Re: [tuning] Digest Number 784

> > But, might one also say that with the knowledge of an "open" or
> irregular system, the same kind of results could pertain?? In other
> words, REGARDLESS of the tuning materials, a talented and perceptive
> individual is going to come up with some good music (??)
>
> Sure, absolutely. But I'm really, however ineptly, trying to get at
> something much more specific here. I can see it, and I can hear it,
> but I'm no doubt having a difficult time explaining it very well...
> and unfortunately I can't really say much more than what I've already
> said. Sorry. Hopefully I'll be able to articulate this better at some
> point.
>

Couldn't have said it better myself. Seriously, I followed the
temperment vs non-temperment discussion and my (unwritten)
additions would have been along the lines that there is a
"an ineffable magic to approximating a system with distinguishable
and regular quanta that is different from, but no less and
possibly more profound, than the original system itself." In
the limited tuning table experiments I did, I found that
12-of-N ets which approximated a certain just set STILL had a
regularity that the just counterparts didn't have, which I found
preferable.

The 'cracks' you mentioned Tatum finding made me think of different
kinds of games one can play in tunings, like converting a mathematical
series into intervals and playing it either melodically or as a chord.
(1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 => C Db Eb E G Ab C Db Gb). Not a good musical
example, but when you play lines like this where the mind can solve
the pattern AND the musical resolution of that pattern is a 'crack'
(perhaps and unexpected concord or discord)... Part of that magic
in an et is that that crack is an unexpected part of the sytem,
like seeing a never before seen crystal. In an irregular system,
I feel like "the crack is HERE, I can't find it anywhere else,
and I can't make it go away", (which may lend itself wonderfully
to exploring in a more modal/drone oriented music).

Its a different tastes thing, but there IS something there.

Bob Valentine

Robert C Valentine wrote,

> but when you play lines like this where the mind can solve the
pattern AND the musical resolution of that pattern is a 'crack'
(perhaps and unexpected concord or discord)...

Hi Robert, thanks for weighing in. JdL once used the term "creatures
of equal temperament" in the context of stacked chords, as in stacks
of fifths or the augmented triad's stack of thirds... and there are of
course all sorts of other "creatures," like the upper extensions of
jazz chords, symmetrical scales and the like as well... and in a
certain sense it's fairly easy to theoretically project certain
proportional characteristics of 12-tET into other tunings; I do it
quite a bit, and all the Balzano generalized diatonics and other
likeminded systems are loaded with symmetries of the sort that are
indigenous to 12-tET. However, I'm much more interested in what sorts
of like "creatures" might arise out of some of the more fairly common
and widely used alternate ETs (and especially a music first theory
later type situation). 19 is especially interesting in this regard as
it has a history, a la Yasser, that speaks of emerging potentials, of
a present adumbrating a future... yet, much like the Balzano types of
generalized diatonic scales, it would seem to require a nearly
complete break with tonality as know it, and I'm not aware of any real
"school" of folks who are seriously digging in and making a lot of
music in either the Balzano like generalized diatonics (despite their
wealth of convenient or familiar symmetries and proportions) or the
Yasser/Fibonacci like 12-out-of-19, 19-out-of-31, etc. types of
systems. 19-tET however has been and is being used quite a bit, and
right here on this list we have the Colorado crew (in the persons of
by Neil Haverstick and John Starrett) digging right in and making
music that recasts a lot of familiar structural and tonal ways of
going about things into the fresh palette of 19-tET... so how bout it
guys; any 21st century "creatures of equal temperament" making
themselves known in 19 yet? While 19 shares 12's status as an
excellent low order approximator of a good fifth and a good third, it
certainly doesn't share 12's often exploited divisibility, so it
should be very interesting to see what sorts of 19-tET "creatures"
might avail themselves musically when a lot of the lingo is a sort of
12-tET transfer to 19! We'll see.

> Part of that magic in an et is that that crack is an unexpected part
of the sytem, like seeing a never before seen crystal. In an irregular
system, I feel like "the crack is HERE, I can't find it anywhere else,
and I can't make it go away",

Well said.

ds