Aleatoric Tunings, Part I - Harps

Hi all, thought I'd share my experience on this:

Aleatoric Tuning Methods, Part I
--------------------------------

Many years ago I made a strange looking harp-like object
out of some wood scraps. It had seven strings, although
it now has six.

I started out by tuning it just.

It didn't stay in tune long though, so I had to completely
retune it constantly.

One day I was playing with this 'out-of-tune' harp. It
sounded harsh to me at first but then I got used to it. It
fact, I started to like it a lot, the more I worked with
it. And because the harp fell out of tune so easily I
found that not only did I have have more than 7 pitches in
my scale, the more I played it, the more pitches I got
(though only seven at a time of course).

And so I realized that not only are there no bad scales,
but that randomly chosen scales are pretty good too as
long as you are not afraid of them.

- Jeff
"Alea Jacta Est"

(By the way, alea is latin for die, singular of dice. So
aleatoric is a fancy two dollar word for 'random'. 'Alea
jacta est' means 'The die is cast.' I learned this from
Asterix and Obelix.)

--- In tuning@y..., "J Scott" <xjscott@e...> wrote:
> Hi all, thought I'd share my experience on this:
>
> Aleatoric Tuning Methods, Part I
> --------------------------------
>
> Many years ago I made a strange looking harp-like object
> out of some wood scraps. It had seven strings, although
> it now has six.
>
> I started out by tuning it just.
>
> It didn't stay in tune long though, so I had to completely
> retune it constantly.
>
> One day I was playing with this 'out-of-tune' harp. It
> sounded harsh to me at first but then I got used to it. It
> fact, I started to like it a lot, the more I worked with
> it. And because the harp fell out of tune so easily I
> found that not only did I have have more than 7 pitches in
> my scale, the more I played it, the more pitches I got
> (though only seven at a time of course).
>
> And so I realized that not only are there no bad scales,
> but that randomly chosen scales are pretty good too as
> long as you are not afraid of them.
>
I think Jacky Ligon and others, who are great at making music out of
all sorts of unusual scales, could particularly benefit from this
observation. And the more random scales one makes, the quicker one
learns what one likse and what one doesn't like in scales, which
should help one's theoretical scale-constructing activities
immensely, and perhaps induce them to reflect one's personal
aesthetic sensibilities more directly.

Jeff wrote:

> And so I realized that not only are there no bad scales,
> but that randomly chosen scales are pretty good too as
> long as you are not afraid of them.

Yes! I found this as well, some time back. I got a random number
generator to design the scales for me. It was a way of testing whether
all the "melodic" criteria for assessing scales were really important for
melody, or if any old pitches would work. They do!

I did find that generating numbers from 0 to 1 and placing them within the
octave meant that they tended to cluster together, which I didn't like.
So I randomised the deviation from 12-equal instead, to +/- 50 cents.
That worked great.

Harmony's a different matter. Most chords sounded awful, so you do need
to think about that. You could work out timbres to fit a random scale,
but that's taking a good thing to far.

Graham

[graham on aleatoric scales:]
> Harmony's a different matter. Most chords sounded awful, so you
> do need to think about that.

Thanks, I get your point. With the xylophone its less of
an issue since I seldom play more than two notes at once,
and when I do things are hunky-dory on account of the
inharmonic overtones, but with the harp, chords do take
some 'getting used to'. But even these can be OK in the
right frame of mind.

> You could work out timbres to fit a random
> scale, but that's taking a good thing to far.

Says who!

- Jeff

--- In tuning@y..., graham@m... wrote:

>>>> It was a way of testing whether > all the "melodic" criteria for
assessing scales were really important for > melody, or if any old
pitches would work. They do!
> I did find that generating numbers from 0 to 1 and placing them
within the > octave meant that they tended to cluster together, which
I didn't like. So I randomised the deviation from 12-equal instead,
to +/- 50 cents. That worked great. >>>>

Hello Graham, This is one more post comparing melody and harmony.
Can you explain to me, who has been fossicking only recently:
(1) "melodic" criteria and (2) scale assessment ?

Thanking you anticipation, and with regards,
Haresh.

Haresh wrote:

> Hello Graham, This is one more post comparing melody and harmony.
> Can you explain to me, who has been fossicking only recently:
> (1) "melodic" criteria and (2) scale assessment ?

I was thinking of Rothenberg propriety, and the related ideas of maximal
evenness, constant structures, Myhill's property, whatever. The idea is
to score the scale according to how close to equal it's steps are. And
then it is assumed that the more equal they are the better the scale is
melodically.

In fact I find an inequality is a good thing. Pythagorean diatonics are
already improper. And some 7-limit scales I came up with have very
unequal intervals but real character. Bhairav that is improper, but
melodically poor? I think not!

All these measures are more relevant to notation, where if you have an
improper scale it will likely be heard as a subset of a wider scale, or
generalised diatonic music. If you want to transpose a melody
diatonically within a scale, it helps if the steps are roughly equal.

Graham

Graham!
Could not agree more. Maybe even an understatement:)

graham@microtonal.co.uk wrote:

> In fact I find an inequality is a good thing. Pythagorean diatonics are
> already improper. And some 7-limit scales I came up with have very
> unequal intervals but real character. Bhairav that is improper, but
> melodically poor? I think not!

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
http://www.anaphoria.com

The Wandering Medicine Show
Wed. 8-9 KXLU 88.9 fm