good/bad scales

Hi Jon!
I do think one can say some scales are better than others in the context of what one wants to do.
while those on the list concentrate on harmony, a scale must also have good melodic qualities.
Personally i think the latter is far more important, at least for what i am interested in doing.
unless one just wants to spend ones life in one night stands with scales, one has to find scales that can be used and thought of in many different ways,
along with a sound that keeps one interested in order to continue.

More often than not one has to actually use on for a period of time to see what it can do.
What partch did with the diamond cannot be evaluated by what comes off in charts as he often thought of this material in new ways. i do think it would not have sounded as good if he used a less acoustically based tuning system as it is what hold together the short decay of his ensemble together.
some of these relationships i admit did not hear at first, but they are very much there
-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/>
The Wandering Medicine Show
KXLU <http://www.kxlu.com/main.html> 88.9 FM Wed 8-9 pm Los Angeles

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@a...> wrote:

> I do think one can say some scales are better than others in the
> context of what one wants to do.
> while those on the list concentrate on harmony, a scale must also have
> good melodic qualities.

Does "a scale must have good melodic properties" really apply to a
scale with as many notes as 19?

> What partch did with the diamond cannot be evaluated by what comes off
> in charts as he often thought of this material in new ways.

It seems to me that Partch used enough notes that harmony is really
the relevant factor. A tonality diamond is precisely an "off in
charts" kind of thing.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <gwsmith@s...> wrote:
> It seems to me that Partch used enough notes that harmony is really
> the relevant factor. A tonality diamond is precisely an "off in
> charts" kind of thing.

Not true. If one traces the trajectory of his work, he set up a system
that allowed for both extensive harmonic use of just intervals, but
also gave a broad range of intervals, in a scalar manner, to create
melodic lines that more closely linked with the human voice. The idea
of 'Monophony', in his usage, very much points to it's literal
translation; the one-approach meant a real focus on melodic intervals,
and all of his early works, especially the Li Po poems, are
melodically driven.

This is not to say that the particular system he utilized is unsuited
to harmonic use, but that it isn't necessarily the primary use. An
overview of his entire output would confirm this.

Cheers,
Jon

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@a...> wrote:
> I do think one can say some scales are better than others in the
> context of what one wants to do.

Yes, I think this is quite true, especially contextually. I was
primarily reacting to the concept of a "bad" scale, because I wondered
if some other composer/musician could make "good" music out of my
"bad" scale. I'm probably being way too pedantic.

> while those on the list concentrate on harmony, a scale must also
> have good melodic qualities.
> Personally i think the latter is far more important, at least for
> what i am interested in doing.

I'm with you.

Cheers,
Jon

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Jon Szanto" <jszanto@c...> wrote:
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <gwsmith@s...> wrote:
> > It seems to me that Partch used enough notes that harmony is really
> > the relevant factor. A tonality diamond is precisely an "off in
> > charts" kind of thing.
>
> Not true. If one traces the trajectory of his work, he set up a system
> that allowed for both extensive harmonic use of just intervals, but
> also gave a broad range of intervals, in a scalar manner, to create
> melodic lines that more closely linked with the human voice.

That's just saying that harmony was in the driver's seat. A lot of
notes giving a broad range of intervals is very far from a scale which
can be grasped as a gestalt.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <gwsmith@s...> wrote:
> That's just saying that harmony was in the driver's seat.

Then maybe I didn't describe it properly, but the gist of my message
speaks completely on point. For those that look backwards at Partch's
system of tuning as an artifact, and especially if they view their own
world in a harmony-centric way, they might see it as you do. It
doesn't make it reality, however.

> A lot of notes giving a broad range of intervals is very far from a
> scale which can be grasped as a gestalt.

No one says it has to be grasped that way. Being a system that he
developed in his own time for his own use, it became ingrained in his
compositional and expressive nature. And if one, as I said before,
looks at the entire output of how *he* used the system, one sees that
a traditional harmonic engine was not his primary focus, though there
were plenty of moments that explored those worlds of the tonality diamond.

Cheers,
Jon

Actually Gene, i do think it is useful to know the harmonic material of a scale in potential as well as the near misses, which i often find quite musically exciting as points of tension ( an option to tempering them out)
I was trying to say is that a scale is a balance of two different needs and a good one will have both. unless of course one's musical concerns are not interested in one over the other. Not in the case of what you recently proposed, but in the past there has been examples of scales that were higher in more harmonic material than others, but produced less interesting melodic integrity.
with equal this is never a problem, but with anything else , one would , for instance want to possibly be able to repeat your melodic size at the fourth or fifth or anywhere else one can in order to have different voices have an idea within their own range or octave equivalent. possibly anywhere in the middle might work for this purpose.

the diamond is a good example in that partch had his harmonic construct, but he did fill in the gaps to balance out his melodic needs. Novaro did the same with the 7 limit diamond

As to if one can have a scale with with 19 tones hold together as a gestalt, i think the answer is yes, even though we supposedly get lost after 7-9 objects ( forget the exact number). With a scale we are dealing with a structure with its own cyclical properties that can be grasped in the sense that we can define a curve with say 9 dots that is much larger than we can even draw on a sheet a paper.
While as time goes on , i tend to use smaller and smaller scales members, i do think i can grasp at least 22 without too much doubt.
I don't think we completely understand the gestalt of sounds and pitch relationships like we do visual elements. From: "Gene Ward Smith" <gwsmith@svpal.org>
Subject: Re: Dave Keenan's scales

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Joseph Pehrson" <jpehrson@r...> wrote:

>> ***Playing around a bit with this in Scala... there is indeed >> something intriguing about it. A couple of the small steps here and >> there, but a larger chromatic feel. Very curious.
> >

Thanks for the feedback. It is awfully quirky compared to Blackjack,
but it packs a lot of septimal harmony into 18 notes. Kraig doesn't
like the idea of measuring the worth of such scales by chord counts,
but if you abandon the theory that scales should be highly regular and
not quirky, what else do you have as a way of assessing them? I'd like
feedback on that, especially from people who think like Kraig. Saying
with Jon that there is no such thing as a bad scale is not of any use
as input either; use another word than "bad" if you prefer, but I
still would like ideas on what makes a scale worthy of consideration.
The sheer number of possibilities is boggling.

>> P.S... I didn't realize, Gene, how many scales you already had in >> the Scala archives a this point...
> >

I was a little surprised by that also; a few years back and there were

--
Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/>
The Wandering Medicine Show
KXLU <http://www.kxlu.com/main.html> 88.9 FM Wed 8-9 pm Los Angeles

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@a...> wrote:

> Not in the case of what you recently proposed, but in the past
there has been examples of scales that were higher in more harmonic
material than others, but produced less interesting melodic integrity.
> with equal this is never a problem, but with anything else , one
would , for instance want to possibly be able to repeat your melodic
size at the fourth or fifth or anywhere else one can in order to have
different voices have an idea within their own range or octave
equivalent. possibly anywhere in the middle might work for this purpose.

That's an argument--and a pretty good one--in favor of using the
constant structure/epimorphic business in scale construction.

> the diamond is a good example in that partch had his harmonic
construct, but he did fill in the gaps to balance out his melodic
needs. Novaro did the same with the 7 limit diamond

I pointed out in a recent tuning-math posting that you need to go to
51 notes to fill out the 11-limit diamond epimorphically. For the
7-limit diamond, it would be 18 notes, which is in Joe's range, so I'd
better hop to it and find some examples.

The 51 note scales are miracle detemperings; involving miracle plus
125/121. The 18 note scales are detempings of what I called tripletone
and Paul augene, plus 49/45.

> As to if one can have a scale with with 19 tones hold together as a
gestalt, i think the answer is yes, even though we supposedly get lost
after 7-9 objects ( forget the exact number). With a scale we are
dealing with a structure with its own cyclical properties that can be
grasped in the sense that we can define a curve with say 9 dots that
is much larger than we can even draw on a sheet a paper.

That's an interesting point, and I expect it hinges on what we really
mean by grasping it as a gestalt.