don't know which chord sequence you are referring to, can you link to the post?

>
> Graham
>
> ------Original message------
> From: lobawad <lobawad@...>
> To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
> Date: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 1:36:28 PM GMT-0000
> Subject: [tuning] Re: Moving on [to Cameron and others]
>
>
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "gbreed@" <gbreed@> wrote:
> >
> > I like the way Magic twists these categories. 25:24 approximates to the interval class I call a 'semitoe'. 16:15 divides into two equal semitoes which makes the two intervals we normally call 'semitones' completely different.
> > The run of tones 9/8, 7/6, 6/5, 5/4, 9/7, 4/3 are all separated by semitoes and so become equally spaced in Magic temperaments. You can't say one pair are inflections of the same interval while another pair are different intervals.
> > For reasons like this a tempered piece may lose its character in JI even if it doesn't pump any commas.
> >
> > Graham
>
> That these intervals are seperated by a consistent step was precisely the reason I used 41-edo in this piece:
>
> http://soundcloud.com/cameron-bobro/eveninghorizon-cbobro
>
> and a main reason in general why I use 41-edo. Notice that using this step it is easy to distinguish between 7:4 and 9:5, and seventh chords alternating these, as distinct entities. This consideration, however, you recently called "random", LOL.
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> You can configure your subscription by sending an empty email to one
> of these addresses (from the address at which you receive the list):
> tuning-subscribe@yahoogroups.com - join the tuning group.
> tuning-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com - leave the group.
> tuning-nomail@yahoogroups.com - turn off mail from the group.
> tuning-digest@yahoogroups.com - set group to send daily digests.
> tuning-normal@yahoogroups.com - set group to send individual emails.
> tuning-help@yahoogroups.com - receive general help information.
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>

🔗lobawad <lobawad@...>

Ah- I remember which chord progression. You missed the point- it is not the temperament which I found wanting! Magic the temperament would be perfect for the chord progession I posted, don't know where you got "Schismatics". As I kept repeating from the git-go, to no avail, I was talking about practical subsets, not temperaments. I've already said this.

The problem is that logically structured non-enormous Magic interval structures have gaps where I find myself needing tones, it is as simple as that.

And there is nothing "random" about these gaps, they are caused because to make a long story short I use runs of "semitones" which temper 36/35 and 25/24 to the same step. 1° of 41 is merely a practical realization of this, it is not the actual step, which was derived from tempering commas. And, one reason these runs exist in the first place is because I distinguish between 7:4 and 9:5.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "lobawad" <lobawad@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "gbreed@" <gbreed@> wrote:
> >
> > I didn't describe that consideration as random because I already said it all works with Magic. What I described as random was choosing the chords with on stated reasons, which is where there threads end up.
> > Equidistant spacing of sevenths works with the Schismatic family. From what you say, Schismatics should suit you. But when you actually posted a chord sequence I found it worked much better in Magic. Much better than it should have, in fact, which means there must have been difficulties in the chords you didn't transcribe.
>
> Obviously we are not understanding each other, because the reason I stated was, in short, distinguishing 3/2*7/6 from 3/2*6/5. Tempering 36/35 and 25/24 to the same interval is something I've brought up before, maybe you didn't see that.
>
> I don't know which chord sequence you are referring to, can you link to the post?
>
>
> >
> > Graham
> >
> > ------Original message------
> > From: lobawad <lobawad@>
> > To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
> > Date: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 1:36:28 PM GMT-0000
> > Subject: [tuning] Re: Moving on [to Cameron and others]
> >
> >
> >
> > --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "gbreed@" <gbreed@> wrote:
> > >
> > > I like the way Magic twists these categories. 25:24 approximates to the interval class I call a 'semitoe'. 16:15 divides into two equal semitoes which makes the two intervals we normally call 'semitones' completely different.
> > > The run of tones 9/8, 7/6, 6/5, 5/4, 9/7, 4/3 are all separated by semitoes and so become equally spaced in Magic temperaments. You can't say one pair are inflections of the same interval while another pair are different intervals.
> > > For reasons like this a tempered piece may lose its character in JI even if it doesn't pump any commas.
> > >
> > > Graham
> >
> > That these intervals are seperated by a consistent step was precisely the reason I used 41-edo in this piece:
> >
> > http://soundcloud.com/cameron-bobro/eveninghorizon-cbobro
> >
> > and a main reason in general why I use 41-edo. Notice that using this step it is easy to distinguish between 7:4 and 9:5, and seventh chords alternating these, as distinct entities. This consideration, however, you recently called "random", LOL.
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------
> >
> > You can configure your subscription by sending an empty email to one
> > of these addresses (from the address at which you receive the list):
> > tuning-subscribe@yahoogroups.com - join the tuning group.
> > tuning-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com - leave the group.
> > tuning-nomail@yahoogroups.com - turn off mail from the group.
> > tuning-digest@yahoogroups.com - set group to send daily digests.
> > tuning-normal@yahoogroups.com - set group to send individual emails.
> > tuning-help@yahoogroups.com - receive general help information.
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
>

🔗lobawad <lobawad@...>

🔗genewardsmith <genewardsmith@...>

🔗lobawad <lobawad@...>

🔗gbreed@...

If you're using runs of 36:35 or 25:24 then yes you'll tend towards Magic temperament. But you didn't say that before so I didn't comment on it. You'll also tend towards the MOS scales.
The message was "Seventh chords, intonation, and function." The chords as I worked them out use twenty thirds piled up above the tonic. All but one outlying pitch fit in the sixteen note MOS. Seventh degrees above ii would be more remote but I don't know if they're required or how they're tuned.
You say you need twenty pitches so I must be missing something in the third phrase.
The point about Schismatic is that you were talking about commas and your chords are following diatonic roots separated by fifths. But this example would need more than thirty consecutively generated pitches of Cassandra. I didn't try any other mappings.

Graham

------Original message------
From: lobawad <lobawad@...>
To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 2:17:51 PM GMT-0000
Subject: [tuning] Re: Moving on [to Cameron and others]

The problem is that logically structured non-enormous Magic interval structures have gaps where I find myself needing tones, it is as simple as that.

------------------------------------

🔗lobawad <lobawad@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "gbreed@..." <gbreed@...> wrote:
>
> If you're using runs of 36:35 or 25:24 then yes you'll tend towards >Magic temperament. But you didn't say that before so I didn't >comment on it.

I see by the dates on my Soundcloud page that it must be about nine months (!) since I mentioned on this list tempering 36/35 and 25/24 to one step for septimal music. So I can hardly expect anyone to remember that.

>You'll also tend towards the MOS scales.

If that were the only consideration, yes. Introducing the syntonic comma via Pythagorean structures messes up this tidiness, however.

> The message was "Seventh chords, intonation, and function." The >chords as I worked them out use twenty thirds piled up above the >tonic. All but one outlying pitch fit in the sixteen note MOS. >Seventh degrees above ii would be more remote but I don't know if >they're required or how they're tuned.

But the chords are not all "above the tonic". I explained this carefully, but okay, more slowly this time.

(When we say above or below, we are of course talking about first or root position).

Let us call our tonic C. A tertian chord is built on, above, this C. Now, this C remains as a pedal tone, and a tertian chord forms BELOW the C. In the example I presented, C became the 11th partial of the following chord.

In traditional terms, a common-tone modulation which is also an enharmonic modulation.

Even in tempered systems using 41 or 53 tones, you already have both an "F#" and a "Gb", and a lot of different pitches. In the example I more recently presented, in which the "C" is a pedal and the chords move such that C is the eleventh partial, then the ninth, then seventh, and so on down, more than 30 discrete pitches are required even without full 11th chords at each new identity for C.

The scheme itself is obviously very simple. But it generates masses of pitches very quickly, and adding root movement by 5ths/4ths will generate even more, offset by syntonic commas.

53-edo- all of it- is perfect for implementing this scheme up to the 11th partial and probably the 13th as well.

The case of distinguishing between harmonic and "dominant" seventh chords also generates many tones and easily steps out of MOS structures. You need numerous instances of full harmonic structures, and Pythagorean root movement will entail needing these structures offset by the syntonic comma as well.

Once again, not once have I criticized the temperaments themselves. Quite the contrary- the examples I give could be titled "reasons to use temperament" (specifically 41 and 53 equal temperaments).

No, the problem is that of practical application, and the unavoidable fact that temperaments cannot both reach every prime at lightening speed and be accurate at the same time.

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 4:43 AM, lobawad <lobawad@...> wrote:
>
> >
> > Sure, but then I think that chords in first inversion can be ambiguous
> > too then. Consider ||: Cmaj/E | Emaj :||. It's similar to ||: Am/E |
> > Emaj :||, with the same sort of ambiguous root/temporary
> > retonicization thing going on.
>
> Yes, and in your examples you can see that the increasing use of harmonic
> movement by thirds/sixths during the celebrated "collapse of the tonal
> system" makes sense. My original point, which you are now further
> supporting, was that even in justly-intoned "5-limit", roots are not always
> automagically spelled out for us.

I'm not sure this is really the "root" though, maybe more an ambiguous
"tonic." It's kind of in between.

> Yes, but traditionally (which I took pains to point out was what I was
> talking about), function is contextual and an augmented sixth does not have
> the same function or resolution tendency as the minor seventh.

7/4 to me usually sounds like a minor seventh. C G E B E A# makes the
outer note sound like an aug 6. It's the chords I imagine inside some
kind of complex interval like that that dictate the way it sounds like
to me, not the intonation. Maybe it's just me.

> How much of
> this is psychoacoustic and how much is a holdover from 1/4-comma thinking, I
> don't know (and would seriously doubt anyone who claims to "know"). I,
> personally, find it only weakly true that these tendencies are built in
> psychoacoustically; nevertheless, a solid enough phenomenon to consider the
> tradtional assignment of the 7th partial to aug. 6 and 3:2*6:5 to the 7th
> partial superior to what seems to me both 12-tET and naive thinking in
> lumping the two together at 7:4.

What about 16/9? In 22-EDO, dominant 7 chords resolve way better if
you use 16/9 = 7/4 as the minor 7 than 9/5 = 11/6.

> > I don't know if this is really barbershop, but it definitely has >that
> > sort of JI sound
> >
> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4NafK3NFhA
>
> Four Freshmen are awesome. Definitely Just vertical harmonies all over-
> the roots, it seems to me, are moving in 12-tET, don't you think?

Yeah, more or less.

> > My point is that the psychoacoustic qualities associated with this
> > thing aren't really "objective" because adaptation can train many of
> > them, sometimes in unknown and complex ways. The analogy again is that
> > they're as objective as being able to deadlift 300 pounds is
> > objective. Most people can objectively adapt to be able to do it, but
> > that's not just like an ability that anyone can do at any point in
> > time.
>
> I think this is a very poor analogy, because even if I were to discount
> thousands of years of testimony, except for one guy with pretty severe
> hearing damage, no one to whom I have presented examples, nay, none not
> once, has failed to immediately distinguish between
> "church/choir/ethnic/bluesy/sleepy/etc". intonation and 12-tET intonation.
> 300 lbs? More like 3 lbs.
>
> I think you do not realize that contemporary Western academic musical
> training trains people to listen past these things.

Er, what are we talking about? I was making the point that musical
training can cause actual changes in the cochlea and auditory
brainstem and auditory cortex and so on. If there's some form of
training that teaches you to ignore something that's fine, but my
point was also that if we now, starting a new chapter start training
ourselves to do things like hear really complex VFs (training complex
pitch perception) or pick out individual notes in a cluster (perhaps
training SOAE's) or whatever it is, those sorts of things might result
in actual changes to the auditory system, not just to mental
schematization of stimuli.

-Mike

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 7:01 AM, lobawad <lobawad@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> > I have no problem believing that someone like Scarlatti or Gesualdo
> > heard these as categorically different things, reachable by a
> > different path of the circle of fifths or something, or that the most
> > highly trained musicians would have also heard it that way. I'm
> > talking about the way that the average listener might have heard it.
> > And also, if Scarlatti uses a "wolf fifth" as a "deliberately out of
> > tune fifth," that would still be in line with what I'm talking about.
>
> Something else to consider is the vast historical revision that takes
> place, for the most part unconsciously I am sure, in musicology or any other
> historical study in the arts. Did you know that the statuary of the ancient
> Greeks was brightly, garishly by today's standards, painted? The paint was
> deliberately scraped off by European collectors, there are even written
> records of scrapings. Enough remains in cracks and crevices to analize and
> recreate the orignal colors; an exhibition was held in Berlin a few years
> ago. I love it, many are shocked silly. But there is no serious question
> that the originals were painted, the fact is even mentioned in ancient
> literature (a woman stricken with some tragic emotion is described as pale
> as a statue without paint, in Homer iirc, for example).
>
> Same jive happens in musicology, I could do a whole song and dance about
> the deliberate complete rewriting (westernization) of Eastern European music
> in the 19th century. A lot of what you- and I - learned about music history,
> tuning and temperament is probably best described as semi-true. The
> revisionism of the "JI" school, which is perpetuated on this list, is just
> as corny as the party line, beware.

This is a good point. Although I'd argue that the JI school isn't
really perpetuated on this list anymore, at least not since we've been
dominating the conversation with categories in this past year and a
half.

> > I happen to think this is a good principle to consider: quasi-equal
> > chromatic scales allow for regularity in melody and purer harmony than
> > the EDOs. Consider 19-EDO, for instance, which is often used as an
> > ambient enharmonic scale for meantone[12], with meantone[7] being used
> > as a prominent subset of that. One can do the same thing for 22-EDO
> > and use it as an ambient enharmonic scale for porcupine[15], with
> > porcupine[7] and porcupine[8] being used as prominent melodic and
> > diatonic subsets.
>
> Sure- can you put together some examples? Don't worry about making undying
> masterpieces, nobody whose opinion is worth considering is going to write
> you off for failing to write a tuning etude that doesn't save the whales and
> make your jimmy thicker.

LOL what? I'm going to ignore that last line. I have this little thing
I did in porcupine a while ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSfnyr1MhXE

Here we can watch me totally botch the explanation of the chord
progression on camera at 5:30 in the morning. Anyway, this chord
progression basically shifts around porcupine modes with the ambient
backdrop being porcupine[15]. There's probably a better example one
could make involving actual melodies that are porcupinally chromatic,
but this is all I have for now.

This was a chord progression I took out of context in the AXiS jam
that I made in 22-edo, which you can also see on my channel.

-Mike

🔗lobawad <lobawad@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 4:43 AM, lobawad <lobawad@...> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Sure, but then I think that chords in first inversion can be ambiguous
> > > too then. Consider ||: Cmaj/E | Emaj :||. It's similar to ||: Am/E |
> > > Emaj :||, with the same sort of ambiguous root/temporary
> > > retonicization thing going on.
> >
> > Yes, and in your examples you can see that the increasing use of harmonic
> > movement by thirds/sixths during the celebrated "collapse of the tonal
> > system" makes sense. My original point, which you are now further
> > supporting, was that even in justly-intoned "5-limit", roots are not always
> > automagically spelled out for us.
>
> I'm not sure this is really the "root" though, maybe more an ambiguous
> "tonic." It's kind of in between.

Yes- in the original post I said that we can even often conflate VFs and roots in 5-limit JI, but roots are still contextual and subjective. I think Partch jives like it's going out of business, but he makes some really incisive observations as well- his take on the old controversy about the "real" root of a minor triad is right on. Pick that one that sounds right to you and move on.

>
> > Yes, but traditionally (which I took pains to point out was what I was
> > talking about), function is contextual and an augmented sixth does not have
> > the same function or resolution tendency as the minor seventh.
>
> 7/4 to me usually sounds like a minor seventh. C G E B E A# makes the
> outer note sound like an aug 6. It's the chords I imagine inside some
> kind of complex interval like that that dictate the way it sounds like
> to me, not the intonation. Maybe it's just me.

I would be amazed if you hear the 7:4 and 9:5 in the piece I just posted, "magical thinking", as two intonations of the same interval, though.

>
> What about 16/9? In 22-EDO, dominant 7 chords resolve way better if
> you use 16/9 = 7/4 as the minor 7 than 9/5 = 11/6.

Yes, that's yet another thing. Basically, conflating tertian chords and harmonic structures is bogus.

>
> Er, what are we talking about? I was making the point that musical
> training can cause actual changes in the cochlea and auditory
> brainstem and auditory cortex and so on. If there's some form of
> training that teaches you to ignore something that's fine, but my
> point was also that if we now, starting a new chapter start training
> ourselves to do things like hear really complex VFs (training complex
> pitch perception) or pick out individual notes in a cluster (perhaps
> training SOAE's) or whatever it is, those sorts of things might result
> in actual changes to the auditory system, not just to mental
> schematization of stimuli.

My point was that you- and I- are highly prone to hear things in terms of structures, modalities, what "might" be, what "should" be, etc. Unschooled listeners can be better, even much better, at hearing raw physical stuff. A friend of mine who can't carry a tune in a bucket or keep a beat, much less analize a piece of music, is an excellent professional mixing engineer. Maybe I shouldn't say unschooled, but schooled otherwise, because you could say he's an excellent "purely-spectral" musician. When I tried to explain alternative tunings to him, I realized that he did not know that there are 12 keys to the octave on the piano. But he spots all these spectral effects of beating, fusing, blending, etc. better than I do.

🔗lobawad <lobawad@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 7:01 AM, lobawad <lobawad@...> wrote:
> >
> > --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@> wrote:
> >
> > > I have no problem believing that someone like Scarlatti or Gesualdo
> > > heard these as categorically different things, reachable by a
> > > different path of the circle of fifths or something, or that the most
> > > highly trained musicians would have also heard it that way. I'm
> > > talking about the way that the average listener might have heard it.
> > > And also, if Scarlatti uses a "wolf fifth" as a "deliberately out of
> > > tune fifth," that would still be in line with what I'm talking about.
> >
> > Something else to consider is the vast historical revision that takes
> > place, for the most part unconsciously I am sure, in musicology or any other
> > historical study in the arts. Did you know that the statuary of the ancient
> > Greeks was brightly, garishly by today's standards, painted? The paint was
> > deliberately scraped off by European collectors, there are even written
> > records of scrapings. Enough remains in cracks and crevices to analize and
> > recreate the orignal colors; an exhibition was held in Berlin a few years
> > ago. I love it, many are shocked silly. But there is no serious question
> > that the originals were painted, the fact is even mentioned in ancient
> > literature (a woman stricken with some tragic emotion is described as pale
> > as a statue without paint, in Homer iirc, for example).
> >
> > Same jive happens in musicology, I could do a whole song and dance about
> > the deliberate complete rewriting (westernization) of Eastern European music
> > in the 19th century. A lot of what you- and I - learned about music history,
> > tuning and temperament is probably best described as semi-true. The
> > revisionism of the "JI" school, which is perpetuated on this list, is just
> > as corny as the party line, beware.
>
> This is a good point. Although I'd argue that the JI school isn't
> really perpetuated on this list anymore, at least not since we've been
> dominating the conversation with categories in this past year and a
> half.

Well, that change pretty much boils down to... you.

Gene has always maintained a distance from the tangled perceptions of "JI"-meets-temperament, not just because mathematical precision safeguards against this, but because, I am quite sure, of his interest in late Romantic music. It is not studied much any more, but if you've had to plough through the thicket of accidentals in Richard Strauss and are aware of the universe outside of 12-tET, you'll realize that there is a sound and natural connection between the temperaments created on this list and music that branches off from late Romantic music. Some of the musical examples I've posted deliberately illustrate this connection.

> >
> > Sure- can you put together some examples? Don't worry about making undying
> > masterpieces, nobody whose opinion is worth considering is going to write
> > you off for failing to write a tuning etude that doesn't save the whales and
> > make your jimmy thicker.
>
> LOL what? I'm going to ignore that last line.

Why ignore it, it's a good point. I notice on gear forums especially that there's this whole "hit", "great", blah blah conception of music. And I think people are really held back by this nonsense, and that this thinking permeates everything. Like everything is competing with Mozart are something. Believe me I'm looking forward eagerly to hearing your Porcupine example but I'd puke if I had to listen to more Mozart right now.

I have this little thing
> I did in porcupine a while ago
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSfnyr1MhXE
>
> Here we can watch me totally botch the explanation of the chord
> progression on camera at 5:30 in the morning. Anyway, this chord
> progression basically shifts around porcupine modes with the ambient
> backdrop being porcupine[15]. There's probably a better example one
> could make involving actual melodies that are porcupinally chromatic,
> but this is all I have for now.
>
> This was a chord progression I took out of context in the AXiS jam
> that I made in 22-edo, which you can also see on my channel.
>
> -Mike
>

Slower so we can hear the harmonies better, man! But the "porcupineness" of it is clear, that's cool- do I understand you right, that part 1 of the Axis jam in porcupine tuned to 22-edo?

🔗gbreed@...

11 maps to -8 generators in Magic. Lower primes are positive. If 11 is the tonic, the other pitches will be above it, measured by generators.
The third section involves iv chords. They will go down in generators. You can't fit both II9 and iv in the same 22 note Magic but it is a close fit.
Yes, there are things you can't do with an MOS. I don't see much point in talking about things we can't do.
9/5 sevenths are no problem in a Magic MOS. They lie in the same direction on the spiral of thirds. It's a theorem that if you have a 7/4 on a degree of a Magic MOS, you must also have a 9/5.

Graham

------Original message------
From: lobawad <lobawad@...>
To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Thursday, February 23, 2012 6:52:35 AM GMT-0000
Subject: [tuning] Re: Moving on [to Cameron and others]