back to list

Carried out on a stretcher*

🔗D. Stearns <stearns@xxxxxxx.xxxx>

5/6/1999 4:51:34 PM

Kraig Grady wrote:
>No ET can be tuned by ear which shows its own absurdity. This
becomes really apparent once one has worked with the just intervals it
approximates.

While the first person precept and 'the incontestable way it is...' are
often bothersome distinctions for the 'artist' to make... in the context of
an open forum on tuning(S) and intonation(S), comments like the above
always seem (to my oversensitive self anyway) like indefensible sarcasm's.

Dan

*Speaking of self-motivating tenets (which are obviously not the
incontestable way things are [for everyone...]); this (from Charles Ives
"Memos") is one of my personal favorites... "Any art or habit of life, if
it is limited chronically to a few processes that are the easiest to
acquire (and for that reason are said to be some natural laws), must at
some time, quite probably, become so weakened that it is neither a part of
art nor a part of life. Nature has bigger things than even-vibration-ratios
for man to learn how to use. Consonance is a relative thing (just a nice
name for a nice habit). It is a natural enough part of music, but not the
whole, or the only one. The simplest ratios, often called perfect
consonances, have been used for so long and so constantly that not only
music, but also musicians and audiences, have become more or less soft. If
they hear anything but do-me-soh or a near cousin, they have to be carried
out on a stretcher."

🔗Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@xxxxxxxxx.xxxx>

5/6/1999 7:09:34 PM

"D. Stearns" wrote:

> From: "D. Stearns" <stearns@capecod.net>
>
> Kraig Grady wrote:
> >No ET can be tuned by ear which shows its own absurdity. This
> becomes really apparent once one has worked with the just intervals it
> approximates.
>
> While the first person precept and 'the incontestable way it is...' are
> often bothersome distinctions for the 'artist' to make... in the context of
> an open forum on tuning(S) and intonation(S), comments like the above
> always seem (to my oversensitive self anyway) like indefensible sarcasm's.
>
> Dan

Then do it, measure the results and let me know! The proof is in the pudding.
At best one can tune then mistune away again I find the process absurd! but
the poetry good!
Actually at very best one might be able to ET it if one had perfect pitch.
within two cents is the tolerance I'll accept!
I guess if I said that If I stopped breathing for 15 min. I would be dead
might also classify as another first person precept.

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
www.anaphoria.com