Re: random responses...

To Justin : A point where time really laughs at the "all pitches
at once" is in real performances of non-fxed-pitch instruments
where the tonic drifts by an appreciable amount during the
performance and no-one notices. I heard a jazz vocal group do
a 5 minute arrangement with a few dozens of dozens of 'rich'
chords and more than a handful of key changes. By the end (we
dropped the needle at the beginning and end for fun) they were
about a third of a tone away from any common point of reference.
But you'd never know it. This is just adaptive tuning at its best.

To PageWizard: (1) : you stated

> There is nothing that is "acceptable" if acceptable is your word
> referring to cultural conditioning. I prefer not to live in an illusion
> where I believe that consonance is based on approximations and not the real
> thing. To me, modulation can live in its own artificial state, and I can
> choose the pure ratios. Any ET system is artificial and will never represent
> the pure ratios accurately because it is uncapable of doing so. Anything is
> deemed acceptable on my own terms, not on what other people convince me of.
>

You are correct, ETs approximating just ratios allow for "exact same
modulation" which some have found to be a useful musical property. You
seem to be expressing that "beat free harmonies" are a property you
find very important. I hope you have already gotten in touch with the
Just Intonation Network website (materials, Dotys book is a good intro
to JI, yes, with lattice diagrams)... and others have suggested
getting Partches book etc...

Check out all the music on the crazymusic list (one of the many sister
lists to this one).

Note however, in your comments regarding "cultural conditioning" that,
yes, everything (at least in the backing tracks) coming over MTV is
for the most part 12tet. This is not true for lots of music all over
the world. But it would be equally untrue to say that those musics are all
based on "low numbered integer ratios".

My point is that "beat free harmonies" are a very small facet
of what one may be looking for when you make the jump to "gee,
I don't HAVE to play in 12...". As Jacky alluded to in response to
my earlier post, adding "tuning" to your bag of variables as a
composer or player opens up much more than just getting consonances
more in tune. Jacky (who's successfully made microtonal music on his
quest, unlike me in mine) seems to look at a "big three" of
"timbre, rhythm and tuning" (which is fascinating Jacky). I'm
coming from a "melody, harmony, rhythm" background and trying
to head much more towards a "melodies, rhythm" thing.

Joseph: re : "Exactly what is wrong in striving for just
intonation??" Nothing, although your phrase does indicate a
little about what our esteemed colleague may be railing against.
The queation we are trying to answer is "how do I make a new
piece of music that I'll be able to enjoy by my criteria (fun
to make, fun to play, people like it, I like it, etc). Just
Intonation (or any tuning paradigm for that matter) will be
only one component that goes into this. Some people imply
that JI is the way that "nature is tuned" and that therefor,
music should be tuned this way and there is something wrong
that it isn't. This seems to be more of a "religious" belief,
which is what our friend seems to be railing against. My limited
play with JI led me to say "bumpy melodically, smooth harmonys
(sometimes, some of them are a bit more ferocious), and these
qualities didn't lead me to the "new piece of music". (Ooops,
back to square one).

I think its true that the music of the world seems to
favor approximations to small numbered ratios in pitch materials. It
is equally true that rhythmically, most musics seem to favor
heirarchys of small number time divisions. However, these two
statements leave a tremendous amount of room for play in the
pitch and rhythm spaces, and there are more components to
music than that!

Enough for now, I wanted to say something about lattices,
but since they don't say too much for me, I'm a bit less
able to respond there. (The information in lattices doesn't
show me what I like to know about
where can I exactly repeat melodies in a tuning system usually
doesn't sho

PageWizard: regarding lattices

So far, the information in lattices didn't say too much to me
because it doesn't express melodic materials in a clear way.
(Melodic materials in a harmonic tuning system are usually
a side effect of that system, making one wonder if the whole
thing isn't being built backwards...) They also tend not to
show 'puns' in ET systems in a very clear manner ("this
endpoint connects to this one...")

I will say that good people use them, so they must be good for
something, and I'll let them explain what it.

Bob Valentine