Re: work against Nature/(intonational) semantics

[Paul Erlich:]
>Dan, it's funny, but when I first heard of you, it was about your album
_Opus Contra Naturem_ (sp?) in 20-tET.

While "Opus Contra Naturam" does indeed use a fair amount of 20-tET* (the
first guitar I ever had re-fretted was re-fretted to 20-tET), with few
exceptions, all of my music since the late `80's (and that tape in
particular) has used mixed-intonation, or poly-intonation processes.** This
was a very natural outgrowth of increasingly dense and layered,
musical/aesthetic tendencies... In short I try to empirically find
intonations/tunings that best enable individual parts to both shine through
the thicket _and_ reinforce the whole... For some this would no doubt seem
like an endless process of chasing one's tail (to which I would offer no
real argument!), but I really did grow into this quite naturally,*** and
little else seems to quite 'fill me up' the same way.

Dan

*Of which I'd personally say that the long end solo on "Not Even Love" is a
good example. (Not a "good example" of either 20-tET or good in the broad
sense -- but a "good example" in the sense of me _using_ 20-tET, and being
quite happy with the results...)

**FWIW I'd like to offer a personal comment (or opinion) on the
term/definition polymicrotonality found at Joe Monzo's excellent (and much
needed) "Dictionary of tuning terms":

<http://www.ixpres.com/interval/dict/index.htm>

I personally would prefer terminology (if indeed any terminology is really
necessary here) something along the lines of poly-intonation, or
mixed-intonation... It just seems to me that those (types of) terms would
not figuratively (nor conceptually) 'exclude' combining 12-tET with any
other non 12-tET intonation system... In this context, polymicrotonality
seems (to me) sort of like calling polymeters: poly'odd'meters - inasmuch
as it tends towards certain (unintended) figurative and conceptual
misnomers.

***And I was also most certainly swayed by the 'poly-everything' influence
of Charles Ives.