yo

I was just reading some old posts. Why, you don't ask? To tell you the truth, it's 4:30
a.m. and I'm procrastinating. Being an inescapably human being who absolutely must
get a grip on and categorize everything and everyone as best as possible, I am still
trying to get a decent grip on this McLaren guy. Why him in particular? His writings
are amusing and I find myself agreeing with many of them. He makes some sense.

In the 800 or so messages I had to skim to get to one of his crazymusic posts that
wasn't deleted (so did that turn out to be Yahoo's doing or what?) I had a lot of other
reactions of course. As usual, I lament being an oblivious high-schooler during this
time, which apparently was rich in exchange of ideas and diverse in the contributing
individuals. Perhaps it's better now that everyone's seemingly gone away to live real
lives. I also realized that a lot of questions that I think about frequently -- those of
instrument design, technology, notation -- have a long history 'round these parts. So
I wonder, is it better to try and extract all from 3-years-ago threads by jumping one
by one through yahoo pages? Or would it behoove me to bring up the same
questions, those which seemingly lie at the root of pRaCtIcAl MiCrOtOnAlItY itself? Or
maybe there are non-online resources which people could point me toward.

Most importantly to me, I wonder how I shall be able to contribute. For years I have
thought, yeah!, when I grow up I want to build instruments. I have held myself to be
capable in both musical and technical matters (my attention span in both is ever an
issue), still at the point where my education could go in any direction, and I have
generally thought that I can do well with any direction that I go in. So what direction
would people benefit most from? A synthesizer with banks of scales, banks of
timbres, on top of banks of bent partials? A family of BP clarinets? Slide crummhorns?

Jacob

Hi Jacob,

> Perhaps it's better now that everyone's seemingly gone away to live real
> lives.

I do agree that, even though talk is fun and talk is cheap, when it comes
down to it, only the music speaks and thus writing music, performing music
and building instruments are the necessary fundamentals. Only when these
aspects are healthy should much talking even be bothered with. Thus, to the
extent that there are no messages and no posting on any of the tuning
groups, the tuning groups have succeeded if their goal is to encourage the
writing and exploration of music in xenharmonic and other tuning systems.

> I also realized that a lot of questions that I think about frequently
> -- those of instrument design, technology, notation -- have a long history
> 'round these parts. So I wonder, is it better to try and extract all from
> 3-years-ago threads by jumping one by one through yahoo pages?

99% of the stuff probably doesn't matter. I'd recommend Andrew's fine
listening list to find out what's going on in a broad sense and then just
jump right in.

As far as instrument building goes, there are at least a couple dozen books
out on musical instrument building and design! Never before have there been
so many possibilities. Just get started and see what happens. If stuck,
email or letters to instrument builders can help, or just further
experiments and inventions. For ready made instruments, there are many
places where finely crafted Turkish, Egyptian, Indian, Indonesian and other
instruments can be acquired, ofter for obscenely low prices, completely
ready to go microtonally.

> Or would it
> behoove me to bring up the same questions, those which seemingly lie at the
> root of pRaCtIcAl MiCrOtOnAlItY itself? Or maybe there are non-online
> resources which people could point me toward.

So many books out there. Everything by Bart Hopkins and everything by Dennis
Waring to begin with. That should keep an instrument builder occupied for at
least a decade.

> Most importantly to me, I wonder how I shall be able to contribute. For years
> I have thought, yeah!, when I grow up I want to build instruments. I have
> held myself to be capable in both musical and technical matters (my attention
> span in both is ever an issue), still at the point where my education could go
> in any direction, and I have generally thought that I can do well with any
> direction that I go in.

> So what direction would people benefit most from?

This is an artistic field so you'll have to follow your own path, your own
inspiration. If designing and building microtonal wind and brass instruments
is your passion, then go for it and don't look back!

I will say that in my opinion there is certainly a vast oversupply of
theory, so further contributions in that area are probably not necessary.

> A synthesizer with banks of scales, banks of timbres, on top of banks of bent
> partials? A family of BP clarinets? Slide crummhorns?

Nonoctave clarinets? Sure! Slide crumhorns? Haven't seen one of those
before! Lead the way wtih music...

- Jeff