More of that awful Jeff Harrington

I wish Harrington would "hie" it over here. We could use his "awful"
commentary. Here's some more of the s...

(I found his comments on JI timbres very interesting... something I
hadn't thought about...)

[Harrington at AMC]:

Oh, alright... I made a harsh judgement
about JI. I guess that explains all that wrong
note movement I've heard in Just pieces.
Always thought it was the musicians trying
so hard to play it right that it came out
wrong. :) Wow... that made a whole lot more
sense.

You know, it's just *so* important to make
music compelling so that people will go and
appreciate the theory behind it! (JOKE).
One concern I have about JI, though and this
is probably the reason I'm not that interested
in it (yeah right) is that when these perfectly
tuned chords resonate... uh... they stop
being chords and form timbres. Now I kind
of relish that effect, but nonetheless, if you're
trying to write counterpoint and suddenly you
resolve your suspension and freakin' notes
disappear into a timbre. Hey! What's up
with that! That's just not good contrapuntal
practice!

One of the reasons I like the Wendy Carlos
Harmonic series scale so much is that by
writing non-contrapuntal pieces you can
have that effect as a momentum-creating
force...

Why don't you get that Tuning Punks group
(is that Jon?) to post MP3's of your FP so
that we could hear it? Do you have any
music up on the web?

jeff - http://www.parnasse.com/jeff.htm -

http://www.mp3.com/Jeff_Harrington

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "Joseph Pehrson" <pehrson@p...> wrote:
> I wish Harrington would "hie" it over here. We could use
his "awful"
> commentary.
> (I found his comments on JI timbres very interesting... something I
> hadn't thought about...)
>
> [Harrington at AMC]:
>
> Oh, alright... I made a harsh judgement
> about JI. I guess that explains all that wrong
> note movement I've heard in Just pieces.
> Always thought it was the musicians trying
> so hard to play it right that it came out
> wrong. :) Wow... that made a whole lot more
> sense.

It's so obvious that J.H. is coming from a 12 tET school of thought -
everything he says is permeated with it. If he's hearing "wrong note
movement" in JI, perhaps it could be due to jaded and burned out 12
tET perceptions and preconceptions about tuning and music in general.

>
> You know, it's just *so* important to make
> music compelling so that people will go and
> appreciate the theory behind it!

Well, we're waiting to hear that compelling microtonal music you've
got - where may we find it?

> One concern I have about JI, though and this
> is probably the reason I'm not that interested
> in it (yeah right) is that when these perfectly
> tuned chords resonate... uh... they stop
> being chords and form timbres. Now I kind
> of relish that effect, but nonetheless, if you're
> trying to write counterpoint and suddenly you
> resolve your suspension and freakin' notes
> disappear into a timbre. Hey! What's up
> with that! That's just not good contrapuntal
> practice!

That he sees this as a detriment rather than a resource shows perfect
naivety about JI as a tuning system. The rule is simple to
understand - every conceivable tuning system under the Sun has it's
own innate and latent potentials for musical generation, out of which
an entire language of harmony and melody can be derived, and it is
absurd to think that that any one of them should behave like the
others do. In other words, one cannot come into the rich vocabulary
of JI, with 12 tET ears - and all the preconceptions that accompany
tempered musical thought and practice, and expect the musical system
to behave in the old well worn familiar ways. The comforts of
temperaments await those that don't get this crucial point.

Jacky Ligon

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "Jacky Ligon" <jacky_ekstasis@y...> wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/12798

>
> That he sees this as a detriment rather than a resource shows
perfect naivety about JI as a tuning system. The rule is simple to
> understand - every conceivable tuning system under the Sun has it's
> own innate and latent potentials for musical generation, out of
which an entire language of harmony and melody can be derived, and it
is absurd to think that that any one of them should behave like the
> others do. In other words, one cannot come into the rich vocabulary
> of JI, with 12 tET ears - and all the preconceptions that accompany
> tempered musical thought and practice, and expect the musical
system to behave in the old well worn familiar ways. The comforts of
> temperaments await those that don't get this crucial point.
>
Hi Jacky!

This argument is pretty similar to the one that Kyle Gann advanced on
the AMC website in response...

http://www.newmusicbox.org/forum/index.html

Jeff Harrington is actually quite an accomplished composer, but he is
known in Internet circles as having rather a large mouth. He's quite
a computer expert and computer programmer... but I think there are
some people on this list who could "knock" some Cents into him...

Here is his website:

http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/6/jeff_harrington.html

Can you believe he's made over $2,000 on that page?? That's not "pay
for play" in MY book...

One of my favorites is his electronic work "Jardin des Merveilles..."

I've told him he should "hie" it over here to onegroups, but so far
all I hear, again, is "braach, braach, braach..." but we've been over
that one before...

_________ _____ __ __ _
Joseph Pehrson