Reasons to Avoid JI (was: Corporealism vs. Abstraction)

>However, if you make no particular
>effort to stay close to the tonic
>or fail to
>concern yourself with comma drift, the number of
>digits in the numerator and
>denominator of the rational numbers of the score
>will be proportional to time
>if harmonic change keeps up at a more or less
>steady pace. Since accidentals
>are multiplicative, that means they will also
>accumulate at a steady rate.

It strikes me that there's an ongoing argument among the ET crowd against JI because of its limitations. You can't get too far away from the tonic. 1/1 exerts gravity. Accidentals accumulate, and become too cumbersome. You can't transpose just anywhere you want to. The notation is erratic and inconsistent. The fractions get too big too fast. Consonance is a ubiquitous temptation. And the ET people want to help us poor, benighted JI people into a better, ET world where we can leave all these limitations behind.

But some composers think limitations are a good thing - a great thing, in fact. Igor Stravinsky said that, if he felt he could write anything he wanted, he'd be too paralyzed to put a note on paper; he couldn't compose without limitations. I love JI for exactly that: its limitations, its challenges and difficult choices, its gravity and fences. And every time an ET advocate urges me to come to ET land where I can get away from all these limitations, I get a shiver as if he's threatening to steal something precious from me. If the ET people are content in their vast, uniform, limitation-less desert, zipping anywhere they want without barriers, I'm very happy for them and think they should stay there. But I'll remain in my verdant JI forest with plenty of trees and rocks to bump into.

As I've said before, to each his own.

Cheers,

Kyle

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Kyle Gann <kgann@e...> wrote:

>And every time an ET advocate urges me to come to ET land
> where I can get away from all these limitations, I get a shiver as if
> he's threatening to steal something precious from me.

Sorry, I don't play that game. I'm not an advocate and I perfer not to take sides in a conflicts which plainly makes no sense. I am merely reporting on a fact of mathematics, which may or may not be relevant to what you do.

If the ET
> people are content in their vast, uniform, limitation-less desert,
> zipping anywhere they want without barriers, I'm very happy for them
> and think they should stay there. But I'll remain in my verdant JI
> forest with plenty of trees and rocks to bump into.

Did you get my CD? Can you explain what the big, fat difference is between the JI music, the et music, the linear temperament music and the planar temperament music on it?

> As I've said before, to each his own.

I prefer rational analysis to shouts of "Hallalulah!" and "King James Only!" Can we please leave religion out of this?

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith <genewardsmith@j...>"

/tuning/topicId_41728.html#41733

.
>
> Did you get my CD? Can you explain what the big, fat difference is
between the JI music, the et music, the linear temperament music and
the planar temperament music on it?
>

***I have the CD (thank you, Gene!) and I have to admit it all sounds
pretty much like Gene Ward Smith music, regardless of the tuning...
hmmmm.

J. Pehrson