Mathematical proofs vs. musical proofs

List,

In all these last months of endless postings of ratios, formulae, columns of numbers, and lattices, there has been one thing that usually bugged me (in the sense that I couldn't reconcile it with myself). It kind of came up when John dL wrote:

>It would be really great to hear an actual piece, tuned in 7-limit, for
>which you say, "This is good, IMO". Does such a thing exist?

This was in response to Paul E., who replied that one of his pieces filled the bill. And here is the dilemma, at least for me:

I can certainly understand (or at least be led to understand) a mathematical proof, or a logical proof, etc. What I cannot figure out is how a piece of music can stand as validation for a theory. And the greater problem for me, at least, is that I don't feel comfortable coming out and saying how bad a piece of music is. Errors can be found in calculations, things can be out of whack in an ASCII lattice diagram, even factual errors can creep into musicological research. All of this can, and very frequently is, corrected here on the list.

But I'm of a notion that you can put forth pretty much any system, any theory, any meta-method of applying these tunings to music, past, present, or future. You can do this, but that piece of music is completely unable to validate what you do unless it meets one undeniable condition:

It would have to be a good piece of music.

The more I listen to the various microtonal musics of the past 5 years, including commercial CDs, indie CDs, all the various compilation CDs, and now the various composers listed on the Tuning Punks site and elsewhere, I really am convinced: the ones that knock me out would probably be able to do it in 12tet, in some fashion or other; the ones that are lame, no tuning system ever or henceforth devised is going to rescue them.

I just don't get it. You can knock me for not getting it, maybe. But I haven't been around this list as long as I have (soon to enter the fifth year) if I wasn't actually *interested* in what people were looking for in alternate tunings. I keep waiting for the beta period to end, and the incredible worlds of music, that only these new tunings can release, to come out.

But I think I know why it hasn't happened.

Cheers,
Jon
`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`
Real Life: Orchestral Percussionist
Web Life: "Corporeal Meadows" - about Harry Partch
http://www.corporeal.com/

"Jonathan M. Szanto" wrote:

> But I'm of a notion that you can put forth pretty much any system, any
> theory, any meta-method of applying these tunings to music, past, present,
> or future. You can do this, but that piece of music is completely unable to
> validate what you do unless it meets one undeniable condition:
>
> It would have to be a good piece of music.

Good call Jon.

--
* D a v i d B e a r d s l e y
* 49/32 R a d i o "all microtonal, all the time"
* http://www.virtulink.com/immp/lookhere.htm

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "Jonathan M. Szanto" <JSZANTO@A...> wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/13005

>
> I just don't get it. You can knock me for not getting it, maybe.
But I haven't been around this list as long as I have (soon to enter
the fifth year) if I wasn't actually *interested* in what people were
looking for in alternate tunings. I keep waiting for the beta period
to end, and the incredible worlds of music, that only these new
tunings can release, to come out.
>

Jon... I am a relative newcomer on the list -- only one year! and I
am a little chary now of disagreeing with you... since I think you
will get mad at me... boo hoo... :)

But, I really feel the list is for "pre-compositional" activities...
and you're not going to see real compositions on it. Where would
they be?? Posted??

All the new works I have been doing on the Tuning Punks and
privately... in 19 derived from just 31, and the multiple hexany
system are TOTALLY a result of the pre-compositional ideas resulting
from reading THIS LIST. Also a new piece for viola and electronics
in a "combined hexanies" tuning.

Maybe you don't think I am, or others are, getting anywhere with
this... and you could be right... Who knows. Some people like my
new pieces:

http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/72/the_tuning_punks.html

But, I believe it is only by the most *rigorous* examinations of our
primary materials... using mathematics and whatever other methods are
at our "disposal" that we are going to be able to create a new music
that is not... let us guess:

12-tET serialism.... whoopie
12-tET minimalism... whoopie
12-tET neo-Romanticism... whoopie...

The Harmonic Entropy experiments are an incredible investigation into
the most abstract overview of concordance and sonance... sure, these
are not ideas that are going to be used right away... but they WILL
be... if not by capable people on this list then, eventually, by
others...

Are you upset yet?? I sincerely hope not, Jon. I'll put some more
"smilies" in if it will help! :) :) :)
______________ ____ ___ __
Joseph Pehrson

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "Jonathan M. Szanto" <JSZANTO@A...> wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/13005

And Jon...

Please don't forget... some of this is a matter of taste. Somebody
who is a Harry Partch aficionado is not going to necessarily like a
Paul Erlich piece...

Sometimes we need to "step outside" ourselves a little bit.

Are you mad yet?? Here come the "smilies" :) :) :)

Seriously, Jon... just a friendly discussion...
________ ___ __ __
Joseph Pehrson

Jon Szanto wrote,

>The more I listen to the various microtonal musics of the past 5 years,
>including commercial CDs, indie CDs, all the various compilation CDs, and
>now the various composers listed on the Tuning Punks site and elsewhere, I
>really am convinced: the ones that knock me out would probably be able to
>do it in 12tet, in some fashion or other; the ones that are lame, no tuning

>system ever or henceforth devised is going to rescue them.

I certainly think you're right about that!

>I keep waiting for the beta period to end, and the
>incredible worlds of music, that only these new tunings can release, to
>come out.

>But I think I know why it hasn't happened.

Please fill us in.

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "Paul H. Erlich" <PERLICH@A...> wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/13028

Paul... surely you can "read between the lines" here... Jon say we
ain't good composers...

Well... even presuming that everybody reading this list [not
everybody POSTS... remember] is not a particularly accomplished
composer... Doubtful... since I've heard some mighty fine stuff by a
lot of our folks!...

There will be others, who can take the basic investigations that
Paul, David Keenan, Monz and others are so DILIGENTLY pursuing...
whether, *YOU* personally understand them or not... oftentimes at
PERSONAL loss... and will be able to "run with them..." making new
music with refreshing materials.

LOOK AT PARTCH. I would say Partch is *AS MUCH* about his theory as
he is about music! "Naah, naah, ne, naah, naah..."

Partch is the PRIMO pre-compositional investigator in MY book.

Jon, seriously, are you mad yet?? Don't go there. This is friendly!
Really!

Joe
_________ ___ __ __
Joseph Pehrson

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jonathan M. Szanto [mailto:JSZANTO@ADNC.COM]
> Sent: Monday, September 18, 2000 11:05 PM
> To: tuning@egroups.com
> Subject: [tuning] Mathematical proofs vs. musical proofs
> List,
>
> In all these last months of endless postings of ratios, formulae, columns
> of numbers, and lattices, there has been one thing that usually bugged me
> (in the sense that I couldn't reconcile it with myself). It kind
> of came up
> when John dL wrote:
>
> >It would be really great to hear an actual piece, tuned in 7-limit, for
> >which you say, "This is good, IMO". Does such a thing exist?
>
> This was in response to Paul E., who replied that one of his
> pieces filled
> the bill. And here is the dilemma, at least for me:
>
> I can certainly understand (or at least be led to understand) a
> mathematical proof, or a logical proof, etc. What I cannot figure out is
> how a piece of music can stand as validation for a theory. And
> the greater
> problem for me, at least, is that I don't feel comfortable coming out and
> saying how bad a piece of music is. Errors can be found in calculations,
> things can be out of whack in an ASCII lattice diagram, even
> factual errors
> can creep into musicological research. All of this can, and very
> frequently
> is, corrected here on the list.

I can't think of a single piece of music, at least in the Western tradition,
which "stands as validation for a theory". Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier,
Rameau's works based on his theory of harmony and some of Gershwin's works
created with inspirations from Schillinger come close, but I don't think a
theory of the type we're discussing here can be validated by pieces, any
more than you can conclude that all swans are white simply because no one
has ever seen one of another color.

On the other hand, I have no problem whatsoever declaring my own personal
preferences for given pieces of music, composers and such. I am willing to
listen to anything, as long as it does not exceed the volume levels where
physical damage to my hearing apparatus is possible. But I am not willing to
listen to music that I don't like more than once. What do I listen to many
times? In the 20th century, Shostakovich, Hovhaness, Wuorinen, Dodge,
Subotnick, Stockhausen, Gershwin and quite a few others.

> But I'm of a notion that you can put forth pretty much any system, any
> theory, any meta-method of applying these tunings to music, past,
> present,
> or future. You can do this, but that piece of music is completely
> unable to
> validate what you do unless it meets one undeniable condition:
>
> It would have to be a good piece of music.

To my taste, there are "good pieces of music" and great composers scattered
throughout the history of Western music. Some of these composers were very
much tuned in to the various mathematical theories of music and some were
totally in ignorance of them. In the language of statistics, there does not
seem to be any correlation between greatness of a composer's works and use,
development or understanding of a mathematical theory of what is supposed to
sound good. Moreover, many of the composers we recognize as great
deliberately broke the rules -- some a little, some a whole bunch.

> The more I listen to the various microtonal musics of the past 5 years,
> including commercial CDs, indie CDs, all the various compilation CDs, and
> now the various composers listed on the Tuning Punks site and
> elsewhere, I
> really am convinced: the ones that knock me out would probably be able to
> do it in 12tet, in some fashion or other; the ones that are lame,
> no tuning
> system ever or henceforth devised is going to rescue them.

Here I'm going to have to part company with you. There are many things you
can't do in 12-TET, quarter-tones and approximating closely some non-Western
scales being two obvious examples. There are also things you can't do in
microtonal music; the very definition implies a scale -- discrete notes --
rather than, say, soundscapes. Microtonality is just one tool in a
composer's bag of tricks. Easley Blackwood, for example, has written both
microtonal and non-microtonal music.

Yes, there is a lot of music that sounds OK in 12-TET and maybe just a tad
better in some alternate tuning. John DL has retuned a number of classical
pieces and my fairly sensitive ear can't tell the difference between the
retuned and the 12-TET versions.

> I just don't get it. You can knock me for not getting it, maybe. But I
> haven't been around this list as long as I have (soon to enter the fifth
> year) if I wasn't actually *interested* in what people were
> looking for in
> alternate tunings. I keep waiting for the beta period to end, and the
> incredible worlds of music, that only these new tunings can release, to
> come out.

How many professional string quartets are there? How many professional
saxophone quartets are there? How much music has been written for string
quartet? How much music has been written for saxophone quartet? I'm sure
there's an "incredible world of music" just waiting to be composed for the
saxophone quartet :-). But I'm not holding my breath waiting for it, nor am
I looking for four saxophone players in the Portland area, nor am I
composing for saxophone quartet. That's not my thing; I'm not sure
microtonality is my thing, either, to tell you the truth.

My thing is music produced by digital computers -- whether it's microtonal
or soundscapes or found music from sounds of computers at work or computer
renderings of classical works. If I could get a computer to compose music
that I liked listening to, I'd be doing that, too. Microtonality is one tool
that is particularly suited to computers, or rather, difficult to do cheaply
any other way. I view "music theory" as simply a way to rule out lots of
garbage right at the start, without me having to listen to it. There is an
infinite amount of possible music, and most of it is gonna suck wet dog fur.

One other note: if you *could* hear the theory in one of my pieces, I would
interpret that as a failure of that piece as music -- as a whole Gestalt,
greater than the sum of its parts. Beethoven's Ninth is the most popular
piece of music in the Portland area. (I can't speak for the rest of the
world :-). It is certainly greater than the deafness of the composer,
greater than any conductor and orchestra who perform it, greater than
Schiller's poetry and Beethoven's music, etc. And it is greater than the
music theory of Beethoven's time and greater than his daring deviations from
that theory! Sure, you can hear the "theory of the symphony" in Beethoven's
Ninth, and knowing that theory brings something more to the piece. But if
that was *all* there was, it wouldn't be the masterpiece it is.

I'm certainly not attempting to create a work that magnificent on my little
Toshiba Satellite, and I doubt if any of the other composers on this list
are either. I'd be happy with a nice little concerto for flute and computer
that more than one flutist (me) would be willing to play :-). (I'm actually
more interested in Japanese scales and shakuhachi that a Western flute, but
I can't play the shakuhachi yet.)

> But I think I know why it hasn't happened.

Because the majority of us can't hear the difference between 12-TET and JI?
Because composing good music is difficult? Because 12-TET has an
overwhelming market share? All of the above?
--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
znmeb@teleport.com
http://www.borasky-research.com/

Ed,

Hello!

You made me think to mention that I was demonstrating to a friend
recently how you can turn almost any sound into a musical sound, so I
put a microphone outside my back door and captured about 30 seconds
of the Insect Philharmonic and after using a couple of DX plugins on
the sample; had this incredible evolving timbre. But one of my
absolute favorite "weird" sounds, is to sample my WWII Shortwave
Radio, out of a B-52 bomber. I love to take the radio signals and
tranform them into "instruments". There is a freeware app that I use
to bring even the most inharmonically structured timbres into concert
pitch - this thing worked miracles on these shortwave sounds! If I
may ask, what state are you in? Been looking for a shakuhachi player!

Good Day!

Jacky Ligon

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "Ed Borasky" <znmeb@t...> wrote:

> My thing is music produced by digital computers -- whether it's
microtonal
> or soundscapes or found music from sounds of computers at work or
computer
> renderings of classical works. If I could get a computer to compose
music
> that I liked listening to, I'd be doing that, too. Microtonality is
one tool
> that is particularly suited to computers, or rather, difficult to
do cheaply
> any other way. I view "music theory" as simply a way to rule out
lots of
> garbage right at the start, without me having to listen to it. > I
can't play the shakuhachi yet.)
>
> > But I think I know why it hasn't happened.
>
> Because the majority of us can't hear the difference between 12-TET
and JI?
> Because composing good music is difficult? Because 12-TET has an
> overwhelming market share? All of the above?
> --
> M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
> znmeb@t...
> http://www.borasky-research.com/

Ed Borasky wrote,

>I view "music theory" as simply a way to rule out lots of
>garbage right at the start, without me having to listen to it. There is an
>infinite amount of possible music, and most of it is gonna suck wet dog
fur.

That's my intent some of the time -- though I'd rephrase it as "a way to
rule out lots of uniteresting and indistinct possibilities" rather than "a
way to rule out lots of garbage".

>One other note: if you *could* hear the theory in one of my pieces, I would
>interpret that as a failure of that piece as music -- as a whole Gestalt,
>greater than the sum of its parts.

This is especially true as regards scale theory and consonance theory -- all
they do is give you the raw materials from which to compose, and that's a
VERY LONG WAY from the composition itself. Not to say there couldn't be
useful mathematical theories of composition, but in my experience it is
better to assume that good composition comes from magical inspiration, and
it's nice to have a good scale under your fingers when that inspiration
comes.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jacky Ligon [mailto:jacky_ekstasis@yahoo.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2000 12:17 PM
> To: tuning@egroups.com
> Subject: [tuning] To Ed: Re: Mathematical proofs vs. musical proofs
>
> Ed,
>
> Hello!
>
> You made me think to mention that I was demonstrating to a friend
> recently how you can turn almost any sound into a musical sound, so I
> put a microphone outside my back door and captured about 30 seconds
> of the Insect Philharmonic and after using a couple of DX plugins on
> the sample; had this incredible evolving timbre. But one of my
> absolute favorite "weird" sounds, is to sample my WWII Shortwave
> Radio, out of a B-52 bomber. I love to take the radio signals and
> tranform them into "instruments".

My first serious excursion into composition was when I was in graduate
school (1972-ish, as I recall). The only thing available to me was a pair of
tape recorders, a home-built diode bridge ring modulator and a military
surplus computer with a 3-bit DAC attached to the high-order 3 bits of the
accumulator register (and wired backwards :-). I was in heaven with just
this collection of gear, and also had the time to compose :-). I dreamed of
fully-digital musical instruments, in a day when computer music was done on
mainframes in large corporations by folks like Max Mathews. I dreamed of
owning a computer powerful enough to compose with, in a day when you could
get, if you knew someone, a PDP-8 for somewhere around 10 - 20K. A lot of
very interesting music was and still is composed this way, although we use
CoolEdit instead of a pair of reel-to-reel tape decks these days.

There is a freeware app that I use
> to bring even the most inharmonically structured timbres into concert
> pitch - this thing worked miracles on these shortwave sounds!

What is the name of this app?

> If I
> may ask, what state are you in? Been looking for a shakuhachi player!

State of residence: Oregon, near Portland.

State of shakuhachi playing: just bought the shakuhachi; can't even play a
note on it yet. Gonna take some lessons :-).

State of composition: gathering ideas and tools. I've downloaded a whole
bunch of free stuff and some reasonably-priced commercial stuff as well. A
lot of it is being written in Java these days. I do have some Java
experience and I *like* the language a lot, but ...

The Java development environment has bloated to the point where it is
approaching the gag-provoking complexity of Microsoft Visual Studio. Yeah,
you need that humongous tool set for really wow-provoking applications, but
if you just want to compose and perform music, much simpler tools will work
just fine. After all, if you have CSound and a C compiler, you can extend
CSound to do such nice things as calculate Sethares' dissonance curves,
generate scores based on stock market price series and perform any
conceivable algorithmic composition task. To tie up a couple hundred
megabytes with a Java development environment takes away from the disk space
I'll have for music!
--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
znmeb@teleport.com
http://www.borasky-research.com/

>I can certainly understand (or at least be led to understand) a
>mathematical proof, or a logical proof, etc. What I cannot figure out is
>how a piece of music can stand as validation for a theory.

I don't think John was asking for music that validated a theory -- just
music that was an example of a theory. I could be wrong here.

>And the greater problem for me, at least, is that I don't feel comfortable
>coming out and saying how bad a piece of music is.

Well, if beauty really is in the eye of the beholder, than it shouldn't
feel uncomfortable at all, since you're simply stating your opinion.

>It would have to be a good piece of music.

I think there may be many different things that could cause a piece of music
to be good. A given listener may value some, but not others.

>The more I listen to the various microtonal musics of the past 5 years,
>including commercial CDs, indie CDs, all the various compilation CDs, and
>now the various composers listed on the Tuning Punks site and elsewhere, I
>really am convinced: the ones that knock me out would probably be able to
>do it in 12tet, in some fashion or other; the ones that are lame, no tuning
>system ever or henceforth devised is going to rescue them.

You got that.

>I just don't get it. You can knock me for not getting it, maybe. But I
>haven't been around this list as long as I have (soon to enter the fifth
>year) if I wasn't actually *interested* in what people were looking for in
>alternate tunings. I keep waiting for the beta period to end, and the
>incredible worlds of music, that only these new tunings can release, to
>come out.

Better get your kids on the list. What we're trying to manufacture here
took hundreds of years to evolve. Partch was way ahead of his time, and
what he achieved was only the beginning -- it will take many years, further
work on all fronts, before the real harvest.

>But I think I know why it hasn't happened.

*Do* fill us in.

-Carl

Ed Borasky wrote,

> Microtonality is one tool that is particularly suited to computers,
or rather, difficult to do cheaply any other way.

How so? In almost 15 years of microtonal musical doings I've yet to
use a computer for anything (save mastering, done by someone else),
and I doubt your gonna find anyone (here) with less coins than me!

> I view "music theory" as simply a way to rule out lots of garbage
right at the start, without me having to listen to it. There is an
infinite amount of possible music, and most of it is gonna suck wet
dog fur.

I dunno, I'm getting the feeling that I just might find a lot in your
garbage!

dan

On Mon, 18 Sep 2000 23:04:39 -0700, "Jonathan M. Szanto" <JSZANTO@ADNC.COM>
wrote:

>The more I listen to the various microtonal musics of the past 5 years,
>including commercial CDs, indie CDs, all the various compilation CDs, and
>now the various composers listed on the Tuning Punks site and elsewhere, I
>really am convinced: the ones that knock me out would probably be able to
>do it in 12tet, in some fashion or other; the ones that are lame, no tuning
>system ever or henceforth devised is going to rescue them.

I don't agree with this. Wendy Carlos' "Afterlife" from the _Tales of
Heaven and Hell_ CD comes to mind as an example of compelling music that
can't be "translated" into 12-tet and have anywhere near the same effect.
Even music that *could* be played in 12-tet to good effect gains a special
quality when played in an appropriate JI tuning or alternative non-12-equal
temperament.

Now, 12-tet isn't a bad tuning system; it has a lot going for it. But it's
like black-and-white film. Great artists can still make great art in
black-and-white, but there really are some nice effects you can get with
colors.

(And to answer another question someone brought up on this thread, there
are black swans in Australia.)

--
see my music page ---> ---<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/music/music.html>--
hmiller (Herman Miller) "If all Printers were determin'd not to print any
@io.com email password: thing till they were sure it would offend no body,
\ "Subject: teamouse" / there would be very little printed." -Ben Franklin

Herman Miller wrote,

> I don't agree with this. Wendy Carlos' "Afterlife" from the _Tales
of Heaven and Hell_ CD comes to mind as an example of compelling music
that can't be "translated" into 12-tet and have anywhere near the same
effect. Even music that *could* be played in 12-tet to good effect
gains a special quality when played in an appropriate JI tuning or
alternative non-12-equal temperament.

Unless I'm *really* missing something (certainly a possibility), I
think John's point was simply that there are more important things
than the tunings at work... that those that fire him up ("knock me
out" to quote) would be able to do so ('knock him out') no matter what
they had to work with for a tuning, and that the "lame" will be "lame"
(or something to that effect) no matter what the tuning may or may not
have to offer.

dan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: D.Stearns [mailto:STEARNS@CAPECOD.NET]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2000 10:29 PM
> To: tuning@egroups.com
> Subject: Re: [tuning] Mathematical proofs vs. musical proofs
>
> Ed Borasky wrote,
>
> > Microtonality is one tool that is particularly suited to computers,
> or rather, difficult to do cheaply any other way.
>
> How so? In almost 15 years of microtonal musical doings I've yet to
> use a computer for anything (save mastering, done by someone else),
> and I doubt your gonna find anyone (here) with less coins than me!

The most I've ever paid for a computer is $1500. For that, I get a musical
instrument of amazing flexibility, CD player, score editor, a portal to the
Internet, help with my taxes, an investment counselor and manager, possibly
a composer's assistant, a typewriter that corrects my spelling mistakes, an
equation solver that will even handle partial differential equations and a
bunch more. As I noted a week or so ago, there is a guy who is charging
$7500 for just a *keyboard*!

(Well, Harry Partch built microtonal instruments out of discarded shell
casings and empty wine bottles. About the time I saw the premiere of
"Revelation in the Courthouse Park", I was learning to program on machines
that cost millions of dollars and had the compute power of your average
microwave oven. :-)

> > I view "music theory" as simply a way to rule out lots of garbage
> right at the start, without me having to listen to it. There is an
> infinite amount of possible music, and most of it is gonna suck wet
> dog fur.

> I dunno, I'm getting the feeling that I just might find a lot in your
> garbage!

Maybe ... I can tell you that well over half of my CD collection is
Shostakovich, and well over half of the remainder is Hovhaness :-). I went
to a "new music" concert Saturday (http://www.nweamo.org/) and while I
*liked* what I heard, there was little difference between it and the
"electronic music" of 25 years ago. There was nothing remotely resembling
microtonal or xentonal music. Portland has not one but *two* "new music"
ensembles, Third Angle New Music and Fear No Music. The local classical
music station, KBPS-FM, is listener-supported and they aren't afraid to play
20th century music. With all that, there must be at least *one* microtonal
composer around here ... right now, it sure isn't me :-).

My point about ruling out garbage was in relation to algorithmic composition
rather than microtonality. The way a lot of algorithmic composition works is
to generate lots of music more or less at random and apply a set of rules to
the random output that select the music that conforms to certain desiderata.
This is more or less what a genetic algorithm does, only GAs are a lot more
efficient. Having some theory on the front end before the random generator
to throw out stuff that is totally useless makes them even more efficient.
--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
znmeb@teleport.com
http://www.borasky-research.com/

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "Ed Borasky" <znmeb@t...> wrote:
>http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/13038
>
> ... Moreover, many of the composers we recognize as great
> deliberately broke the rules -- some a little, some a whole bunch.

Ah, but that's exactly what some of us here on the list are
working so hard to find out: why could composers like Beethoven
and Schoenberg, who broke so many 'rules', get away with it so
forcefully?

The power of their musical logic indicates that there are some
'other rules' lurking somewhere, and we want to figure out what
they are!

To a great extent, this has been a successful endeavor regarding
Schoenberg: lots of eminent theorists have written reams on how
his voice-leading and harmony works, and have indeed formulated
new 'rules' based on his compositions and those of later atonalists
and serialists.

I suggest that one reason theorists have had so much success in
these cases is that they started with a given tuning system
(12-tET) and are painstakingly exploring every possible facet
of it. Properties inherent in the tuning system itself are
bound to shed light on some of the successful musical maneuvers
the composers achieved in their pieces.

Wagner's music, which also broke tons of contemporary rules, has
also spawned whole new schools of harmonic theory. The case
here (as far as tuning is concerned) is a bit more complicated,
because I would argue that Wagner still retained many vestiges
of tonal meaning/function in his harmonic practice, much of
which depends on meantone or well-tempered tuning and 5-limit
JI theory.

But the fact that the transition to pseudo-universal acceptance
of 12-tET was already underway helps to elucidate his compositional
gestures to a large extent, again because of the more recent
discoveries about properties of 12-tET itself.

The case of Beethoven is considerably more complicated than that
of Wagner, because his compositional gestures have a definite
grounding in meantone/well-tempered tuning and 5-limit JI theory
and in many cases exhibited a very modern (for its time)
exploration of the properties of 12-tET.

IMO, Beethoven is the first great composer for 12-tET. I realize
that much of his earlier music was conceived with possibly
meantone or more likely a well-temperament in mind, but his
later works show many definite and deliberate manipulations of
harmonic and, especially, modulatory techniques that only work
well in 12-tET.

So in a nutshell, I'd predict that a lot of the work that the
theorists here on the Tuning List do will ultimately be applied
by legions of later musicologists to masterworks and composers
of the past, to uncover all kinds of aspects of the affective
reaction to their music that have gone unnoticed due to the
lack of recognition of an historical multitude of tunings.

> ... Microtonality is one tool that is particularly suited to
> computers, or rather, difficult to do cheaply any other way.

Amen to that, mostly. I'd amend it (pun intended) by saying
that microtonality can be done cheaply any way one sees fit
to coerce it out of any sound-source (how about a 50-cent
tin whistle?).

The computer makes it easy to do microtonality *accurately*
- that's the big plus.

> ... Sure, you can hear the "theory of the symphony" in
> Beethoven's Ninth, and knowing that theory brings something
> more to the piece. But if that was *all* there was, it
> wouldn't be the masterpiece it is.

There is *very* much in line with Schoenberg's dogged contention
that there were some mysterious things about masterworks that
defied analysis.

I don't buy it - guess I'm just a firm believer in the ability
of good analysis to eventually uncover all the secrets.
It will probably just take too long for any of us too know
about it. But in the meantime, I certainly find the exploration
a great adventure! :)

-monz
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "Paul H. Erlich" <PERLICH@A...> wrote:
> http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/13046
>
> > [Ed Borasky]
> > ... music -- as a whole Gestalt, greater than the sum of
> > its parts.
>
> [Paul]
> This is especially true as regards scale theory and consonance
> theory -- all they do is give you the raw materials from which
> to compose, and that's a VERY LONG WAY from the composition
> itself. Not to say there couldn't be useful mathematical
> theories of composition, but in my experience it is better to
> assume that good composition comes from magical inspiration,
> and it's nice to have a good scale under your fingers when that
> inspiration comes.

And as usual, Paul provides the irrefutable antidote to what
I thought I just so eloquently posted about the abilities of
analysis.

OK, I *have* to agree with this: there have been lots of times,
especially improvising rock, when the inspiration was really
magical and bandmates played stuff that worked so well together
that I got that 'cosmic' feeling.

But I do stand by what I said in the sense that I think composers
and improvisers make use of possibilites inherent in a particular
tuning or set of tunings (simultaneously), whether it's conscious
or unconscious. The theorists just try to uncover this by
studying particular works.

This is a bit different from the generalized types of scale
theories Paul is talking about. The analysis of particular
works or sets of works uncovers *subjective* aspects of
composition, while I would say that the scale and consonance
theories are *objective*, even if subjective perception and
context play large roles in their formulation.

The composer's or improviser's partucular *use* of these
materials (and theories?) involves aspects of his/her/their
own personalities, which makes a fascinating study in itself
in the case of particularly interesting musicians (like Mahler,
for me).

-monz
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html

An ironic remark in this regard was made by Rameau, who
regretted the fact that he "wasted so much time composing,
instead of looking further for the true foundations of musical
art". Which with he meant writing about music theory.

To illustrate Paul's point that it's a long way from a scale to
a composition I mention an analogy once made by Paul Rapoport,
who compared it to finding your way in a new city.
From his review of Blackwood's etudes in _Fanfare_ Sept/Oct 1994,
p.146-147:

"The core of the CD is the twelve electronic etudes Blackwood wrote
in 1978-80, each of them in a different number of equal steps per
octave, from 13 to 24. "Wrote" is a understatement. He had to
figure out what the harmonic properties of each tuning were, devise
a notation for each, compose the music, and perform it, one track
at a time, on a regular keyboard. This last point is not trivial.
You know those rooms where the gravity throws you because the walls
look square but are way off perpendicular? Try to imagine not twelve
such rooms, but twelve such _cities_, all substantially different,
i.e., disorienting in really different ways. Living in each of those
is the kind of task Blackwood not only faced but mastered."

Manuel Op de Coul coul@ezh.nl

--- In tuning@egroups.com, " Monz" <MONZ@J...> wrote:
> --- In tuning@egroups.com, "Ed Borasky" <znmeb@t...> wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/13075

> I suggest that one reason theorists have had so much success in
> these cases is that they started with a given tuning system
> (12-tET) and are painstakingly exploring every possible facet
> of it.

I just wanted to add one small thing to Monz' interesting post... by
suggesting that, serialism is, fundamentally an "assembled" system,
and thereby readily lends itself to "reductive" analysis... The same
applies to early 20th Century pre-serial atonal works. Many were
assembled from mutatable fragments. It would be no surprise, then,
if theorists would have great success retro-tracing them.

(What's that computer term again for trying to discover "source code"
from final programs... it it "reduction..." (??))
_____________ ___ __ __ _
Joseph Pehrson

I dunno, playing microtonal bassoon is a lot easier AND rewarding than
microtonal computer to me. When I play microtonal bassoon it is always
musical. The computer is often cold, less reliable (even though I must make
double reeds), and not easily portable. One might even say the computer is
push-button, inherently monotone, and more of a toy.

Please accept the above with humor. Just don't forget that there are still
virtuoso dinosaurs roaming the earth, waiting to share their microtonal
performances with culture. If only culture realized how easily it can be
done.

Johnny Reinhard

--- In tuning@egroups.com, " Monz" <MONZ@J...> wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/13076

> And as usual, Paul provides the irrefutable antidote to what
> I thought I just so eloquently posted about the abilities of
> analysis.
>

My own short take on this question is that there are some things that
*can* be analyzed and some that *can't*... unless you consider just
*listening* to a composer's music and following a score "analysis."

HOWEVER, to proclaim that the *only* important factor in a piece is
the talent or imagination of a composer and that analysis or study of
materials, pre-compositional or post-compositional is a worthless
pursuit, I believe is an error.

Much can be learned through such study... materials can be explored,
CONSCIOUS realization of structure and new possibilities in
materials. That's what I believe a lot of this list is about.

The "inspiration" or ability of a composer remains separate from
this, and it's something that really can't be taught or learned...
but how many composers with "talent" have "IMPROVED" their art
through
conscious study??

Even Satie, finally, made a conscious and thorough study of
counterpoint when he was in his 40s!!
_____________ ___ __ __ _ _
Joseph Pehrson

Ed Borasky wrote,

> The most I've ever paid for a computer is $1500. For that, I get a
musical instrument of amazing flexibility, CD player, score editor, a
portal to the Internet, help with my taxes, an investment counselor
and manager, possibly a composer's assistant, a typewriter that
corrects my spelling mistakes, an equation solver that will even
handle partial differential equations and a bunch more. As I noted a
week or so ago, there is a guy who is charging $7500 for just a
*keyboard*!

All points well taken! Still, I'm more of the, "What? You want a
hundred dollars for that! I got thirty dollars, how's that sound?"
variety: pennywhistles? I'm there! (I ain't paying more than a buck
though...)

Guitars are great in this extent, as they're affordable enough (for
me) and easy enough (for me) to detwelveulate. My first conscientious
microtonal writing and playing was done with my sister's Bundy Bb and
a Fostex X-15 -- when I slowly started to discover what miraculous (to
me) things could be done with embouchure, multi-tracking, and the
pitch knob there was simply no turning back!

> My point about ruling out garbage was in relation to algorithmic
composition rather than microtonality. The way a lot of algorithmic
composition works is to generate lots of music more or less at random
and apply a set of rules to the random output that select the music
that conforms to certain desiderata. This is more or less what a
genetic algorithm does, only GAs are a lot more efficient. Having some
theory on the front end before the random generator
to throw out stuff that is totally useless makes them even more
efficient.

Got it. Though I think that the GA analogy, though helpful by design,
is less than ideal (though I see no reason why it couldn't be every
bit as potentially rewarding and whatnot) if overzealously applied to
"standard" compositional practice... Stuckenschmidt's "Twentieth
Century Music" makes some convincing points along these lines as
regards Schillinger's theories.

BTW, your talking, err... singing, computer-at-work music sounds
fascinating; are you familiar with "nonlinear hotwiring" as in the
Qubais Reed Ghazala "circuit-bending school"?

dan

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "Joseph Pehrson" <pehrson@p...> wrote:
> http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/13091
>
> The "inspiration" or ability of a composer remains separate from
> this, and it's something that really can't be taught or learned...
> but how many composers with "talent" have "IMPROVED" their art
> through conscious study??
>
> Even Satie, finally, made a conscious and thorough study of
> counterpoint when he was in his 40s!!

Hmmm... but IMO, with the major exception of _Socrate_, the
music Satie wrote after this wasn't as good as the stuff he
wrote early in his career... or maybe it just wasn't as
*original*; perhaps that's what I really like about the
earlier work.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a very big fan of Satie, and I find
good and bad pieces sprinkled thru-out his whole career. But
my faves are the _Sarabandes_ (1887) and _Gymnodpedies_ (1888),
... and _Socrate_ (1919).

-monz
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html

>
>--- In tuning@egroups.com, "Ed Borasky" <znmeb@t...> wrote:
>>http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/13038
>>
>> ... Moreover, many of the composers we recognize as great
>> deliberately broke the rules -- some a little, some a whole bunch.
>
>
>Ah, but that's exactly what some of us here on the list are
>working so hard to find out: why could composers like Beethoven
>and Schoenberg, who broke so many 'rules', get away with it so
>forcefully?
>
>The power of their musical logic indicates that there are some
>'other rules' lurking somewhere, and we want to figure out what
>they are!
>
>-monz
******************

Joe you hit it right on the head. I strongly believe this conjecture holds
for all musics of the planet in varying degrees. However, I still think a
solution to the problem of uncovering the 'other rules' should be
formulated and solutions attempted in a non-deterministic setting.

Best regards,

.
Dr. Can Akkoc
Alabama School of Mathematics and Science
1255 Dauphin Street
Mobile, AL 36604
USA

Phone: (334) 441-2126
Fax: (334) 441-3297

Wow.

This has been fun.

I've got to attend to some things (and have been), so I don't want any of you to think I just threw a stink bomb in the room and ran. I'll post soon enough, but will try to be concise and not waste everyone's time.

One thing, from JP:
>(What's that computer term again for trying to discover "source code"
>from final programs... it it "reduction..." (??))

"Disassembly". There are actually commercial "disassemblers" available for a variety of platforms/languages...

Cheers,
Jon
`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`
Real Life: Orchestral Percussionist
Web Life: "Corporeal Meadows" - about Harry Partch
http://www.corporeal.com/

Ed Borasky wrote:

> > But I think I know why it hasn't happened.
>
> Because the majority of us can't hear the difference between 12-TET and JI?

Ears can be trained! When I stopped using MIDI
exclusivly as a composition tool and started
getting into retuning guitars (slide) my musical ear
got better. Singing to a drone helps too.

--
* D a v i d B e a r d s l e y
* 49/32 R a d i o "all microtonal, all the time"
* http://www.virtulink.com/immp/lookhere.htm

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "Jonathan M. Szanto" <JSZANTO@A...> wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/13134

> Wow.
>
> This has been fun.

Hi Jon!

You're not mad yet, are you?? I'm a bit neurotic. You should see
the number of times I wash my hands... Well, I want to "wash my
hands" at least of *THIS!*

>
> I've got to attend to some things (and have been), so I don't want
any of you to think I just threw a stink bomb in the room and ran.

Did seem a tad like't though.

> One thing, from JP:
> >(What's that computer term again for trying to discover "source
code"
> >from final programs... it it "reduction..." (??))
>
> "Disassembly". There are actually commercial "disassemblers"
available for
> a variety of platforms/languages...
>

Actually, sorry to disappoint you, Jon, but the term I was looking
for was "reverse engineering," which someone was kind enought to post
to me off-list...

Best!

________ ___ __ __
Joseph Pehrson

On Tue, 19 Sep 2000 23:30:01 -0700, "D.Stearns" <STEARNS@CAPECOD.NET>
wrote:

>Unless I'm *really* missing something (certainly a possibility), I
>think John's point was simply that there are more important things
>than the tunings at work... that those that fire him up ("knock me
>out" to quote) would be able to do so ('knock him out') no matter what
>they had to work with for a tuning, and that the "lame" will be "lame"
>(or something to that effect) no matter what the tuning may or may not
>have to offer.

Well, an expanded tuning palette doesn't necessarily produce better music
any more than color film produces better pictures. But alternative tunings
have important features not shared by 12-TET, and if you look for it, it's
possible to find good music that exploits these features. There may not be
as much of it as we'd like to find, but I've found several that have
convinced me that new systems of tuning are worth exploring. For instance,
Easley Blackwood's microtonal etudes persuaded me that 12, 15, 19, and
22-TET aren't the only relatively small equal scales that are musically
useful and appealing.

I can imagine Wendy Carlos' "Afterlife" retuned to 11-limit JI on a
Chromelodeon, for instance, but 12-TET lacks the characteristic "neutral
seconds" of 15-TET (within 5 cents of 11/10) that give this piece much of
its unique flavor. I suspect that retuning it to 12-TET would radically
change the character of both the harmonic and melodic elements. That's why
I think it's a good example of serious non-12 music that works.

(On the other hand, Blackwood's etudes sometimes seem to go out of their
way to sound as much like conventional 12-TET music as they can within the
bounds of these exotic tunings, since he was exploring their similarities
to the diatonic scale. But that's part of their remarkable appeal.)

--
see my music page ---> ---<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/music/music.html>--
hmiller (Herman Miller) "If all Printers were determin'd not to print any
@io.com email password: thing till they were sure it would offend no body,
\ "Subject: teamouse" / there would be very little printed." -Ben Franklin

> -----Original Message-----
> From: MANUEL.OP.DE.COUL@EZH.NL [mailto:MANUEL.OP.DE.COUL@EZH.NL]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2000 6:35 AM
> To: tuning@egroups.com
> Subject: RE: [tuning] Mathematical proofs vs. musical proofs
>
> An ironic remark in this regard was made by Rameau, who
> regretted the fact that he "wasted so much time composing,
> instead of looking further for the true foundations of musical
> art". Which with he meant writing about music theory.

That is a very sad commentary. I discovered the music of Rameau many years
ago, and he is one of my favorites, though not on as high a scale as, say,
Vivaldi. I should waste my time like that :-).

> "The core of the CD is the twelve electronic etudes Blackwood wrote
> in 1978-80, each of them in a different number of equal steps per
> octave, from 13 to 24. "Wrote" is a understatement. He had to
> figure out what the harmonic properties of each tuning were, devise
> a notation for each, compose the music, and perform it, one track
> at a time, on a regular keyboard. This last point is not trivial.
> You know those rooms where the gravity throws you because the walls
> look square but are way off perpendicular? Try to imagine not twelve
> such rooms, but twelve such _cities_, all substantially different,
> i.e., disorienting in really different ways. Living in each of those
> is the kind of task Blackwood not only faced but mastered."

I have not heard this particular Blackwood piece, but I have heard some of
his more conventional works and they are excellent. For what it's worth, his
father, also named Easley Blackwood, was a famous contract bridge player,
who invented a bidding convention in wide use even today.
--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
znmeb@teleport.com
http://www.borasky-research.com/

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Afmmjr@aol.com [mailto:Afmmjr@aol.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2000 6:54 AM
> To: tuning@egroups.com
> Subject: Re: [tuning] Mathematical proofs vs. musical proofs
>
> I dunno, playing microtonal bassoon is a lot easier AND rewarding than
> microtonal computer to me. When I play microtonal bassoon it is always
> musical. The computer is often cold, less reliable (even though
> I must make
> double reeds), and not easily portable. One might even say the
> computer is
> push-button, inherently monotone, and more of a toy.

I have two portable notebook computers and I will have a third in the near
future. Inherently monotone? Not *my* computers! Of course, I can't play a
bassoon at all, and the flute only for slow jazz :-).

> Please accept the above with humor. Just don't forget that there
> are still
> virtuoso dinosaurs roaming the earth, waiting to share their microtonal
> performances with culture. If only culture realized how easily it can be
> done.

Make your own reeds? Well, I used to make my own diode bridge ring
modulators :-). For what it's worth, I make most of my own *software*.
Dinosaurs? Not really ...
--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
znmeb@teleport.com
http://www.borasky-research.com/

> From: "Jonathan M. Szanto" <JSZANTO@ADNC.COM>
> Subject: Re: Mathematical proofs vs. musical proofs.3
>
> {Johnny Rienhard wrote...}
> >Re Jon Szanto's rant against microtonal composition not being like Bach, this
> >is an old, but transplanted argument. (nothing personal)
>
> OK, JR, I won't take it personally. That said, I don't think my original
> post could be construed as a rant [Wester's: to talk or say in a loud,

Yes, you were mischaracterized.

I started a reply to your post and will try again. There are many points
that can be made in reply and the first is to restate Sturgeons Law "90%
of everything is crap". This includes 'microtonal music' (as well as Bach,
though even Bachs 'crap' is sublime).

That said, I believe any activity that becomes non-holistic, focusing on
a specific path at the exclusion of others, has an even greater tendency
to produce 'crap', especially for those not active in the genre. We can
take 'movements' in the arts and ridcule a great body of the examples
(minimalism, total serialism, aleatoric come to mind in twentieth
century music) but also should recognize that each of these movements
has provided SOME works which a fair number of people relate to
(fair >= 1).

As far as finding a totally new music through microtonal investigations,
I think thats a bit like an artist deciding to paint in a totally new
color. There are three hues... which can be worked on to produce a
few 100 million visible colors. I believe 'consonance' (or 'concords')
is our finite palette (our being composers working harmonically
in music). We can debate whether the boundary between 'concord' and
'fuzzy slush' is in 5-limit, 25-limit, odd or prime limit, etc. But
there are distinctions beyond which no definition of 'concordance' will
hold.

The strength of the compositions in any genre are due to the strengths
of the composers (and their strengths may well be their ability to get
out of the way of the spirit world). Realizing that strength may require
microtonalism to get the ball rolling, other compositions require the
microtonality for their expression (Wendy Carlos has been mentioned,
What little I've heard of Bill Alves music also has that impression).

Thats about as far as I'll go with that.

Bob Valentine

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "Ed Borasky" <znmeb@t...> wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/13165

some of
> his more conventional works and they are excellent. For what it's
worth, his father, also named Easley Blackwood, was a famous contract
bridge player,
> who invented a bidding convention in wide use even today.
> --
> M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
> znmeb@t...
> http://www.borasky-research.com/

Ah... Ed, you have solved the riddle as to why a search on "Easley
Blackwood" over at Amazon.com will reveal so much material on that
game... in addition to music!
______________ ____ __ __
Joseph Pehrson