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Notation standards

🔗Neil Haverstick <STICK@USWEST.NET>

1/16/2002 6:31:22 AM

I'm not really responding specifically to recent posts about 72, and
notation...those posts suggested something to me, which I'll briefly
mention. For the 2000 Microstock concert, I composed and performed a
solo guitar piece on fretless electric, which used a tuning of 1/1, 5/4,
3/2, 7/4, 35/32, and 21/16. Once I had the tuning, I started looking for
motifs, by ear, and after about a year, a whole flood of ideas came to
me, some of which I used in the piece. I will eventually record this
music, a bit further down the road. My point is this...although I can
find and play the riffs which belong to this piece, I don't have a clue
about what notes I'm playing, in an intellectual sense...nor, at this
point, do I care. If you asked me to notate it, I would be in big
trouble. Yet, I can play it, and the melodies, in places, are quite
specific. I'm sure not saying that notation is bad, as it definitely
fosters communication between musicians who are trying to play a common
score...and, if I ever wanted others to play this piece with me, as in
unison lines, perhaps writing it out would be very helpful, needless to
say. I have always been, and still am fascinated with, the more non
intellectual forms of music, especially blues, where it's done by feel
and intuition. I don't know how it's done, but it is...that's why art,
itself, is so amazing...it doesn't need to be talked about, or theorized
about...it is somehow brought into the physical world, from somewhere,
and no one knows how...Hstick
(BTW, I can write music in 12 eq if need be...I have a whole bunch of
solo guitar pieces sitting around, and of course I wrote out "Mysteries"
for Hoogewerf...)