Re: Riding the Waves

To John Starrett:
But should you list evangelists _before_ composers?

To David Beardsley:
When you discover the charms of the equal temperaments - that which strings
the mind together in logarithmic lock-step, eventually allowing for 1200-TET
relativity and a polymicrotonal promise - you may sustain Nirvana. :)

To Paul Erlich and Joe Monzo:
I've always felt the math on this list were exquisite idiosyncratic forms of
frozen composition, much like certain discovered Star Trek species, hologram
sentience at one end and international virtual community on the other. Math
is music. Math is the true universal language. (But it's not for everybody.)

The list is post implosion '99 by all signs and looks forward to Y2K and many
other new developments in the fairly unpredictable near future. (nope, I
don't care for evangelicals.)

Enjoy the heat and pick up a good book everybody or go for a swim.

Johnny Reinhard

Afmmjr@aol.com wrote:

> To David Beardsley:
> When you discover the charms of the equal temperaments - that which strings
> the mind together in logarithmic lock-step, eventually allowing for 1200-TET
> relativity and a polymicrotonal promise - you may sustain Nirvana. :)

Hey Johnny, I've heard you sing 31tet as well as allthose other performances over
the years - how do you
do it? Tips?

Last year I asked La Monte's cello player Charles Curtis
about this and he says he's tuning by counting beats.
He didn't elaborate and I didn't pursue it at the time.

--
* D a v i d B e a r d s l e y
* xouoxno@virtulink.com
*
* J u x t a p o s i t i o n N e t R a d i o
* M E L A v i r t u a l d r e a m house monitor
*
* http://www.virtulink.com/immp/lookhere.htm

Thanks David for asking about 31-tone singing by diesis. It reminds me of a
recent sushi meal I shared with Sasha Bogdanowitsch. Before getting into a
"technique" I think a bit more emphasis on the "raison d'etre" for learning
diverse tunings internally may be in order.

There are 2 kinds of solfege taught in NYC: fixed-Do and moveable-Do. Fixed
mirrors absolute pitch (e.g. A=440 always). Moveable, taught where I teach
at C.W. Post, assumes the position of traditional tonal music with an
extended meantone compass. Both perspectives have their value and I have to
alternate between them on occasion.

Since I don't have perfect pitch which is the result of a gene, I have
developped an overly athletic relative sense of pitch, enhanced by my
familiarity of diverse tuning constellations (or arrays, or modes, or
scales). With select choices, one could, after several serious years of
work, sing any pitch combination of 1200-TET. Tuning machines are no longer
necessary (they break down anyway over time).

With the idea of liberating past the machines, like composing from the
imagination and not plinking things out on a keyboard, one could learn to
hear "differently." All sounds within the 1200-TET compass will have a
sensibility, a microtonal "address."

As for the technique: emotional memory works best for me. Learn a tune in a
special tuning and then it becomes part of your personal dictionary. Call
upon it as you will and add to it until you reach point where you've got the
territory covered. It is quite liberating.

Johnny Reinhard
AFMM
Afmmjr@aol.com

[Johnny Reinhard:]
>With select choices, one could, after several serious years of work,
sing any pitch combination of 1200-TET.

[!!??] I'm very interested in exactly what you mean by "With select
choices." Could you elaborate on this?

Thanks,
Dan

When Jon Catler introduced me to 31-TET I had only been familiar with
quartertones. He explained to me, 20 years ago, that there were no notes in
common, unless we farily arbitrarily lined them up so that there was a single
note in common.

When we played Cowpeople together with his rock band JC & The Microtones, I
had an ascending 24-tone line against his descending 31-TET line. These 2
are now ingrained in me.

When I first spent an afternoon listening to LaMonte Young's Well-Tuned
Piano, I became ill due to the purity of the intervals hitting me all at
once. It was like getting car sick because my mind couldn't keep up with the
sensory input. When I could match just intervals to specific numbers I had
the tools to reference a chain reaction's worth of relationships at any point
and LaMonte's music became a joy.

Do any of you remember a panic when trying to find a particular microtone?
Only be internally referencing landmark intervals cane you traipse across the
pitch divide.

Certain select cross referenced tunings...keep the A=440 or other common tone
between them...at least in some referenceable way.

Try 24ET, 31ET, JI, 19ET, 7ET, and add to taste. Not unlike Ives and
polyrhythms, no Dan?

Johnny Reinhard
AFMM
Afmmjr@aol.com

[Johnny Reinhard:]
>Not unlike Ives and polyrhythms, no Dan?

In a lot of ways, yes, very much so... But in much the same way that
I've never known anyone who could approach (with the possible and
notable exception of Boston based drummer Ned Smith) Ives' "in the
left hand a 5--with the left foot, beat a two--with the right foot,
beat a 3--with the right hand, play an 11--and sing a 7" polyrhythmic
exercise, I've never known anyone who could approach one cent
accuracy, or 1200e playability... but this is not intended as some
sort of confrontational assertion, for much as I have no reason to
doubt Ives, I also have no reason to doubt you - I just happen to find
both (in the truest sense of the word!) phenomenal.

Dan