Re: "...axiomatic perorations"/D is for delete

[Ray Tomes:]
It seems that no-one is addressing the key point. Why have a compromise at
all?

Ray,

These are a just few post from just the last few days... and while I can
hardly claim: "Solutions to all the problems raised will be suggested and a
grand structure erected," I believe that they do at least "address" the
point.... But then again, as they agree with nearly nothing you say...
perhaps they really don't address the point?

Dan

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 inconte
stable 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:]
>Then do it, measure the results and let me know! The proof is in the
pudding.

I've never had to tune an equal temperament by ear... And the point from my
perspective is that this is (as both a musician and a composer) a non-issue
(for me). [A bad analogy might be something on the order of saying: "Lets
see you fly without an airplane..."] In short, whether I can or I can't
tune an equal temperament by ear is really besides the point in the context
of my actual musical doings... But keeping the discussion strictly in the
'tuning by ear' context of which you wrote; you seem to be saying that
every fraction of an octave has a suitable JI representation that is
(easily?) tunable by the ear alone...? ("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.") But to what degree is this
really the case? Are 3/5ths & 4/7ths of an octave really nothing more than
illegitimate 3/2's? Regardless of whether or not you happen to believe (as
I do) that the equal division of the octave is a legitimate tuning entity
outside of the _one-dimensional_, 'historical expedience' role in which it
is often cast;I really don't think you would have to look very hard, or
far, to find many examples along these lines.

Are simple JI intervals easier to tune by ear than fractions of an octave?
Of course! Is this desirable and useful? Absolutely. Are these the
chief/only concerns of tuning and intonation......

Dan

---------------------------------------------------------------

[Kraig Grady:]
>frankly a while back I listed Why I preferred JI over ET. I expected to
get a list back.

Well if you expected a list of why I prefer ET over JI, I wouldn't have one
to give back;- as I don't...

FERTILE FIELDS IN ALL DIRECTIONS?
Before I was aware of even fairly common terms like microtone or
quartertone, and in what I believe to be a natural process of
musical/creative curiosity and experimentation, I was drawn to various
attempts at manipulating, regulating, and aligning intonation.* (It would
actually take several years before it ever really sunk in that there were
many formal systematized ways to go about this...) When I did eventually
settle into using (almost exclusively) intonation and tuning scenarios and
methods that weren't the octave divided into twelve equal parts; I did so
because I was utterly fascinated by both the immediate usefulness, and the
latent possibilities of such a vastly expanded expressive and structural
resource... And some fourteen or so years on, I have honestly yet to
encounter a single tuning scenario that doesn't seem to (either by way of
its particular or general usefulness) 'LIKE MUSIC...' Clouds of beats/no
beats, no fifths/all fifths, melodic commas/harmonic commas... the good the
bad and the neutral - Fertile fields in all directions...**

When I first started looking into what 'microtonal' literature I could (A)
find, and (B) have even the remotest chance of understanding... three
things seemed to jump right out at me: (1) The theoretical and technical
scope was immense, _extremely_ daunting, and could probably prove to be
just as alluring as the actual sounds themselves... (2) Until the
widespread advent of the Internet, you probably had to windup quite outside
the readily available channels*** to acquire much more than a misunderstood
misrepresentation of Harry Partch and quartertones... and (3) From the
"trista"**** of Hermann Helmholtz' classic "On the Sensation of Tone," to
the red meat, processed sugars, and violent action movies***** of Kyle
Gann's contemporary "Just Intonation Explained" -- my personal awe and
admiration of an undiminished pitch continuum (where all the possible
structural and emotional resources one could find and make useful were as
such _fundamentally_ useful******) seemed to be standing in direct
opposition to the oft repeated ideological equilibrium's of just
intonation.

In his introduction to the 1954 edition of "On The Sensation Of Tone,"
Henry Margenau would write: "...and the musician finds in it unexhausted
treasure if he wishes to understand his art..." While I certainly believe
that he got the unexhausted treasure part right(!), I also believe that the
indicative "IF" of an "if he wishes to understand his art,"******* has
fostered not only the careful and considered 'high accountabilities' of
physiological literatim (et al...), but also a host of axiomatic
perorations that to this day comprise a sizable portion of the
tuning/intonation narrative.

Dan

*Anyone who might be interested in hearing a specific audio example of
these types of "various attempts at manipulating, regulating, and aligning
intonation," can see Silvered.ram/.rm, or Blue Caro.ram/.rm @ Jeff
Collins': http://members.xoom.com/Minor2nd/

**Though it should go without saying - Just because I personally happen to
have been open and receptive to all these different types of tuning
possibilities, that is in no way meant to imply that I believe my music to
be any better off than that created out of the most excluding and
uncontestable 'way it is' intonational view. That said: When it comes to
the strictly quantifiable structural components of music, I really can't
see any (reasonable) reason why [regardless of whether I personally happen
to find any use for it or not] a potentially useful method/tool ["Natural,
reasonable, and inherently pleasing" - or not/"Easy, convenient, and
without logical aural causation" - or not] wouldn't-shouldn't-couldn't
potentially be put to good _OR BETTER_ ('musical') use by someone (/else)
somewhere (/else).

***Even those frequented by someone with a natural curiosity (if not a
'natural' technical orientation) for such things.

****pg. 230 [Helmholtz, "On the Sensations of Tone"]

*****The actual quote from Kyle Gann's "Just Intonation Explained" @:
http://home.earthlink.net/~kgann/tuning.html is... "Equal temperament could
be described as the musical equivalent to eating a lot of red meat and
processed sugars and watching violent action films."

******Which of course is neither some sort of artistic carte blanche, or
some righteous character contingency. (It is largely my autobiographical
droning on about that which takes the soul + brain + ear + eye + hand
ensemble-of-the-conditioned-and-the-innate in for a reasonably robust
'microtonal' turn or two in the first place.)

*******While it's obviously impossible to say exactly what role "Genesis Of
A Music" played in supplying an example where the germane egression from a
wholly unsatisfactory status quo = AN UPPERCASE INTEMPERANCE OF AN
IDEOLOGY;-- Surely Harry Partch embodied as vibrant a dose of the former as
could perhaps be hoped for, _and_ preached the latter with a blaring glee
of rarely matched perspicacity and derision!

p.s.
NATURES MUSIC:
_testis unus, testis nullus_.

Personally I just can't help but feel that if the great anagogic promise of
art lies outside the realm of some wayward humanistic ideomotor
impingement;-- it must surely encompass a hell of a lot more than the
exclusive explications and numinous exhortations of any one of its
teleological simulacrums.