Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning Numbers, notes, art, and artiface.

The endless debate on the tuning list continues.

{Paul Erlich wrote...}
>Nonetheless, wonderful sounds can be made from _pure harmony_

Sure, why not?

>Dave Keenan's realization of a tumbling Wilson dekany is completely devoid >of melodic considerations and has no semblance of a meter.

Two very objective statements.

>Yet it's a wonderful work of art

Entirely, wholly subjective.

Once again, this will all become tedious. The math camp equates visuals and spreadsheets with expressive humanity at its highest. The intuitive/performer/composer camp relegates it to tweezer hockey and asks for divine intervention in the form of a melody that will smite everyone in hearing range with a bliss beyond reason and understanding. (The previous two examples are only the most recent scenario)

Why is all of this happening? Because reasonable people refuse to drop their own prejudices and desires and make sincere attempts to communicate the gist of their ideas, the source of their dreams, the propulsion driving their:

1. music making
2. scientific investigation

I watched my father go through weeks of similar dialogue when he drifted in and out of intensive care in the last few months. There was an endless parade of medical professionals (all in their white 'lab' coats), all with bona fide important information to disseminate. And how did they do? Some very well, some not so well, some abysmally.

Why? Bedside manner, or lack thereof.

All the great information, all the wisdom, all the corrections to well-intentioned mistakes, all the supporting data to articulate a calculated response -- all of these are essentially worthless if you can't communicate it in a tactful, understandable, approachable manner. You waste our time, you insult our sensibilities. Some of those doctors... I wanted to slap them silly. Some of you, too.

If this list is dynamic, and if it is growing (in experience and wisdom, not merely membership) then we better learn to tolerate different ways of taking these paths. It is getting beyond tiresome, the finger-pointing, endless correcting, posturing and posing.

I wish I had an answer for all of this, but I don't.

And, so that I can feel justified in some of the eyes here to spout this junk, I just had a World Premiere two nights ago, officially commissioned and funded with a grant from Meet The Composer, Inc. But the last thing I'm going to do is tell *you* what to do with *your* music.

Cheers (though it hardly feels that way),
Jon

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

🔗Dave Keenan <D.KEENAN@UQ.NET.AU>

Thanks Jon,

Before we released the first tumbling dekany with sound (folks had
only seen the graphics), I asked Andy if we could easily get 5 or 10
minutes of it (without graphics) into a MIDI file or MP3 (using Choir
Aahs and varying the speed and volume over the course of it) because I
wanted to try an experiment.

I wanted to know how much people's perception of the artistic merit of
an algorithmic composition could be altered if they believed it to
have been created by non-mathematical means and without machine
assistance, particularly if the fictitious artist claimed to have
composed it to express emotional experiences in his or her own life.

I intended to put it up on a website that noone would associate with
me, and post the following message to the list from an unfamiliar
email address.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
To whom it may concern,

It has been a year now since the death of my friend Peter Hindemith
(no relation to Paul Hindemith). I believe his music deserves to be
more widely known.

Please listen to
http://......./ALifeIn10Voices.mid

Two years before his death he lost both his wife and young son in a
car accident. This piece was written in those final two years in which
I was priveleged to know him. He called it "Life in 10 voices".

As Peter described it to me, it was intended to be performed by a
choir of ten "voices" where each voice only ever sings a single note.
At a pinch it could be performed by as few as six singers, since
certain notes were never required to be sung together. The singers
were free to vocalise in any way, except that the sounds must never
"make sense", i.e. not be recognisable words in the language of the
audience. His handwritten score with its strange curves, simply
indicates when and how loudly each singer should sing his or her note.
Although the singers need to be synchronised by a conductor and the
scores show bar lines for that purpose, these are entirely arbitrary
and are not intended to introduce any "beat" into the music.

Having spent his childhood in central Australia before moving to the
east coast to study both music and mathematics, I suspect there may be
some influence from aboriginal music, in particular the digeridoo with
its harmonic variations on a basic drone.

I understand that he called it "Life in 10 voices" because it was
intended to represent the 10 most significant people in his life with
their varying distance from him and their periodic blending together,
sometimes harmonious, sometimes not. But he would never say who they
were for fear of offending someone.

I know it is rather a pathetic imitation to try reproduce this in MIDI
format, and I wrestled with my conscience over this. But I don't have
access to a choir and, as I said, I think his work deserves to be
known.

It was intended to be performed in a form of "just intonation", and
although I am myself not a mathematician (nor am I much of a
musician), with the help of a friend I believe we understood what
Peter wrote regarding how much each note departs from standard tuning
and we hope we have faithfully reproduced it using MIDI pitch bends.
At least it sounds absolutely awesome to us.

Please let me know if you think it has any merit. And please pass this
message on to anyone you think might appreciate it.

Peace,
Armah Leguin
---------------------------------------------------------------------

We would have waited a few weeks before posting
http://dkeenan.com/Music/StereoDekany.xls
and then waited until someone put 2 and 2 together.

Unfortunately it was all just too difficult at the time. But I
encourage you to select the "Choir Aahs" patch and maybe bump the
Zero-Vol-Distance to 180 and close your eyes and listen, and think
about the life of Peter Hindemith. Isn't it more enjoyable that way?
Does it really matter that he never existed?

Regards,
-- Dave Keenan

🔗JSZANTO@ADNC.COM

Dave,

--- In tuning@y..., "Dave Keenan" <D.KEENAN@U...> wrote:
>I wanted to try an experiment.
> I wanted to know how much people's perception of the artistic merit
of
> an algorithmic composition could be altered if they believed it to
> have been created by non-mathematical means and without machine
> assistance, particularly if the fictitious artist claimed to have
> composed it to express emotional experiences in his or her own life.

I'm not sure how to read this: do you yourself doubt the artistic
worth of a series of calculations, or do you anticipate that others
feel that way? And how would your own outlook change pending the
results?

> Peace,
> Armah Leguin

Nice story. I like this Armah person.

> http://dkeenan.com/Music/StereoDekany.xls

In all fairness, I've re-downloaded the sheet and will trundle it
over one day this week to a collegue's house for another
viewing/listening (I don't keep Excel on hand, and I very much look
forward to you capturing it in another format, though it sounds too
complicated for anything but building as a standalone app).

> Does it really matter that he never existed?

Nice try. A truly integrated artform isn't a number of arbitrary
facets stapled together, but one generating the other in a cohesive
or evolutionary manner. At least that's how I would look at it
tonight.

Numbers, notes, art, and artiface.

🔗Jonathan M. Szanto <JSZANTO@ADNC.COM>

🔗Dave Keenan <D.KEENAN@UQ.NET.AU>

🔗JSZANTO@ADNC.COM

🔗jpehrson@rcn.com