A funny thing happened [20t-ET perception]

> One of the harmonic and subharmonic identities I tried out when I was
> working on this was 15:17:20:22:25. Try these two out. The "major" C B
> A K J here is an utonal 1/(25:22:20:17:15) pentad, and the "minor" C B
> Ab K J is the otonal pentad:

Well, OK, so this was TOTALLY inept:

I checked my notes from last night, and I actually was playing the SAME
pentads last night as I did tonight.

I wasn't playing TETRADS at all!

Last night, however, the "minor" seemed MUCH more "stable" and "smooth"
as the major, but since you kept insisting that they were both the same,
when I listened TONIGHT, I heard them both as the same...

Actually, there is something quite valuable learned, at least to me, in
this experiment... it is the power of PSYCHOLOGY and expecting to hear a
certain thing!

Wouldn't it be interesting to try different experiments of this
nature... and how different expectations influenced the end result???

I swear I really heard something totally different tonight. Of course,
there is another factor... perhaps memory, and the familiarity with
these chords. Maybe there is even a "disassociation" with 12t-ET memory
that was going on in the back of my brain during the interim. In other
words, the "minor" chord originally sounded like something more stable
in 12t-ET and I made that association, but after processing this
information as something DISTINCT from prior experiences, I was able to
hear the chords "fresh" and different again after a suitable interval --
and they seemed more ALIKE!

This process, of course, happens frequently in composition, as everybody
knows. One thinks one has something, and then coming back to it again
in another day or night, one finds out it is entirely something else...
or at least it is PERCEIVED as something else. In a way, that's why
it's good to have break intervals while writing a piece... so this
element of "perspective" or mental processing is allowed to take place
as a piece is progressing...

Well, yes it was totally stupid, but I learned something even more
valuable in this process!

___________ ____ ___ __ _
Joseph Pehrson