ideas for big collaborative projects

I've been reading a lot of the lovely posts on
this list and tuning-challenges today concerning
friendship and cooperation, and had what I think
is a great idea.

Many of us who are working on various musical,
theoretical, and/or software projects and problems,
have lately publicly expressed the desire to work
together for the result of achieving higher goals
than the ones already in sight for ourselves.

How about if several of us with diverging backgrounds
and interests work together on a multi-media presentation
on some particular aspect (or several) of microtonal music?

The immediate idea that came to mind was to create
an animated lattice-diagram-with-sound of some famous
composition in some particular (or several) tuning(s),
making use of as many differing approaches as can be
represented by the contributors.

I was just adding some lattice diagrams to my old post
detailing Schoenberg's 1911 theory of rational implications
of 12-EDO (this new post [Wed Jul 18, 2001 9:16 am GMT] is
at </tuning-math/message/516>)
and thought of asking John deLaubenfels to figure out a way
to use my analysis of Schoenberg's tuning as the ground-scale
for a retuned MIDI-file of a Schoenberg piece from 1909.

(Some suggestions:

- _F�nf Orchesterst�cke_ op 16; my MIDI
of the first half of the 1st piece is here
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/schoenberg/5pcs1.mid

- _Erwartung_ op 17; my MIDI of the beginning is here
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/schoenberg/erwartng.mid

- or perhaps even the _3 Piano Pieces_ op 11, altho
here I'd be more hesitant because it might be advisable
to apply a stretch to the tuning too.

- and certainly Schoenberg's ideas would apply equally well
Webern's early _6 Pieces for Orchestra_ op 6; my MIDI of
the complete first piece is here:
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/webern/op6-1.mid

Perhaps this is the best suggestion because it's complete
already.)

How 'bout it, John? Take a look at my new post on
tuning-math and tell me what you think.

The adaptune program would have to have some way of
determing which "tonic" would be in effect at any
given time; this is a non-trivial problem for this
group of compositions.

Another example could be my idea of illustrating Sumerian
brick walls as representing 5-limit lattices, as described
in this tuning-math post [Sun Jun 24, 2001 6:32 pm GMT]
</tuning-math/message/316>.

I believe that the Sumerians were deeply interested in
musical temperaments, and would like to portray this
vividly in a visual representation along with sound.

These could be fantastic explanatory materials for
acquainting people with some concepts about tuning or
for illustrating theory, or simply for some good
microtonal music with really cool video.

Perhaps this "real world music" project could be what
finally gets us working in earnest on the hybrid
Scala/FTS/adaptune/Midiconv/JustMusic/????
software application project.

-monz
http://www.monz.org
"All roads lead to n^0"

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Hi, Monz; this sounds really exciting and fun, but... if it took much
of any modification to my program right now, the chances of my having
time for it any time soon are slim.

It sounds like we would need that feature we've talked about, where the
sequencer can instruct the program what tuning to use when. Then,
existing code could make use of the springs to distribute out commas
where necessary, etc. That's pretty high on my list, but...

Do you think anything else would be required in the way of features?

JdL