level of precision

Dear Paul:

By way of of greeting and I hope welcome, may I say thank you all for the great ongoing work and archives, which I am astonished to find after 15 years of discontented wondering/wandering about: Where is this subject? (That's how long I haven't had a computer). I've been a performer and student of Erv Wilson's and Kraig Grady's methods and I can still say I wish they'd be be more forthcoming about what it is they're doing. At the same time, I think there's much to to be considered in the context of "Let she who has ears...hear."

As it was given to me by Harry Partch (and others), JI--Just Intonation--is what The Ideal Ear wants to hear. But I don't think HP (especially!) ever made a distinction between that and what my ears want to hear: simple whole number ratios. At its most basic level, I don't believe there's really any difference between any numerical abstraction--and isn't 'number' the penultimate abstraction?--and what the ear wants or does not want to hear. (There's a joke about 'drum and drummer'--may I suggest 'numb and number'?).

Without waxing metaphysical on the subject, I think the whole point is simply not to underestimate what human beings are capable of perceiving! At that point--which was Partch's point--a few cents matters, and a dozen becomes a controversy. Then, god bless this list, we experience the eloquent contestants in that controversy. And then also we find out who is a nihilist and who believes in and is willing to do something creative.

Again it must be said, don't underestimate what you or I or anyone else can hear. No, I'm not absolutely certain that my 3/2's and 5/4's are within fractions of a cent true, but I know and accept when--and why!--they're not. And at that point, precision becomes poetry, I hope.

Thanks (again!) for the extaordinary work--all y'all!

Pete McRae

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--- In tuning@y..., Pete McRae <ambassadorbob@y...> wrote:

At its most basic level, I don't believe there's really any
difference between any numerical abstraction--and isn't 'number' the
penultimate abstraction?--and what the ear wants or does not want to
hear. (There's a joke about 'drum and drummer'--may I suggest 'numb
and number'?).

I don't understand what this means, but clearly there does come a
point where the theoretically irrational numbers of an et and the
theoretically rational numbers of JI will sound the same--the 8539 et
I mentioned would be well over that line, for instance. It's been
suggested that 72 is "effectively" JI, which I don't buy, but I think
you can make a case for the 171-et, with errors less than 1/2 cent,
as being effectively JI so far as the 7-limit goes.