Re: [tuning] Digest Number 1612

> From: "Jon Szanto" <JSZANTO@ADNC.COM>
> Subject: Re: Achieving success...
>
> Paul,
>
> --- In tuning@y..., "Paul Erlich" <paul@s...> wrote:
> > > but certainly the
> > > progression in Afro-Cuban musics shows an increase in the
> > complexity
> > > of rhythmic structure and interplay,
> >
> > Right . . . but we're talking about large pitch sets in melodies.
>
> I was only holding open the door that as rhythms could become more
> complex and _still_ hold undeniable sway, maybe the same could be
> said of expanding resources for complex melodies, if the listener
> became similarly 'hip' to the evolution.

Spent the past few days looking into internet resources on Middle
Eastern and Balkan rhythms. Many of these are certainly in a "higher"
class of complexity compared to lots of familiar rhythms in the West.
However, what we look at as 11/8, they may be internally thinking
of as "short short short long short" (2 2 2 3 2) hence it is really
a sequence of 5 familiar things. You can see other more complex
rhythms which will be similarly heirarchical, like (artificial
example follows, but its kinda hip!)

24/8
7 + 8 + 9
(2+2+3) + (3+3+2) + (2+2+2+3)

This does get back to some form of Miller 7+-2 stuff.

(If we look at Afro-Cuban and other West African descended musics,
we have some "simple" fundamentals in the "marriage of 3 and 2" and
the clave pattern etc...)

I believe something like this holds in a melody sense too. I don't
think I could ever grasp a "white key" scale of more than about 9
notes, however, that doesn't mean that it can't freely modulate or
borrow neighbors from some infinite pallette, as long as I can deal
with some part of the heirarchy at that sort of level.

Related thoughts to this :

I like Babbitts music because of the repeated notes. He allows
his very complicated melodic material slip into these little
"micro-motifs", and suddenly, there is something comprehendable.
If this didn't occur, it would just sound like random notes
at random volumes to me (at which point it is likely that real
world noises will be more interesting since they often have
timbral activity that we try to eliminate from our musical
instruments).

One way of dealing with non-octave scales is to build them up
heirarchically from smaller cells similar to tetrachordality,
just don't have them bump into a usable 2/1 (or hit it in the
middle of a pattern so its function is not quite a 2/1).

Latest scale I'm working with, (in 12, but I'm trying some
other tunings...)

logically 1 b2 #2 3 [4 #4 b5] 5 b6 #6 7
^^^^^^^: not quite sure whether I want
one or all of these to tie the
repeated thingies together...

"JI" : 1/1 12/11 7/6 5/4 [ ] 3/2 18/11 7/4 15/8
^
[4/3 11/8 7/5 10/7 16/11]

Relating to the non-octave thing I mentioned,, 0one could
construct it in 31 as the cell

3 4 3 4 4

and it will produce this series, miss the octave, and keep
repeating the cell on the chain of fifths (1, 5, 2, 6, 3 etc...)
Of course this is a MOS, but in a non-octave world, the addition
of a sharp HERE also adds a sharp THERE, and its only on the
same cell degree, not related to the octave... I guess this gets
into how I would approach using the Peirce-Bohlen (sp, sp)...

I'm not sure THIS is entirely useful... I'm more inclined to
keep it as an octave scale (again in 31) like...

3 4 3 3 [5] 3 4 3 3
^
[2,3 and 3,2 equally available]

But back to the 3 4 3 4 4, if we make it an octave scale it looks
like
3 4 3 4 4 3 4 3 3

For MOSniks, this is two alterations from a 9 note MOS.

s L s L L s L s s <- the scale
take out
two s L s L s L s L s <- the MOS parent
alterations

...and it has a symmetric rotation (which probably would
sound a bit harsh in 31...)

L s L s s s L s L

The success will be when I can improvise in it at speed (with
taste and feeling) over the 11/8 above, regardless of the tuning!

Bob Valentine