A New Member

Hi there everybody!

Let me introduce myself.
I'm 22 year old student of philosophy living in Helsinki, Finland.
My father and many of my relatives are folk musicians and my grandpa
who was born in Minnesota was a professional accordionist although he
had other jobs as well. He received his musical training from his own
father. Although not formally trained he didn't restrict his
repertoire to polkas, tangos, mazurkas and Finnish folk music. I
remember him playing pieces of Johann Sebastian Bach and other
composers as well.
So it is only natural that I was interested in music from very early
age. My father was quite disappointed when I showed no interest on
the accordeon. I was instead drawn to the world of synthesizers! My
father can only blame Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode and Commodore 64.
Finally he bought a Yamaha SY35 synthesizer to me and my twin
brother. We had a lot of use for it in our teenage bands. Much later
I got a second hand E-mu Emax Sampler with which I did my first
microtonal experiments back in 1998. It was quite troublesome since
there is no tuning table in EMAX. Later I have figured out that the
scale which I tuned into it is called Harmonic Octatonic scale. Back
then I didn't find the sound of it interesting and I forgot the whole
subject of tuning for a while.
Recently I purchased a PC with a decent soundcard and started to mess
up with the soundfonts. I instantly found a way to tune my samples
into any scale I could imagine. My imagination was quickly exhausted
on inventing scales and soon I turned on the Internet for more
information and there I found YOU GUYS.
I want to thank especially you, Joe Monzo. Your index for tuning
terms has been an extremely valuable source of information. I have
spent almost all of my summer holiday in this fascinating subject
playing in different equal temperaments, pythagorean tuning, tonality
diamonds and combination product sets. For providing information on
the thoughts of Erv Wilson I want to thank Kraig Grady.
Also helpful have been the writings of the Ivor Darreg maintained by
Brian McLaren and the writings of Margo Schulter and Paul Ehrlich.
The Scala software by Manuel Op de Coul has been most helpful.
I could never have learned so much in such a short time without the
help of the microtonal community. Thank you all!
Now I would like to ask about a practical problem. Since I am a poor
student I couldn't possibly buy any microtonal controller so I have
to cope with the standard Halberstadt keyboard. Because scales
commonly have more than 12 pitches I have to map them across the
keyboard. I assume there is no general way to cope with this problem
but I would like to know how keyboardists of you handle this. For
eikosanies for example I have used the keys C C# D D# F F# G G# A A#
in two octaves. That is the best solution I have found for them since
the black keys work as visual cues. I fear that some great scales
like many of the equal temperaments may become unattractive to me
just because of the mapping problem. So if you know some good ways to
cope with it let me know!

best wishes,

Kalle Aho.

--- In tuning@y..., kalleaho@m... wrote:
> I fear that some great scales
> like many of the equal temperaments may become unattractive to me
> just because of the mapping problem. So if you know some good ways
to
> cope with it let me know!
>
> best wishes,
>
> Kalle Aho.

Hi Kalle, welcome, and thanks for introducing yourself! Personally,
the mapping problem does bother me more than it does some other
people (such as Joseph Pehrson and Brian McLaren). I'm assuming
you're familiar with my solution for 22-tET, which omits the "E" keys
on the keyboard, thus placing the "naturals" of my decatonic system
on the black keys, with the white keys acting as "sharps"
and "flats" . . . yes?

Dear Dan,

And, of course, now you've got all of us -- who not only love you
for your words but your music as well -- wanting to hear

"a series of microtonal pieces for two pianos, the Sovittaja Park
preludes, that were 100% influenced the place and my time spent
there on Damond pond."

And I just have to think that Prent Rodgers could come up with a
great piece inspired by the Finnish accordian cutting contests.

But I've been wrong before! :)

Thanks, as usual, for the fine verbiage, and for sharing part of your
life...

Cheers,
Jon

Hi to Kalle - I spent a terrific month in Finland in 1998, mostly for a
summer workshop on music cognition held in Jyvaskyla, but I enjoyed
Helsinki for a week too. It struck me what a great jazz scene there was in
Jyvaskyla, a small town of 25,000 or so -- twice a week there'd be open
sessions at a local pub, and so many musicians would come through, good
players, too.

Jon S. wrote:

> And I just have to think that Prent Rodgers could come up with a great
> piece inspired by the Finnish accordian cutting contests.

ha - on my last day in Helsinki I found a CD whose title has to be the
best of any CD I've ever owned:

Finnish Accordian Jazz: The Golden Years (1928-1953)

There are some wicked players on this, and even the sidemen are hip and
accomplished for the times.

I liked Dan's description of his pieces too - can we hear them?

best -- Jon W.

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

> I'm assuming you're familiar with my solution for 22-tET, which
> omits the "E" keys on the keyboard, thus placing the "naturals" of
> my decatonic system on the black keys, with the white keys
> acting as "sharps" and "flats" . . . yes?

Yes indeed. In fact I was just rereading your paper "Tuning,
Tonality, and Twenty-Two-Tone Temperament" and I'm going to tune my
system that way today and give it a try.

I have to ask what is your relation to JI?

This far I myself have been interested in both the temperaments and
just intonation. Personally I find it wise to tune scales derived
from Combination Product Sets or Tonality Diamonds in Just Intonation
since it is not particularly important to be able to modulate in
these systems. Strictly pure intervals give these scales an eerie
edge. I don't find justly tuned intervals boring at all as some
people do.

I am also interested in synthetic scales (which do not have any
prototypes in Just Intonation) because I'm a fan of Olivier Messiaen
and Iannis Xenakis.

Kalle

Hi Dan
and many thanks for your reply!

Unfortunately the rents have been going up here in Finland too,
especially in Helsinki. That's mainly because some people in the
Nokia Corporation have too much money and their landlords want their
share of it too. And so they raise all rents in the city.

Nevertheless my rent is still under 250$ since I reside in
Ostrobotnia Student's Union's flatlet which has 17 1/2 square meters
of space. Nowadays this is very rare so I'm very fortunate. I can
even concentrate on my studies and not take jobs for whole year if I
live modestly. This is very important since I want to have time to
make music too.

Kalle

--- In tuning@y..., kalleaho@m... wrote:
> --- In tuning@y..., "Paul Erlich" <paul@s...> wrote:
>
> > I'm assuming you're familiar with my solution for 22-tET, which
> > omits the "E" keys on the keyboard, thus placing the "naturals"
of
> > my decatonic system on the black keys, with the white keys
> > acting as "sharps" and "flats" . . . yes?
>
> Yes indeed. In fact I was just rereading your paper "Tuning,
> Tonality, and Twenty-Two-Tone Temperament" and I'm going to tune my
> system that way today and give it a try.
>
> I have to ask what is your relation to JI?

A love-hate relationship :) Seriously, as you can see in the paper, I
think consonance has a huge amount to do with approximating simple JI
ratios, but when it comes to tuning systems, I agree with Dave Keenan
that some form of temperament (not necessarily equal temperament) can
usually have more benefits than costs. We study these matters quite a
bit on <tuning-math@yahoogroups.com>.
>
> This far I myself have been interested in both the temperaments and
> just intonation.

Hopefully, by "temperaments" you don't just mean equal temperaments.

> Personally I find it wise to tune scales derived
> from Combination Product Sets or Tonality Diamonds in Just
Intonation
> since it is not particularly important to be able to modulate in
> these systems.

That makes absolutely perfect sense. However, many composers who have
used these JI structures, such as Harry Partch and Kraig Grady, have
embedded them in larger JI scales which "fill the holes" in a way
that allows for many more consonant relationships, as well as a sort
of full melodic flexibility. These scales generally conform to
Fokker's conception of "periodicity blocks" in the lattice. Dave
Keenan has shown convincingly that certain very fine temperings (NOT
ETs -- think meantone as a simple example) of these larger JI scales
can _greatly_ increase the number of consonant relationships, while
(to our ears) not materially decreasing the consonance of each of
these intervals. The details, and general principles, of all this are
being discussed mainly on <tuning-math@yahoogroups.com>, but much is
to be found in the archives of this list. Dave Keenan has also
constructed "microtemperaments" for JI scales that are not
periodicity blocks, for example Dean Drummond's "zoomoozophone" scale.

> Strictly pure intervals give these scales an eerie
> edge. I don't find justly tuned intervals boring at all as some
> people do.

I would at least try out some of Dave Keenan's microtemperaments, to
see if the quality of the slightly-tempered intervals is
aesthetically useful to you.
>
> I am also interested in synthetic scales (which do not have any
> prototypes in Just Intonation) because I'm a fan of Olivier
Messiaen
> and Iannis Xenakis.

You might be surprised how synthetic scales can often be related to
just intonation scales with certain "commas" tempered out . . .