Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning Subject: Re: to Joe Pehrson

Me (Dave Keenan):
> > Down with outrageous JI fundamentalist claims!
> > But long live JI harmony (among other kinds).

Kraig Grady:
> All this talk of JI fundamentalism and i have yet to see any posted.
The JI people make no claims-they don't even post. I find this a
> figure of imagination and in continued bad taste to associate JI
with Fundamentalism. One the other hand there is a posse of Witch
> hunters.
> Talk about psycho acoustical proof, show me the fundamentalist!

I'm sorry about the unavoidable association with the worst excesses of
Religious Fundamentalism, but the term "fundamentalism" has a meaning
independent of what the beliefs are about.

They may not post, but they certainly make claims on their websites.

Having read David Doty's excellent recent post to this list on "False
reification" I cannot call him a JI Fundamentalist, but the following
earlier claim by him remains on the JIN website.

See http://www.dnai.com/~jinetwk/

"The simple-ratio intervals upon which Just Intonation is based are
the fundamental constituents of melody and harmony. They are what the
human auditory system recognizes as consonance, if it ever has the
opportunity to hear them in a musical context."

You see, he has said they are _THE_fundamental_ constituents, not only
of harmony (where he could perhaps be forgiven the slight hyperbole)
but also of melody (where I think Julia is entitled to be a little
annoyed, if not outraged).

And here's Kyle Gann from
http://home.earthlink.net/~kgann/tuning.html#tune4

"I've had interesting experiences playing just-intonation music for
non-music-major students. Sometimes they will identify an
equal-tempered chord as "happy, upbeat," and the same chord in just
intonation as "sad, gloomy." Of course, this is the first time
they've ever heard anything but equal temperament, and they're far
more familiar with the first sound than the second. But I think
they correctly hit on the point that equal temperament chords do have
a kind of active buzz to them, a level of harmonic excitement
and intensity. By contrast, just-intonation chords are much calmer,
more passive; you literally have to slow down to listen to them.
(As Terry Riley says, Western music is fast because it's not in tune.)
It makes sense that American teenagers would identify tranquil,
purely consonant harmony as moody and depressing. Listening from the
other side, I've learned to hear equal temperament music as
a kind of aural caffeine, overly busy and nervous-making. If you're
used to getting that kind of buzz from music, you feel the lack of
it as a deprivation when it's not there. But do we need it? Most
cultures use music for meditation, and ours may be the only culture
that doesn't. With our tuning, we can't.

My teacher, Ben Johnston, was convinced that our tuning is responsible
for much of our cultural psychology, the fact that we are so
geared toward progress and action and violence and so little attuned
to introspection, contentment, and acquiesence. Equal
temperament could be described as the musical equivalent to eating a
lot of red meat and processed sugars and watching violent
action films. The music doesn't turn your attention inward, it makes
you want to go out and work off your nervous energy on
something."

What patent nonsense. I personally find that Brahm's lullaby, for
example, is very soothing in 12-equal. If it is more so in JI, the
difference is extremely small.

Do you see what I (and Julia) mean?

I suppose that some JI proponents feel they need to make such
outrageous statements against non-JI tunings to try to counteract the
huge amount of ignorance and inertia working against acceptance of JI.
But I hope we can all see now that they really don't help the cause at
all. They just lead to further reactions in the opposite direction
like those of Julia's dissertation.

Perhaps the time is ripe for a little reconciliation. And a little
recognition that there is a hell of a lot of middle ground between
strict JI and 12-equal. We should be building bridges not fortifying
bunkers. 72-ET is a marvelous bridge.

🔗jpehrson2 <jpehrson@rcn.com>

--- In tuning@y..., "dkeenanuqnetau" <d.keenan@u...> wrote:

/tuning/topicId_38531.html#38542

>
> Having read David Doty's excellent recent post to this list
on "False reification" I cannot call him a JI Fundamentalist, but the
following earlier claim by him remains on the JIN website.
>
> See http://www.dnai.com/~jinetwk/
>
> "The simple-ratio intervals upon which Just Intonation is based are
> the fundamental constituents of melody and harmony. They are what
the human auditory system recognizes as consonance, if it ever has
the opportunity to hear them in a musical context."
>
> You see, he has said they are _THE_fundamental_ constituents, not
only of harmony (where he could perhaps be forgiven the slight
hyperbole) but also of melody (where I think Julia is entitled to be
a little annoyed, if not outraged).
>

***I'm sorry for continuing to inject a but of humor on this list,
but I find this absolutely *hilarious.* We're "looking for"
JI "Fundamentalism" and Doty uses the term "fundamental."

Well, *I* found it funny...

> And here's Kyle Gann from
> http://home.earthlink.net/~kgann/tuning.html#tune4
>

***Yes, and this is, of course, the famous "eating red meat" quote.
I try to stay away from that...

🔗Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@anaphoria.com>

>
>
> Message: 7
> Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2002 01:07:57 +0530
> From: Joel Rodrigues <joelrodrigues@mac.com>
> Subject: Re: to Joe Pehrson
>
> On Wednesday, July 10, 2002, at 02:31 , tuning@yahoogroups.com wrote:
> > Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@anaphoria.com>
> >
> >> Hello Joe!
> >
> > My objection to the use of the tern is that it implies that
> > practitioners of JI try to impose it on others.
>
> The 'true path' ideology of JI is implied often enough, perhaps
> sometimes unwittingly.Historically there is probably more ture path comments on !@ ET and there continue to be so than any other tuning.

> Personally I am so tired of seeing everything under the sun
> being reduced to a small numbers to serve JI advocates. Ooh look
> she/he says 704.xxx cents, that's so close to 701.954980949,
> ooooooh juuuuuusst intonation baby !!! The sad part is this is
> only a slight exaggeration, as like statements *have* been made
> here.

Well Joel here is one point where we agree although i see it as as a justification for usually the ET or temperment in question

>
>
> > . Just look
> > at how many of them post. They have all been driven off. It
> > seems its OK to attack what JI people do and let what ever the
> > ET crowd do
> > and say without any reflection.
>
> I've yet to see this any of this supposed hard-line ET
> advocation. You seem to be stuck in some kind of JI v/s ET
> limbo. Wake up Kraig ! It's not real ! You're just having a bad
> dream...

72 ET is in front of you

>
>
> 'Some did manage to stand out, either because they bent the
> rules of serialism to their will, or because they possessed the
> imagination and developed the influence to spread the word that
> serialism could be a vibrant, meaningful technique.'

The direction of new music left it all behind. Go into a store and look in the experimental section. It is divorced from such dead ends and it's practices are antiquated at best. Still born at Cage with some Minimalism in the
background

>
>
> Here's a lovely turn of phrase from the above series of
> articles, a quote from Nicolas Slonimsky describing Sheila
> Silver's music, '"enlightened dissonance devoid of ostensible
> disharmonies."'. I'd like that plastered on a T-shirt. I dare
> say some JI hard heads would sooner suck a lemon than utter a
> sentence like that.

why? (BTW i studied with him )

>
>
> > I can see it has provided nothing more
> > than one more thing for academia to "talk " about.
>
> I disagree. But will say that if *mainstream* music academia
> could get it's butt off the couch and show some courage, we'd
> have a hope. Still at least there may be more mutual respect
> and civility on display in academia than here.

Academia works by pretending things don't exist until they are dead. It does more to nip more ideas in the bud than to foster new exploration.

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
http://www.anaphoria.com

The Wandering Medicine Show
Wed. 8-9 KXLU 88.9 fm

Subject: Re: to Joe Pehrson

🔗Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@anaphoria.com>

🔗dkeenanuqnetau <d.keenan@uq.net.au>

🔗jpehrson2 <jpehrson@rcn.com>

🔗Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@anaphoria.com>