Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning This way to the egress! Top beep version!

I take back what I said earlier about 27;25 temperament ("beep", or von
Hornbostel's pelog temperament). It turns out to be useful after all!

http://www.io.com/~hmiller/midi/egress-vh14.mid

This is "This Way to the Egress", originally in 14-ET, retuned to Paul
Erlich's Tenney-optimal "beep" temperament with a generator of 260.26 cents
and a period of 1200.0 cents. I have to say that I think this version
sounds better than the original!

The pelog modes are also nice, and modulating between them seems to be
working out reasonably well.

--
see my music page ---> ---<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/music/index.html>--
hmiller (Herman Miller) "If all Printers were determin'd not to print any
@io.com email password: thing till they were sure it would offend no body,
\ "Subject: teamouse" / there would be very little printed." -Ben Franklin

🔗Carl Lumma <ekin@lumma.org>

🔗Dave Keenan <d.keenan@bigpond.net.au>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Carl Lumma <ekin@l...> wrote:
> >I take back what I said earlier about 27;25 temperament ("beep", or von
> >Hornbostel's pelog temperament). It turns out to be useful after all!
> >
> >http://www.io.com/~hmiller/midi/egress-vh14.mid
> >
> >This is "This Way to the Egress", originally in 14-ET, retuned to Paul
> >Erlich's Tenney-optimal "beep" temperament with a generator of
260.26 cents
> >and a period of 1200.0 cents. I have to say that I think this version
> >sounds better than the original!
> >
> >The pelog modes are also nice, and modulating between them seems to be
> >working out reasonably well.
>
> Yeah dude! Rockin! Where's Dave Keenan?

I suppose you're distorting my claims again.

I believe I've always made it clear that I am not in the slightest
suggesting that these tunings are not "useful". Heaven forbid. It's
patently obvious that something like pelog has been extremely useful,
over hundreds or thousands of years, to an entire culture.

I only question the claim (by Paul Erlich and others) that this
musical usefulness derives from their approximating 5-limit JI. This
seems a particularly western-centric idea.

To provide evidence for such a claim, you would have to find scales
that were similar to these in all ways except that they do _not_
approximate 5-limit JI (and preferably no other JI either), and show
that they are not as musically useful. This has not been done, and
indeed Paul Erlich seems to be suggesting it _can't_ be done.

🔗Carl Lumma <ekin@lumma.org>

>> >I have to say that I think this version
>> >sounds better than the original!
//
>>
>> Yeah dude! Rockin! Where's Dave Keenan?
>
>I suppose you're distorting my claims again.

I don't know what previous event(s) you're referring to, but
are you saying you hear no consonances in this piece. Further,
if this version sounds better than the 14-tET version, it
suggests temperament might be at work.

>I only question the claim (by Paul Erlich and others) that this
>musical usefulness derives from their approximating 5-limit JI. This
>seems a particularly western-centric idea.

I agree that there can be other kinds of usefulness.

>To provide evidence for such a claim, you would have to find scales
>that were similar to these in all ways except that they do _not_
>approximate 5-limit JI (and preferably no other JI either), and show
>that they are not as musically useful. This has not been done, and
>indeed Paul Erlich seems to be suggesting it _can't_ be done.

Whether Paul is saying that, I certainly agree it would be impossible
to show any scale is not as musically useful as another.

What I read Paul to say is that everything approximates JI to some
extent. I echoed this with my "the ear is vigilant" remark. To
the extent I (for one) can hear harmony, it is always an approximation
of JI (or similar harmonic-entropy-derived Thing).

-Carl

🔗Joseph Pehrson <jpehrson@rcn.com>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Dave Keenan" <d.keenan@b...> wrote:

/tuning/topicId_51469.html#51482

> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Carl Lumma <ekin@l...> wrote:
> > >I take back what I said earlier about 27;25 temperament ("beep",
or von
> > >Hornbostel's pelog temperament). It turns out to be useful after
all!
> > >
> > >http://www.io.com/~hmiller/midi/egress-vh14.mid
> > >
> > >This is "This Way to the Egress", originally in 14-ET, retuned
to Paul
> > >Erlich's Tenney-optimal "beep" temperament with a generator of
> 260.26 cents
> > >and a period of 1200.0 cents. I have to say that I think this
version
> > >sounds better than the original!
> > >
> > >The pelog modes are also nice, and modulating between them seems
to be
> > >working out reasonably well.
> >
> > Yeah dude! Rockin! Where's Dave Keenan?
>
> I suppose you're distorting my claims again.
>
> I believe I've always made it clear that I am not in the slightest
> suggesting that these tunings are not "useful". Heaven forbid. It's
> patently obvious that something like pelog has been extremely
useful,
> over hundreds or thousands of years, to an entire culture.
>
> I only question the claim (by Paul Erlich and others) that this
> musical usefulness derives from their approximating 5-limit JI. This
> seems a particularly western-centric idea.
>
> To provide evidence for such a claim, you would have to find scales
> that were similar to these in all ways except that they do _not_
> approximate 5-limit JI (and preferably no other JI either), and show
> that they are not as musically useful. This has not been done, and
> indeed Paul Erlich seems to be suggesting it _can't_ be done.

***This reminds me a bit of Heinrich Schenker (recently discussed on
the list) who, seemingly, felt that all significant Western music
only concerned harmonies up to the 5-limit...

J. Pehrson

🔗Dave Keenan <d.keenan@bigpond.net.au>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Carl Lumma <ekin@l...> wrote:
> >> >I have to say that I think this version
> >> >sounds better than the original!
> //
> >>
> >> Yeah dude! Rockin! Where's Dave Keenan?
> >
> >I suppose you're distorting my claims again.
>
> I don't know what previous event(s) you're referring to,

Sorry. It was probably someone else (maybe Paul) who (much earlier)
misread my suggestion that pelog wasn't a 5-limit temperament as
saying pelog wasn't musically useful.

> but
> are you saying you hear no consonances in this piece. Further,
> if this version sounds better than the 14-tET version, it
> suggests temperament might be at work.

Of course I hear consonances in this piece, and temperament is indeed
at work, but surely you can hear that it is not any so-called
temperament with 45 cent errors! such as the one prematurely called
"Beep", where 25:27 vanishes.

If the tuning consists of 14 notes in a chain of 260.26 cents, a
little calculation shows that this contains six near-perfect 5:6s (-8
gens) and four near-perfect 4:9s (10 gens) and seven very good 5:7s
(-7 gens). The generator itself is only 7 cents away from a 6:7. The
7:9s are rather poor with 16 cents errors, but there are 11 of them.
There's even one rather poor 4:7.

You may find it sounds slightly better with a 260.45 cent generator.

"Beep"? No.

How easily we can fool ourselves into believing what we want to believe.

🔗Carl Lumma <ekin@lumma.org>

>> I don't know what previous event(s) you're referring to,
>
>Sorry. It was probably someone else (maybe Paul) who (much earlier)
>misread my suggestion that pelog wasn't a 5-limit temperament as
>saying pelog wasn't musically useful.

Well I wouldn't have put it past me. Interestingly, though, when
"pelogic" first debuted on tuning-math Paul and maybe you and I had
it out over whether the Indonesians are implying the 5-limit. In
that thread I strongly argued that the answer was "no", and that any
less constituted a fairly-tale Westernization of reality. I was in
fact practicing my devil's advocate routine, but I seem to remember
thinking I did a decent job of it.

>> but
>> are you saying you hear no consonances in this piece. Further,
>> if this version sounds better than the 14-tET version, it
>> suggests temperament might be at work.
>
>Of course I hear consonances in this piece, and temperament is
>indeed at work, but surely you can hear that it is not any so-called
>temperament with 45 cent errors! such as the one prematurely called
>"Beep", where 25:27 vanishes.

Where are the 45-cent errors?

>If the tuning consists of 14 notes in a chain of 260.26 cents, a
>little calculation shows that this contains six near-perfect 5:6s (-8
>gens) and four near-perfect 4:9s (10 gens) and seven very good 5:7s
>(-7 gens). The generator itself is only 7 cents away from a 6:7. The
>7:9s are rather poor with 16 cents errors, but there are 11 of them.
>There's even one rather poor 4:7.
>
>You may find it sounds slightly better with a 260.45 cent generator.
>
>"Beep"? No.

Beep yes. You can't say it isn't any good at approximating JI and
then say it is. If it's the 24-cent errors on the 3:2 and 5:4 that
worry you, you can choose to avoid them, as you seem to be saying
Herman's piece does. However I think I hear some 3:2s and 5:4s in
there...

-Carl

🔗Dave Keenan <d.keenan@bigpond.net.au>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Carl Lumma <ekin@l...> wrote:
> Well I wouldn't have put it past me. Interestingly, though, when
> "pelogic" first debuted on tuning-math Paul and maybe you and I had
> it out over whether the Indonesians are implying the 5-limit. In
> that thread I strongly argued that the answer was "no", and that any
> less constituted a fairly-tale Westernization of reality. I was in
> fact practicing my devil's advocate routine, but I seem to remember
> thinking I did a decent job of it.

I expect you did. Good onya. I'm sorry my memory is so poor.

> >Of course I hear consonances in this piece, and temperament is
> >indeed at work, but surely you can hear that it is not any so-called
> >temperament with 45 cent errors! such as the one prematurely called
> >"Beep", where 25:27 vanishes.
>
> Where are the 45-cent errors?

I was wrong. The TOP version has 55 cent errors.

Beep is alleged to be a 5-limit temperament with octave period in
which there are -2 generators to the approximate 2:3 and -3 generators
to the approximate 4:5, this implies 1 generator to the approximate
5:6. With a period of 1200 c and a generator of 260.26 cents these are:

JI Beep error
-----------------
2:3 679 c - 22 c
4:5 419 c + 33 c
5:6 260 c - 55 c

The thing is, once you've chained 8 generators you get a minor third
that is far better than the alleged minor-third doing the generating.

As several people have reminded me, it isn't the generator that
defines the temperament, but the mapping. So the minor third that is
generated by -8 generators owes absolutely nothing to the Beep
"temperament".

It comes instead from a single chain of a twin chain 5-limit
temperament having generator mapping [0 5 13] and period mapping [2 1
-1]. This can be extended to a 7-limit temperament with generator
mapping [0 5 13 6] and period mapping [2 1 -1 3].

> Beep yes. You can't say it isn't any good at approximating JI and
> then say it is.

I hope you understand now that I'm saying Beep isn't an approximation
of 5-limit JI, but a chain of 260.26 cent generators is very good at
approximating 1:9's, 3:5's, 3:7's, 5:7's and their octave extensions
and inversions, via a completely different mapping.

-- Dave Keenan

🔗Carl Lumma <ekin@lumma.org>

>> Well I wouldn't have put it past me. Interestingly, though, when
>> "pelogic" first debuted on tuning-math Paul and maybe you and I had
>> it out over whether the Indonesians are implying the 5-limit. In
>> that thread I strongly argued that the answer was "no", and that any
>> less constituted a fairly-tale Westernization of reality. I was in
>> fact practicing my devil's advocate routine, but I seem to remember
>> thinking I did a decent job of it.
>
>I expect you did. Good onya. I'm sorry my memory is so poor.

It was back when I was using the web interface, but I've suffered
Yahoo's search to find...

/tuning-math/message/2237

>Beep is alleged to be a 5-limit temperament with octave period in
>which there are -2 generators to the approximate 2:3 and -3 generators
>to the approximate 4:5, this implies 1 generator to the approximate
>5:6. With a period of 1200 c and a generator of 260.26 cents these are:
>
>JI Beep error
>-----------------
>2:3 679 c - 22 c
>4:5 419 c + 33 c
>5:6 260 c - 55 c
>
>The thing is, once you've chained 8 generators you get a minor third
>that is far better than the alleged minor-third doing the generating.
>
>As several people have reminded me, it isn't the generator that
>defines the temperament, but the mapping. So the minor third that is
>generated by -8 generators owes absolutely nothing to the Beep
>"temperament".

Looks like you're right.

-Carl

🔗Herman Miller <hmiller@IO.COM>

On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 10:59:49 -0000, "Dave Keenan" <d.keenan@bigpond.net.au>
wrote:

>As several people have reminded me, it isn't the generator that
>defines the temperament, but the mapping. So the minor third that is
>generated by -8 generators owes absolutely nothing to the Beep
>"temperament".

I don't think this minor third has much to do with _Egress_. But looking at
the piano roll in Cakewalk, I see that I used a lot of neutral thirds. So
this isn't a fair test of the "beep" temperament, even though it produced
interesting results. Scala shows that the 14-ET neutral third splits into
two intervals; 317.920 cents (the excellent minor third you mentioned) and
361.560 cents (24.75 cents flatter than a major third). It's likely that
sharpening the neutral thirds to make them closer to a major third is a big
part of why this tuning of _Egress_ sounds better than the 14-ET version.

The splitting of the perfect fourth into two minor thirds, which is a
prominent feature of the _Egress_ melody, _does_ imply a tempering of
27/25. But it's better to think of these as subminor thirds in the 14-ET
version. This implies a comma of 49/48, which actually happens to be
consistent with 14-ET. So this suggests that even better results might be
had by tempering the 49/48.

🔗czhang23@aol.com

In a message dated 2004:01:11 09:15:23 AM, LummaOne writes:

> [...] Interestingly, though, when
>"pelogic" first debuted on tuning-math Paul and maybe you and I had
>it out over whether the Indonesians are implying the 5-limit. In
>that thread I strongly argued that the answer was "no", and that any
>less constituted a fairly-tale Westernization of reality. I was in
>fact practicing my devil's advocate routine, but I seem to remember
>thinking I did a decent job of it.

related story:
One summer, me and Djiudjahr {JEW-JaaRr} aka "D-joe" - an
Indonesian/Senoi friend of my family* were amusin' our silly selves listenin' to my
sample-library of Lou Harrison's versions of "pelog."
D-joe remarked after our 3rd round of intense meditations on these oddly
familiar sounds: "Why he so hepped up on taking pelog into duller sounds?
Can't he hear that it's _deader_ sounding?"
I tried explaining the theory behind JI.
D-joe: "To bleedin' blazes with tall pommie bullshit theory! This is the
real world. Hands-On, lah?"
"Eh? "
"Why screw with something that is not broken, lah... well, not broken
just yet and _not_ in my lifetime if I can have any bleeding say in the
matter..." **

The Zhang Test: Do you grin uncontrollably while playing a scale or
tuning in an improv way?
if YES, then it's workin' its magic, otherwise either put it aside for
later
post-mortem & dissection or deep 6 the unworkable carcass...

(*his grandfather was our family's commander of bodyguards during WW2 in
Japanese Occuppied Malaya and he also fought in the both the Malaysian and
Indonesian wars for independence [my uncle, age 14 on, did as well])

** D-joe is not opposed to theory - afterall he is an
audioEFX-designer/hacker. And he plays fretless bass and synths (including a keyboard he built -
with help from certain Dutch friends ;) - that is like a cross 'tween a
_Kraakdoos_ and a continuum fingerboard).
The Hacker Manifesto has the phrase: "Hands-On Imperative" in regards to
both theory and practise, learning and implementing

---|-----|--------|-------------|---------------------|
Hanuman Zhang, musical mad scientist

"One taps into the core when one can leave the ego at the door..." - Jacky
Ligon

"When you're trying to do something you should feel absolutely alone, like a
spark in the blackness of the universe."-Xenakis

"For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the
world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It
is for the hearing. It is not legible, but audible." - Jacques Attali,
_Noise: The Political Economy of Music_

In a message dated 2004:01:11 01:45:04 PM, BooRad*** quotes:

> Challenges come so we can grow and be prepared for things we
>are not equipped to handle now. When we face our challenges with
>faith, prepared to learn, willing to make changes, and if necessary,
>to let go, we are demanding our power be turned on.
>
> Iyanla Vanzant

New England Graveyards

It is a foreign symmetry, unlike anything

in the earth's surface rubble —

the headstones, grouped by family

to organize the sacred rows; the flowers

at the fresh site

are forced blooms with exposed

glands of pollen and the widest throats;

even the neat packages

of food, each container marked

with the names of the living.

If there is a life beyond the body,

I think we have no use for order

but are buoyed past our individuating fear,

and that memory is not,

as now, a footprint filling with water.

Ellen Bryant Voigt

🔗wallyesterpaulrus <paul@stretch-music.com>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, czhang23@a... wrote:
>
> In a message dated 2004:01:11 09:15:23 AM, LummaOne writes:
>
> > [...] Interestingly, though, when
> >"pelogic" first debuted on tuning-math Paul and maybe you and I had
> >it out over whether the Indonesians are implying the 5-limit. In
> >that thread I strongly argued that the answer was "no", and that
any
> >less constituted a fairly-tale Westernization of reality. I was in
> >fact practicing my devil's advocate routine, but I seem to remember
> >thinking I did a decent job of it.
>
>
> related story:
> One summer, me and Djiudjahr {JEW-JaaRr} aka "D-joe" - an
> Indonesian/Senoi friend of my family* were amusin' our silly selves
listenin' to my
> sample-library of Lou Harrison's versions of "pelog."
> D-joe remarked after our 3rd round of intense meditations on
these oddly
> familiar sounds: "Why he so hepped up on taking pelog into duller
sounds?
> Can't he hear that it's _deader_ sounding?"
> I tried explaining the theory behind JI.
> D-joe: "To bleedin' blazes with tall pommie bullshit theory!

Actually, the theory works perfectly well here: JI intervals are
the "dullest" kind, at least with harmonic timbres, since they take
one set of beating rates and set them to zero. If you want something
less dull, you probably want more beating, hence deviation from JI
(again if you're using harmonic timbres).