Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning JI fudge factor

[Monz]
>For the record, note that I agree pretty much with Dave
>Keenan's restriction to "within +-0.5 cents" for a true
>JI label. I've always contended that differences of
>1 cent or less are negligible under most circumstances,
>excluding only such particular cases as La Monte Young
>sound installations.

I know I may make some enemies saying so, but I seriously
doubt that anyone could tell the difference if the tones
of the dream house were randomly fudged by 0.5 cents. In
fact, are the synths used for the dream house even that
accurate?

While changes greater than a cent may make a noticable
difference to those who are very familiar with the dream
house, I seriously doubt they would come at the expense
of any affect in the composition. The dream house is
full of beating combination tones; I'm not really sure
that JI is all that important to it. There, I said it.

[Jacky]
>Show me any Barbershop Quartet singer, or any singer that can
>deliberately sing "within +-0.5 cents" of Just Intonation, and
>sustain this degree of "mechanical" accuracy over the course of
>entire compositions, and I will dub him "Man Machine".

Agreed. And further, how do we intend to measure this sort of
thing? Even if there was a way to get spectral data that
accurate, the process of assigning fundamentals to the parts, in
order to measure their "accuracy" with respect to JI, isn't
determined to within +/- 0.5 cents by any existing method.

>In light of the above challenge, can it truly be shown that
>Barbershop Quartet singing is really the ironclad and unshakeable
>proof we need of the definition of JI? To clarify my point here: If
>indeed a "beatlessness" is perceived in the chords of this music, and
>yet we are saying also that there must be "within +-0.5 cents"
>accuracy for it to truly be considered JI, then which am I to
>understand is correct; an audible quality of beatlessness, or
>the "within +-0.5 cents" rendered accuracy of the performance?

Obviously the former. Accuracy of barbershop? Their singers are
capable of sustained chords tuned beatless to the limit of the timbres.
See my post, "Barbershop Spectrogram", circa Dec. '98 (the files for
the post are temp. off line, but I will provide them upon request).

[JdL]
>The only question is whether +-5 cents qualifies as "true JI" vs.
>"quasi-JI". Yes?

No! That question is meaningless. Shame on you all for entertaining
it under the guise of good scholarship. If anyone disagrees, then
he should provide the criteria that were used to arrive at these
numbers, and why a binary distinction around them is warranted.

Further, given the multiplicity of criteria sets, with respect to
physics (limit, timbre, volume), effect (beating, periodicity), and
affect (noticeable difference, annoying difference, etc.), he should
explain why the particular criteria set should be the basis for the
definition of such a basic and general term as "just intonation".

I must be crazy.

-Carl

🔗Monz <MONZ@JUNO.COM>

--- In tuning@egroups.com, Carl Lumma <CLUMMA@N...> wrote:

> http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/16557
>
> [Monz]
> > For the record, note that I agree pretty much with Dave
> > Keenan's restriction to "within +-0.5 cents" for a true
> > JI label. I've always contended that differences of
> > 1 cent or less are negligible under most circumstances,
> > excluding only such particular cases as La Monte Young
> > sound installations.
>
> I know I may make some enemies saying so, but I seriously
> doubt that anyone could tell the difference if the tones
> of the dream house were randomly fudged by 0.5 cents. In
> fact, are the synths used for the dream house even that
> accurate?

Carl,

For the Dream House, La Monte Young commissioned a
specially-designed synthesizer from David Rayna which
is extremely accurate. I don't have the specifics of
the resolution handy, but if Kyle Gann's around he
should be able to provide them.

I specifically excluded Young's piece *because* he
went thru all the trouble to get an instrument that
was capable of sustaining pitches tuned to such precision
over long periods of time.

As to your question of whether "anyone could tell the
difference" if the pitches were fudged by 0.5 cents, I
suppose the only way to know for sure is to set up another
nearly-identical Dream House with those different pitches.

>
> While changes greater than a cent may make a noticable
> difference to those who are very familiar with the dream
> house, I seriously doubt they would come at the expense
> of any affect in the composition. The dream house is
> full of beating combination tones; I'm not really sure
> that JI is all that important to it. There, I said it.

Given the difficulty we're having here of definining JI,
I'm not at all sure what would be the right response to
this.

But I *can* say that Young's primary interest, AFAIK,
is in exploring the affect/effect produced by high-prime
harmonic relationships. Since it's apparent that he
agrees with me (again invoking my concept of "finity")
that high-prime ratios can easily be misperceived as
lower-prime ratios, it's extremely important for his
purposes to achieve the most accurate and most stable
tuning resolution possible.

How easily that "misperception" occurs depends on many
aspects, primarily the duration over which a precisely-tuned
ratio is sustained. That's the main reason Young's
Dream House sustains its pitches over what is theoretically
an inifinite period of time. He's interested in bathing
his own ears in these sounds for weeks, months, or even years
at a time, and studying what kind of effect they have
on his nervous system.

Perhaps the most important thing to note about Young's
compositions is that, mainly because of these incredibly
long durations, they are radically different from
"traditional" music. That's why I point out his music
as an exception in so many of my posts on this thread.

-monz
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html
'All roads lead to n^0'

🔗Monz <MONZ@JUNO.COM>

To supplement what I wrote in:
http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/16561

I just thought I'd give a few more leads on info
about Young's Dream House:

From:
http://www.virtulink.com/mela/S&LPRESS.HTM

> Young has stated that: "This is my newest and most
> radical work; the Rayna synthesizer has made it
> possible to realize intervals which are derived
> from such high primes that, not only is it unlikely
> that anyone has ever worked with these intervals
> before, it is also highly unlikely that anyone has
> ever heard them or perhaps even imagined the
> feelings they create."

Kyle Gann's description of the Dream House is in
"The Tingle of p x mn - 1 (installations by La Monte
Young and Marian Zazeela)"
_Village Voice_, October 4, 1994 (Vol. XXXIX No. 40, p. 84);
reproduced at:

http://www.virtulink.com/mela/GANN.HTM

Unfortunately, neither of these pages gives the specifics
on the tuning resolution of Young's custom-made Rayna synth.

-monz
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html
'All roads lead to n^0'

🔗Dave Keenan <D.KEENAN@UQ.NET.AU>

🔗Carl Lumma <CLUMMA@NNI.COM>

[JdL]
>>No! That question is meaningless. Shame on you all for entertaining
>>it under the guise of good scholarship. If anyone disagrees, then
>>he should provide the criteria that were used to arrive at these
>>numbers, and why a binary distinction around them is warranted.
>
>Dang, Carl - what's this upset about?

Sorry guys -- no hostility meant. I'm in the middle of moving right
now, and I'm a bit stressed out. At the same time, this thread is
throwing around a lot of very haughty-sounding stuff, without making
a whole lot of sense.

>I thought you were the guy who wants infinitely rigid vertical springs
>(i.e. exact vertical JI) in his tunings!

Yep.

>Or you saying that any attempt to quantify a limit of true JI in cents
>is misguided?

Exactly. You'd have to specify all the things I list to make it
meaningful.

>Yet, am I understanding you correctly here as saying that an unqualified
>"JI" should apply to +-5 cents?

To find out exactly what I am saying, let's go over my definitions again.
I distinguish between the _intention_ of JI (my "general" definition),
which is used when speaking broadly of music (dissonant, approximating
JI, etc.), and is largely determined by the _composition_. As opposed
to the use of the term "JI" to mean "precision tuning" (the "special"
definition), where an increase in the blend of the sound is _practically_
impossible given the timbres and instruments used.

I do acknowledge the unique utility of JI (both strict and "extended
reference") in melody, but the term is used for this meaning so
infrequently that I would expect the author to use "melodic JI", or
"strict JI", or "classical JI", etc.

So meantone is, generally speaking, JI, but specifically, it is not
JI, since one is deliberately tuning away from the smoothest sounds
(that is, one _could_ -- _practically_, he could do better).

The main feature of my definitions is that they work for all timbres.
Certainly, integer-based definitions cannot. They require a restriction
on timbre. But I haven't seen a single one of these definitions that
offers a precise restriction. I've seen stuff like, "harmonic timbres",
but what exactly constitutes a "harmonic timbre"? Howabout the sound
of a 9' concert grand? An old spinet? What about a synthesized timbre
that starts out harmonic but turns inharmonic as it decays? How do you
even determine the fundamental of certain timbres (as on many old
pianos, where the determination of fundamental is one of the most
important things a piano tuner does to produce a good tuning)? Aside
from this, any reasonable integer-based definition requires a smallness
restriction (as Dave Keenan points out). But how small is small? It
depends on the musical context -- does such belong in a definition?
Also, while on a large scale, complexity does go up with the size of the
numbers in the ratios, on a small scale this is not uniform, and the
theory required to predict it -- harmonic entropy -- is not complete.

So why do we still have pushers of timbre-specific and integer-based
definitions running around claiming they've got the whole thing wrapped
up? I'm all for coming up with specifics regarding timbres and smallness
(which is why I'm on the harmonic entropy list), but claiming you've got
this stuff covered when you obviously don't is irresponsible.

>(as I've said, I routinely tolerate vertical deviations of around +-5
>cents in my adaptive work, and don't care, except to achieve some
>convention for clear communication, whether this is called "adaptive JI"
>or "adaptive quasi-JI")

As I understood it, the term "adaptive JI" was used to specify stuff
about the size of a pitch set over time, independent of the accuracy
of harmonies. I would call your +-5 cent sprung stuff adaptive
temperament.

>>I must be crazy.
>
>I'm missing something. Please explain.

Just another one of my frequent trips into self-righteous insanity.

"...On one of my frequent trips to the ground, I noticed Maloy was
wearing sneakers... for _sneaking_!"

[Monz]
>For the Dream House, La Monte Young commissioned a
>specially-designed synthesizer from David Rayna which
>is extremely accurate. I don't have the specifics of
>the resolution handy, but if Kyle Gann's around he
>should be able to provide them.

Sorry -- looks like I remembered that incorrectly.
I still doubt the importance of that accuracy to the
installation. But doubt isn't very strong; I can get
away with doubting from my armchair. But the semi-
religious statements made by the LaMonte crowd on
high-prime JI -- such statements do require, IMO,
testing (and in all fairness to LaMonte, he may very
well have done some).

[Graham]
>So much more out of tune, and you won't hear beats,
>you'll hear roughness.

As I've said, I consider roughness and beating to be
two ways that we know the place mechanism is failing
to resolve pitches. IOW, they are the same, as far as
my definitions are concerned.

[Paul Erlich]
>>I find it exceedingly difficult to believe that it could
>>be shown to be true, that these composers you listed here
>>have produced music which is totally beatless.
>
>Jacky, you're missing an essential part of Dave Keenan's
>definition of "just intonation" as a tuning system: You're
>allowed to have plenty of dissonant chords and beating
>sonorities, as long as each note in the tuning system is
>connected to at least one other by a "just" (OED) relationship,

Allowing chords such as {1/1 9/7 11/8}, which have nothing to
do with JI, as far as static harmonies go.

-Carl

🔗Monz <MONZ@JUNO.COM>

🔗Joseph Pehrson <pehrson@pubmedia.com>

--- In tuning@egroups.com, Carl Lumma <CLUMMA@N...> wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/16594

> The main feature of my definitions is that they work for all
timbres. Certainly, integer-based definitions cannot. They require a
restriction on timbre. But I haven't seen a single one of these
definitions that offers a precise restriction. I've seen stuff like,
"harmonic timbres", but what exactly constitutes a "harmonic timbre"?
Howabout the sound of a 9' concert grand? An old spinet? What about
a synthesized timbre that starts out harmonic but turns inharmonic as
it decays? How do you even determine the fundamental of certain
timbres (as on many old pianos, where the determination of fundamental
is one of the most important things a piano tuner does to produce a
good tuning)?

It would be interesting to hear from some people on this list who have
had extensive experience in piano tuning. I have had *some,* and,
clearly, the accuracy of counting beats really distinguishes a fine
piano from an old "clunker." Believe me, I've had *MANY* of the
latter in my early days as a composer... and this was BEFORE the
ubiquitous inexpensive MIDI keyboards that composers can use
nowadays...

On many old pianos, it's difficult to count beats accurately at all...

_________ ___ __ _
Joseph Pehrson

🔗Carl Lumma <CLUMMA@NNI.COM>

>>The main feature of my definitions is that they work for all
>>timbres. Certainly, integer-based definitions cannot. They require a
>>restriction on timbre. But I haven't seen a single one of these
>>definitions that offers a precise restriction. I've seen stuff like,
>>"harmonic timbres", but what exactly constitutes a "harmonic timbre"?
>>Howabout the sound of a 9' concert grand? An old spinet? What about
>>a synthesized timbre that starts out harmonic but turns inharmonic as
>>it decays? How do you even determine the fundamental of certain
>>timbres (as on many old pianos, where the determination of fundamental
>>is one of the most important things a piano tuner does to produce a
>>good tuning)?
>
>It would be interesting to hear from some people on this list who have
>had extensive experience in piano tuning.

That's not me. Ed Foote?

>I have had *some,* and, clearly, the accuracy of counting beats really
>distinguishes a fine piano from an old "clunker."

Well, I guess. Norman Henry is quite good, and what's amazing is the
speed at which he tunes, without counting beats at all. He just tunes
by fifths until they all "sound the same". Not the best tunings I've
ever heard, but definitely up there.

>On many old pianos, it's difficult to count beats accurately at all...

Right: on many pianos, the timbres themselves beat -- sometimes, even
a single string will beat!

-Carl