practical kook [was:] Re: nutty professor has me confused (JI)

jpehrson@rcn.com asked these questions:

> Isn't it perfectly clear that lower-integer ratios (mistuned) are the
> foundation of our Western music??
>
> And, isn't there a particular joy in hearing them adaptively tuned
> correctly...??
>
> Exactly what is wrong in striving for just intonation??
>

The person behind these questions might just doubt JI's usefulness
as a closed system (which doesn't go too well with his antipathy to
things mathematical, but isn't that part of the problem?).

Could it be that excessive work with MIDI, with the possibilities of
electronic instruments, have clouded the perception of the
limitations of traditional instruments? And that all traditional
musics have evolved from those "imperfect" instruments, which
probably accounts for most of their differences and some of their
similarities?

Let me grasp the opportunity to tell you a story.

<small print/> I have no proof of anything I will mention in a
moment; it's all just an idea I have (and looking for clues for or
against it is at least part of the reason why I try to follow these
here lists). I do not really expect to be refuted, and my opinions
will go down very well with e.g. Joe Monzo, but you're welcome to
surprise me. (Read: what do you think I post this for?) </on with
the show>

A long, long time ago, just after Man started to build wooden
dwellings and banging on a log for fun had become an established
practice, man discovered that banging on a second log increased the
fun: it was now possible to follow different strains of bangs that
could be differentiated by their timbre which was at the same time
relative pitch. It also turned banging on something into a positive
communal activity and furthered the arts of science and
communication when people tried to agree on who bangs when. The
increasing of additional fun relative to the number of participants
was hence called, in the primitive spelling of the day,
"logarhythm".

Inspired by this, Woman began to pluck the strings on her loom. As a
matter of establishing tradition and culture, certain plucking and
weaving patterns were preserved, and soon it was deemed desirable to
reproduce the pitch patterns as exactly as the woven designs.
Different strings were tuned to the pitch of an exact fraction of
another string (a third proved convenient enough for the desired
results), an thus exactly repeatable melodies were invented.

But all the while there were backward people loath of the newfangled
logarhythms and looming maths. They had the hunting bow and arrow as
"all the civilization WE need" and were content to BANG on a STRING,
which the more cultured peoples considered inappropriate.

I should come up with something else about equidistant holes in a
reed, but I can't think of anything. I think, though, that something
about artificialness should be mentioned there.

And it all amount to this:

I believe that music arises from the instruments used.

The voice is totally free, without much to assist orientation in the
pitch continuum.

Some "found" instruments produce different pitches that are not
reproducable in similar instruments, and you use what you get: the
overblown tone on a didgeridoo for instance (or a shofar).

Some instruments are made, but their pitch depends on too many
variables to be predictable. In an ensemble of them, you just try
not to allow single pitches to get too close to each other, or, not
to have any intervals that stick out. That's one respectable tuning
aesthetic, the equidistant, and it applies especially to collections
of idiophones.

Collections of plucked strings are easier to tune, they behave
pretty predictably. You can get a definite pitch by dividing one of
the strings and tuning another one to it: Pythagorean tuning,
suitable for harps and such.

You can take a reed, a bone, or a string and shorten it with holes
or your fingers: the subharmonic series.

You can filter the sound of the voice or anything else which
vibrates in the audio range by varying a resonating cavity (throat
singing, jaw's harps) or by obstructing certain lower partials
(berimbaos, [mariners'] trumpets): the harmonic series. Take note
here that "common practice" evolved just north of the Alps, where
@ the vikings and such played lures, basically brass imitations of
mammoth tusks tuned a fourth (or fifth?) apart
@ there is a living tradition of alphorn and, most pertinently,
jaw's harp music where virtuosos play on several instruments at a
time.
This is very conducive to lower partial harmony, or, this is where
lower partial harmony belongs.

Have I mentioned everything?

Now there might be a problem where different instruments play
together, and this is where systems come in. Not that they need to
(flute, voice, and gongs in Balinesian music; all kinds of
instruments [none of them actually too hard to tune differently] in
Noh and probably Gagaku music). But you might as well reduce all the
possiblities to one system that is easy to try out and compute
(Pythagorean) or that is convenient for modulation (12-tET), or that
is closed (ETs), or... . Or you could posit a super-system that
unites different tunings (which is what I think the sruti system was
originally: a common home to three gramas that were based on pitches
produced by different types of instruments, or a method teaching how
to imitate them on an instruments not necessarily limited to one
tuning [which would have to be of the stopped string type]).

Well, thanks for listening.

klaus

Klaus,

I think one of the important points you're missing in your
ruminations is the psychological similarity of pitches at 2:1, and
the lesser but still significant similarity obtained at 3:2 and 4:3.
This sense of similarity may be inborn or it may be acquired
prenatally due to exposure to the harmonics in the mother's voice. In
any case, it's a significant feature that plays out quite clearly in
the melodies of virtually every musical culture around the world.
Though the realization of these ratios may often be "out-of-tune" by
Western standards, they (or some decent approximation thereof) still
seem to play a powerful role in shaping nearly all music, whether
steeped in a long tradition or produced spontaneously by beginners.

-Paul