Re: [tuning] Digest Number 2241

Mark:
> >The generalised layout is for one thing very good, but is
> >still suffers from one defect - very few classically
> >trained pianists are willing to relearn their technique
> >for a generalised layout.
>
> Graham:
>I don't like this idea of something being defective because it's different
>to something more popular. It's reality that's at fault here, not the
>generalized layout.

I still think that we must work with what we have. We cannot re-educate
genrations of pianists/keyboard players. Reality may be at fault, but I do
not subscribe to utopian views.

> Regardless of what people say or are not willing to do, it
> remains that any music which could be called "microtonal
> keyboard music" in the sense we now say "classical keyboard
> music", will require a radically different layout and
> technique.
>
> You can't make an omelate without breaking some eggs.

>The latest fashions in economic theory are on our side here. At least
>according to last week's Capitalist. I've got a link here

><http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=1352924>

>which I think you can get at without a subscription. The upshot is:
>
>"""
>Name a plainly superior technology that society has set aside not because
>of private cost or self-incompatibility, but because wide adoption was a
>precondition for its success. Not easy. Network effects do exist, and in
>principle they could work as the advocates of strong lock-in say, but in
>practice they have turned out to be far milder than e-commerce zealots
>supposed�in case after case, too weak to suppress plainly superior
>products.
>"""

>So, if a generalized keyboard is plainly superior for microtonal music it
>can't be suppressed!

But, we all use VHS, we nearly all use Microsoft, we all use standard
railway gauge, and English is an awful language, yet it is slowly killing
off languages around the world. Todays pet econobabble doesn't erase the
past.

>> >If microtonal music is to get more than a fringe foothold, it
>> >is important to innovate by degrees. Wiping the slate clean
>> >is ostensibly the best path to take (Partch), but reinventing
>> >notation for each new instrument, and reinventing the whole
>> >technique of a pianist is just plain impossible.
>>
>> We'll see about that!

>If the microtonal fringe produces great music, it won't stay a fringe for
>long. If it doesn't, how fortunate we didn't pollute the mainstream with
>our new keyboards!

If nobody can play the great music then the great music will remain in the
fringe. Even great music written in conventional ways with conventional
instruments remains in the fringe.

My view is to write great music with instruments which can be adapted for
the purpose, without disturbing too greatly the technique of the performer.
Then, if these performers can then see how much easier it could be played
on the 'new instruments', the new instruments will take off.

You just can't shove a generalised keyboard in front of my (ordinary - NB!)
musician, and expect them to adjust. You've got to make them *want* to play
the new keyboards, new instruments.

There are some who are always willing to experiment, but these are in the
minority. But at least the minority is growing.

Mark

[Mark Gould wrote...]
>>It's reality that's at fault here, not the generalized layout.
>
>I still think that we must work with what we have. We cannot
>re-educate genrations of pianists/keyboard players. Reality
>may be at fault, but I do not subscribe to utopian views.

Sometimes progress is gradual, sometimes there are 'paradigm
shifts'. Beethoven, Jazz, Einstein, Microsoft (since you
bring it up) switching to NT, Apple switching to OS X, are all
examples of more sudden change being successful. In some cases
backward-compatibility was provided. The ability to map 12-tET
to a generalized keyboard while keeping familiar fingerings
might be viewed as backward-compatibility. Probably beats the
impossibly-slow "Classic" emmulation under OS X!

There's also a danger in too much backward compatibility. Tasks
that are very similar tend to compete for brain space once one
of them has been well-learned. For example, switching to Dvorak
makes most people forget their QWERTY skills unless the
retraining is done very carefully.

DSKeyboards, makers of 7/8-width Halberstadt keyboards ('feel
what it's like to play the piano with bigger hands') suffered
from this (according to them). Even after a few days of playing
the smaller keys, the normal keyboard was akward for most
(including yours truly). I bet learning a Wilson keyboard
won't hurt my Halberstadt playing. (George?)

>But, we all use VHS, we nearly all use Microsoft, we all use
>standard railway gauge, and English is an awful language, yet
>it is slowly killing off languages around the world. Todays
>pet econobabble doesn't erase the past.

I used both VHS and Beta both right up to when I banned all
forms of tape storage from my life two years ago. English is
a strapping-good language, in my opinion.

It's really just a matter of personal choice. A friend of mine
lives in a house he and his wife built, in the wilderness, on
solar and hydro-electric power. They raised a child there. Paul
Vandervoort, a professional Halberstadt artist, taught himself to
play the Janko keyboard. Now he plays both professionally. Cool
things can happen when people put their minds to it.

>Even great music written in conventional ways with conventional
>instruments remains in the fringe.

Not for long, usually. History seems to have done well in this
regard. Even in contemporary music, poor artists sometimes make
it to the top, but the best artists almost always make it to the
top (example: Phish).

>My view is to write great music with instruments which can be
>adapted for the purpose, without disturbing too greatly the
>technique of the performer.

Well, there's certainly several lifetimes of work on this path,
and you won't get anything but encouragement from me!!

However, please don't diss the more radical path. See, I'm
claiming that the design of an instrument inspires music in
some deep way. Instruments are tools for coming up with things
you wouldn't have otherwise. Manuscript paper itself can be
an instrument in this respect. But consider that a great number
of history's most celebrated composers were first and foremost
keyboardists (Bach, Beethoven). This changed in the last century
when specializing in playing became a living. But almost all
composers work at the piano at some point. And arguably, the
defining instrument of the last century of musical innovation has
been the guitar...

You will, of course, be able to write plenty of strapping-good
music by remapping the Halberstadt, using more than one
Halberstadt at a time, etc. But my point is, there's a class of
new music you won't be able to write on paper for somebody else
to play -- you'll have to learn the new keyboard yourself.

This more utopian approach can make the new instruments take off,
too. Beethoven essentially invented the piano in this way, I'll
argue. It had a familiar keyboard, but it was certainly capable
of things the harpsichord, organ, and clavichord were not!

I understand the world's best musical saw player (by far) is some
guy from Brazil who bought a 'learn the musical saw' instructional
video and practiced often.

The world's best checkers player (by far) beat all computer
checkers programs until his recent death, and was the only human
who could do so. Now, the best checkers player in the known
universe is a computer, but we'll never know if the guy would
have beaten it.

Interesting that touch-typing wasn't invented until many years
after the typewriter. "Invented", because one dude figured it
out. He went all the way to a competition against the fastest
hunt-and-peck typist in the land, and won so convincingly he
garnered global attention.

Don't know anything about running, but I've read that when the
barrier of the '5-minute mile' was broken, it was broken in
spades.

-Carl

--- In tuning@y..., "Carl Lumma" <clumma@y...> wrote:
>
> DSKeyboards, makers of 7/8-width Halberstadt keyboards ('feel
> what it's like to play the piano with bigger hands') suffered
> from this (according to them). Even after a few days of playing
> the smaller keys, the normal keyboard was akward for most
> (including yours truly). I bet learning a Wilson keyboard
> won't hurt my Halberstadt playing. (George?)

Not at all, as long as you continue to play both of them. In
addition to playing both of these, I also play a smaller-than-piano-
width Halbertstadt keyboard on the right hand of my accordion (the
white keys are exactly 2 cm wide), plus a completely different left-
hand accordion button system (actually I have two instruments, and
the button spacing is slightly different between the two), plus a
conventional typewriter keyboard. It took a little time (~ a week or
two) to adapt to some of these, but once this was done I found that
it was no problem to go from one to the other, so long as I played
them regularly. (And if I neglected one of these for a long while, I
found that it took only about 10 or 15 minutes at the most to get
myself acclimated again.)

By the way, the thing gave me the most difficulty when I first
learned the generalized keyboard was having to break the habit of
going in the sharp direction to play the flats. But this relearning
experience did not cause any problems for me when I played the
Halberstadt keyboard, because there you constantly have to remember
what key you're in to know when to use the sharps and flats.

On the generalized keyboard, since you play by pattern you can almost
forget about what sharps or flats are in the key signature, because
the keys are in the same relative places, regardless of whether they
are sharps, flats, naturals, or even doubles. (Hmmm, did any of you
ever think about how easy it is to transpose something on this
keyboard at sight?)

--George

--- In tuning@y..., "Mark Gould" <mark.gould@a...> wrote:
> Mark:
> > >The generalised layout is for one thing very good, but is
> > >still suffers from one defect - very few classically
> > >trained pianists are willing to relearn their technique
> > >for a generalised layout.
> >
> > Graham:
> >I don't like this idea of something being defective because it's
different
> >to something more popular. It's reality that's at fault here, not
the
> >generalized layout.
>
Mark:
> I still think that we must work with what we have. We cannot re-
educate
> genrations of pianists/keyboard players. Reality may be at fault,
but I do
> not subscribe to utopian views.

With microtonality and alternative tunings being so potentially
bewildering to the newcomer, with its multiplicity of octave
divisions and tunings, most of which are more complicated than 12-ET,
I believe that we have a responsibility to make things as simple as
we possibly can, and two important items that I have concentrated on
are multi-system keyboard design and notation. While it may be more
comforting to some to espouse a gradual evolution, such a path is
bound to result in something ultimately more complicated than
solutions that are well thought out in advance.

Then, should (when, if) a breakthrough come and microtonality is
suddenly "in", then we'll be prepared for questions like "what is
best for such and such" and won't need to rush to adopt makeshift
solutions. Of course it will be necessary for musicians to learn
some new techniques and concepts, but isn't that what you would
expect if you're going to work with something new (in this case a
whole new world of tonal resources)?

True, we can't expect to re-educate generations of musicians, but we
can educate a new generation, and we can re-educate those others who
have enough of an interest to take the time and effort to learn
something new.

--George

George,

There have been a couple of threads that are interconnected, this being one of them, that I've wanted to comment on... but I thought the better of it! I certainly have my feelings about where to go, what to do, and how to help microtonality, but I won't belabor those for the moment. What I *did* want to say was:

--- In tuning@y..., "gdsecor" <gdsecor@y...> wrote:
> True, we can't expect to re-educate generations of musicians, but we
> can educate a new generation, and we can re-educate those others who
> have enough of an interest to take the time and effort to learn
> something new.

In this statement you have really put your finger on it, both in a lucid and kind way. You recognize what is (probably) not possible, what is *very* possible, and what is probable and expected (we've certainly seen a lot of seekers on this list, those that "have enough of an interest", and we can put a lot of effort in that area).

Looking forward to results, some day,
Jon