Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning woodwind, brass, extended techniques etc

Hi again Tuning,

sorry not to have been able to join in the recent stuff about
instruments before (and about consistency, but I'll leave that for
another time...). Also, if you don't mind I've changed the title - too
many sightings of 'was Patrick Ozzard-Low' in the past tense get a
little disconcerting! ;)

George wrote:

>Patrick ...first contacted me (by phone, at what was around 3 a.m....
>This was also the event which first awakened me out of my microtonal
>slumber, so if you happen to read this, thank you Patrick!)

My pleasure! anyone who wants to ring me at 3 am - just count to ten
and wait till tomorrow! ;) Oh, except it almost 3 am now... Thanks
George - I'm very glad indeed I made that call!

Now seriously, about these microtonal woodwinds, brasswinds, extended
techniques... I'll try to put my view on this as clearly as I can.
You'll see that I'm not taking sides. Many truths have been expressed
on the list about this recently - apparently in contradiction - but I
think that in reality they complement each other. Here goes (apologies
for length):

Firstly, I think its worth taking Johnny's position on this seriously,
not only because there's more than a grain of truth in what he says, but
because there are quite a significant and now increasing number of
players who specialise in performing contemporary music, in Europe, USA
and elswhere, who ARE indeed capable of playing mainly quarter-tones but
also (as in Johnny's group) other tuning systems too. Of course the
overall accuracy of performance amongst these groups (considering pitch
alone) varies, but as has been said, 1/4-tone realisation (for example)
is seldom intended to be especially 'strict' (in a mathematical sense),
since composers and performers are more concerned with being 'in-tune',
and that depends greatly on musical context, and these factors, taken
together, are not easily correlatable or quantifiable. In my opinion,
for example, being 'in-tune' is not reducible (even vertically, moment
by moment, which to my mind is not a sufficent criterion) to analysis in
terms of 'pure' (JI) tunings, because what counts as 'in-tune' results
from both acoustic and 'encultured' phenomena.

Anyway... one amongst quite a number of groups who achieve pretty
'accurate' performances (in the above sense), is James Wood's UK based
ensemble 'Critical Band'. At the recent CNMI symposium their
clarinettist, Ian Mitchell, was present. He commented at one stage that
making 1/4-tone (or n-tone) instruments was unnecessary, and would 'take
the fun out of playing 1/4 music' (which Ian can sight-read while eating
breakfast, reading the newspaper, and cycling to work). I countered
that, were 1/4-tone instruments available, the players could still have
their 'fun' playing 1/8-tones - or whatever. And I think he gently
concurred...

But this misses a more fundamental point which I think Johnny (and many
others) have raised, which is that wind instruments aren't played 'in-
tune' just by pressing keys etc. Rather, it is the intentionality of
the performer, honed by years of experience, which really does the job.
Once the player has as tuning in their mind's ear (or ear's mind), for
the good player tuning, given the right (non-standard by conventional
standards) combinations of fingerings, embouchure and breath-control are
second nature, and come quite naturally...

As I tried to say in the book (despite it's three billion blemishes
which I now see...) this must be recognised as part-and-parcel of all
wind (wood and brass) playing.

Now the thing is - when George writes, very compellingly, that -

>>If microtonality is going to be so difficult to achieve that
>>it is going to be beyond the reach of all but an elite group, then
>>there is no chance of its becoming a part of the musical mainstream,
>>achievable by unexceptional amateur musicians, and it will be doomed
>>to remain a very small niche in the world of music.

>>This, I submit, is the compelling reason for the creation of
>>microtonal instruments.

- I am in considerable degree of agreement with him. But there is also
a compelling counter-argument, which is that if tuning largely depends
on the intentionality of the performer, no matter how many logically
controlled tone-holes the instrument has, if the performer ain't doing
the intentionality thing it ain't gonna sound in tune anyhow.

Johnny's other point is that it isn't _that_ difficult, once you get
into it (and if you're already an excellent player). (Johnny's
perspective is slightly biased by the fact that the bassoon is the least
'in-tune' of the orchestral winds - if, for example, comparison were
made by blowing them all mechanically. Because the learner bassoonist
has to play _against_ the 'natural' tuning of the instrument right from
the start, playing 'alternative' tunings is not so counter-intuitive as
on other winds. Or so I understand).

[Another point worth bearing in mind regarding tuning on woodwinds is
that (again, as I understand it, from Leo Fuks) the player is constantly
compensating for the changes in gas composition as the player blows out
(the make-up of gas changes significantly with time). Without
compensation, on a longish note, the pitch of a note falls by up-to
about 20 cents. So I take a the pinch of salt when players talk about
achieving accuracy (constant through start-time 0 and throughout the
compensation process) of 'one cent'. Johnny, did you ever get one of
your friends round to do 100% objective tests on intonation - with a
good (say Peterson) pitch meter? Not that it really makes any
difference...]

Anyway... the counter-counter-argument goes: player's will have a
better chance of learning and refining the tuning if the process of
learning to play a new instrument itself refines the process of the
'intentional' learning: in short, that the new instrument will generate
a new degree of sensitivity and reactivity in the _player_.

So things are really upside down to conventional thinking: the most
important thing about any musical instrument is the person who's playing
it. And the 'person' who teaches the player to play is... to some
extent... the instrument.

A counter-counter-counter-argument is: really good players have refined
tuning anyway. When the Berlin Phil play Messaien do you say: 'hey, I
wish they would play better in tune'? Occasionally perhaps - but 99.99%
of the time questions of tuning don't enter your head: its wonderful
music. So we don't need any further tuning refinement.

But counter-counter-etc is: that is not so, generally, with
microtonality. Most listeners regularly ask themselves when listening
to such music: 'I wonder if I'm really hearing what the composer
intended'. New instruments (ones which really worked) could greatly
help, I believe, focus complex melody and harmony. (For simple
microtonal harmony the need for new instrument may be less.)

However, there again, simple or slow music may call for the greatest
uniformity of tone throughout the scale, and that is categorically NOT
available on existing instruments if non-standard tunings are required.

And so, all in all...I still believe passionately that we need new
acoustic instruments.

George also wrote:

> Patrick reports that this
>sort of technology has already been tested (to a limit extent), and
>it has elicited some very favorable reactions from the players
>involved.

Just to be 100% clear: very favourable from a excellent trumpet player,
Steve Altoft. We don't unfortunately have any reports on radical
microtonal wind instruments yet.

George also wrote:

>I also mentioned brass instruments. Within the past couple of years
>I completely rethought my original brass proposal and discarded it in
>favor of a completely new approach that does the same thing for the
>brass instruments that the Bosanquet keyboard could do for
>synthesizers (and did for the Scalatron) or that the sagittal symbols
>can do for notation: My new approach employs easy-to-learn fingerings
>that partially build on existing (12-EDO) patterns and carry over
>from one tonal system to another. This can be implemented in multi-
>system brass instruments that would allow a player to have 17, 19,
>22, 24, 31, 36, and 41-EDO (and perhaps others) all in a single four-
>valve instrument. I need to emphasize that these are not
>hypothetical instruments; I've done the math on the tube lengths, and
>it can all be done with mechanical valves. (Patrick has been
>pursuing the use of electrically controlled valves lately, and if
>that will offer any significant advantage in cost or reliability,
>then that could be a possibility.)

I think what George has done here is very remarkable. Unfortunately I
have still not been able to persuade our brass instrument maker (Dave
Cowie) to examine closely what George has done, partly because Dave is
no mathematician, partly because he's got his own ideas of how he wants
HIS brass quintet to work (and I can't argue with that!). However, I'm
working on it...

>With a multi-system instrument the player would not be locked into a
>single tonal system upon making a purchase, would not incur any
>adverse financial consequences upon a change of mind about that
>system, and would not have to carry more than one instrument to a
>performance to play in different systems. Likewise, the manufacturer
>would not have to produce separate models for different tonal systems
>(as if that would happen anyway!), thus giving the convertible
>instruments the widest possible market, i.e., the entire microtonal
>community (which is small enough as things go).
>
>Does this sound like the sort of "standard" that might appeal to you
>or anybody else out there?

I _have_ been talking (very very very tentatively) to a major UK
ensemble/orchestra about them taking up some microtonal brass
instruments for a demonstration... Further details as things progress,
I guess in about 25 years or so ;) ...

>Both Patrick and Harry Partch gave the same answer to this question.
>The one (and probably only) thing that is going to put microtonality
>in demand is to have some significant microtonal music come into
>existence. Whether it might be the sort of instant success that
>would accomplish what "Switch-on Bach" did for electronic music, or
>whether it would more likely be a significant cumulative body of work
>of a group of talented people, it's ultimately up to those of us who
>consider ourselves microtonal composers to compose something
>significant. Short of that, I don't think we have a prayer.
>
>A primary purpose of the paper is to secure funding for what is
>admittedly a highly ambitious project, and in endeavoring to convey a
>vision of what should be the future of music, I think that Patrick
>felt that it was useful to show that musical tuning has a varied and
>illustrious past. What we are using today has been in general use
>for a relatively short time; and what we will use in the future does
>not have to be what we are using today.

Thank you George for these incisive summaries!

Paul wrote:

>i'm surprised to hear you say that, given the imaginative mechanisms
>you've proposed for new wind and brass instruments. it seems that 72
>would be far more practical, since one could preserve a musician's
>lifetime of training in 12-equal, and then use the electronic keying
>technology to provide a way, with just a couple of extra buttons, to
>inflect by a twelfth-tone, by a sixth-tone, and by a quarter-tone.
>and you're done!

Thanks Paul. On a woodwind this kind of thing may well be possible,
assuming, as George later pointed out, you've got three extra fingers!
But seriously, of course it's possible to reduce the number of keys
required to do the jobs by simple combinative logic. But the major
problems are acoustics and interface (if the instr is an extension of
the conventional design):

- the number of tone-holes used, and the the acoustic damage of having a
large number of 'chimneys' and an increase of multiple inner-
enlargements within the bore itself; and the design of an optimal and
playable (cognizable) arrangement of finger movements which are not
necessarily biased toward particular (conventional) pitch arrangements
and figurations. There are so _many_ ways of solving the latter problem
(each with plusses and minuses) that choosing which one (or ones) to
prototype is the first problem...

Joseph (I think!) wrote:

>*YES!* Or even, possibly, with *conventional* fingerings and a *FOOT
>PEDAL* or some such to affect the three "inflections!"

IRCAM have developed a foot-pedal for the conventional clarinet. If you
buy any of Alain Damiens recent recordings he is likely to be using
this. Basically, it's something like a MIDI-keyboard-sustain pedal
which attaches via a bicycle cable to a small piston which rides inside
a horizontal cylinder - a 'branch-tube' - on the side of the mouth-
piece, just forward from the reed. When you press the pedal down it
pulls the piston outward, thus increasing the volume of air inside the
mouthpiece - and the pitch falls. Of course the amount the pitch falls
varies proportionally to the number of toneholes which are closed. So
its not a 'discreet' 'scale-forming' device - its a slide, operating
within about a tone. Unfortunately the device also affects the timbre
of the note - but this can be used to goo effect too, if that's what the
composer wants.

That's all I can manage now (and its 4.00 am) and fingers are going.
There's a book of this stuff in my head and I'd be here until tommorrow
at 4am.

George - I've seen the woodwind stuff and will reply when possible.

Aaron (pitchcolor!) if you're reading this, I recieved the new diagram -
thanks - back to you later!

Hope this is useful -

cheers for now,

Patrick

woodwind, brass, extended techniques etc

🔗Patrick Ozzard-Low <pol@c21-orch-instrs.demon.co.uk>

🔗jpehrson2 <jpehrson@rcn.com>

🔗Afmmjr@aol.com