Re: [tuning] Re: the $64,000 question

John!
I was commenting on your comment about stress and music. I must say i haven't listen to
what you are doing nor really followed this thread. I can't judge any tuning in a one off midi
translation. I can't comment on acoustic instrument translated to electronic version. Would
have to hear it on a real acoustic instrument and then i feel i might be able to judge. With
most midi samples of even materials that i know well, or think i know well, I find
unrecognizable, so i pass over all of them. I envy those of you on this list that can. Like i
have said maybe too many times, I started out in 31 et and it took a while before I realized I
just couldn't use it any more. Being my first tuning, it is understandable. I this point its a
matter of days. Any tuning can work for a short period, it is a tunings ability to withstand
some test of time that makes it useful. I am not criticizing your work, for how often has the
research in one direction given fruit in another. I have no real interest in 5 limit tunings
under 17 tones, at this point no real interest in Bach or Mozart but proceed, our work is
bound to cross at some time.

"John A. deLaubenfels" wrote:

> Do you prefer the Bach in 12-tET than in 5-limit adaptive grounded to
> COFT? How about the Mozart? Certainly in the music itself the process
> of stress and resolution from stress is played out many times; it is in
> the bones of the notes themselves. Are you saying that a more
> dissonant tuning helps you enjoy the music?

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
www.anaphoria.com

John A. deLaubenfels wrote,

> Could you clarify what you're opposed to?

Well in short, any tuning 'ideology' that would _always have vertical
major triad _best represented by a (or a very near) 4:5:6...
"ideology" being the important part of my opposition, because I'm NOT
opposed to the endeavor, and am in fact impressed by your continued
commitment to fine tuning and experimenting with it.

> Again, I do not dispute that dissonance is an integral part of some
music. Sometimes it should not be diminished at all.

For me, I've always been more comfortable with ambiguity and
dissonance than I have been with consonances... when I was a teenager
and got my first guitar it came with a chord book, and I distinctly
remember wanting to move the positions of the fretted notes to make
most of the chords sound better - inevitably this was always something
like moving the fretted notes in an open position E minor seventh down
a fret... My mother also signed me right up for some guitar lessons,
and after the first month of mutual frustrations between me and the
guitar teacher, he informed my mother that it was "hopeless" - No ear,
and less rhythm!

> But there's a LOT of music that is, IMHO, made more sweet and more
powerful by the application of dynamic tuning. To some ears, at
least, certainly including mine!

Oh I'm sure your right, and I wouldn't doubt or question that for a
minute... though I do believe that that would hold true for the
opposite as well...

> Anyone who prefers Mozart (say) in 12-tET or in some other tuning
has my blessing. We were not born the same.

I guess the things that interest and fires me up are probably just
going to be completely different from what are the real pertinent and
more or less doable issues of adaptive retuning... and I guess that if
I were to set my mind to something like adaptive retuning, I would be
more interested in exploring something like how to 'best' or
'optimally' retune something like Ives' second orchestral set, where
complex and slippery issues like programmatic simultaneity would both
enrich and bedevil issues such as what's 'sweet' and 'sour' in the
music.

Dan

ps - Keep up the good work and don't much listen to me...