In defense of 12tet and list personel

Well, theres a lot of crap that should be moved off-list,
and the last time (three weeks ago?) this happenned we lost
some valuable people. So get a grip folks.

It seems foolish to come to the defense of 12tet, but,
there are some things it does quite well. Excellent
fifths, useable thirds, "9/8==10/9"...

And it has some very interesting properties by being so
readily divisible (diminished chords, augmented chords,
tritone substitutions, whole tone scales)...

As one who has composed and played an awful lot of 12tet
music, my journey into microtonalism is a stumbling one.
Besides all the technological hurdles (instruments), there
is some sense of throwing the baby out with the bathwater
when the familiar tricks of the 12tet trade are taken away.
Until I convince myself that I have found similar identities
in a new tuning system that I have in the old, most of my
microtonal adventures will remain in the laboratory.

So, I still make music; new music and good music; and grow
as a musician, in a language I already have a fluency in. Why
not?

Meanwhile, I've gotten completely lost in the current
math oriented thread. I looked for Fokker on the internet,
periodicity blocks, etc... I couldn't find anything and
have no idea what the matrix notation is referring to
or why.

Oh well,

Bob Valentine

My comment about Paul being a 12tet traitor shouldn't
be taken so seriously. For his massive volumes of
posting to this list, one might think there would be
a bit of evidence that he does a bit more than
just type about microtonality.

And you aren't the only one who gets lost
in his lengthy threads.

--
* D a v i d B e a r d s l e y
* xouoxno@virtulink.com
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* J u x t a p o s i t i o n N e t R a d i o
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