Making music (in case you're interested)

Johnny Reinhard put me in touch with someone who heard my microtonal
music on WNYC and liked it. This person really liked the other
microtonal piece of mine that I was able to immediately share with
him, and I am now ready to kidnap my erstwhile keyboard player Ara
(it's not Ira) in order to try to record decent performances of a
bunch of pieces.

I had a fun visit with Joseph Pehrson today. He had the blackjack
tuning set up on his keyboard, and I showed him some chord
progressions I'd been playing around with (though with none of the
rhythmic conviction I had at home :)). He immediately asked me how I
would notate the music . . .

I guess the fact that notation is unimportant to me reflects the fact
that I am an improvising musician. My main musical skill is my
ability to jump into almost any musical situation, immediately hear
the chord progression, improvise in a stylistically appropriate and
emotionally expressive manner. When I don't know which chords are
coming next, I somehow manage to continue to play melodically
coherent and interesting phrases that will flow over the bar line and
allow me to complete them appropriately in the split second it takes
me to register which chord is being played. I suppose I developed
this skill through endless hours jamming along with the radio, as
well as a few classes in classical counterpoint. Also, I seem to be
able to construct solo improvisations on guitar or piano that will
keep myself and others interested for extended periods of time.

Notated music is anathema to all this magic for me. If I need to
learn a part, I'll learn it by ear. This is usually very easy for me.
I only notate when working with, say, a flute player or a saxophone
player who is better at reading than at hearing and memorizing. If I
need to create a form, I'll write it out, but usually end up revising
it endlessly -- never satisfied. As you might expect, composing is a
grueling process for me, as music comes most naturally to me when the
composing, the performing, and the hearing are virtually simultaneous.

Sorry for all this rambling about myself. I guess, since I've posted
so much for over five years, I wanted to let those who didn't know,
know where I'm coming from musically. I try to create environments
for myself (and others) to improvise in, where the theoretical
considerations (as Daniel Wolf pointed out, even free improvisers
operate with an overwhelming amount of theory, conscious or
otherwise) lead the improviser to mutations of, or varying degrees of
departure from, existing styles.

One aspect of "traditional" styles I'm usually preserving is the
contrast between consonance and dissonance, and another is coherent
melody. In a sense, I make music for my nine-year-old self who hadn't
yet developed the ability to hear a chord progression and know
exactly what it was. There was still mystery in a Madonna song. As I
see it, having greater musical knowledge shouldn't lead the musician
to a world where he/she makes music only for other musicians. One
needs to keep alive the innocent child within, for many reasons, one
of which is to be able to hear and feel music the way others are
likely to.

But I don't think that the music has to be in 12-tone equal
temperament, or even be diatonic (though that's a tougher one to get
away from), to communicate in this direct way. I played my solo 22-
tET guitar piece for a professional guitarist friend, and even though
one of the voices descends through six consecutive 22-tET pitches, he
thought it sounded "normal" (i.e., not microtonal). I think that's
because the line was melodically smooth and the chords were simple
harmonic-series (I mean approximately) subsets which connected
through common tones. If that makes music sound "not microtonal",
then I don't want to be microtonal (though what else would you call
playing six consecutive 22-tET pitches?)!

Having a near-daily experience of entertaining people with music, and
validation of non-12-tET through experiences such as this, poses an
immediately "practical" engineering problem: how to create pitch sets
with potential for melodic coherence, and with lots of approximate-
harmonic-series subsets connectable through common tones. It's
engineering, not science. The MIRACLE scales were but one (although,
it turned out, a very special one in many ways) way to build a bridge
over this particular river. That's all -- no greek letters, no
elaborate experimental set-ups, just a simple goal and a nice way of
achieving that goal.

It's not science. But it sure is mathematical. One can proceed simply
by trial and error forever. Or one can observe patterns, elevate some
patterns to the status of theorems while others remain hypotheses for
the time being, and prune the infinite trial-and-error tree to
manageable proportions. All of this requires constant validation by
the inner nine-year-old's ears. If the inner nine-year-old likes the
scale that's not maximally even better than the one that's maximally
even, or the one that's improper better than the one that's proper,
then you can be sure that I'm not going to be pruning the branches
from my tree in the way that these abstract concepts might suggest.

The history of musical tuning systems throughout the world cannot be
irrelevant to this process. If my inner child does in fact represent
the way most people hear, then my engineering paradigms should lead
naturally to many tuning systems that were actually used in practice
for making music that people liked. If the actual, practical tuning
systems are excluded, then I know I'm ignoring a whole lot of "inner
children" -- and this is unwise.

So the engineering process becomes a time-consuming activity unto
itself, involving a great deal of information gathering and
exchanging with others. This has been one of the wonderful benefits
of this list -- bringing together a huge pool of knowledge and
experience into one place. And it's not a purely selfish activity --
many composers and improvisers with similar aesthetic goals have
benefitted, are benefitting, and will benefit from the new ideas, and
critiques and reiterations of old ideas, that are the results of this
process.

Where the process gets mathematical, some feel it becomes anathema to
music-making. They must feel the way I do when presented with notated
music, or with the requirement to notate my music. So to better
coexist with such individuals, I have created the tuning-math list,
where the engineering and meta-engineering (i.e., theory) work has
continued, and may more fully migrate in the coming days. But
hopefully such individuals who have read this far will better
understand why I am pursuing these "mathematical machinations" to the
extent that I am. The goals really very simple, and visceral, and the
ends served are not abstract or elitist in the slightest. It's the
force of the response I get from the average music-listener that made
me decide not to be a physicist (got a degree and went no further),
but instead apply my mathematical skills to music (and to the part-
time job that pays my rent right now).

If anyone thinks I'm foolish, or I've made fundamental (or other)
errors in reasoning or judgment, or has any other critical comments,
I'm more than willing to listen and consider their arguments
carefully. If anyone feels hurt, maligned, alienated, ignored, angry,
or otherwise negatively about anything in this message or anything
I've written here in the past that has gone unaddressed, please do
share these feelings with me -- I can be naive sometimes but you'll
find I'm very sympathetic. All right, I'm tired . . . until later!

--- In tuning@y..., "Paul Erlich" <paul@s...> wrote:

/tuning/topicId_23885.html#23885

Thanks so much, Paul, for expressing your motivations for
constructing chord progressions, and the like, for the MIRACLE family
and for other scales!

I never thought about it being an "engineering" problem rather than
a "scientific" one... very interesting.

In any case, of course, I will be very intrigued with what you come
up with and, naturally, I am not surprised in the least that it could
involve some mathematics. Great!

Frankly, I'm a little disappointed that the "math" part of this list
has gone over to another list. I enjoyed looking at the math stuff,
even if I didn't understand it.

This new schism gives my "inner child" a good excuse *NOT* to have
time to read the math-oriented list, and that's a shame, since I
generally learn something...

The same concerns all the other "split" lists. I find, now, that I
am skipping over messages even on THIS list where before, incredibly
enough, I was studying carefully EVERY single message...

Oh well, things change.... I guess it's "easier" this way... but I
don't learn so much...

best,

________ ______ _________
Joseph Pehrson

--- In tuning@y..., jpehrson@r... wrote:
>
> In any case, of course, I will be very intrigued with what you come
> up with

Well, of course you're pretty familiar with my decatonic scales in 22-
tET, which were an early, simple, and effective result of this
process. Other scales in 22-tET, as well as the more complex 19-out-
of-meantone and MIRACLE scales are more recent results of this
(collaborative) process, as you know. So there's plenty of material
to play around with, which is of course what you're doing. So don't
be too disappointed if the tuning-math list stays separate and you
decide you don't have time to follow it. You should still have enough
tuning ideas to keep you composing freshly, and with the ability to
use consonance when you want it, for many decades.

--- In tuning@y..., "Paul Erlich" <paul@s...> wrote:

/tuning/topicId_23885.html#23900

> --- In tuning@y..., jpehrson@r... wrote:
> >
> > In any case, of course, I will be very intrigued with what you
come
> > up with
>
> Well, of course you're pretty familiar with my decatonic scales in
22-
> tET, which were an early, simple, and effective result of this
> process. Other scales in 22-tET, as well as the more complex 19-out-
> of-meantone and MIRACLE scales are more recent results of this
> (collaborative) process, as you know. So there's plenty of material
> to play around with, which is of course what you're doing. So don't
> be too disappointed if the tuning-math list stays separate and you
> decide you don't have time to follow it. You should still have
enough
> tuning ideas to keep you composing freshly, and with the ability to
> use consonance when you want it, for many decades.

This makes sense, and I probably should attend to my "own business"
with music, and not worry to much about the "tuning math" list... I
really don't have the background for it, anyway, but will look at it
from time to time...

Thanks!

__________ _________ ______
Joseph Pehrson

--- In tuning@y..., "Paul Erlich" <paul@s...> wrote:

..............

>>>>I guess the fact that notation is unimportant to me reflects the
fact that I am an improvising musician. >>>>

Hi Paul, how true, how very true! Since Indian music is ONLY
improvisation, musicians have not felt the need to notate any Indian
music. In fact, my guru was vehemently against anything like
notation at all -- he used to say: write music and murder it! However
hard you may try, notation cannot represent Indian music. Infinite
is the number of possible variations, combinations, phrases, nuances,
shruti ranges in any raga. I have heard maestros like Sharafat
Hussein Khan singing Bihag for more than three hours, with his
listeners in rapt attention and wanting him to sing more and more.

Indian music is learnt only by ear. The notation system can be some
help, like a memory peg, for later revisions , especially for those
compositions that you do not sing often. It can be some help in
conveying a musical idea to someone who can go behind the notation
and reach the heart of the expression.

Regards,
Haresh.

On 5/28/01 4:47 AM, "Paul Erlich" <paul@stretch-music.com> wrote:

> In a sense, I make music for my nine-year-old self who hadn't
> yet developed the ability to hear a chord progression and know
> exactly what it was. [...] All of this requires constant validation by
> the inner nine-year-old's ears.
> [...] If my inner child does in fact represent
> the way most people hear, then my engineering paradigms should lead
> naturally to many tuning systems that were actually used in practice
> for making music that people liked.
> [...] If the actual, practical tuning
> systems are excluded, then I know I'm ignoring a whole lot of "inner
> children" -- and this is unwise.

I about fell out of the chair when I read this.
I really don't know how to respond to this without being off-group.
Paul - I enjoyed reading that.

I'll at least say that however you arrived at the attitude,
making music that's "inner-child-safe" is an extremely positive thing to do.

Um... Paul are you *sure* you don't want to join [spiritual_tuning] ?

> But I don't think that the music has to be in 12-tone equal
> temperament, or even be diatonic (though that's a tougher one to get
> away from), to communicate in this direct way. I played my solo 22-
> tET guitar piece for a professional guitarist friend, and even though
> one of the voices descends through six consecutive 22-tET pitches, he
> thought it sounded "normal" (i.e., not microtonal). I think that's
> because the line was melodically smooth and the chords were simple
> harmonic-series (I mean approximately) subsets which connected
> through common tones. If that makes music sound "not microtonal",
> then I don't want to be microtonal (though what else would you call
> playing six consecutive 22-tET pitches?)!

I'm so sorry for becoming so inarticulate the other day
when I was talking about 27 being the limit for audible slides.
I completely misrepresented myself.
Right chart, wrong line.

It's not the threshhold for *sliding*...
it's the threshhold of **melody** I meant.
This is the first time I've talked about a lot of this,
and apparently on certain subnewsgroups,
the information has been coming out sideways.

What I meant to say was something like what Paul just said.
That you can go up to 27, and PLAY chromatic notes,
in certain contexts, and they'll still sound melodic
as opposed to sounding like a slide or melt.
And it's not even that heavy a thing,
you can just play chromatics from one note to another
and it doesn't really sound abnormal.
It doesn't always have to be in some harmonic context.

But yeah that¹s definitely true about 22.
You can play a bunch of chromatics in a row
and it can still sound melodic.

--- In tuning@y..., jpehrson@r... wrote:

/tuning/topicId_23885.html#23892

> Frankly, I'm a little disappointed that the "math" part of
> this list has gone over to another list. I enjoyed looking
> at the math stuff, even if I didn't understand it.
>
> This new schism gives my "inner child" a good excuse *NOT*
> to have time to read the math-oriented list, and that's a
> shame, since I generally learn something...
>
> The same concerns all the other "split" lists. I find, now,
> that I am skipping over messages even on THIS list where
> before, incredibly enough, I was studying carefully EVERY
> single message...
>
> Oh well, things change.... I guess it's "easier" this way...
> but I don't learn so much...

Joseph, I'm with you 100% on this one.

While the new lists certainly have a more focused approach,
and in fact allow people to post on things they might not
otherwise talk about (in my own case, the spiritual_tuning
list comes to mind here), I still think it really sucks that
the original tuning list has been split up like this.

There are so many new tuning lists that I don't even know
about all of them and, frankly, don't care. I belong to
five different ones and it's a royal pain in the ass to
keep up with those!

I suppose, in retrospect, that we really should have created
a MIRACLE list a month ago before all this happened. That
would have kept the volume of posts here down to "normal",
and everyone who was not interested in the MIRACLE tunings
would have been spared the barrage of information they didn't
care about.

Oh well... too late now. Sorry about the "parental advisory"
language here... but I really feel strongly about this and
decided to reflect that by using strong language.

-monz
http://www.monz.org
"All roads lead to n^0"

--- In tuning@y..., "monz" <joemonz@y...> wrote:
> I suppose, in retrospect, that we really should have created
> a MIRACLE list a month ago before all this happened. That
> would have kept the volume of posts here down to "normal",
> and everyone who was not interested in the MIRACLE tunings
> would have been spared the barrage of information they didn't
> care about.

Hindsight is 20/20, but this was all asked for in advance and during;
those requests were treated as if from philistines and dolts, and now
the list is splintered. May we live in interesting times...

Regards,
Jon

--- In tuning@y..., "Orphon Soul, Inc." <tuning@o...> wrote:

> I'm so sorry for becoming so inarticulate the other day
> when I was talking about 27 being the limit for audible slides.

I missed that -- where was it?
>
> What I meant to say was something like what Paul just said.
> That you can go up to 27, and PLAY chromatic notes,
> in certain contexts, and they'll still sound melodic
> as opposed to sounding like a slide or melt.
> And it's not even that heavy a thing,
> you can just play chromatics from one note to another
> and it doesn't really sound abnormal.
> It doesn't always have to be in some harmonic context.

That's interesting, because in February (I think) I posted a whole
bunch of 27-tone (as well as some 26-, 22-, 19-, 18-, 16-, 15-, and
14-tone) JI scales (periodicity blocks) -- I found that if I tried to
include more notes, I would get some 27.3-cent steps (septimal commas
aka 64:63s), which seemed more like inflections than like separate
notes (which is what Joseph was wanting at the time). So in a 7-limit
JI context, 27 may indeed be the most notes per octave you can have
without any "melting" or "sliding" going on.

As for ETs, if you play slowly, I think you might be able to go a
little higher than 27. But there's no firm dividing line. Joseph is
now working with the blackjack scale, which alternates 33.3 cent
steps (the step size of 36-tET) and 83.3 cent steps. He does feel
that the smaller step are "inflections" right now, but at least
they're bigger than 27.3 cents :) Seriously, though, I think with a
long period working with a particular microtonal system, one might
develop categorical interval perception that is different than most
musicians', and what used to be "melting" or "sliding" might
become "melody". I heard of some experiments that showed this to be
the case.

--- In tuning@y..., "Paul Erlich" <paul@s...> wrote:
> Seriously, though, I think with a
> long period working with a particular microtonal system, one might
> develop categorical interval perception that is different than most
> musicians', and what used to be "melting" or "sliding" might
> become "melody". I heard of some experiments that showed this to be
> the case.

Arguing slightly in the opposite direction: In the octave specific
4,5,6,7,9 dekany I find that 4*9 and 5*7 sound like inflections of the
same note. In the tumbling dekany I tend to want to set the
zero-vol-distance so that I rarely hear this "slide".

They are about 49 cents apart, so that's about 24 to the octave.

On 5/29/01 6:21 PM, "Paul Erlich" <paul@stretch-music.com> wrote:

> --- In tuning@y..., "Orphon Soul, Inc." <tuning@o...> wrote:
>
>> I'm so sorry for becoming so inarticulate the other day
>> when I was talking about 27 being the limit for audible slides.
>
> I missed that -- where was it?

Might have been on the PM list.
I was thinking of the threshhold of sliding/pitch morphing,
instead of melody/sliding.
I can't find the post with all of the noise.

> [...] So in a 7-limit
> JI context, 27 may indeed be the most notes per octave you can have
> without any "melting" or "sliding" going on.
> As for ETs, if you play slowly, I think you might be able to go a
> little higher than 27. But there's no firm dividing line.

"There is no firm dividing line." That was well put.
There just seemed to be something when you listen to 27, 28, 29,
28 seems to be a sort of dotted line,
like there's a fade effect there,
you can slide *or* be melodic with 28.

I'm glad you responded the way you did.
Actually I'd forgotten to mention the iffiness of 29.
I've noticed because of the way Pythagorean wraps around 29,
I'm not sure how to describe the effect... hm...
I think it's that maybe when you play Pythagorean 29,
you tend to hear the functionality 1/29 as a Pyth comma,
which is about half the size.
So even though you're playing a twice as large interval,
the harmonic context around it puts it in the *sliding* zone.
If you start playing off Pythagorean 29,
you can definitely make the 1/29 sound melodic.
Quirky, sure, but still melodic.
The idea of the "melt" or "slide" sub-categorization, audibly, I think,
is when you tend to interpret two notes close enough together
as one being some kind of function of the other.

Oh actually one example is if you try to force 5th limit in 29.
The major third comes down one note, the minor third goes up one,
since they're only 3 notes apart to start with, the diesis becomes 1/29.
(That's what it's called right, the 25:24...?)
Try playing Twenty Flight Rock...

Also... if you play a major chord and a minor chord
from the meantone scale in 33,
you can still hear the difference very easily.
Even moreso if you play a major seventh chord to a minor seventh.

*Maybe* even in 40. I'm really not sure.

> Joseph is
> now working with the blackjack scale, which alternates 33.3 cent
> steps (the step size of 36-tET) and 83.3 cent steps. He does feel
> that the smaller step are "inflections" right now, but at least
> they're bigger than 27.3 cents :) Seriously, though, I think with a
> long period working with a particular microtonal system, one might
> develop categorical interval perception that is different than most
> musicians', and what used to be "melting" or "sliding" might
> become "melody". I heard of some experiments that showed this to be
> the case.

I know what you mean.
I noticed you using the chromatic in 22 pretty well live.
Or as you said before, playing those 6 chromatics in a row
to your friend sounded melodic.

One idea of the blackjack scale though,
is that every note *has* a specific function, true?
This would make a lot of sense then.

--- In tuning@y..., "Paul Erlich" <paul@s...> wrote:

/tuning/topicId_23885.html#23955

> As for ETs, if you play slowly, I think you might be able to go a
> little higher than 27. But there's no firm dividing line. Joseph is
> now working with the blackjack scale, which alternates 33.3 cent
> steps (the step size of 36-tET) and 83.3 cent steps. He does feel
> that the smaller step are "inflections" right now, but at least
> they're bigger than 27.3 cents :) Seriously, though, I think with a
> long period working with a particular microtonal system, one might
> develop categorical interval perception that is different than most
> musicians', and what used to be "melting" or "sliding" might
> become "melody". I heard of some experiments that showed this to be
> the case.

This seems, Paul, to be an important comment, since, with the
blackjack scale, so far, the slightly different "inflections" act
almost analogous to "tense" in verbal writing... Sonorities are
RELATED... and the challenge is to really understand which ones they
are... just like the words, for example, saw, seen, (have) seen are
related... but using the right one in a sentence requires exposure
to the overall "language..."

What we DON'T want is: "I ain't got no blackjack "chops..."

______ ______ ______
Joseph Pehrson

--- In tuning@y..., "Orphon Soul, Inc." <tuning@o...> wrote:
>
> Oh actually one example is if you try to force 5th limit in 29.
> The major third comes down one note, the minor third goes up one,
> since they're only 3 notes apart to start with, the diesis becomes
1/29.
> (That's what it's called right, the 25:24...?)

The 25:24 is called the chromatic semitone. The diesis is 128:125.

> One idea of the blackjack scale though,
> is that every note *has* a specific function, true?

Not sure what that would mean, really . . . Every note is involved in
a lot of consonances with other notes, if that's what you were asking.