How do microtonal people hear?

I'm wondering if there is something funny about the way most of us
hear, which causes us to be able to listen to Harry Partch for the
first time and immediately think it sounds cool. The reason I'm
pondering that is that I've accumulated a lot of evidence that 7-limit
just or near just intonation sounds out of tune to most people. Even
if you stick to pure,
well-intonated tetrads, the adjectives you get are things like
"horribly out of tune" and "extremely cacophonic". However, I am
interested in this kind of music in good measure because it *doesn't*
sound out of tune to me.

Now, I can wave numbers around in the air and "prove" I'm right, but
of course there isn't much point to doing that. It can't very well be
that these perceptions are entirely a matter of learning and
conditioning, or why are some people *not* hearing 12-et as the acme
of tuning perfection? Why do I want what I think of as "in tune" music
if 12-et should be the definition "in tune" for someone raised in the
West? What's really going on with the desciption of in-tune,
reasonably tame 7-limit harmonies as "extremely cacophonic", when in
fact the the harsh features of what I might be inclinded to call
"cacophonic" are not present? Why do people object to this sort of
"cacophonic" when very noisy music is now a staple of both popular and
classical traditions? It is as if melody is being misheard as harmony
somehow. And why, incidentally, can you get away with 5-limit JI if
it's all a matter of conditioning?

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <gwsmith@s...> wrote:
>
> I'm wondering if there is something funny about the way most of us
> hear, which causes us to be able to listen to Harry Partch for the
> first time and immediately think it sounds cool.

At http://sonic-arts.org/darreg/CASE.HTM Ivor Darreg describes a kind
of mood peculiar to 19 equal that makes sense to me.

Clark

A sound theory of Musico-Cultural Relativity is required it seems.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gene Ward Smith" <gwsmith@svpal.org>
To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: 29 Ocak 2006 Pazar 12:12
Subject: [tuning] How do microtonal people hear?

> I'm wondering if there is something funny about the way most of us
> hear, which causes us to be able to listen to Harry Partch for the
> first time and immediately think it sounds cool. The reason I'm
> pondering that is that I've accumulated a lot of evidence that 7-limit
> just or near just intonation sounds out of tune to most people. Even
> if you stick to pure,
> well-intonated tetrads, the adjectives you get are things like
> "horribly out of tune" and "extremely cacophonic". However, I am
> interested in this kind of music in good measure because it *doesn't*
> sound out of tune to me.
>
> Now, I can wave numbers around in the air and "prove" I'm right, but
> of course there isn't much point to doing that. It can't very well be
> that these perceptions are entirely a matter of learning and
> conditioning, or why are some people *not* hearing 12-et as the acme
> of tuning perfection? Why do I want what I think of as "in tune" music
> if 12-et should be the definition "in tune" for someone raised in the
> West? What's really going on with the desciption of in-tune,
> reasonably tame 7-limit harmonies as "extremely cacophonic", when in
> fact the the harsh features of what I might be inclinded to call
> "cacophonic" are not present? Why do people object to this sort of
> "cacophonic" when very noisy music is now a staple of both popular and
> classical traditions? It is as if melody is being misheard as harmony
> somehow. And why, incidentally, can you get away with 5-limit JI if
> it's all a matter of conditioning?
>
>

On 1/29/06, Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@svpal.org> wrote:
> I'm wondering if there is something funny about the way most of us
> hear, which causes us to be able to listen to Harry Partch for the
> first time and immediately think it sounds cool. The reason I'm
> pondering that is that I've accumulated a lot of evidence that 7-limit
> just or near just intonation sounds out of tune to most people. Even
> if you stick to pure,
> well-intonated tetrads, the adjectives you get are things like
> "horribly out of tune" and "extremely cacophonic". However, I am
> interested in this kind of music in good measure because it *doesn't*
> sound out of tune to me.
>
> Now, I can wave numbers around in the air and "prove" I'm right, but
> of course there isn't much point to doing that. It can't very well be
> that these perceptions are entirely a matter of learning and
> conditioning, or why are some people *not* hearing 12-et as the acme
> of tuning perfection? Why do I want what I think of as "in tune" music
> if 12-et should be the definition "in tune" for someone raised in the
> West? What's really going on with the desciption of in-tune,
> reasonably tame 7-limit harmonies as "extremely cacophonic", when in
> fact the the harsh features of what I might be inclinded to call
> "cacophonic" are not present? Why do people object to this sort of
> "cacophonic" when very noisy music is now a staple of both popular and
> classical traditions? It is as if melody is being misheard as harmony
> somehow. And why, incidentally, can you get away with 5-limit JI if
> it's all a matter of conditioning?

I know what you mean and I can't completely explain it either, but I
might have some insight.

I remember doing a science project in... middle school I think, that
tried to determine experimentally which intervals sounded consonant to
people. I had people listen to pairs of tones and rate how much they
"blended" or something like that (I remember the wording was really
hard to get right). It wasn't the most rigorous study in the world,
but I ended up with a graph that looked pretty good and had separate
peaks for, for example, 7/6 and 6/5.

The thing is that when people listen to 7-limit JI their sense of
pitch and conditioning is telling them that it's out of tune, but
their sense of aural quality is telling them that it's in tune because
it blends together and doesn't beat. That's why it depends so much on
the timbre.

Another experience, which I'm not sure I should even mention, was with
the unique drug diisopropyltryptamine. Wikipedia has a decent article
on it. It's not exactly illegal, at least in the US, but I don't know
where you can get a hold of it. Anyway, DIPT is a hallucinogen that
affects only the sense of hearing. People's voices sound like frogs.
It's so weird because you can play an interval that you know should be
a perfect fifth, but it sounds like a sixth or seventh, even though
the two notes blend together just like a fifth. Then you find two
notes that you think sound like a fifth, and they clash horribly. It's
very difficult to describe.

Keenan

Hi Keenan.

You wrote:

> Another experience, which I'm not sure I should even mention, was with
> the unique drug diisopropyltryptamine. Wikipedia has a decent article
> on it. It's not exactly illegal, at least in the US, but I don't know
> where you can get a hold of it. Anyway, DIPT is a hallucinogen that
> affects only the sense of hearing. People's voices sound like frogs.
> It's so weird because you can play an interval that you know should be
> a perfect fifth, but it sounds like a sixth or seventh, even though
> the two notes blend together just like a fifth. Then you find two
> notes that you think sound like a fifth, and they clash horribly. It's
> very difficult to describe.

Oohhh!!
If somethink like this ever happened to me, I think I'd soon literally get
mad. Even though I've never heard of this, just reading your description
makes me frightened when I try to imagine something like this happening to
me. OK, you've successfully shown me that I no longer need to read ghost
stories. BTW, do you remember what was happening when you heard a melody --
i.e. when the tones sounded one after another, not at the same time?

If I take this to a much less serious level of experimenting, have you tried
the frequency shifting effect in an effect unit or an audio editor? Maybe
there are some similarities. The frequency shifting effect changes the
entire frequency band by altering it linearly by a certain amount. This
makes lots of harmonic timbres totally inharmonic. For example, if the
frequencies are shifted 100Hz down, then an input signal of
250-500-750-1000Hz mixed changes to 150_400_650_900Hz in the output.
The interesting thing is that if you know exactly by what amount the
frequencies are shifted and whether it is up or down, you can even make good
music by using scales whose pitches are made in such a way that they seem to
be totally out of tune when you hear them as they are originally, but they
sound perfectly in tune after you pass them through the frequency shifter.
When you do this, the actual music sounds OK then and the timbres themselves
lose their harmonicity they may have had originally.

Petr

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "threesixesinarow" <CACCOLA@N...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <gwsmith@s...> wrote:
> >
> > I'm wondering if there is something funny about the way most of us
> > hear, which causes us to be able to listen to Harry Partch for the
> > first time and immediately think it sounds cool.
>
> At http://sonic-arts.org/darreg/CASE.HTM Ivor Darreg describes a kind
> of mood peculiar to 19 equal that makes sense to me.

I found this quote interesting: "Since then, I have interviewed about
200 persons and found that certain personality types prefer 19 and
others prefer the 22-tone temperament, and it is difficult to be
impartial about them, but I do my best. Someday this might become a
standard psychological personality test."

Jonathan Glaser told me that, so apparently there is at least one
other believer in this theory. One trouble I have with the "mood" of
19 is that 19 used as a way to play common-practice music with a
meantone basis does not seem to me to have the same "mood" as music
composed natively in 19. 19, like other tuning systems, really has a
range of moods. Salinas, I think, nailed the effect of 19-et in
playing 5-limit meantone well: "languid", he says, but not "offensive
to the ear". That's it exactly, and yet that does *not* describe a lot
of the music people compose natively for 19.

On 1/29/06, Petr Pařízek <p.parizek@chello.cz> wrote:
> Hi Keenan.
[snip]
> Oohhh!!
> If somethink like this ever happened to me, I think I'd soon literally get
> mad. Even though I've never heard of this, just reading your description
> makes me frightened when I try to imagine something like this happening to
> me. OK, you've successfully shown me that I no longer need to read ghost
> stories. BTW, do you remember what was happening when you heard a melody --
> i.e. when the tones sounded one after another, not at the same time?

Yeah, I guess it was pretty scary the first time. Especially because
it lasts so long; you freak out and think your hearing is permanently
damaged... but then you wake up next morning and it's back to normal.

Melodies were totally distorted. The intervals seemed all stretched
out, to different degrees in different octaves. Someone really needs
to make a study of this stuff, we could learn a lot about how the
sense of hearing works. Alexander Shulgin talks about it in his book
TIHKAL: http://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/tihkal/tihkal04.shtml

> If I take this to a much less serious level of experimenting, have you tried
> the frequency shifting effect in an effect unit or an audio editor? Maybe
> there are some similarities. The frequency shifting effect changes the
> entire frequency band by altering it linearly by a certain amount. This
> makes lots of harmonic timbres totally inharmonic. For example, if the
> frequencies are shifted 100Hz down, then an input signal of
> 250-500-750-1000Hz mixed changes to 150_400_650_900Hz in the output.
> The interesting thing is that if you know exactly by what amount the
> frequencies are shifted and whether it is up or down, you can even make good
> music by using scales whose pitches are made in such a way that they seem to
> be totally out of tune when you hear them as they are originally, but they
> sound perfectly in tune after you pass them through the frequency shifter.
> When you do this, the actual music sounds OK then and the timbres themselves
> lose their harmonicity they may have had originally.
>
> Petr

Ooh, I tried something like this just the other day. I took 12-EDO and
subtracted the same amount from the frequency of every pitch, so that
one pitch was reduced to 0 Hz. Really weird scale.

Keenan

Hi Keenan.

You wrote:

> Ooh, I tried something like this just the other day. I took 12-EDO and
> subtracted the same amount from the frequency of every pitch, so that
> one pitch was reduced to 0 Hz. Really weird scale.

Really? Was this MIDI tuning or actual audio? If it was audio, you may have
heard the strange timbre inharmonicity I was speaking about.

Petr

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Keenan Pepper <keenanpepper@g...> wrote:

> Ooh, I tried something like this just the other day. I took 12-EDO and
> subtracted the same amount from the frequency of every pitch, so that
> one pitch was reduced to 0 Hz. Really weird scale.

In the Chorled piece, the latest one for people to find jarringly
dissonant, the tuning of the odd primes was 3.00171, 5.00171 and
7.00171. This is not, of course, remotely close to what we would
expect to sound dissonant, and anyway people reacted the same as they
do to 3, 5, 7. To me the tuning sounded really nice; I like about one
cent of detuning.

On 1/29/06, Petr Pařízek <p.parizek@chello.cz> wrote:
> Hi Keenan.
>
> You wrote:
>
> > Ooh, I tried something like this just the other day. I took 12-EDO and
> > subtracted the same amount from the frequency of every pitch, so that
> > one pitch was reduced to 0 Hz. Really weird scale.
>
> Really? Was this MIDI tuning or actual audio? If it was audio, you may have
> heard the strange timbre inharmonicity I was speaking about.
>
> Petr

I just tuned my keyboard/synth to it, so the individual notes were
normal (I tried out some different timbres), but tuned to this weird
scale.

Keenan

This might explain why different cultures prefer diverse interval
combinations melodically as well as (quasi-)harmonically.

Oz.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Keenan Pepper" <keenanpepper@gmail.com>
To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: 29 Ocak 2006 Pazar 22:10
Subject: Re: [tuning] How do microtonal people hear?

> On 1/29/06, Petr Pařízek <p.parizek@chello.cz> wrote:
> > Hi Keenan.
> [snip]
> > Oohhh!!
> > If somethink like this ever happened to me, I think I'd soon literally
get
> > mad. Even though I've never heard of this, just reading your description
> > makes me frightened when I try to imagine something like this happening
to
> > me. OK, you've successfully shown me that I no longer need to read ghost
> > stories. BTW, do you remember what was happening when you heard a
melody --
> > i.e. when the tones sounded one after another, not at the same time?
>
> Yeah, I guess it was pretty scary the first time. Especially because
> it lasts so long; you freak out and think your hearing is permanently
> damaged... but then you wake up next morning and it's back to normal.
>
> Melodies were totally distorted. The intervals seemed all stretched
> out, to different degrees in different octaves. Someone really needs
> to make a study of this stuff, we could learn a lot about how the
> sense of hearing works. Alexander Shulgin talks about it in his book
> TIHKAL: http://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/tihkal/tihkal04.shtml
>

SNIP

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <gwsmith@s...> wrote:
>
> I'm wondering if there is something funny about the way most of us
> hear, which causes us to be able to listen to Harry Partch for the
> first time and immediately think it sounds cool. The reason I'm
> pondering that is that I've accumulated a lot of evidence that 7-limit
> just or near just intonation sounds out of tune to most people. Even
> if you stick to pure,
> well-intonated tetrads, the adjectives you get are things like
> "horribly out of tune" and "extremely cacophonic". However, I am
> interested in this kind of music in good measure because it *doesn't*
> sound out of tune to me.

This is all speculation from my part but maybe people refer to
different things with "out-of-tuneness"!

Because microtonal musicians have studied at least some relevant
psychoacoustics and listened to new and weird intervals with all this
theoretical background in mind their judgement of out-of-tuneness is
dominated by perceptions of roughness, sonance and other
psychoacoustical factors.

Normal listeners are very likely able to hear these things (while
probably not being aware of hearing them) but do not think those are
the things to listen for when judging out-of-tuneness.

They might just be comparing the microtonal performance under
judgement to paradigm performances of music where the same musical
instruments are used.

This is context-sensitive. At least for me microtonal tunings sound
more striking with traditional instruments than with entirely new
sounds. It might be this strikingness that is understood as
out-of-tuneness. Because of the negative connotations associated with
the term "out-of-tune" this is perceived as something undesirable.

Kalle Aho

> Another experience, which I'm not sure I should even mention, was
> with the unique drug diisopropyltryptamine. Wikipedia has a decent
> article on it. It's not exactly illegal, at least in the US, but
> I don't know where you can get a hold of it. Anyway, DIPT is a
> hallucinogen that affects only the sense of hearing. People's
> voices sound like frogs. It's so weird because you can play an
> interval that you know should be a perfect fifth, but it sounds
> like a sixth or seventh, even though the two notes blend together
> just like a fifth. Then you find two notes that you think sound
> like a fifth, and they clash horribly. It's very difficult to
> describe.

I've also taken DIPT, with a friend (who's a hearing researcher)
watching (and testing) me. Contrary to Shulgin's claims, my
thinking process was definitely affected, but I was plenty able
to confirm that I was experiencing absolute pitch shifts of about
a whole tone (down, IIRC). Part of how we recognize voices is by
the *absolute* pitches of formants in them. You can get a
similar effect by recording your friend's voice and using a
pitch-but-not-speed shifter on it in software.

Incidentally, DIPT could very well be considered illegal under
the Drug Analogs act of 1988, though I'm not aware of any
attempt to prosecute it that way. However, most internet labs
that would sell it were busted under that act for other
substances in 2004 (or was it 03?).

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@y...> wrote:

> Incidentally, DIPT could very well be considered illegal under
> the Drug Analogs act of 1988, though I'm not aware of any
> attempt to prosecute it that way.

I suspect it wouldn't work; it's not really very analogous to anything
from the sound (if you'll pardon the expression) of it.

Gene Ward Smith wrote:

> I found this quote interesting: "Since then, I have interviewed about
> 200 persons and found that certain personality types prefer 19 and
> others prefer the 22-tone temperament, and it is difficult to be
> impartial about them, but I do my best. Someday this might become a
> standard psychological personality test."

What if you like both? :-)

> Jonathan Glaser told me that, so apparently there is at least one
> other believer in this theory. One trouble I have with the "mood" of
> 19 is that 19 used as a way to play common-practice music with a
> meantone basis does not seem to me to have the same "mood" as music
> composed natively in 19. 19, like other tuning systems, really has a
> range of moods. Salinas, I think, nailed the effect of 19-et in
> playing 5-limit meantone well: "languid", he says, but not "offensive
> to the ear". That's it exactly, and yet that does *not* describe a lot
> of the music people compose natively for 19.

You could say the same about the difference between 12-ET used as a way to play meantone-based music vs. music composed natively in 12-ET, using resources such as the octatonic scale or the nine-note Tcherepnin scale (associated with diminished and augmented temperaments). Music composed natively in 19-ET can take advantage of magic, hanson, negri, and sensi temperaments and their associated scales. Another difference is that leading tones can be made sharper in 19-ET (as Ivor Darreg points out in the article linked to), which is the same thing that I do with 26-ET, but conflicts with the traditional usage in meantone notation (G-Gb-G instead of G-F#-G). I think this is a very natural thing to do in 19-ET, and you can hear the difference between sharpened and unsharpened versions of the same note in a piece that I wrote in 19-ET many years ago (the first microtonal thing I ever wrote):

ftp://ftp.io.com/pub/usr/hmiller/music/cv1.mp3

The first appearance of the theme, around 0:06, uses the sharpened version of the supertonic, which propels the music forward. When it returns at 0:19, it's the unsharpened supertonic, which has a more relaxed effect.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Herman Miller <hmiller@I...> wrote:

> Music composed
> natively in 19-ET can take advantage of magic, hanson, negri, and sensi
> temperaments and their associated scales.

Over on MMM I was using godzilla/semaphore as an example, since there
the 19-et tuning is pretty much optimal.

> Melodies were totally distorted.

Funny, I didn't have that experience at all. How much did you
take? My records show I took 80mg orally on an empty stomach,
but there's a question mark, indicating I wasn't sure when I
entered it. That would have many several times Shulgin's 18mg
active dose, but then again Shulgin seems to lowball these
things.

-Carl

> > Incidentally, DIPT could very well be considered illegal under
> > the Drug Analogs act of 1988, though I'm not aware of any
> > attempt to prosecute it that way.
>
> I suspect it wouldn't work; it's not really very analogous to
> anything from the sound (if you'll pardon the expression) of it.

I haven't read the language of the act, but my understanding is
that it's pretty liberal with chemistry. More like, 'if you're
doing it to get high, we can bust you.' But anyway,
di-isopropyl tryptamine is close to things like 4-HO-DIPT,
which definitely does more than screw with your hearing.

-Carl

What i find even more interesting is how people hear a Brahms quartet sound in tune.
I find that most string quartets when they have to play such ambiguous music it is almost unbearable to me, while the audience for the most part could care less of whether it is in 12 Et or a constantly shifting morass of indiscriminate pitches.
String instruments with piano is similarly a disaster of intonation.
> Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 10:12:44 -0000
> From: "Gene Ward Smith" <gwsmith@svpal.org>
> Subject: How do microtonal people hear?
>
> I'm wondering if there is something funny about the way most of us
> hear, which causes us to be able to listen to Harry Partch for the
> first time and immediately think it sounds cool. The reason I'm
> pondering that is that I've accumulated a lot of evidence that 7-limit
> just or near just intonation sounds out of tune to most people. Even
> if you stick to pure, > well-intonated tetrads, the adjectives you get are things like
> "horribly out of tune" and "extremely cacophonic". However, I am
> interested in this kind of music in good measure because it *doesn't*
> sound out of tune to me. >
> Now, I can wave numbers around in the air and "prove" I'm right, but
> of course there isn't much point to doing that. It can't very well be
> that these perceptions are entirely a matter of learning and
> conditioning, or why are some people *not* hearing 12-et as the acme
> of tuning perfection? Why do I want what I think of as "in tune" music
> if 12-et should be the definition "in tune" for someone raised in the
> West? What's really going on with the desciption of in-tune,
> reasonably tame 7-limit harmonies as "extremely cacophonic", when in
> fact the the harsh features of what I might be inclinded to call
> "cacophonic" are not present? Why do people object to this sort of
> "cacophonic" when very noisy music is now a staple of both popular and
> classical traditions? It is as if melody is being misheard as harmony
> somehow. And why, incidentally, can you get away with 5-limit JI if
> it's all a matter of conditioning?
>
> >
>
> -- 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

> I'm wondering if there is something funny about the way most of
> us hear, which causes us to be able to listen to Harry Partch
> for the first time and immediately think it sounds cool.

I've told this story here several times, and it may be worth
telling again.

The 1st Partch I heard was Jabberwocky, on a JIN compilation
tape. I was highly critical of most of the music on that tape,
and Jabberwocky was one of my prime complaints. I don't think
I knew it was Partch, or quite who Partch was, at the time.
And indeed, it's not much of a piece; just some jangly accompaniment
with the intoning voice. The 2nd Partch I heard was The Dreamer
That Remains, about a year later, and I had a cathartic experience
which changed my life. Go figure.

Another track on that tape was Harrison's "The Rose", from
his _From Ancient Worlds_. It's a beautiful piece of music,
and one of the most principly-7-limit pieces on the tape, and
it sounded sour and out of tune to me.

But funny enough, I've loved Barbershop since I can remember.

Then one day, listening to Barbershop, I recognized the chords
as identical to Harrison's. It was another catharsis.

The difference was the timbre. Piano vs. voice. Timbre is
not only part of consonance, as Sethares shows, it's generally
a primary part of music perception. The ability to hear
notes regardless of timbre is a refined one, which 95% of
listeners simply don't have. To them, microtonal music is
no different than equal-tempered music. They're likely to
ask you what kind of weirdo synth you're using.

Of course, to be fair, the ubiquity of equal temperament
is grossly exaggerated in the microtonal community.

-Carl

> What i find even more interesting is how people hear a Brahms
>quartet sound in tune.
> I find that most string quartets when they have to play such
>ambiguous music it is almost unbearable to me, while the
>audience for the most part could care less of whether it is in
>12 Et or a constantly shifting morass of indiscriminate pitches.

Good point. Most string quartets play out of tune.
String sections even in pro orchestras always bothered me, too.

> String instruments with piano is similarly a disaster of
>intonation.

I usually detest this instrumentation for precisely this reason.
It isn't *always* the case, though.

-Carl

On 1/29/06, Carl Lumma <clumma@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Melodies were totally distorted.
>
> Funny, I didn't have that experience at all. How much did you
> take? My records show I took 80mg orally on an empty stomach,
> but there's a question mark, indicating I wasn't sure when I
> entered it. That would have many several times Shulgin's 18mg
> active dose, but then again Shulgin seems to lowball these
> things.
>
> -Carl

I'm sure I took less that that, in fact I think it was about 30 mg.
Melodic intervals definitely sounded different to me. I guess it just
goes to show how subjective it all is.

Keenan

On 1/29/06, Herman Miller <hmiller@io.com> wrote:
[snip]
> ftp://ftp.io.com/pub/usr/hmiller/music/cv1.mp3

I like this one a lot. You should do an extended version or remix or something.

Keenan

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@y...> wrote:
> I've told this story here several times, and it may be worth
> telling again.

Great post, Carl, every aspect of it. And I'd like to second the
notion, raised earlier in this thread, that context is a huge part of
listening.

Cheers,
Jon

Hi Keenan and Carl.

You wrote:

> > Another experience, which I'm not sure I should even mention, was
> > with the unique drug diisopropyltryptamine. Wikipedia has a decent
> > article on it. It's not exactly illegal, at least in the US, but
> > I don't know where you can get a hold of it. Anyway, DIPT is a
> > hallucinogen that affects only the sense of hearing. People's
> > voices sound like frogs. It's so weird because you can play an
> > interval that you know should be a perfect fifth, but it sounds
> > like a sixth or seventh, even though the two notes blend together
> > just like a fifth. Then you find two notes that you think sound
> > like a fifth, and they clash horribly. It's very difficult to
> > describe.
>
> I've also taken DIPT, with a friend (who's a hearing researcher)
> watching (and testing) me. Contrary to Shulgin's claims, my
> thinking process was definitely affected, but I was plenty able
> to confirm that I was experiencing absolute pitch shifts of about
> a whole tone (down, IIRC). Part of how we recognize voices is by
> the *absolute* pitches of formants in them. You can get a
> similar effect by recording your friend's voice and using a
> pitch-but-not-speed shifter on it in software.

Aha, so, as far as I can understand this matter, the frequency band is never
shifted upwards in this case. The strange thing is that Carl speaks of
something that reminds me of an "exponential" frequency alterations while
Keenan's experience reminds me strikingly of the effect of linear frequency
shifting (i.e. harmonic timbres are no longer harmonic and very rarely vice
versa). Well, I'm normally used to sing something around more or less 220Hz
when someone says "Sing an A3" and noone knows if I heard it higher or lower
if I had this experience (or is it definitely always lower?) and if I heard
the same intervals only at different absolute pitches. If the intervals were
really different, that would, of course, be a much more frightening
experience.

I've also heard of a strange event that happened to one of my former
schoolmates. About four years ago, he had some sort of a seisure, he
suddenly fell into coma, and when he woke up some hours later, he heard
everything about 80 cents lower. The worse thing for him was that it took
about four or five months for his hearing to recover. But he said that the
intervals were still the same for him and he heard no overtone distortion.

Some years ago, I made CoolEdit scripts which work with amplitude modulation
in various ways. Two of their effects are called "100Hz up" and "100Hz
down", respectively. It's some sort of a two-step process. First, a regular
amplitude modulation is used which shifts the frequencies both up and down
so that every single tone becomes two. Then, both the original signal and
the modulator are phase-shifted by 90 degrees in the entire frequency range
and the modulation is used for a second time. Finally, the two results of
the modulation are either mixed or subtracted, depending on whether you wish
to shift the frequencies down or up, respectively. As the names suggest,
these effects shift the entire frequency band linearly up or down by 100Hz
by default. You can specify any other frequency if you check the "Pause at
dialogs" box before launching the script and then change the frequency to
the desired one in both stages of the modulation. . If you were interested,
I can find the script and send it to you. Well, maybe we'll find a way of
"digitally" simulating DIPT in the end, who knows? :-D

Petr

Hi Gene,

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <gwsmith@s...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "threesixesinarow" <CACCOLA@N...> wrote:
> >
> > --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <gwsmith@s...> wrote:
> > >
> > > I'm wondering if there is something funny about
> > > the way most of us hear, which causes us to be able
> > > to listen to Harry Partch for the first time and
> > > immediately think it sounds cool.
> >
> > At http://sonic-arts.org/darreg/CASE.HTM Ivor Darreg
> > describes a kind of mood peculiar to 19 equal that
> > makes sense to me.
>
> I found this quote interesting: "Since then, I have
> interviewed about 200 persons and found that certain
> personality types prefer 19 and others prefer the
> 22-tone temperament, and it is difficult to be
> impartial about them, but I do my best. Someday
> this might become a standard psychological personality
> test."
>
> Jonathan Glaser told me that, so apparently there is
> at least one other believer in this theory. One trouble
> I have with the "mood" of 19 is that 19 used as a way
> to play common-practice music with a meantone basis
> does not seem to me to have the same "mood" as music
> composed natively in 19. 19, like other tuning systems,
> really has a range of moods. Salinas, I think, nailed
> the effect of 19-et in playing 5-limit meantone well:
> "languid", he says, but not "offensive to the ear".
> That's it exactly, and yet that does *not* describe
> a lot of the music people compose natively for 19.

Didn't i mention to you that i too subscribe to Ivor's
"mood theory" ... on the same day at the park in Oakland
when Jonathan talked to you about it?

I've had a suspicion for a long time that the "moods"
of various tunings has to do with the prime-factors
that are present or most obviously approximated.

LaMonte Young is another composer who has similar
theories and ideas. He habitually sets up a chord
with many sine tones tuned to all kinds of prime ratios
on his synthesizer, along the lines of his Dream House
installation _The Base 9:7:4 Symmetry in Prime Time ..._:

http://melafoundation.org/gann.htm

and just lets it play in his apartment for months at
a time while otherwise going on about his life. He
says that he is studying the effect of the various
primes and their combinations on his and wife Marian's
nervous systems.

-monz
http://tonalsoft.com
Tonescape microtonal music software

That would be the equivalent of sonic dipsomania?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Petr Par�zek" <p.parizek@chello.cz>
To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: 30 Ocak 2006 Pazartesi 9:48
Subject: Re: [tuning] Re: How do microtonal people hear?

> Hi Keenan and Carl.
>
> You wrote:
>
> > > Another experience, which I'm not sure I should even mention, was
> > > with the unique drug diisopropyltryptamine. Wikipedia has a decent
> > > article on it. It's not exactly illegal, at least in the US, but
> > > I don't know where you can get a hold of it. Anyway, DIPT is a
> > > hallucinogen that affects only the sense of hearing. People's
> > > voices sound like frogs. It's so weird because you can play an
> > > interval that you know should be a perfect fifth, but it sounds
> > > like a sixth or seventh, even though the two notes blend together
> > > just like a fifth. Then you find two notes that you think sound
> > > like a fifth, and they clash horribly. It's very difficult to
> > > describe.
> >
> > I've also taken DIPT, with a friend (who's a hearing researcher)
> > watching (and testing) me. Contrary to Shulgin's claims, my
> > thinking process was definitely affected, but I was plenty able
> > to confirm that I was experiencing absolute pitch shifts of about
> > a whole tone (down, IIRC). Part of how we recognize voices is by
> > the *absolute* pitches of formants in them. You can get a
> > similar effect by recording your friend's voice and using a
> > pitch-but-not-speed shifter on it in software.
>
> Aha, so, as far as I can understand this matter, the frequency band is
never
> shifted upwards in this case. The strange thing is that Carl speaks of
> something that reminds me of an "exponential" frequency alterations while
> Keenan's experience reminds me strikingly of the effect of linear
frequency
> shifting (i.e. harmonic timbres are no longer harmonic and very rarely
vice
> versa). Well, I'm normally used to sing something around more or less
220Hz
> when someone says "Sing an A3" and noone knows if I heard it higher or
lower
> if I had this experience (or is it definitely always lower?) and if I
heard
> the same intervals only at different absolute pitches. If the intervals
were
> really different, that would, of course, be a much more frightening
> experience.
>
> I've also heard of a strange event that happened to one of my former
> schoolmates. About four years ago, he had some sort of a seisure, he
> suddenly fell into coma, and when he woke up some hours later, he heard
> everything about 80 cents lower. The worse thing for him was that it took
> about four or five months for his hearing to recover. But he said that the
> intervals were still the same for him and he heard no overtone distortion.
>
> Some years ago, I made CoolEdit scripts which work with amplitude
modulation
> in various ways. Two of their effects are called "100Hz up" and "100Hz
> down", respectively. It's some sort of a two-step process. First, a
regular
> amplitude modulation is used which shifts the frequencies both up and down
> so that every single tone becomes two. Then, both the original signal and
> the modulator are phase-shifted by 90 degrees in the entire frequency
range
> and the modulation is used for a second time. Finally, the two results of
> the modulation are either mixed or subtracted, depending on whether you
wish
> to shift the frequencies down or up, respectively. As the names suggest,
> these effects shift the entire frequency band linearly up or down by 100Hz
> by default. You can specify any other frequency if you check the "Pause at
> dialogs" box before launching the script and then change the frequency to
> the desired one in both stages of the modulation. . If you were
interested,
> I can find the script and send it to you. Well, maybe we'll find a way of
> "digitally" simulating DIPT in the end, who knows? :-D
>
> Petr
>
>
>

Hi Ozan.

You wrote:

> That would be the equivalent of sonic dipsomania?

Oh, what's sonic dipsomania? Never heard of that.

Petr

monz wrote:

>
>LaMonte Young is another composer who has similar
>theories and ideas. He habitually sets up a chord
>with many sine tones tuned to all kinds of prime ratios
>on his synthesizer, along the lines of his Dream House
>installation _The Base 9:7:4 Symmetry in Prime Time ..._:
>
>http://melafoundation.org/gann.htm
>
>and just lets it play in his apartment for months at
>a time while otherwise going on about his life. He >says that he is studying the effect of the various
>primes and their combinations on his and wife Marian's
>nervous systems.
> >

In recent years, La Monte also leaves his tambura CD on repeat for hours.
-- * David Beardsley
* microtonal guitar
* http://biink.com/db

> It can't very well be that these perceptions are entirely a
> matter of learning and conditioning, or why are some people *not*
> hearing 12-et as the acme of tuning perfection?

To summarize my answer to this, I think it can be learned, and
was in my case.

But what I learned in the story was more about accepting the
bare 7-limit sounds from a piano, and less about melodic shifts
or scales with lots of different 2nds.

As soon as I had the basic realizations in the story, I began
to relish JI-type melodic shifts and uneven melodies. But a lot
of what I was hearing was JI, since I was entering the field
through the JI Network. So maybe that too was learned. And I
like melodic shifts less now than I did then.

One listening experiment cited by Paul E. grouped subjects
into two groups -- type 1 listeners and type 2 listeners, or
some such. Maybe he can remember which one that was.

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@y...> wrote:

> But what I learned in the story was more about accepting the
> bare 7-limit sounds from a piano, and less about melodic shifts
> or scales with lots of different 2nds.

What do you mean by "melodic shifts"?

> One listening experiment cited by Paul E. grouped subjects
> into two groups -- type 1 listeners and type 2 listeners, or
> some such. Maybe he can remember which one that was.

Paul?

> > But what I learned in the story was more about accepting the
> > bare 7-limit sounds from a piano, and less about melodic shifts
> > or scales with lots of different 2nds.
>
> What do you mean by "melodic shifts"?

Maybe I should have said "tiny intervals in the melody".

-Carl

Concordance vs. consonance.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <gwsmith@s...> wrote:
>
> I'm wondering if there is something funny about the way most of us
> hear, which causes us to be able to listen to Harry Partch for the
> first time and immediately think it sounds cool.

You did??

> The reason I'm
> pondering that is that I've accumulated a lot of evidence that 7-
limit
> just or near just intonation sounds out of tune to most people. Even
> if you stick to pure,
> well-intonated tetrads, the adjectives you get are things like
> "horribly out of tune" and "extremely cacophonic". However, I am
> interested in this kind of music in good measure because it
*doesn't*
> sound out of tune to me.
>
> Now, I can wave numbers around in the air and "prove" I'm right, but
> of course there isn't much point to doing that. It can't very well
be
> that these perceptions are entirely a matter of learning and
> conditioning, or why are some people *not* hearing 12-et as the acme
> of tuning perfection? Why do I want what I think of as "in tune"
music
> if 12-et should be the definition "in tune" for someone raised in
the
> West? What's really going on with the desciption of in-tune,
> reasonably tame 7-limit harmonies as "extremely cacophonic", when in
> fact the the harsh features of what I might be inclinded to call
> "cacophonic" are not present? Why do people object to this sort of
> "cacophonic" when very noisy music is now a staple of both popular
and
> classical traditions? It is as if melody is being misheard as
harmony
> somehow. And why, incidentally, can you get away with 5-limit JI if
> it's all a matter of conditioning?
>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <gwsmith@s...> wrote:
>
> I'm wondering if there is something funny about the way most of us
> hear, which causes us to be able to listen to Harry Partch for the
> first time and immediately think it sounds cool.

Julia Werntz played her class some Harry Partch once and they thought
it sounded like 12-equal. I don't know which piece she chose(!), but
her point was that JI is not a particularly efficient way of getting to
those nice juicy microtones. I tend to disagree.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <gwsmith@s...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "threesixesinarow" <CACCOLA@N...>
wrote:
> >
> > --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <gwsmith@s...>
wrote:
> > >
> > > I'm wondering if there is something funny about the way most of
us
> > > hear, which causes us to be able to listen to Harry Partch for
the
> > > first time and immediately think it sounds cool.
> >
> > At http://sonic-arts.org/darreg/CASE.HTM Ivor Darreg describes a
kind
> > of mood peculiar to 19 equal that makes sense to me.
>
> I found this quote interesting: "Since then, I have interviewed
about
> 200 persons and found that certain personality types prefer 19 and
> others prefer the 22-tone temperament, and it is difficult to be
> impartial about them, but I do my best. Someday this might become a
> standard psychological personality test."

No offense to Ivor Darreg, but I seriously doubt the set of musical
examples (if any) this "test" was based on was anywhere near
sufficient to make generalizations about the mood of either tuning.

> Jonathan Glaser told me that, so apparently there is at least one
> other believer in this theory. One trouble I have with the "mood" of
> 19 is that 19 used as a way to play common-practice music with a
> meantone basis does not seem to me to have the same "mood" as music
> composed natively in 19. 19, like other tuning systems, really has a
> range of moods. Salinas, I think, nailed the effect of 19-et in
> playing 5-limit meantone well: "languid", he says, but
not "offensive
> to the ear". That's it exactly, and yet that does *not* describe a
lot
> of the music people compose natively for 19.

And in 22, 5-limit meantone or common practice don't even get off the
ground.

Why? Which cultures make regular use of drugs like these?

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Ozan Yarman" <ozanyarman@o...> wrote:
>
> This might explain why different cultures prefer diverse interval
> combinations melodically as well as (quasi-)harmonically.
>
> Oz.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Keenan Pepper" <keenanpepper@g...>
> To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: 29 Ocak 2006 Pazar 22:10
> Subject: Re: [tuning] How do microtonal people hear?
>
>
> > On 1/29/06, Petr Pařízek <p.parizek@c...> wrote:
> > > Hi Keenan.
> > [snip]
> > > Oohhh!!
> > > If somethink like this ever happened to me, I think I'd soon
literally
> get
> > > mad. Even though I've never heard of this, just reading your
description
> > > makes me frightened when I try to imagine something like this
happening
> to
> > > me. OK, you've successfully shown me that I no longer need to
read ghost
> > > stories. BTW, do you remember what was happening when you heard
a
> melody --
> > > i.e. when the tones sounded one after another, not at the same
time?
> >
> > Yeah, I guess it was pretty scary the first time. Especially
because
> > it lasts so long; you freak out and think your hearing is
permanently
> > damaged... but then you wake up next morning and it's back to
normal.
> >
> > Melodies were totally distorted. The intervals seemed all
stretched
> > out, to different degrees in different octaves. Someone really
needs
> > to make a study of this stuff, we could learn a lot about how the
> > sense of hearing works. Alexander Shulgin talks about it in his
book
> > TIHKAL:
http://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/tihkal/tihkal04.shtml
> >
>
> SNIP
>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Keenan Pepper <keenanpepper@g...>
wrote:
>
> On 1/29/06, Carl Lumma <clumma@y...> wrote:
> > > Melodies were totally distorted.
> >
> > Funny, I didn't have that experience at all. How much did you
> > take? My records show I took 80mg orally on an empty stomach,
> > but there's a question mark, indicating I wasn't sure when I
> > entered it. That would have many several times Shulgin's 18mg
> > active dose, but then again Shulgin seems to lowball these
> > things.
> >
> > -Carl
>
> I'm sure I took less that that, in fact I think it was about 30 mg.
> Melodic intervals definitely sounded different to me. I guess it
just
> goes to show how subjective it all is.
>
> Keenan

On another note, Gary Morrison and Joseph Pehrson have both posted
about how their experiments with microtonal scales caused them to
hear (immediately afterwards) conventional ET or JI intervals as
larger than they "really were" or at least were remembered to me. And
I don't think they were on anything . . .

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@y...> wrote:

> One listening experiment cited by Paul E. grouped subjects
> into two groups -- type 1 listeners and type 2 listeners, or
> some such. Maybe he can remember which one that was.

If I know what you're talking about, this experiment presented
listeners with pure and detuned versions of 4:5:6, 3:5:7, and
10:12:15 chords. The experiment found two classes of listeners, one
which preferred the first two chords pure, the other which preferred
the middle note of each of the first two chords detuned by 15 cents
in *either* direction (30 cents was tested too, no one preferred
those). The third chord looked different, perhaps because lowering
the middle note 15 cents leads to a close approximation of 16:19:24,
but raising it 15 cents doesn't do anything similar. The article on
this experiment can be found in:

Sundberg, Johan (ed.) Harmony and Tonality, papers given at a seminar
organized by the Music Acoustics Committee of the Royal Swedish
Academy of Music, Publications of the R.S.A.M. no. 54, Stockholm,
1987, 99 pages.

Nearly all my dear fellow. We consume such drugs in minute amounts every day
from our common food sources.

----- Original Message -----
From: "wallyesterpaulrus" <wallyesterpaulrus@yahoo.com>
To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: 31 Ocak 2006 Sal� 2:42
Subject: [tuning] Re: How do microtonal people hear?

Why? Which cultures make regular use of drugs like these?

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Ozan Yarman" <ozanyarman@o...> wrote:
>
> This might explain why different cultures prefer diverse interval
> combinations melodically as well as (quasi-)harmonically.
>
> Oz.

Do you have any references? I know that DMT is already present in our
spinal fluid, but as for the particular drugs mentioned here, I'd
love to learn of any natural occurences.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Ozan Yarman" <ozanyarman@o...> wrote:
>
> Nearly all my dear fellow. We consume such drugs in minute amounts
every day
> from our common food sources.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "wallyesterpaulrus" <wallyesterpaulrus@y...>
> To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: 31 Ocak 2006 Salý 2:42
> Subject: [tuning] Re: How do microtonal people hear?
>
>
> Why? Which cultures make regular use of drugs like these?
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Ozan Yarman" <ozanyarman@o...>
wrote:
> >
> > This might explain why different cultures prefer diverse interval
> > combinations melodically as well as (quasi-)harmonically.
> >
> > Oz.
>

On 1/30/06, wallyesterpaulrus <wallyesterpaulrus@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Do you have any references? I know that DMT is already present in our
> spinal fluid, but as for the particular drugs mentioned here, I'd
> love to learn of any natural occurences.
>
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Ozan Yarman" <ozanyarman@o...> wrote:
> >
> > Nearly all my dear fellow. We consume such drugs in minute amounts
> every day
> > from our common food sources.
[snip]

This is getting really off topic, but I don't think DIPT occurs
naturally in any significant quantities. Of course, you can find any
substance anywhere if you look hard enough...

Keenan

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "wallyesterpaulrus"
<wallyesterpaulrus@y...> wrote:
>
> Concordance vs. consonance.
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <gwsmith@s...> wrote:
> >
> > I'm wondering if there is something funny about the way most of us
> > hear, which causes us to be able to listen to Harry Partch for the
> > first time and immediately think it sounds cool.
>
> You did??

You bet. A real "wow" reaction due mostly to the exotic harmony. It
left me wishing the harmony was brought out more clearly; I actually
found other elements a little distracting from that point of view,
nice as the rythmic vitality for instance was in itself. I wanted more
sustained chords!

I speak from personal experience alone. Industrialization of agriculture has
endangered the planetary eco-system to a point where we cannot sustain
ourselves naturally anymore. No one can predict the extent to which
genetical mutations are taking place. Our food sources are surely
contaminated with every kind of psychotic substance that directly affects
our ability to perceive. The planet is stark raving mad, I tell you. I
believe I am myself suffering for a prolonged time from the visible
manifestations of such delusive substances. The symptoms resemble the
effects of the prescribed medication I daily consumed during my bipolar mood
disorder treatment long years ago. Everything is a little hazy, insipid,
boring... nausea and anxiety is often felt.

----- Original Message -----
From: "wallyesterpaulrus" <wallyesterpaulrus@yahoo.com>
To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: 31 Ocak 2006 Sal� 3:47
Subject: [tuning] Re: How do microtonal people hear?

Do you have any references? I know that DMT is already present in our
spinal fluid, but as for the particular drugs mentioned here, I'd
love to learn of any natural occurences.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Ozan Yarman" <ozanyarman@o...> wrote:
>
> Nearly all my dear fellow. We consume such drugs in minute amounts
every day
> from our common food sources.
>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "wallyesterpaulrus"
<wallyesterpaulrus@y...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <gwsmith@s...> wrote:
> >
> > I'm wondering if there is something funny about the way most of us
> > hear, which causes us to be able to listen to Harry Partch for the
> > first time and immediately think it sounds cool.
>
> Julia Werntz played her class some Harry Partch once and they thought
> it sounded like 12-equal.

I had never heard of Harry Partch and had no idea what to expect, but
I could tell it wasn't 12-equal, and to me there was something
immediately right and convincing-sounding about it. But I was familiar
with the idea of JI, from Redfield.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "wallyesterpaulrus"
<wallyesterpaulrus@y...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@y...> wrote:
>
> > One listening experiment cited by Paul E. grouped subjects
> > into two groups -- type 1 listeners and type 2 listeners, or
> > some such. Maybe he can remember which one that was.
>
> If I know what you're talking about, this experiment presented
> listeners with pure and detuned versions of 4:5:6, 3:5:7, and
> 10:12:15 chords. The experiment found two classes of listeners, one
> which preferred the first two chords pure, the other which preferred
> the middle note of each of the first two chords detuned by 15 cents
> in *either* direction (30 cents was tested too, no one preferred
> those).

Did they test for very slight detunings?

Gene Ward Smith escreveu:
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "wallyesterpaulrus"
> <wallyesterpaulrus@y...> wrote:
> >>--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@y...> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>One listening experiment cited by Paul E. grouped subjects
>>>into two groups -- type 1 listeners and type 2 listeners, or
>>>some such. Maybe he can remember which one that was.
>>
>>If I know what you're talking about, this experiment presented >>listeners with pure and detuned versions of 4:5:6, 3:5:7, and >>10:12:15 chords. The experiment found two classes of listeners, one >>which preferred the first two chords pure, the other which preferred >>the middle note of each of the first two chords detuned by 15 cents >>in *either* direction (30 cents was tested too, no one preferred >>those). > > > Did they test for very slight detunings? I don't know that test, but I read on another.

According to John Pierce and Max Mathews (paper on BP scale), Mathews and L. Roberts have proposed the concept of /intonation sensivity/:

"Intonation sensivity is determined by how the preference for a chord varies with the tuning, or mistuning, of the center note".

It seems (there is a figure in the paper) that the experiments included only 0, +/-15 and +/-30 cents from JI's center pitch. Chords were 4:5:6, 1/4:1/5:1/6, 3:5:7 and 5:7:9.

Hudson

--
Hudson Lacerda <http://geocities.yahoo.com.br/hfmlacerda/>
*N�o deixe seu voto sumir! http://www.votoseguro.org/
*Ap�ie o Manifesto: http://www.votoseguro.com/alertaprofessores/

== THE WAR IN IRAQ COSTS ==
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_______________________________________________________ Yahoo! doce lar. Fa�a do Yahoo! sua homepage. http://br.yahoo.com/homepageset.html

Kalle Aho wrote:

> This is all speculation from my part but maybe people refer to
> different things with "out-of-tuneness"! > > Because microtonal musicians have studied at least some relevant
> psychoacoustics and listened to new and weird intervals with all this
> theoretical background in mind their judgement of out-of-tuneness is
> dominated by perceptions of roughness, sonance and other
> psychoacoustical factors. More than that -- the more you listen to new and weird intervals the less weird they become. If you've spent hours working on a piece in a tuning system you're already familiar with, it's hardly suprising that it will sound less out of tune to you than to a fresh listener.

> Normal listeners are very likely able to hear these things (while
> probably not being aware of hearing them) but do not think those are
> the things to listen for when judging out-of-tuneness. > > They might just be comparing the microtonal performance under
> judgement to paradigm performances of music where the same musical
> instruments are used. Yes, I think this is completely true. My experience of playing most of the music I like to most of my friends is that the instantly hate it. And the speed with which they hate it is truly alarming. How can you make a definitive judgement on a style you've never heard before in 20 seconds, while you're talking the whole time? Nevertheless, they do it.

I don't know if the aim should be to copy existing styles -- to try and ensnare people who like those styles -- or be completely different so you aren't damned for getting it slightly wrong. Probably you lose either way with these kind of people.

As for myself, I don't think I have any disposition to hear intervals differently to other people. What I seem to have is an unusual desire to persist with unfamiliar music until is stops sounding like a racket. Maybe that's something we share, and have to expect from our listeners.

> This is context-sensitive. At least for me microtonal tunings sound
> more striking with traditional instruments than with entirely new
> sounds. It might be this strikingness that is understood as
> out-of-tuneness. Because of the negative connotations associated with
> the term "out-of-tune" this is perceived as something undesirable. How should we manipulate the context? I've always thought that microtonal pieces should start with an exposition of some kind, like tonal music establishes the key and Indian classical music establishes the raga. But I still don't really know how to go about it. Do you start with the characteristic chords of your system, or with more familiar chords and introduce the strange notes later? The danger's that you either turn people off right at the start or they smell a rat when the strange intervals creep in. I know some composers have been dazzled by the newness of microtonality and ended up spending too much time going up and down scales so that we can hear the newness of it all.

It'd be super if I could learn from the experience of my betters but I really don't know how other people have approached this problem.

Graham

Graham,

Great post, lots of personal insights into your musical soul (so to
speak...)

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Graham Breed <gbreed@g...> wrote:
> More than that -- the more you listen to new and weird intervals the
> less weird they become. If you've spent hours working on a piece in a
> tuning system you're already familiar with, it's hardly suprising that
> it will sound less out of tune to you than to a fresh listener.

Abso-absolutely.

> My experience of playing most of
> the music I like to most of my friends is that the instantly hate it.

Hmmm. I can only think of two replies:

1. there is no accounting for taste
2. you need new friends

(neither of which is really serious)

> What I seem to have is an unusual desire
> to persist with unfamiliar music until is stops sounding like a racket.
> Maybe that's something we share, and have to expect from our
listeners.

The music you make has to please and communicate with you first,
before anyone else. All you can expect from listeners is a listen, and
if the music you make is honest, you will find the right people who
will like it. As to something we share, it certainly is a very small
niche in the larger experience, and it probably isn't fruitful to
expect masses of people liking the particular music that you (or I)
happen to like. When I compose, I usually can't imagine others liking
it (at least in the way that I do), and when positively received it is
an awfully nice surprise.

> How should we manipulate the context?

Well, I don't look at it that way, nor do I view my writing as
composing in some way to justify the use of microtones. I use them
when they seem like the only way to express what I want to express.

> I know some composers have been
> dazzled by the newness of microtonality and ended up spending too much
> time going up and down scales so that we can hear the newness of it all.

Yeah, that is always so pleasant. How lame.

> It'd be super if I could learn from the experience of my betters but I
> really don't know how other people have approached this problem.

I'd say one would want to view music creation on a larger scale, and
not simply "how does everyone else make music out of microtones". If
that is the only tack you take, it is probably going to sound just
like the description, instead of an inevitable result of a creative act.

Cheers,
Jon

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Graham Breed <gbreed@g...> wrote:

> I don't know if the aim should be to copy existing styles -- to try and
> ensnare people who like those styles -- or be completely different so
> you aren't damned for getting it slightly wrong.

I compose the kind of music I would like to listen to, if someone else
had composed it. That tends to mean it sounds like music in the
classical tradition played out of tune to a lot of people.

> As for myself, I don't think I have any disposition to hear intervals
> differently to other people. What I seem to have is an unusual desire
> to persist with unfamiliar music until is stops sounding like a racket.

I was thinking of my immediately positive reaction to Harry Partch,
and it occurs to me that while I didn't listen to Partch because I
knew he was using JI tunings, I *had* experimented with 7-limit JI
years before hearing Partch. I thought the melodies I could come up
with (played, of course very badly, by myself on a violin) in 7-limit
JI were cool. My ears were clearly open to the possibility, whatever
opened them.

Jon Szanto wrote:
> Graham,
> > Great post, lots of personal insights into your musical soul (so to
> speak...)

Why thank you! I notice I'd made two posts that seemed to agree with what Neil had said while I was offline. I count that as a good sign :)

>>What I seem to have is an unusual desire >>to persist with unfamiliar music until is stops sounding like a racket. >> Maybe that's something we share, and have to expect from our
> listeners.
> > The music you make has to please and communicate with you first,
> before anyone else. All you can expect from listeners is a listen, and
> if the music you make is honest, you will find the right people who
> will like it. As to something we share, it certainly is a very small
> niche in the larger experience, and it probably isn't fruitful to
> expect masses of people liking the particular music that you (or I)
> happen to like. When I compose, I usually can't imagine others liking
> it (at least in the way that I do), and when positively received it is
> an awfully nice surprise.

I don't agree with your first point. Solitary music making's an unusual, and maybe perverted activity. Music's a part of a wide range of communal activities. You can easily look at it as a tool for bringing people together. If microtonality acts as a barrier between me and other people I know with an interest in music then it's a problem. It's a problem that goes to the heart of what music making should be about.

OTOH, as I've changed jobs and homes so much in the past few years, the largely online microtonal community is the most enduring one in my life beyond my family. So that's worth thinking about as well.

>>How should we manipulate the context?
> > Well, I don't look at it that way, nor do I view my writing as
> composing in some way to justify the use of microtones. I use them
> when they seem like the only way to express what I want to express.

I got interested in microtonality because I thought I could use it to make better music. Because music's a subjective thing that means other people have to agree. If microtonality's something that means people like my music less (i.e. it's worse in their subjectivity) then it's a waste of time. If I thought I could make better music in 12-equal then I'd do that. It'd be a lot less trouble. Leave microtonlity as theory-only. Or maybe produce microtonal music for my own pleasure and round everything off to 12 notes before I make it public. I'd much rather keep working on good microtonal music, so that it sounds better than anything I could have done otherwise. That means I have to think about how people are actually going to hear it.

>>It'd be super if I could learn from the experience of my betters but I >>really don't know how other people have approached this problem.
> > I'd say one would want to view music creation on a larger scale, and
> not simply "how does everyone else make music out of microtones". If
> that is the only tack you take, it is probably going to sound just
> like the description, instead of an inevitable result of a creative act.

I'm not interested in how people do it, but how they've been successful in doing it. How do you make explicitly microtonal music that a naive (but open minded) listener can understand on a first hearing? Or, alternatively, how do you make microtonal music that sounds good?

There are standard techniques in all the enduring classical traditions I know of that help listeners to understand the tonal structure of the music they're listening to. And this usually assumes those listeners will be familiar with the particular style. How much more important to make listeners understand an unfamiliar harmonic style!

Graham

> > Cheers,
> Jon
> > > > > > You can configure your subscription by sending an empty email to one
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> > > > > > > >

Graham,

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Graham Breed <gbreed@g...> wrote:
> I don't agree with your first point. Solitary music making's an
> unusual, and maybe perverted activity.

Oh, I don't know that's really the case, and I'm speaking of just one
activity: composing. There have been an awful lot of composers over
the millenia, and rarely were they doing group efforts. I acknowledge,
and take part in, a lot of other music activities, including
improvisatory music that *does* occur with others. But to write music,
in the quietude of one's environment, to be shared later, doesn't seem
that perverted to me.

> Music's a part of a wide range of communal activities.
> You can easily look at it as a tool for
> bringing people together.

Certainly.

> If microtonality acts as a barrier between me
> and other people I know with an interest in music then it's a problem.
> It's a problem that goes to the heart of what music making should be
about.

But you don't know for sure that it is the microtonality that is
putting them off, do you? If the people you are concerned with
reaching have 12tet as a lingua franca, the only way you are going to
be allowed to fret (no pun intended) over your success is if you also
managed to alienate (or bore) them with some 12tet music. Have you
played them anything you wrote that *wasn't* microtonal?

> OTOH, as I've changed jobs and homes so much in the past few years, the
> largely online microtonal community is the most enduring one in my life
> beyond my family. So that's worth thinking about as well.

As you choose.

> I got interested in microtonality because I thought I could use it to
> make better music. Because music's a subjective thing that means other
> people have to agree.

Are *you* happy with the music you've made?

> I'd much
> rather keep working on good microtonal music, so that it sounds better
> than anything I could have done otherwise. That means I have to think
> about how people are actually going to hear it.

Well, Graham, I guess we have to depart a bit: I honestly think you
are selling short your own experience. It almost sounds like it is
inconsequential as to whether you yourself enjoy the music, so long as
it pleases others. That sounds like a recipe for profound regret, or
at the very least a diminution of your talents into a common
denominator market.

> How do you make explicitly microtonal music that a naive
> (but open minded) listener can understand on a first hearing? Or,
> alternatively, how do you make microtonal music that sounds good?

Well, I don't have an answer. I have to say that, if your most
enduring community has been this list (and derivatives), you may have
been tainted by some of the thinking. I don't say that in a
mean-spirited way, but if the entire or main focus of creating a piece
is to explicitly thrust the microtonal nature of the fabric to the
forefront, without considering the many other aspects of a
communicative music, you are looking at a very small chance of
pleasing people. "These are microtones, eat them, they're good for you!"

> How much more important to
> make listeners understand an unfamiliar harmonic style!

That makes a good question: just how much more *important*? Frankly, I
don't listen to music just for some harmonic content - that harmonic
content is a servant in a bigger task.

You might (I said _might_, I'm not sure) find interest in reading the
musings of people who are active in composition on a daily or regular
basis, and just stand back and see how they approach some of your
situations. I imagine there are forums or blogs for popular
composers/performers, but one place I check occasionally are the
discussions at Sequenza 21:

http://www.sequenza21.com/

Best,
Jon

Jon Szanto wrote:

>Graham,
>
>--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Graham Breed <gbreed@g...> wrote:
> >
>>I don't agree with your first point. Solitary music making's an >>unusual, and maybe perverted activity.
>> >>
>
>Oh, I don't know that's really the case, and I'm speaking of just one
>activity: composing. There have been an awful lot of composers over
>the millenia, and rarely were they doing group efforts. I acknowledge,
>and take part in, a lot of other music activities, including
>improvisatory music that *does* occur with others. But to write music,
>in the quietude of one's environment, to be shared later, doesn't seem
>that perverted to me.
> >

I don't know what Graham is up to, but as long as he washes his hands when he's
done, no big deal.

--
* David Beardsley
* microtonal guitar
* http://biink.com/db

I think this hits the nail on the head.
An artist can only be concerned with the way they hear and see. one can only be one self and if it is difficult for audiences, good.
What good is art if it doesn't challenge and expand what we already know?
Every period of music did exactly this. Why do we expect it to be different now.
Now that many (so called) artist seem more concerned with careers than art have they become, pardon the expression, gutless wimps. or to be kind, technicians.

> From: "Jon Szanto" <jszanto@cox.net>
>
> >
> The music you make has to please and communicate with you first,
> before anyone else. All you can expect from listeners is a listen, and
> if the music you make is honest, you will find the right people who
> will like it. As to something we share, it certainly is a very small
> niche in the larger experience, and it probably isn't fruitful to
> expect masses of people liking the particular music that you (or I)
> happen to like. When I compose, I usually can't imagine others liking
> it (at least in the way that I do), and when positively received it is
> an awfully nice surprise.
>
> -- 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

So, that would make technicians gutless wimps according to you? LOL

Oz.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kraig Grady" <kraiggrady@anaphoria.com>
To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: 01 �ubat 2006 �ar�amba 21:45
Subject: [tuning] Re: How do microtonal people hear?

> I think this hits the nail on the head.
> An artist can only be concerned with the way they hear and see. one can
> only be one self and if it is difficult for audiences, good.
> What good is art if it doesn't challenge and expand what we already know?
> Every period of music did exactly this. Why do we expect it to be
> different now.
> Now that many (so called) artist seem more concerned with careers than
> art have they become, pardon the expression, gutless wimps. or to be
> kind, technicians.
>
>

Jon Szanto wrote:

> Oh, I don't know that's really the case, and I'm speaking of just one
> activity: composing. There have been an awful lot of composers over
> the millenia, and rarely were they doing group efforts. I acknowledge,
> and take part in, a lot of other music activities, including
> improvisatory music that *does* occur with others. But to write music,
> in the quietude of one's environment, to be shared later, doesn't seem
> that perverted to me.

Composing isn't music making. It's the first part of a music making process that usually involves other people and is usually geared towards a public performance. Before amplification it was part of the form of music making that involved the most musicians. Composers putting dots on paper for their own solitary pleasure have always been rarer than coprophiles.

> But you don't know for sure that it is the microtonality that is
> putting them off, do you? If the people you are concerned with
> reaching have 12tet as a lingua franca, the only way you are going to
> be allowed to fret (no pun intended) over your success is if you also
> managed to alienate (or bore) them with some 12tet music. Have you
> played them anything you wrote that *wasn't* microtonal?

No I don't know that. But it's what Gene thought about his own music when he started the original thread. It's something we should be thinking about. If it's a general phenomenon -- things we think are in tune sound out of tune to our listeners -- then surely we should think of ways to avoid it. I'm surprised there's even disagreement about that.

How are we defining "microtonal"? I've done meantone things but they weren't written down. Back when I only had 12-equal keyboards people hated what I did, but it was heavily atonal and so I can hardly claim I was aiming to please.

>>I got interested in microtonality because I thought I could use it to >>make better music. Because music's a subjective thing that means other >>people have to agree.
> > Are *you* happy with the music you've made?

I hope I can do better in the future.

>>I'd much >>rather keep working on good microtonal music, so that it sounds better >>than anything I could have done otherwise. That means I have to think >>about how people are actually going to hear it.
> > Well, Graham, I guess we have to depart a bit: I honestly think you
> are selling short your own experience. It almost sounds like it is
> inconsequential as to whether you yourself enjoy the music, so long as
> it pleases others. That sounds like a recipe for profound regret, or
> at the very least a diminution of your talents into a common
> denominator market.

I want to make good music and I'm happier the better I think it is. It isn't always possible to tell by listening myself. I know what it's supposed to be doing and what's going to happen next. And I don't listen to finished pieces enough that my own pleasure makes up for the work involved in finishing them.

I don't have anything to sell so I think I can happily ignore the market.

>>How do you make explicitly microtonal music that a naive >>(but open minded) listener can understand on a first hearing? Or, >>alternatively, how do you make microtonal music that sounds good?
> > Well, I don't have an answer. I have to say that, if your most
> enduring community has been this list (and derivatives), you may have
> been tainted by some of the thinking. I don't say that in a
> mean-spirited way, but if the entire or main focus of creating a piece
> is to explicitly thrust the microtonal nature of the fabric to the
> forefront, without considering the many other aspects of a
> communicative music, you are looking at a very small chance of
> pleasing people. "These are microtones, eat them, they're good for you!"

Is this another tuning list myth? Along with "everybody except me is doing theory without practice" we now have "everybody except me is putting too much emphasis on the microtonality and not the music". It seems to be fashionable to state how important it is to think about the music and nobody ever disagrees. So the thinking on the list is clearly that the music as a whole is important. If that's a taint then I share it.

Of course, as we're here to discuss tuning that does mean we spend a lot of time talking about tuning. It doesn't mean we neglect other aspects. There are lots of things to think about in making good music but here we talk about the tuning.

How do you get from what I said to how you paraphrase it? I said if the microtones aren't working, take them out. The point of them being there is that they make the music better. They should be something that draws listeners in, not a hurdle they have to get over.

Incidentally, "tiny notes" aren't what I'm doing (or not doing) now. I've been looking at fixed pentatonics. Partly the hope is that they will be easier for listeners to grasp and once they get the hang of it I can bring in more notes.

>>How much more important to >>make listeners understand an unfamiliar harmonic style!
> > That makes a good question: just how much more *important*? Frankly, I
> don't listen to music just for some harmonic content - that harmonic
> content is a servant in a bigger task.

Yes, and it's the one we talk about here, and one that people making complex music do tend to think about.

> You might (I said _might_, I'm not sure) find interest in reading the
> musings of people who are active in composition on a daily or regular
> basis, and just stand back and see how they approach some of your
> situations. I imagine there are forums or blogs for popular
> composers/performers, but one place I check occasionally are the
> discussions at Sequenza 21:
> > http://www.sequenza21.com/

I don't know, it's difficult to find my way around. And the "contemporary classical" tag scares me. Maybe when I have a permanent connection and time on my hands.

Graham

Hi Graham,

Due to a big day of work, I'm going to have to be brief in my
comments, but I'm happy to discuss this with you. I hope we both
gather insights...

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Graham Breed <gbreed@...> wrote:
> Composing isn't music making.

Well, one of the aspects of a technically oriented list such at this
one is the precision of the terms. "Music making" - could mean a lot
of things, from the writing of the music to the performing of the
music. I don't think I've *ever* heard you discuss playing in a band,
or with other folks, so I guess I took your original subject area to
mean the music that you yourself was creating, and being solitary, I
assumed it was composition (or at least improvisation). This is how
I've viewed the couple songs that you've posted over the years.

If I misinterpreted your main idea, my apology.

> Composers putting dots
> on paper for their own solitary pleasure have always been rarer than
> coprophiles.

A relative thing.

> No I don't know that. But it's what Gene thought about his own music
> when he started the original thread. It's something we should be
> thinking about.

Not me. If it is material that interests me, that is what I choose to
use. And I *do* stand by the idea that when microtonal music is well
written, well performed and/or well recorded, it doesn't much matter
that it isn't 12tet. But that is just my take on it.

> If it's a general phenomenon -- things we think are in
> tune sound out of tune to our listeners -- then surely we should think
> of ways to avoid it. I'm surprised there's even disagreement about
that.

Don't be surprised. It appears we have different reasons for
writing/performing music. I don't mean that to sound elitist or
dismissive of listeners; in fact, I have faith in the listeners!

> I want to make good music and I'm happier the better I think it is. It
> isn't always possible to tell by listening myself. I know what it's
> supposed to be doing and what's going to happen next. And I don't
> listen to finished pieces enough that my own pleasure makes up for the
> work involved in finishing them.

Well, it seems like you need to spend more time in the crafting of
your music, dote on it and nurture it, and spend less time on the
other aspects.

> I don't have anything to sell so I think I can happily ignore the
market.

Yeah, I wasn't being literal, but using "market" as a figure of speech.

> Is this another tuning list myth? Along with "everybody except me is
> doing theory without practice" we now have "everybody except me is
> putting too much emphasis on the microtonality and not the music".

No, it isn't a myth, and I'm not the only one that feels that way.
This isn't about "me".

> How do you get from what I said to how you paraphrase it?

I'm thinking out loud. It would be a lot easier if we were simply
sitting in a pub, so if I stray or get fuzzy on your concepts through
a paraphrase, please forgive me. I'm simply, by thinking out loud,
trying to find some alternatives for you/with you.

> Incidentally, "tiny notes" aren't what I'm doing (or not doing) now.

Ahem, again, just a figure of speech. I get tired of typing
"microtones" all the time! :)

> I don't know, it's difficult to find my way around.

I don't buy that, you're smart. I'm just saying poke your head in
there every so often. I'm trying to find a place for you to see some
thought processes that are more in the realm of composing or "making
music" rather than keeping your focus in these (tuning) lists, as it
can become claustrophobic, and be only one way of looking at making music.

> And the
> "contemporary classical" tag scares me. Maybe when I have a permanent
> connection and time on my hands.

Who cares what they call it? There are composers there that come from
a lot of different backgrounds. Anyway, it is just one place, I'm sure
there are others. I just think you need more perspective on music
creation then we get simply on the tuning fora.

Cheers,
Jon

I would only like to add that Lou Harrison got me into using pentatonics again. they are easy to teach other players and if you look at it a just pentatonic ( like others of unequal sizes taken from larger equal sets as to not include what might be your own preference or not) they often contain more different size intervals than one can get out of the entire 12 tone scale. i find them quite challenging to pull something out of them that hasn't been done.
i appreciate your other comments about community music making which found a strong voice in Cardew, at least at the beginning till it took a back seat to his politics.
While not disagreeing entirely with your comments about composers be a rare solitary animal, there are many composers who wrote and write for the purpose of allowing a particular for of community music making, one that cannot alway be accessed in much other ways.
Musicians i think are more developed in skill and insight than in previous times, i think, and often are quite capable of adding their own creative impulse to things. Many composers i think are interested in using these talents as suppressing them.
From: Graham Breed <gbreed@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Composing the tiny notes (was Re: How do microtonal people hear?)

Incidentally, "tiny notes" aren't what I'm doing (or not doing) now. I've been looking at fixed pentatonics. Partly the hope is that they will be easier for listeners to grasp and once they get the hang of it I can bring in more notes.

--
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

Jon Szanto wrote:

> Well, one of the aspects of a technically oriented list such at this
> one is the precision of the terms. "Music making" - could mean a lot
> of things, from the writing of the music to the performing of the
> music. I don't think I've *ever* heard you discuss playing in a band,
> or with other folks, so I guess I took your original subject area to
> mean the music that you yourself was creating, and being solitary, I
> assumed it was composition (or at least improvisation). This is how
> I've viewed the couple songs that you've posted over the years.

This is techincally oriented? But yes, I mean the whole process, from the writing (if it's written) to the listening. No, I've never been in a band, because most of my friends over the years have hated most of what I listen to and everything I write, especially the ones who are interested in music. That's a problem and making the music better would help with it (although only so far). So yes, I make music on my own, but if I go to the effort of cleaning it up and combing its hair I want it to be listened to.

>>No I don't know that. But it's what Gene thought about his own music >>when he started the original thread. It's something we should be >>thinking about.
> > > Not me. If it is material that interests me, that is what I choose to
> use. And I *do* stand by the idea that when microtonal music is well
> written, well performed and/or well recorded, it doesn't much matter
> that it isn't 12tet. But that is just my take on it.

If the material interests you, then yes, use it. All I'm saying is that you should try and make it platable.

I'd say that if music's well it can stand up with a mediocre performance and a poor recording. The kind of people who switch off are same ones who won't but up with out-of-tune-ness. Still, that's a depressing rallying cry -- "work hard at your microtonal music and maybe it can be as good as if the microtones weren't there!" I still hope there's good music that only stands up because it isn't in 12tet.

>>If it's a general phenomenon -- things we think are in >>tune sound out of tune to our listeners -- then surely we should think >>of ways to avoid it. I'm surprised there's even disagreement about
> > that.
> > Don't be surprised. It appears we have different reasons for
> writing/performing music. I don't mean that to sound elitist or
> dismissive of listeners; in fact, I have faith in the listeners!

Of course you can't be elitist, because elitism targets an audience as much as populism.

>>I want to make good music and I'm happier the better I think it is. It >>isn't always possible to tell by listening myself. I know what it's >>supposed to be doing and what's going to happen next. And I don't >>listen to finished pieces enough that my own pleasure makes up for the >>work involved in finishing them.
> > Well, it seems like you need to spend more time in the crafting of
> your music, dote on it and nurture it, and spend less time on the
> other aspects.

Other aspects? What other aspects?

>>Is this another tuning list myth? Along with "everybody except me is >>doing theory without practice" we now have "everybody except me is >>putting too much emphasis on the microtonality and not the music". > > No, it isn't a myth, and I'm not the only one that feels that way.
> This isn't about "me".

People feeling that way is what makes it a myth. But if everybody agrees with it it can't be contradicting the mainstream of the list.

>>How do you get from what I said to how you paraphrase it?
> > I'm thinking out loud. It would be a lot easier if we were simply
> sitting in a pub, so if I stray or get fuzzy on your concepts through
> a paraphrase, please forgive me. I'm simply, by thinking out loud,
> trying to find some alternatives for you/with you.

I don't think it'd be easier, only faster. I don't mind at all. That's the point of conversation. Now, it would be easier if we had musical instruments of some sort to hand, so we could talk about music without it being in the abstract.

>>Incidentally, "tiny notes" aren't what I'm doing (or not doing) now.
> > Ahem, again, just a figure of speech. I get tired of typing
> "microtones" all the time! :)

Which is still inaccurate but that's the language we have to work with.

>>I don't know, it's difficult to find my way around.
> > I don't buy that, you're smart. I'm just saying poke your head in
> there every so often. I'm trying to find a place for you to see some
> thought processes that are more in the realm of composing or "making
> music" rather than keeping your focus in these (tuning) lists, as it
> can become claustrophobic, and be only one way of looking at making music.

The tuning lists have a big variety of ways of looking at music, which results from them not being based around a particular style. Anyway, that site took a while to load and I couldn't find my away around. I ended up on Kyle Gann's blog which seems to be a different site altogether. And I found this article:

http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2005/12/the_underrated_predictability.html

which says much what I was trying to say but more eloquently. People even agree with it!

>>And the >>"contemporary classical" tag scares me. Maybe when I have a permanent >>connection and time on my hands.
> > Who cares what they call it? There are composers there that come from
> a lot of different backgrounds. Anyway, it is just one place, I'm sure
> there are others. I just think you need more perspective on music
> creation then we get simply on the tuning fora.

We'll see, time to sign off now and I haven't reloaded it:P

Graham

Kraig Grady wrote:
> I would only like to add that Lou Harrison got me into using pentatonics again. they are easy to teach other players and if you look at it a just pentatonic ( like others of unequal sizes taken from larger equal sets as to not include what might be your own preference or not) they often contain more different size intervals than one can get out of the entire 12 tone scale. i find them quite challenging to pull something out of them that hasn't been done.

I'm looking at variations of

1/1 8/7 21/16 3/2 7/4 2/1

tempered so that it has four intervals like 8:7, all the same. But I expect it'd work fine without the tempering and is in the Scala archive as such (pygmie.scl). The other one's where 8/7 and 7/6 are tempered to be the same (consistent with 19- and 29-equal).

> i appreciate your other comments about community music making which found a strong voice in Cardew, at least at the beginning till it took a back seat to his politics.
> While not disagreeing entirely with your comments about composers be a rare solitary animal, there are many composers who wrote and write for the purpose of allowing a particular for of community music making, one that cannot alway be accessed in much other ways.

Is this still Kraig? But yes! Who are you disagreeing with?

> Musicians i think are more developed in skill and insight than in previous times, i think, and often are quite capable of adding their own creative impulse to things. Many composers i think are interested in using these talents as suppressing them.

I think, yes, the best Western classical musicians are better now than they've ever been. But I prefer to think of non-musical amateurs, partly because I am one. With electronics it's possible to make music without all that training and microtonality should be part of the mix. It's easier to get into when you don't have to unlearn some particular system.

Graham

Morning, Graham -

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Graham Breed <gbreed@...> wrote:
> This is techincally oriented?

I meant in the sense that the list will spend a lot of time refining
and redefining _terms_ used in microtonality; "music making" was a
term you used, but I was trying to get how broad a meaning you were
giving it.

> So yes, I make music on my own,
> but if I go to the effort of cleaning it up and combing its hair I want
> it to be listened to.

Certainly.

> If the material interests you, then yes, use it. All I'm saying is
that
> you should try and make it platable.

I guess that is an individual choice, and probably a good one for many
people.

> I'd say that if music's well it can stand up with a mediocre
performance
> and a poor recording.

That is probably true, but unless you are banking on the fact that
each and every one is going to be a complete gem, content-wise, it
doesn't hurt to put effort into the performance (and recording, if not
live).

> Still, that's a depressing
> rallying cry -- "work hard at your microtonal music and maybe it can be
> as good as if the microtones weren't there!"

I didn't mean to give that impression, I'm only saying that the
crafting/creating of a good piece of music entails elements besides or
beyond the tuning, and if your audience that is continually dismissing
your microtonal work has some very recognizable touchstones in the
linigua franca of 12tet, one wonders what would happen if - at least
for the moment, if only to experiment - you could try seeing if they
liked something you did in 12. It may be a cold splash of water, but
if you don't reach them that way them maybe, just maybe, it is more
than the non-12-ness that is bothering them.

> I still hope there's good
> music that only stands up because it isn't in 12tet.

I suppose, but I prefer things that a good because of what they *are*,
as opposed to what they *are not*.

> > Well, it seems like you need to spend more time in the crafting of
> > your music, dote on it and nurture it, and spend less time on the
> > other aspects.
>
> Other aspects? What other aspects?

Tuning for tuning's sake. I guess I'm saying that the desire to make
compelling music is strong, but it takes a lot of time and work to
bring it off; one must make that a priority. I don't *know* that you
spend more time on tuning issues than you do on creating music with
those tunings, but if you want your musical creations to have better
effect, maybe you need to spend more time in that arena. As I say, I'm
just conjecturing.

> People feeling that way is what makes it a myth. But if everybody
> agrees with it it can't be contradicting the mainstream of the list.

I didn't say everyone. The list just has it's 'schools of thought'.

> I don't think it'd be easier, only faster.

I always find face to face communication far more effective. And
easier. And, yes, faster. Also less prone to _mis_-communication.

> Which is still inaccurate but that's the language we have to work with.

I'll stick with non12, will that work?

OK, Graham, gotta go to work...

Cheers,
Jon

I know I'M weird! I started composing at age 10, and
the hole world seemed out of tune to me from the
start. At twelve I composed a Mass and asked the
singers to sing notes half-to-two-thirds of the way
between a C and a #, for example. My music teacher and
choir director told me this as impossible. When I was
in a psych class some graduate students trested our
undergrad class on pitch sensitivity. Their hypothesis
was that musically inclined people have no better
pitch discrimination than average Joes. My sensitivity
to pitch was greater than the wow and flutter
tolerance of the tape recorder they were using, and
they angrily threw out my data, convinced I had
cheated. When I first heard scales in53-equal, I burst
into tears and said to myself, finally I'm hearing
something in tune!

Chris Mohr

--- Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@svpal.org> wrote:

> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "wallyesterpaulrus"
> <wallyesterpaulrus@y...> wrote:
> >
> > --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith"
> <gwsmith@s...> wrote:
> > >
> > > I'm wondering if there is something funny about
> the way most of us
> > > hear, which causes us to be able to listen to
> Harry Partch for the
> > > first time and immediately think it sounds cool.
> >
> > Julia Werntz played her class some Harry Partch
> once and they thought
> > it sounded like 12-equal.
>
> I had never heard of Harry Partch and had no idea
> what to expect, but
> I could tell it wasn't 12-equal, and to me there was
> something
> immediately right and convincing-sounding about it.
> But I was familiar
> with the idea of JI, from Redfield.
>
>
>
>
>
>

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
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--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Jon Szanto" <jszanto@...> wrote:

> I didn't mean to give that impression, I'm only saying that the
> crafting/creating of a good piece of music entails elements besides or
> beyond the tuning, and if your audience that is continually dismissing
> your microtonal work has some very recognizable touchstones in the
> linigua franca of 12tet, one wonders what would happen if - at least
> for the moment, if only to experiment - you could try seeing if they
> liked something you did in 12. It may be a cold splash of water, but
> if you don't reach them that way them maybe, just maybe, it is more
> than the non-12-ness that is bothering them.

Over in midi contest land, I sometimes get people who would hate it
anyway, I suspect, but I also get people who say very nice things
about everything but the tuning, and even give me Top Quality Awards.
You can't please everyone and it is pointless to try, but clearly some
people would like what I've written a lot better if they could get
over the microtonal barrier. If someonen is aiming at an audience, I
hope they don't intend to include everyone. That doesn't work.

Chris,

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Chris Mohr
<fromtherealmoftheshadow@...> wrote:
>
> I know I'M weird!

Great anecdote, and you aren't weird, you are different. Let's
celebrate *that*!

Cheers,
Jon

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <genewardsmith@...>
wrote:
> If someone is aiming at an audience, I
> hope they don't intend to include everyone. That doesn't work.

Agreed. Start with the audience of one - yourself - and expand
outward, but be at least satisfied if the first step is successful.

Cheers,
Jon

Message: 14 Date: Fri, 03 Feb 2006 11:55:17 +0000
From: Graham Breed <gbreed@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Re: Composing the tiny notes (was Re: How do microtonal people hear?)

> > i appreciate your other comments about community music making which found a strong voice in Cardew, at least at the beginning till it took a back seat to his politics.
> > While not disagreeing entirely with your comments about composers be a rare solitary animal, there are many composers who wrote and write for the purpose of allowing a particular for of community music making, one that cannot alway be accessed in much other ways.
> Is this still Kraig? But yes! Who are you disagreeing with?
i was making the assumption that you thought of composers of just solitary animals. glad we are not disagreeing with you on this

> > Musicians i think are more developed in skill and insight than in previous times, i think, and often are quite capable of adding their own creative impulse to things. Many composers i think are interested in using these talents as suppressing them.
> I think, yes, the best Western classical musicians are better now than they've ever been. But I prefer to think of non-musical amateurs, partly because I am one. With electronics it's possible to make music without all that training and microtonality should be part of the mix. It's easier to get into when you don't have to unlearn some particular system.

well i would say that many amateurs are quite gifted and this was a resource that i think Cardew tried to bring back into the music making community. Possibly there is a way to exercise and develop these individuals in ways that the classic music lessons leave out.
I think in many of his performances, there is a 'magic' that happens despite the technical abilities of the performers. not that is really noticeable.
electronics has the great advantage of allowing individuals to work directly with the sound as opposed to an ideal rendition of it.
It does make certain music possible and subtleties not possible otherwise.
My own personal objection is the interface between human and machine still falls short for me. but that is just me.
Graham

--
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, Chris Mohr
<fromtherealmoftheshadow@...> wrote:

>When I first heard scales in53-equal, I burst
> into tears and said to myself, finally I'm hearing
> something in tune!

What do your ears tell you about septimal intervals?

Hi Chris.

I'm very glad to have read your words. I definitely understand what you mean
and I agree with Groven who had said that 12-EDO was a "practical disease".
Just for these very same reasons, my favorite tunings are JI tunings. I
believe it's possible to even train one's voice very carefully to be able to
sing very close to JI. I was trying this myself by layering a few tracks of
my own voice and I managed to sing 7-limit chords with a detuning of, let's
say, somewhere around +/-4 cents away from JI. I'm saying that just to
encourage you and confirm, as Jon has said, that it's no weirdness, it's
just a reality distorted by dull oppinions of unexperienced people who
consider it right to think that musicians have the same level of pitch
sensitivity as others do. Of course, such a claim is total nonsense unless
someone's called a "musician" just because he knows how to "mechanically
translate" notes on a paper into keys on a piano, though he/she is actually
unable to hear the actual value of the result and can't distinguish a third
from a sixth.

BTW: Do you also have some favorite tunings? Or have you also made any?

Petr

> >--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Graham Breed <gbreed@...> wrote:
>> >>
> >
>> >> Composing isn't music making. It's the first part of a music making
>> >> process that usually involves other people and is usually geared
> >towards
>> >> a public performance. Before amplification it was part of the form of
>> >> music making that involved the most musicians. Composers putting dots
>> >> on paper for their own solitary pleasure have always been rarer than
>> >> coprophiles.
> >
> >Nonsense. Making music for oneself is a perfectly legitimate activity.
> >And there are often situations, personal, cultural-political,
> >economic, etc., where the making of public music is so limited or
> >controlled that private music-making is the only avenue available for
> >one's conscious. The later Ives and Nancarrow composed to satisfy
> >their own imaginations, for their own ears, and their own cabinet
> >drawers, and I don't think the production of either was anything but
> >musical. Of course, there is some satisfaction, some sense of
> >resolution to hearing these pieces finally in public, but that sense
> >of resolution is our satisfaction as listeners, not the composers in
> >question. That would be projection on our part, and projection onto
> >ghosts. I think that they were satified with their music and do not
> >need our projection. Could you imagine what a work _Le Nozze de
> >Figaro_ would have been if Mozart had not had to submit to the royal
> >censors? How about works of Prokofiev or Schostakovich? Better to
> >damn politics and fashion and make the music you want to hear, not the
> >music they want others to hear.
> >
> >A good friend of mine, and a superb composer of works in just
> >intonation and in historical temperaments, is older and in poor
> >health. His work has always required intense musical preparation, is
> >subtle, and will never find a wide public. He can no longer get to his
> >manuscripts himself, physically, but has insured that a University
> >library will handle the archives. He doesn't have the energy now to
> >promote his work in any way, but has a number of projects that he
> >wishes to finish. So he concentrates the energy that he has on those
> >projects. He is literally making all the music that he can, and I
> >cannot fault him for this.
> >
> >I've recently had the luxury of having only a bit of work for hire on
> >my desk and that has coincided with a slight crisis about my own
> >regressive infantiloquy (not getting any younger, any of us). So I've
> >decided to do two things -- (1) make a lot of pieces that do things
> >that I've always wanted to hear, and (2) not worry about finishing any
> >of them. As far as I'm concerned, I'm making more music than ever, and
> >I've never been a happier camper. By your terms, I'm not making music
> >at all. By the terms of a lot of people on this planet, you're right.
> >And I do worry about this, and honestly, I do calculate a bit that a
> >lot of this music is going to eventually get used in some public way.
> >But so what? To paraphrase the old joke that Beckett paraphrase in
> >_Endgame_: I look at the world, then listen to my music, and figure
> >out pretty quickly that I'm on the right track after all.
> >
> >DJW

One more thing I want to add to my post for Chris.

It's a well-known matter that musicians, if this term can serve, are
significantly more sensitive to the harmonic content of music than
non-musicians are. Speaking for myself, as time goes, I'm getting a feeling
like if this was an extreme of a proven truth in my case. There are pieces
whose harmonic progressions seem hollow to me and give me a feeling like
"better to go away from that". And there are others whose harmonies sound so
nice and clear and beautiful to me that it almost makes me cry -- sorry for
some of you who may find my harmonic sensing too emotional. This is one of
the other reasons why I also prefer negative linear temperaments (i.e.
meantones) instead of the positive ones when playing regular tonal music. Of
course, if I had some equipment like Groven had, maybe I'd go for schismic
tempering. Nevertheless, the idea that I'm playing "C-Fb-G" to get C major
or "C-D#-G" to get C minor does not satisfy me very well. So I decided to
think of harmonies in the meantone-like point of view and nowadays, if
someone plays or sings a tone and asks me to tell its name, I'll say "Db" if
it's a bit higher or "C#" if it's a bit lower. And if you ask me what I
think about 7/4, well, I take it as an augmented 6th.

Petr

Jon Szanto wrote:
> Morning, Graham -

Afternoon!

>>I'd say that if music's well it can stand up with a mediocre
> performance >>and a poor recording.
> > That is probably true, but unless you are banking on the fact that
> each and every one is going to be a complete gem, content-wise, it
> doesn't hurt to put effort into the performance (and recording, if not
> live).

Ah, now this is where I disagree with you. If you're producing gems it's worth getting good performances and recordings of them. Maybe the composer isn't the best person to do that, though. But if the notes-ordered-in-time part of the music isn't so good you're better off moving on to the next piece and trying to do improve. To extend your metaphor, it's better to try and produce a gem than to keep on polishing turds. When you succeed you can always hope that a good performer will recognize it from your own mediocre recording and take it up.

This doesn't describe the way I work, but then it isn't really about me. If somebody's mainly interested in the melody, harmony and rhythm then I'd encourage them to stick with quantized performances on General MIDI synths. The rest of it can swallow up far too much of your time.

>>Still, that's a depressing >>rallying cry -- "work hard at your microtonal music and maybe it can be >>as good as if the microtones weren't there!"
> > I didn't mean to give that impression, I'm only saying that the
> crafting/creating of a good piece of music entails elements besides or
> beyond the tuning, and if your audience that is continually dismissing
> your microtonal work has some very recognizable touchstones in the
> linigua franca of 12tet, one wonders what would happen if - at least
> for the moment, if only to experiment - you could try seeing if they
> liked something you did in 12. It may be a cold splash of water, but
> if you don't reach them that way them maybe, just maybe, it is more
> than the non-12-ness that is bothering them.

Well, yes, of course there's more to it than the tuning. How is it even worth your time to type out such an obvious observation?

And no, I don't think it is only the microtonality. Unlike Gene I've never had complaints about being out of tune. But I do find people hear things as weirder than I do and maybe the tuning's part of that. The particularly uncultured lot I used to work with didn't like the unequal rhythms in Stellar Floor Text at all although they weren't smart enough to know why. And you didn't like the drums in the magic demo. So keeping to simple rhythms would be a better place to start.

You know, I listened back to that magic demo to see what I still think about it. Much to my disappointment, the first 30 seconds or so was awful! Incoherent drums, too much bass, generally poor sound quality, and no strong ideas. But then it started to improve. By the end it was really quite good. So I listened to it again, and of course it's like that all they way through, and I like it all the way through again. Some cool 9-limit chords as well. But it supports my idea that I need to hold the listener's hand for that first 30 seconds.

Oh, and while I'm at it, the description on my website says "Demonstration of magic temperament. Did actually take quite a bit of work." I hope you take that as typical British irony, and don't think I only recorded it to demonstrate magic temperament :-O

>>I still hope there's good >>music that only stands up because it isn't in 12tet.
> > I suppose, but I prefer things that a good because of what they *are*,
> as opposed to what they *are not*.

Ah, well, you're the one who introduced the negative. I can feel an analogy coming on. Do you think heavy rock is good because it doesn't use acoustic guitars? I think it's proved that amplification needn't be a barrier to audience approval, but can even be a positive thing. Really, microtonality should be the same.

>>>Well, it seems like you need to spend more time in the crafting of
>>>your music, dote on it and nurture it, and spend less time on the
>>>other aspects.
>>
>>Other aspects? What other aspects?
> > Tuning for tuning's sake. I guess I'm saying that the desire to make
> compelling music is strong, but it takes a lot of time and work to
> bring it off; one must make that a priority. I don't *know* that you
> spend more time on tuning issues than you do on creating music with
> those tunings, but if you want your musical creations to have better
> effect, maybe you need to spend more time in that arena. As I say, I'm
> just conjecturing.

How much time do you think the tuning, actually tied to the music, actually takes? Or how little time do you think I get the rest of it done in? Most of the time is spent moving notes around, and most of that's in the accompaniment because it's where most of the notes are. I could save most of the effort by using loops, which I have done to an extent in the past. Tuning doesn't really enter into it. Even the custom timbres I'm using now weren't such a problem.

>>People feeling that way is what makes it a myth. But if everybody >>agrees with it it can't be contradicting the mainstream of the list.
> > I didn't say everyone. The list just has it's 'schools of thought'.

Yes, the list's diverse, as it should be.

> I'll stick with non12, will that work?

Oh, there's nothing wrong with "microtonality". It's what everybody else says. I was only remarking that it isn't always accurate. But our language would be an impoverished thing if we only used words in line with their strict etymology.

Graham

Kraig Grady wrote:

> i was making the assumption that you thought of composers of just solitary animals. glad we are not disagreeing with you on this

Indeed, I was saying that music making of all kinds is usually a social activity.

> well i would say that many amateurs are quite gifted and this was a resource that i think Cardew tried to bring back into the music making community. Possibly there is a way to exercise and develop these individuals in ways that the classic music lessons leave out.
> I think in many of his performances, there is a 'magic' that happens despite the technical abilities of the performers. not that is really noticeable.

Amateurs are good and always have been. Chamber music started with amateurs and a lot of great music has been written for them. I don't know about Cardew, I wasn't there, but I'd say Johnny Rotten did a lot more to bring music making to ordinary people. Especially the ones turned off by music lessons.

> electronics has the great advantage of allowing individuals to work directly with the sound as opposed to an ideal rendition of it.
> It does make certain music possible and subtleties not possible otherwise.

That means you spend lots and lots of time putting sound together instead of lots and lots of time learning an instrument. It doesn't represent the way most electronic music's made or how I expect the best electronic music to be made in the future. Usually you work with an engineer's abstraction rather than sound itself. It's much easier to get work done that way.

> My own personal objection is the interface between human and machine still falls short for me. but that is just me.

Have you played with a 303 box? It's a great way to make simple music without actually playing notes. I think you can get an RB338 as a free download now. There are other imitations as well and I hope more work's being done in that area.

Graham

Hey there,

I'm wondering if at some point we should continue in private email.
Don't know when that point might come, but I don't see many getting
into this thread, yet I find it of value (and hope same for you).

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Graham Breed <gbreed@...> wrote:
> Ah, now this is where I disagree with you.

Surely not only here! :) And I guess it does become a point of
difference as to how the music becomes finalized. Many seem to feel
quite comfortable leaving things in a very rough form (I had dinner
with a friend of mine who has played with a singer/songwriter of
modest fame for many years, and said how often he expressed his
frustration with her willingness to move on before things had even
begun to get even slightly polished). This may also have a lot to do
with my being a performer for many, many years, and desiring for my
performances to meet a high standard of presentation.

> This doesn't describe the way I work, but then it isn't really about
me.
> If somebody's mainly interested in the melody, harmony and rhythm
then
> I'd encourage them to stick with quantized performances on General MIDI
> synths. The rest of it can swallow up far too much of your time.

Then it *is* a place we separate, because I find those aspects
important enough that I don't consider them an incorrect expenditure
of time, but a very valuable one. And all I ask, since you've been
gloomy about the reception of your musical works, that you _consider_
the potential upside of a little more production before presenting
works to listeners.

> Well, yes, of course there's more to it than the tuning. How is it
even
> worth your time to type out such an obvious observation?

Because I

- don't always know where someone is coming from
- have seen examples of people doing music where it *is* just the tuning
- have time on my hands? :)

> And no, I don't think it is only the microtonality. Unlike Gene I've
> never had complaints about being out of tune. But I do find people
hear
> things as weirder than I do and maybe the tuning's part of that.

So what I'm getting is that you don't really know what alienates them,
or at least doesn't really tickle them. Which makes it, I would think,
easy to do a 12tet piece to eliminate whether tuning is the big issue,
a non-issue, or something else.

> The
> particularly uncultured lot I used to work with didn't like the unequal
> rhythms in Stellar Floor Text at all although they weren't smart enough
> to know why. And you didn't like the drums in the magic demo. So
> keeping to simple rhythms would be a better place to start.

I've lost track of the pieces you've played for me before, and I would
like it if you emailed me off-list with some links so I could dedicate
some listening time. And, if you'd be interested, maybe files or
something to try a collaboration?

> But it supports my idea that I need
> to hold the listener's hand for that first 30 seconds.

Yeah, it's pretty counter-productive to lose them early on!

> Ah, well, you're the one who introduced the negative.

Sorry - when speaking in this case, I'm still thinking of the lingua
franca of the common public, as well as the unspoken prejudice against
12 on the lists. It makes sense to not want to discuss 12, but it does
exist for many listeners, and for many, the enormous world of
microtonality, the endless possibilities, boil down to one thing - it
isn't what they are used to (12).

> I think it's proved that amplification needn't be
> a barrier to audience approval, but can even be a positive thing.
> Really, microtonality should be the same.

Yes, it should be. Seems like a good place to stop...

Cheers,
Jon

I LOVE the septimal intervals. Based on experience,
I've come to very loosely associate the octave with
unity, the fifth (third harmonic) with power, and the
third (fifth harmonic) with emotion. The seventh
harmonic brings in a whole new kind of energy, one
that has been explored much less than the others, and
which resonates in me as an almost otherworldly,
mysterious kind of energy, like a transitional
harmonic to something beyond my ordinary
consciousness. My 53-eq scales are great for the third
and fifth harmonics, but as you may know they're only
OK (4+ cents sharp) for the seventh harmonic. Still,
that seems close enough for a harmonic relationship
which is at the edge of what I can generate with my
natural voice or hear with my natural ear. As I learn
more I will be doing more stuff with septimal
harmony... I've played some examples to people and
they go oh my God what IS that? I'm sure a lot of us
have had that experience!

Chris Mohr

--- Gene Ward Smith <genewardsmith@coolgoose.com>
wrote:

> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Chris Mohr
> <fromtherealmoftheshadow@...> wrote:
>
> >When I first heard scales in53-equal, I burst
> > into tears and said to myself, finally I'm hearing
> > something in tune!
>
> What do your ears tell you about septimal intervals?
>
>
>
>
>

__________________________________________________
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--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Chris Mohr
<fromtherealmoftheshadow@...> wrote:

> My 53-eq scales are great for the third
> and fifth harmonics, but as you may know they're only
> OK (4+ cents sharp) for the seventh harmonic. Still,
> that seems close enough for a harmonic relationship
> which is at the edge of what I can generate with my
> natural voice or hear with my natural ear.

There's definately something to be said for moving to 72 or 99 for the
seventh harmonic, however.

As I learn
> more I will be doing more stuff with septimal
> harmony... I've played some examples to people and
> they go oh my God what IS that? I'm sure a lot of us
> have had that experience!

Some people like it and others run screaming from the room. My own
feeling is that the real weird doesn't start until 11.

That's the same test, Hudson. Maybe you didn't notice that 10:12:15
is the same thing as 1/6:1/5:1/4.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Hudson Lacerda <hfmlacerda@...> wrote:
>
> Gene Ward Smith escreveu:
> > --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "wallyesterpaulrus"
> > <wallyesterpaulrus@y...> wrote:
> >
> >>--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@y...> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>One listening experiment cited by Paul E. grouped subjects
> >>>into two groups -- type 1 listeners and type 2 listeners, or
> >>>some such. Maybe he can remember which one that was.
> >>
> >>If I know what you're talking about, this experiment presented
> >>listeners with pure and detuned versions of 4:5:6, 3:5:7, and
> >>10:12:15 chords. The experiment found two classes of listeners,
one
> >>which preferred the first two chords pure, the other which
preferred
> >>the middle note of each of the first two chords detuned by 15
cents
> >>in *either* direction (30 cents was tested too, no one preferred
> >>those).
> >
> >
> > Did they test for very slight detunings?
>
> I don't know that test, but I read on another.
>
> According to John Pierce and Max Mathews (paper on BP scale),
Mathews
> and L. Roberts have proposed the concept of /intonation sensivity/:
>
> "Intonation sensivity is determined by how the preference for a
chord
> varies with the tuning, or mistuning, of the center note".
>
> It seems (there is a figure in the paper) that the experiments
included
> only 0, +/-15 and +/-30 cents from JI's center pitch. Chords were
4:5:6,
> 1/4:1/5:1/6, 3:5:7 and 5:7:9.
>
> Hudson
>
> --
> Hudson Lacerda <http://geocities.yahoo.com.br/hfmlacerda/>
> *Não deixe seu voto sumir! http://www.votoseguro.org/
> *Apóie o Manifesto:
http://www.votoseguro.com/alertaprofessores/
>
> == THE WAR IN IRAQ COSTS ==
> http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?
option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________________
> Yahoo! doce lar. Faça do Yahoo! sua homepage.
> http://br.yahoo.com/homepageset.html
>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Graham Breed <gbreed@...> wrote:

> It's something we should be
> thinking about. If it's a general phenomenon -- things we think
are in
> tune sound out of tune to our listeners -- then surely we should
think
> of ways to avoid it. I'm surprised there's even disagreement about
that.

Huh. I simply assume that microtonal music is going to take more
dedicated or multiculturally-informed listening, including whatever
time it takes to get used to the tuning, since that's what it took to
get me to compose it in the first place. If I want to avoid asking
that of listeners, I know I can go play some music in 12-equal, and
gain more friends in one night than in 10 years on this list. But
being popular isn't everything. There are deeper and more enduring
things to reach for. Me, I'm slowly shifting my priorities in their
direction.

> I don't have anything to sell so I think I can happily ignore the
market.

Then you're in good shape to make microtonal music.

> >>How do you make explicitly microtonal music that a naive
> >>(but open minded) listener can understand on a first hearing?
Or,
> >>alternatively, how do you make microtonal music that sounds good?
> >
> > Well, I don't have an answer. I have to say that, if your most
> > enduring community has been this list (and derivatives), you may
have
> > been tainted by some of the thinking. I don't say that in a
> > mean-spirited way, but if the entire or main focus of creating a
piece
> > is to explicitly thrust the microtonal nature of the fabric to the
> > forefront, without considering the many other aspects of a
> > communicative music, you are looking at a very small chance of
> > pleasing people. "These are microtones, eat them, they're good
for you!"
>
> Is this another tuning list myth? Along with "everybody except me
is
> doing theory without practice" we now have "everybody except me is
> putting too much emphasis on the microtonality and not the music".

Ha -- love it!

> It
> seems to be fashionable to state how important it is to think about
the
> music and nobody ever disagrees. So the thinking on the list is
clearly
> that the music as a whole is important. If that's a taint then I
share it.
>
> Of course, as we're here to discuss tuning that does mean we spend
a lot
> of time talking about tuning. It doesn't mean we neglect other
aspects.
> There are lots of things to think about in making good music but
here
> we talk about the tuning.

So the myths above should be replaced with the truth: "everybody
except me is here to talk about the tuning".

:)

> Incidentally, "tiny notes" aren't what I'm doing (or not doing)
now.
> I've been looking at fixed pentatonics.

Great -- that's sufficient for melody, even great melody, in many
cultures.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Jon Szanto" <jszanto@...> wrote:
>
> as well as the unspoken prejudice against
> 12 on the lists.

It's spoken, loud and clear, using words like "traitor".

Hi all,

The question of how to cultivate microtonal
sensitivities in an average listener is one I have
asked long and hard. For the next ten years or so I
will be working on a 53-eq oratorio, setting some
twenty sacred poems from around the world to music. I
will be choosing ancient scales that may have been
heard by these poets, and I've chosen to start with
scales that sound very much like 12-eq (our
traditional major scale in pure Pythagorean tuning is
almost indistinguishable from 12-eq to a casual
listener, as long as you avoid the comma). Gradually I
will go into scales that take the ear further and
further from what it is used to. So the goal will be
to write music that is just heard as music with
beautiful melodies, and gradually go into places where
12-eq cannot go at all. So the tuning will come more
and more into the forefront as the piece progresses.
Will it work for a larger audience? I don't know. Some
people tell me that average listeners will either hear
the music as sounding the same as 12-eq, so why
bother?--- or out of tune. Right now I want to develop
myself as a composer so that the oratorio works as
music, with all the elements of structure and
expression in place. The tuning is an essential part
of the composition, but not the only part. I make my
living performing weddings, so I don't have to find a
huge audience for this. My ears are very happy to hear
the natural harmonies that are so muddied by 12-eq
(yes, I have always disliked 12-eq: I have a facetious
sign in my music room that says Ban 12-Equal: The 7-11
of Tuning!).
Chris Mohr

--- wallyesterpaulrus <wallyesterpaulrus@yahoo.com>
wrote:

> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Graham Breed
> <gbreed@...> wrote:
>
> > It's something we should be
> > thinking about. If it's a general phenomenon --
> things we think
> are in
> > tune sound out of tune to our listeners -- then
> surely we should
> think
> > of ways to avoid it. I'm surprised there's even
> disagreement about
> that.
>
> Huh. I simply assume that microtonal music is going
> to take more
> dedicated or multiculturally-informed listening,
> including whatever
> time it takes to get used to the tuning, since
> that's what it took to
> get me to compose it in the first place. If I want
> to avoid asking
> that of listeners, I know I can go play some music
> in 12-equal, and
> gain more friends in one night than in 10 years on
> this list. But
> being popular isn't everything. There are deeper and
> more enduring
> things to reach for. Me, I'm slowly shifting my
> priorities in their
> direction.
>
> > I don't have anything to sell so I think I can
> happily ignore the
> market.
>
> Then you're in good shape to make microtonal music.
>
> > >>How do you make explicitly microtonal music that
> a naive
> > >>(but open minded) listener can understand on a
> first hearing?
> Or,
> > >>alternatively, how do you make microtonal music
> that sounds good?
> > >
> > > Well, I don't have an answer. I have to say
> that, if your most
> > > enduring community has been this list (and
> derivatives), you may
> have
> > > been tainted by some of the thinking. I don't
> say that in a
> > > mean-spirited way, but if the entire or main
> focus of creating a
> piece
> > > is to explicitly thrust the microtonal nature of
> the fabric to the
> > > forefront, without considering the many other
> aspects of a
> > > communicative music, you are looking at a very
> small chance of
> > > pleasing people. "These are microtones, eat
> them, they're good
> for you!"
> >
> > Is this another tuning list myth? Along with
> "everybody except me
> is
> > doing theory without practice" we now have
> "everybody except me is
> > putting too much emphasis on the microtonality and
> not the music".
>
> Ha -- love it!
>
> > It
> > seems to be fashionable to state how important it
> is to think about
> the
> > music and nobody ever disagrees. So the thinking
> on the list is
> clearly
> > that the music as a whole is important. If that's
> a taint then I
> share it.
> >
> > Of course, as we're here to discuss tuning that
> does mean we spend
> a lot
> > of time talking about tuning. It doesn't mean we
> neglect other
> aspects.
> > There are lots of things to think about in
> making good music but
> here
> > we talk about the tuning.
>
> So the myths above should be replaced with the
> truth: "everybody
> except me is here to talk about the tuning".
>
> :)
>
> > Incidentally, "tiny notes" aren't what I'm doing
> (or not doing)
> now.
> > I've been looking at fixed pentatonics.
>
> Great -- that's sufficient for melody, even great
> melody, in many
> cultures.
>
>
>
>

__________________________________________________
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Wow, Chris, this sounds like an awesome project!!

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Chris Mohr
<fromtherealmoftheshadow@...> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> The question of how to cultivate microtonal
> sensitivities in an average listener is one I have
> asked long and hard. For the next ten years or so I
> will be working on a 53-eq oratorio, setting some
> twenty sacred poems from around the world to music. I
> will be choosing ancient scales that may have been
> heard by these poets, and I've chosen to start with
> scales that sound very much like 12-eq (our
> traditional major scale in pure Pythagorean tuning is
> almost indistinguishable from 12-eq to a casual
> listener, as long as you avoid the comma). Gradually I
> will go into scales that take the ear further and
> further from what it is used to. So the goal will be
> to write music that is just heard as music with
> beautiful melodies, and gradually go into places where
> 12-eq cannot go at all. So the tuning will come more
> and more into the forefront as the piece progresses.
> Will it work for a larger audience? I don't know. Some
> people tell me that average listeners will either hear
> the music as sounding the same as 12-eq, so why
> bother?--- or out of tune. Right now I want to develop
> myself as a composer so that the oratorio works as
> music, with all the elements of structure and
> expression in place. The tuning is an essential part
> of the composition, but not the only part. I make my
> living performing weddings, so I don't have to find a
> huge audience for this. My ears are very happy to hear
> the natural harmonies that are so muddied by 12-eq
> (yes, I have always disliked 12-eq: I have a facetious
> sign in my music room that says Ban 12-Equal: The 7-11
> of Tuning!).
> Chris Mohr

Thanks Carl,

I'll be taking lessons from Allaudin Mathieu for the
next couple years before actually composing the music
for this oratorio. I do compose rather glacially, I
admit. As a self-taught composer I spent twenty years
creating an all-vocalise opera, From The Realm Of The
Shadow, which sounds mostly traditional but includes
one 19-tone movement performed with Johnny Reinhard
and Dave Eggar from AFMM, as well as an awesome 34-eq
lick from Neil Haverstick on faux-oud guitar in a
middle-eastern-style section. The work is out on Naxos
Records, but I'm not happy with some aspects of it
from a purely compositional point of view. It's both
humbling and exciting to learn what I wish I had
learned as an 18 year old kid!

Chris Mohr

--- Carl Lumma <clumma@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Wow, Chris, this sounds like an awesome project!!
>
> -Carl
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Chris Mohr
> <fromtherealmoftheshadow@...> wrote:
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > The question of how to cultivate microtonal
> > sensitivities in an average listener is one I have
> > asked long and hard. For the next ten years or so
> I
> > will be working on a 53-eq oratorio, setting some
> > twenty sacred poems from around the world to
> music. I
> > will be choosing ancient scales that may have been
> > heard by these poets, and I've chosen to start
> with
> > scales that sound very much like 12-eq (our
> > traditional major scale in pure Pythagorean tuning
> is
> > almost indistinguishable from 12-eq to a casual
> > listener, as long as you avoid the comma).
> Gradually I
> > will go into scales that take the ear further and
> > further from what it is used to. So the goal will
> be
> > to write music that is just heard as music with
> > beautiful melodies, and gradually go into places
> where
> > 12-eq cannot go at all. So the tuning will come
> more
> > and more into the forefront as the piece
> progresses.
> > Will it work for a larger audience? I don't know.
> Some
> > people tell me that average listeners will either
> hear
> > the music as sounding the same as 12-eq, so why
> > bother?--- or out of tune. Right now I want to
> develop
> > myself as a composer so that the oratorio works as
> > music, with all the elements of structure and
> > expression in place. The tuning is an essential
> part
> > of the composition, but not the only part. I make
> my
> > living performing weddings, so I don't have to
> find a
> > huge audience for this. My ears are very happy to
> hear
> > the natural harmonies that are so muddied by 12-eq
> > (yes, I have always disliked 12-eq: I have a
> facetious
> > sign in my music room that says Ban 12-Equal: The
> 7-11
> > of Tuning!).
> > Chris Mohr
>
>
>
>
>
>

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Chris Mohr <fromtherealmoftheshadow@...> wrote:
>
> Thanks Carl,
>
> I'll be taking lessons from Allaudin Mathieu

Any relation to W. A. Mathieu?

P.S. I don't know what you mean about avoiding the comma in the Pythagorean diatonic scale. It's normally any of the (5-limit) Just Intonation diatonic scales where a composer can "avoid the comma" -- specifically, the syntonic comma (either melodically or as an amount by which certain would-be consonances are mistuned). Can you help sort out my confusion?

for the
> next couple years before actually composing the music
> for this oratorio. I do compose rather glacially, I
> admit. As a self-taught composer I spent twenty years
> creating an all-vocalise opera, From The Realm Of The
> Shadow, which sounds mostly traditional but includes
> one 19-tone movement performed with Johnny Reinhard
> and Dave Eggar from AFMM, as well as an awesome 34-eq
> lick from Neil Haverstick on faux-oud guitar in a
> middle-eastern-style section. The work is out on Naxos
> Records, but I'm not happy with some aspects of it
> from a purely compositional point of view.

I'd love to hear it anyway. Good deal and congrats!

It's both
> humbling and exciting to learn what I wish I had
> learned as an 18 year old kid!
>
> Chris Mohr
>
> --- Carl Lumma <clumma@...> wrote:
>
> > Wow, Chris, this sounds like an awesome project!!
> >
> > -Carl
> >
> > --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Chris Mohr
> > <fromtherealmoftheshadow@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > The question of how to cultivate microtonal
> > > sensitivities in an average listener is one I have
> > > asked long and hard. For the next ten years or so
> > I
> > > will be working on a 53-eq oratorio, setting some
> > > twenty sacred poems from around the world to
> > music. I
> > > will be choosing ancient scales that may have been
> > > heard by these poets, and I've chosen to start
> > with
> > > scales that sound very much like 12-eq (our
> > > traditional major scale in pure Pythagorean tuning
> > is
> > > almost indistinguishable from 12-eq to a casual
> > > listener, as long as you avoid the comma).
> > Gradually I
> > > will go into scales that take the ear further and
> > > further from what it is used to. So the goal will
> > be
> > > to write music that is just heard as music with
> > > beautiful melodies, and gradually go into places
> > where
> > > 12-eq cannot go at all. So the tuning will come
> > more
> > > and more into the forefront as the piece
> > progresses.
> > > Will it work for a larger audience? I don't know.
> > Some
> > > people tell me that average listeners will either
> > hear
> > > the music as sounding the same as 12-eq, so why
> > > bother?--- or out of tune. Right now I want to
> > develop
> > > myself as a composer so that the oratorio works as
> > > music, with all the elements of structure and
> > > expression in place. The tuning is an essential
> > part
> > > of the composition, but not the only part. I make
> > my
> > > living performing weddings, so I don't have to
> > find a
> > > huge audience for this. My ears are very happy to
> > hear
> > > the natural harmonies that are so muddied by 12-eq
> > > (yes, I have always disliked 12-eq: I have a
> > facetious
> > > sign in my music room that says Ban 12-Equal: The
> > 7-11
> > > of Tuning!).
> > > Chris Mohr
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
>

Can you post a link to it on Amazon?

-Carl

> Thanks Carl,
>
> I'll be taking lessons from Allaudin Mathieu for the
> next couple years before actually composing the music
> for this oratorio. I do compose rather glacially, I
> admit. As a self-taught composer I spent twenty years
> creating an all-vocalise opera, From The Realm Of The
> Shadow, which sounds mostly traditional but includes
> one 19-tone movement performed with Johnny Reinhard
> and Dave Eggar from AFMM, as well as an awesome 34-eq
> lick from Neil Haverstick on faux-oud guitar in a
> middle-eastern-style section. The work is out on Naxos
> Records, but I'm not happy with some aspects of it
> from a purely compositional point of view. It's both
> humbling and exciting to learn what I wish I had
> learned as an 18 year old kid!
>
> Chris Mohr

Sorry it took me so long to reply. Yes, W.A. Mathieu
is Allaudin Mathieu.

In 53-eq, each interval of 1/53rd of an octave is
22.641 cents. So all of the commas can be very closely
approximated by one or two of the 53-eq "steps."

The Pythagorean comma is around 23 cents, the syntonic
or didymic comma is around 21 cents, the Great Dieses
is 41 cents, and the Diaschisma is around 20 cents.
The 2-cents Schisma doesn't need to be dealt with in
this discussion.

In 53-eq, then, each 1/53-octave interval can be
thought of as a generic "comma." And 53-eq can
therefore very closely approximate the resolution of
all of these commas so even as I change keys the ear
never has to hear a comma.

For example, I could tune my piano in pure Pythagorean
tuning, rising up 12 true perfect 5ths from F. The
Pythagorean comma would show itself as a "wolf fifth"
from Bb to F, and whenever I played that interval,
instead of hearing a pure fifth as I would with the
other intervals on the keyboard, I would hear the
"wolf fifth." On my 53-eq keyboard, I have a Bb, a
B'b, a B''b, a B,b, and a B,,b (sorry for the clumsy
typed notation, but you get the idea). On my keyboard,
the true Pythagorean Bb is actually a rank down on my
five-tiered keyboard. Voila! No wolf fifth. The same
principle can be applied when I confront any of the
other commas in my composing.

Since the 53-equal perfect fifth is only .07 cents off
from the pure fifth, and the 53-eq "just" third is
only 1.4 cents from the fifth harmonic, I can very
closely approximate the sound of just intonation and
still modulate and chord-progress while still having
"escape hatches" when I come up against any of these
commas. The "ideal" would be to write in pure just
intonation, but with 53-eq, I can notate and fix
pitches which are at least finite in number. I can
also create a "circle" of eight fifths and a third and
come back home, much like composers using 12-eq can
exploit the artificial "circle of fifths."

By the way, the seventh harmonic is only 4 1/2 cents
off, a noticeable discrepancy but much better than the
31-cent discrepancy of 12-eq. 12-eq kind of erases all
the commas too, but compromises the fifth and seventh
harmonics so grossly in the process that to my ear,
the sacrifice is not worth it. There are commas in the
7-limit system as well, which I will be exploring
eventually.

I hope this answers your question!

Chris Mohr

--- wallyesterpaulrus <wallyesterpaulrus@yahoo.com>
wrote:

> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Chris Mohr
> <fromtherealmoftheshadow@...> wrote:
> >
> > Thanks Carl,
> >
> > I'll be taking lessons from Allaudin Mathieu
>
> Any relation to W. A. Mathieu?
>
> P.S. I don't know what you mean about avoiding the
> comma in the Pythagorean diatonic scale. It's
> normally any of the (5-limit) Just Intonation
> diatonic scales where a composer can "avoid the
> comma" -- specifically, the syntonic comma (either
> melodically or as an amount by which certain
> would-be consonances are mistuned). Can you help
> sort out my confusion?
>
> for the
> > next couple years before actually composing the
> music
> > for this oratorio. I do compose rather glacially,
> I
> > admit. As a self-taught composer I spent twenty
> years
> > creating an all-vocalise opera, From The Realm Of
> The
> > Shadow, which sounds mostly traditional but
> includes
> > one 19-tone movement performed with Johnny
> Reinhard
> > and Dave Eggar from AFMM, as well as an awesome
> 34-eq
> > lick from Neil Haverstick on faux-oud guitar in a
> > middle-eastern-style section. The work is out on
> Naxos
> > Records, but I'm not happy with some aspects of it
> > from a purely compositional point of view.
>
>
> I'd love to hear it anyway. Good deal and congrats!
>
> It's both
> > humbling and exciting to learn what I wish I had
> > learned as an 18 year old kid!
> >
> > Chris Mohr
> >
> > --- Carl Lumma <clumma@...> wrote:
> >
> > > Wow, Chris, this sounds like an awesome
> project!!
> > >
> > > -Carl
> > >
> > > --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Chris Mohr
> > > <fromtherealmoftheshadow@> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Hi all,
> > > >
> > > > The question of how to cultivate microtonal
> > > > sensitivities in an average listener is one I
> have
> > > > asked long and hard. For the next ten years or
> so
> > > I
> > > > will be working on a 53-eq oratorio, setting
> some
> > > > twenty sacred poems from around the world to
> > > music. I
> > > > will be choosing ancient scales that may have
> been
> > > > heard by these poets, and I've chosen to start
> > > with
> > > > scales that sound very much like 12-eq (our
> > > > traditional major scale in pure Pythagorean
> tuning
> > > is
> > > > almost indistinguishable from 12-eq to a
> casual
> > > > listener, as long as you avoid the comma).
> > > Gradually I
> > > > will go into scales that take the ear further
> and
> > > > further from what it is used to. So the goal
> will
> > > be
> > > > to write music that is just heard as music
> with
> > > > beautiful melodies, and gradually go into
> places
> > > where
> > > > 12-eq cannot go at all. So the tuning will
> come
> > > more
> > > > and more into the forefront as the piece
> > > progresses.
> > > > Will it work for a larger audience? I don't
> know.
> > > Some
> > > > people tell me that average listeners will
> either
> > > hear
> > > > the music as sounding the same as 12-eq, so
> why
> > > > bother?--- or out of tune. Right now I want to
> > > develop
> > > > myself as a composer so that the oratorio
> works as
> > > > music, with all the elements of structure and
> > > > expression in place. The tuning is an
> essential
> > > part
> > > > of the composition, but not the only part. I
> make
> > > my
> > > > living performing weddings, so I don't have to
> > > find a
> > > > huge audience for this. My ears are very happy
> to
> > > hear
> > > > the natural harmonies that are so muddied by
> 12-eq
> > > > (yes, I have always disliked 12-eq: I have a
> > > facetious
> > > > sign in my music room that says Ban 12-Equal:
> The
> > > 7-11
> > > > of Tuning!).
> > > > Chris Mohr
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________________
> > Do You Yahoo!?
> > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam
> protection around
> > http://mail.yahoo.com
> >
>
>
>
>
>

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

Just became aware of this thread. Had something I care to add,
in response to Gene's original posting:

I think there are three somewhat distinct stages of listening in
a person's musical development. They exist in relation to many
characteristics, not just tuning.

The first is when the listener simply purely hears the music and
feels whatever they feel about the affect, the tension and release,
whatever. The little kid who doesn't know from rock vs. country
vs. whatever, who just experiences it and likes it or not.

The second is a huge range. It is the experienced listener who
can say B.S. like "that's not rock" or "that's not in tune" or "that
was a parallel fifth" or "that sounds like a sampled piano because
I don't hear interaction between the various strings' harmonics"
etc. etc.

The third is the open-minded musician who realizes that all
the rules and style guidelines and everything are crap because
the world isn't that simple and the whole point is to be in touch
with the original way of just experiencing. This listener knows
what scales are and styles and history and theory, but knows
that lots of things don't fit these boxes. This listener is able to
just listen and enjoy and connect with how they feel, regardless
of whether they understand it or not. Anyone at this level
probably has the ability, to varying degree, to adjust their
mode of listening at will.

I can say that with 100% of the totally unscientific experiences
that I've had playing microtonal music for various people that
every single person at the first or third levels enjoys good
microtonal music as much as any other music if not moreso.
Furthermore, BOTH people at level 1 and level 3 often think
the microtonal music is not particularly remarkable. It just
sounds like music to them. Especially people at level 1, they
think it's crazy to think this is weird music. It doesn't even
sound one bit different from anything else to them. But the
real point is that I've had many people at level 3 who don't
notice that the music is any different from normal unless I
point it out.

My overall point is that I'm quite convinced that only highly
trained, and further only specialized and not very broadened
musicians hear microtonality as weird or cacophonous. It is
an intellectual problem of fitting the music into their
preconceived boxes.

On the other hand, don't forget that much microtonal music
*is* cacophonous to a degree, or is weird and crazy, or is
computery and chop-chop sounding. In other words, I think
many, many critics of microtonal music aren't critical of the
tuning, but of the fact that relatively little of our new microtonal
music, Partch included, is otherwise usual sounding.
Partch's music is certainly not microtonal versions of traditional
styles and playing methods, so how can they be compared?

One good point on this: I know a musician who is fantastic and
certainly has open-minded ears a la my listener number 3. But,
he is an advocate of, and loves 12TET and does not know anything
about microtonality. He has great ears and can hear tuning VERY
well. Actually, now that I think of it, I know a few musicians like
this. And when I play them barbershop recordings (or in one case,
Toby Twining's Chrysalid Requiem), they do not marvel at the
weirdness or write it off as weird. They hear it like I do: fantastic
beautiful music. But in every case, they do not hear anything weird
about it, so they say something like: "well, that basically sounds
pretty close to 12TET still." Or my one professor's response to
the Chrysalid Requiem: "Other than being too long, it is a very
good composition. I think, though, that the beauty is the
compositional elements, and it would work just as well in 12TET."

I feel pretty certain when I say: microtonal music that is otherwise
similar to music people are used to is SO not strange that even
trained musicians don't really even hear it as different. There's
only two groups of people who hear microtonality and take notice
of the tuning particularly: microtonal advocates who are really
into the subteties of the tuning, and people at a mid-stage of
training who worked hard to learn to hear 12TET pitches and are
not yet at the learn-it-and-forget-it stage, so they aren't ready
to step back and listen to the music, but instead try to analyze
everything and get frustrated if they can't fit it into their intellectual
box.

I am convinced that good microtonal music that doesn't try to
be otherwise different, will be thought of by 95% of the population as
just another piece of music. But I believe they will like it more,
along the same lines that people like a high fidelity recording
made at 24-bit more than a recording made at 16-bit with
lower quality gear, even though that same 95% couldn't identify
that difference intellectually. And of course, we need to remind
ourselves that if the low-quality recording is a better piece of music
(or the 12TET piece is otherwise a better piece) that *easily*
overrides these other subtle differences.

Why don't most people like Partch? It sounds crazy (to their ears), and
not because it is microtonal. Why don't some people like barbershop?
Because it can be hokey, or they like drumbeats. Why doesn't everyone
like some of the list members' MIDI music? Hey, I made two albums
of 12TET MIDI music and even though I thought (in High School at the
time) that it was great composing, everyone said it sounded like video
game computer music. Why doesn't everyone like the Catler Brothers?
Not everyone likes instrumental jazz-fusion music! Where are the
microtonal pop-radio recordings?? When someone does that, then
we'll really see where this all stands!

-Aaron

Well, it's not pop, but ambient music. This is where I plug Robert
Rich again ( http://robertrich.com ) . All his solo stuff starting
wtih 'Numena' is JI, but he's the only one I know with a modern,
accessible sound. He basically sticks with modal 7-limit JI, except
when using the harmonic series. I don't think most of his audience
understands his tunings anyway.

Joe

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Wolf" <backfromthesilo@...> wrote:
> Where are the microtonal pop-radio recordings?? When someone does
> that, then we'll really see where this all stands!
>
> -Aaron

Right on! He is a great example of what I'm talking about.
I don't think *anybody* listening to Robert Rich would have
the reactions that Gene described people having to microtones,
calling them grossly out of tune or cacophonous.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Joe" <tamahome02000@...> wrote:
>
> Well, it's not pop, but ambient music. This is where I plug Robert
> Rich again ( http://robertrich.com ) . All his solo stuff starting
> wtih 'Numena' is JI, but he's the only one I know with a modern,
> accessible sound. He basically sticks with modal 7-limit JI, except
> when using the harmonic series. I don't think most of his audience
> understands his tunings anyway.
>
> Joe
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Wolf" <backfromthesilo@> wrote:
> > Where are the microtonal pop-radio recordings?? When someone does
> > that, then we'll really see where this all stands!
> >
> > -Aaron
>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Chris Mohr
<fromtherealmoftheshadow@...> wrote:

> By the way, the seventh harmonic is only 4 1/2 cents
> off, a noticeable discrepancy but much better than the
> 31-cent discrepancy of 12-eq. 12-eq kind of erases all
> the commas too, but compromises the fifth and seventh
> harmonics so grossly in the process that to my ear,
> the sacrifice is not worth it. There are commas in the
> 7-limit system as well, which I will be exploring
> eventually.

I actually wrote a piece in 53edo that used not just the 7 but even
the 11 limit. Mostly, like you, people implicitly treat 53 as a
schismatic system, so that the pure major triad is C-Fb-G. However, we
can get away from considering the circle of fifths at all, and use
circles of other intervals. Another important 53 system, which I used,
is orwell; this has a circle of 7/6 intervals, or 12 steps of 53. If
you want to stick to the 5-limit, a good alternative to schismatic is
hanson; this uses circles of 6/5 intervals, 14 steps of 53.

I don't know what you mean by the commas in the 7-limit system;
generally in these contexts "commas" is taken to mean intervals the
system tempers out. In the case of 53, in the 5-limit it tempers out
the schisma, 32805/32768, and the kleisma, 15625/15552. These two
together define 53 in the 5-limit, as Tanaka, who named the kleisma,
implicitly discovered. The schisma is what gives you your circle of
eight fifths and a major third. The kleisma, similarly, gives a circle
of six minor thirds and a fourth, or alternatively five minor thirds
and a minor sixth.

In the 7-limit, 53 tempers out 225/224, 1728/1715 and 3125/3087.
Tempering out 225/224, which says the semitones 15/14 and 16/15 are
the same, is extremely useful; one effect of it is that many 5-limit
scales, when tuned to 53edo, will be seen to have 53-et versions of
7-limit chords. It also makes the augmented triad into a 5/4-5/4-9/7
chord, and gives you a 5/4, 5/4, 9/7 circle of thirds. 1728/1715
vanishing means among other things that there is a circle of thirds
going 7/6, 7/6, 7/6, 5/4, and a 7/6-7/6-7/6-5/4 chord.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Wolf" <backfromthesilo@...> wrote:
>
> Right on! He is a great example of what I'm talking about.
> I don't think *anybody* listening to Robert Rich would have
> the reactions that Gene described people having to microtones,
> calling them grossly out of tune or cacophonous.

I'd be interested in your reactions to these:

http://www.xenharmony.org/ogg/gene/choraled.mp3

http://www.xenharmony.org/ogg/gene/chrome.mp3

http://www.xenharmony.org/ogg/gene/bodacious.mp3

Are we talking cacophanous, or merely weird? If they aren't all that
cacophanous, why the reaction?

Excellent post, Aaron! I just have a few comments below.

Aaron Wolf wrote:
> Just became aware of this thread. Had something I care to add,
> in response to Gene's original posting:
>
> I think there are three somewhat distinct stages of listening in
> a person's musical development. They exist in relation to many
> characteristics, not just tuning.
>
> The first is when the listener simply purely hears the music and
> feels whatever they feel about the affect, the tension and release,
> whatever. The little kid who doesn't know from rock vs. country
> vs. whatever, who just experiences it and likes it or not.
>
> The second is a huge range. It is the experienced listener who
> can say B.S. like "that's not rock" or "that's not in tune" or "that
> was a parallel fifth" or "that sounds like a sampled piano because
> I don't hear interaction between the various strings' harmonics"
> etc. etc.
>
> The third is the open-minded musician who realizes that all
> the rules and style guidelines and everything are crap because
> the world isn't that simple and the whole point is to be in touch
> with the original way of just experiencing. This listener knows
> what scales are and styles and history and theory, but knows
> that lots of things don't fit these boxes. This listener is able to
> just listen and enjoy and connect with how they feel, regardless
> of whether they understand it or not. Anyone at this level
> probably has the ability, to varying degree, to adjust their
> mode of listening at will.
>
> I can say that with 100% of the totally unscientific experiences
> that I've had playing microtonal music for various people that
> every single person at the first or third levels enjoys good
> microtonal music as much as any other music if not moreso.
> Furthermore, BOTH people at level 1 and level 3 often think
> the microtonal music is not particularly remarkable. It just
> sounds like music to them. Especially people at level 1, they
> think it's crazy to think this is weird music. It doesn't even
> sound one bit different from anything else to them. But the
> real point is that I've had many people at level 3 who don't
> notice that the music is any different from normal unless I
> point it out.
>
> My overall point is that I'm quite convinced that only highly
> trained, and further only specialized and not very broadened
> musicians hear microtonality as weird or cacophonous. It is
> an intellectual problem of fitting the music into their
> preconceived boxes.
>
> On the other hand, don't forget that much microtonal music
> *is* cacophonous to a degree, or is weird and crazy, or is
> computery and chop-chop sounding. In other words, I think
> many, many critics of microtonal music aren't critical of the
> tuning, but of the fact that relatively little of our new microtonal
> music, Partch included, is otherwise usual sounding.
> Partch's music is certainly not microtonal versions of traditional
> styles and playing methods, so how can they be compared?
>
> One good point on this: I know a musician who is fantastic and
> certainly has open-minded ears a la my listener number 3. But,
> he is an advocate of, and loves 12TET and does not know anything
> about microtonality. He has great ears and can hear tuning VERY
> well. Actually, now that I think of it, I know a few musicians like
> this. And when I play them barbershop recordings (or in one case,
> Toby Twining's Chrysalid Requiem), they do not marvel at the
> weirdness or write it off as weird. They hear it like I do:
> fantastic beautiful music. But in every case, they do not hear
> anything weird about it, so they say something like: "well, that
> basically sounds pretty close to 12TET still." Or my one
> professor's response to the Chrysalid Requiem: "Other than
> being too long, it is a very good composition. I think, though,
> that the beauty is the compositional elements, and it would work
> just as well in 12TET."
>
> I feel pretty certain when I say: microtonal music that is
> otherwise similar to music people are used to is SO not strange
> that even trained musicians don't really even hear it as
> different. There's only two groups of people who hear
> microtonality and take notice of the tuning particularly:
> microtonal advocates who are really into the subteties of the
> tuning, and people at a mid-stage of training who worked hard
> to learn to hear 12TET pitches and are not yet at the
> learn-it-and-forget-it stage, so they aren't ready to step back
> and listen to the music, but instead try to analyze everything
> and get frustrated if they can't fit it into their intellectual
> box.
>
> I am convinced that good microtonal music that doesn't try to
> be otherwise different, will be thought of by 95% of the
> population as just another piece of music. But I believe they
> will like it more, along the same lines that people like a high
> fidelity recording made at 24-bit more than a recording made
> at 16-bit with lower quality gear, even though that same 95%
> couldn't identify that difference intellectually. And of
> course, we need to remind ourselves that if the low-quality
> recording is a better piece of music (or the 12TET piece is
> otherwise a better piece) that *easily* overrides these other
> subtle differences.
>
> Why don't most people like Partch? It sounds crazy (to their
> ears), and not because it is microtonal. Why don't some people
> like barbershop? Because it can be hokey, or they like
> drumbeats. Why doesn't everyone like some of the list members'
> MIDI music? Hey, I made two albums of 12TET MIDI music and
> even though I thought (in High School at the time) that it was
> great composing, everyone said it sounded like video game
> computer music.

How ironic -- video game music is now cool and incredibly
popular.

> Why doesn't everyone like the Catler Brothers?
> Not everyone likes instrumental jazz-fusion music! Where are the
> microtonal pop-radio recordings?? When someone does that, then
> we'll really see where this all stands!

Even pop radio isn't what it used to be. There's some reason
to think we're entering the "long tail" phase of media... in the
near future, 22-tET musicians may entertain the same niche-type
audiences as every other kind of musician.

-Carl

Gene,

While I really appreciate the harmony in choraled, there is one thing that really bores me:

- It sounds mechanical. As far as I can tell, it's the same sample set with the same amplitude (mostly) and the same vibrato going at the same constant tempo throughout the whole piece. I get aural fatigue. I would expect a string quartet to do within-note (de)crescendos. Video game music tries to make up for the static sample set by varying volume and vibrato, adding glides. And the choice of sample set is important too.

And one thing that puts me off emotionally:
- If I follow the individual voices, some parts sound like the kind of melody that humans vocalize to express suffering, frustration, boredom.
Who wants to hear that? This is unfortunately extra apparent in the intro.

And my lasting memory of the piece is diffuse:
- After hearing the piece, I can't remember any melody or an important segment. All I can remember is notes and chords jumping here and there.

As long as I focus only on the harmony, I love it. But normally when I listen to music, I don't only listen to the harmony. The other parts are just as important or even more important. You need to get down to the actual sound, and work on that I think. Add some organic breathing (on all time scales). Simplify.

Otoh, if you love it as it is, I'm not saying you are wrong.

- Magnus

On Wed, 15 Mar 2006, Gene Ward Smith wrote:

> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Wolf" <backfromthesilo@...> wrote:
>>
>> Right on! He is a great example of what I'm talking about.
>> I don't think *anybody* listening to Robert Rich would have
>> the reactions that Gene described people having to microtones,
>> calling them grossly out of tune or cacophonous.
>
> I'd be interested in your reactions to these:
>
>
> http://www.xenharmony.org/ogg/gene/choraled.mp3
>
> http://www.xenharmony.org/ogg/gene/chrome.mp3
>
> http://www.xenharmony.org/ogg/gene/bodacious.mp3
>
> Are we talking cacophanous, or merely weird? If they aren't all that
> cacophanous, why the reaction?
>
>
>
>
>
> You can configure your subscription by sending an empty email to one
> of these addresses (from the address at which you receive the list):
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>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "J.Smith" <jsmith9624@...> wrote:

> I found the examples to be neither cacophonous nor weird -- only
> flavorful and piquant. What I wouldn't give to hear "Choraled"
> played by real strings!

That might be interesting; the tuning system is such that it's not
that difficult to produce a score. Producing a string quartet to play
it is another question.

On Wed, 15 Mar 2006, J.Smith wrote:

> What I wouldn't give to hear "Choraled"
> played by real strings!

I second that!

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@...> wrote:
> How ironic -- video game music is now cool and incredibly
> popular.

Witness the 4,000 people that sold out a concert last summer, done
during ComiCon, where the orchestra I play in did a live concert suite
from the music for the "Final Fantasy" series. I can't ever remember
audience members mobbing (or at least clotting) orch players for their
autographs! :) It was one of the most amazing cultural phenomena I've
witnessed in quite a few years.

Cheers,
Jon

Gene,

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <genewardsmith@...>
wrote:
> Are we talking cacophanous, or merely weird? If they aren't all that
> cacophanous, why the reaction?

I hope I speak for others in wishing that you could get over this
description of your piece, which you've used a number of times. I
don't think anyone on the tuning lists would have ever called this
cacophony, and I truly feel that any listeners who *did* term it thus
are coming from a very conservative or extrememly narrow listening
experience. They are the "Rollos" that Ives used to rail against! My
word, what would they say about George Crumb's "Black Angels"? Or
Autechre, for that matter!! :)

It ain't cacophony at all, so put that to bed. I thought Magnus did a
very fine examination of how choraled struck him, and they are points
that have been brought up before.

If the audience that is terming it cacophonous is an audience you feel
an interest in pleasing, then maybe you want to step back and compare
the piece to the kind of music they *do* care for. I think you might
find that a lot of the areas that Magnus addressed - melody,
variations in form, texture (not just sound sets, but maybe thinning
numbers of voices at times), dynamics - are elements that you can work
on creatively to lift choraled, and other pieces like it, from their
current presentation into forms that appeal to those other areas of a
musical piece.

Cacophonous? Heck, you didn't even have any DRUMS! :)

Cheers,
Jon

> - It sounds mechanical.

I've often suspected that a lack of controller data and
human rhythmic feel in Gene's music has been its limiing
factor. But I just assumed Gene meant them as demos of
pieces. That may not have been the case, but since
that's how I enjoy them, that's how I'm going to continue
to think of them. Gene's a mathematician and a composer.
I don't think less of him that he's not also a digital
sound engineer.

-Carl

> Witness the 4,000 people that sold out a concert last summer, done
> during ComiCon, where the orchestra I play in did a live concert

Which orchestra is that?

There have been a number of these live performances of video
game music by orchestras. I don't have the links to hand at
the moment.

Also, bitcrunched drum machines and low-fi synth sounds have
been taken up heavily in indie rock and even mainstream pop.

And let's not forget the "blindfolded pianist", who can play
the mario theme blindfolded.

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@...> wrote:
> Which orchestra is that?

My usual gig, San Diego Symphony. Last summer down here in SD - the
ComiCon took place at the convention center, and the summer pops venue
is right on the bay next to the center. This summer the same tie-in
(with ComiCon) is going to feature the big orchestral suite from the
"Lord of the Rings" movies, music by Howard Shore.

> Also, bitcrunched drum machines and low-fi synth sounds have
> been taken up heavily in indie rock and even mainstream pop.

Yep. I've been having fun the last few nights using some new live
glitch/stutter plugs, along with heavy bitcrunching/downsampling, to
mangle drum tracks. Yeah, I'm behind the times, but hell, I'm 53
already! :)

Cheers,
Jon

> And let's not forget the "blindfolded pianist", who can play
> the mario theme blindfolded.

And also not to mention the Gameboy Orchestra from Germany.

For my part, I've always loved the sounds. I grew up in the
80s, and I used to go to arcades just to listen to the games
being played. My favorite was Arkanoid. I thought anything
that sounded like a robot was supposed to sound had to be cool.
My dad had one of the talking cars of the era... I totally
freaked when he brought it home.

My friend had a Commodore 64, whose "SID" chip is still my
favorite video game synth. (Check out
http://www.refx.net/pro_QuadraSID.htm?lang=eng
for a software version.) I was disappointed when the Adlib
card in my PC didn't sound that way. But a few shareware
games I had worked through the PC speaker, and I loved that.

Electro was hot in dance halls in the early 80s, but I always
wondered why the sounds didn't see wider use. So the past 6
years have been a delight for me -- I guess it just had to
wait for my generation to get old enough.

Nintendo in particular has done a lot for the genre. When
the original Sony Playstation opted for CD audio soundtracks,
Nintendo kept up the cartridge and synthesis model for their
"64" console.

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Magnus Jonsson <magnus@...> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 15 Mar 2006, J.Smith wrote:
>
> > What I wouldn't give to hear "Choraled"
> > played by real strings!
>
> I second that!

Thanks, guys.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Jon Szanto" <jszanto@...> wrote:

> They are the "Rollos" that Ives used to rail against! My
> word, what would they say about George Crumb's "Black Angels"? Or
> Autechre, for that matter!! :)

They'd hate it, of course. On the other hand, a lot of people in that
musical world are likely to think choraled sounds naively consonant
and too much like tonality, unless they are too postmodern to think
that and then who knows what they'd think.

> I think you might
> find that a lot of the areas that Magnus addressed - melody,
> variations in form, texture (not just sound sets, but maybe thinning
> numbers of voices at times), dynamics - are elements that you can work
> on creatively to lift choraled, and other pieces like it, from their
> current presentation into forms that appeal to those other areas of a
> musical piece.

I just put up a new version where I tried for a little more dynamics,
but I doubt it will address people's concerns.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@...> wrote:
>
> > - It sounds mechanical.
>
> I've often suspected that a lack of controller data and
> human rhythmic feel in Gene's music has been its limiing
> factor.

Actually, if you look at my Scala seq files you often see scads of
controller data; maybe I just am not doing it right, but I am doing
it. If someone wants to show how it really should be done, I'd be
interested.

But I just assumed Gene meant them as demos of
> pieces. That may not have been the case, but since
> that's how I enjoy them, that's how I'm going to continue
> to think of them. Gene's a mathematician and a composer.
> I don't think less of him that he's not also a digital
> sound engineer.

Thanks, Carl. I get a little frustrated in that it seems to me there
is a sort of implicit demand that I be equally good at everything.

> Actually, if you look at my Scala seq files you often see scads of
> controller data; maybe I just am not doing it right, but I am doing
> it. If someone wants to show how it really should be done, I'd be
> interested.

Do you use velocity, and if so, where do you get them?

If you're using Nagler's humanize for onset staggering, it isn't
very good.

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <genewardsmith@...>
wrote:
> Actually, if you look at my Scala seq files you often see scads of
> controller data; maybe I just am not doing it right, but I am doing
> it.

Doing *what*? Is the controller data being directed at volume or some
other cc, or is this just the pitch wheel data?

> I get a little frustrated in that it seems to me there
> is a sort of implicit demand that I be equally good at everything.

Gene, you were the one that brought up what bothered you, the
cacophonous attribution. I, along with others, just hope to offer
suggestions to help you go farther down the road (if you want to).
Naturally, if I ever need to get help with math, you'll be one of my
go-to guys! (if you don't read the New Yorker, I'll scan and send to
you the recent cartoon about scaling the pinnacles of mathematics - it
pegged me to a "T").

Cheers,
Jon

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@...> wrote:
>
> > Actually, if you look at my Scala seq files you often see scads of
> > controller data; maybe I just am not doing it right, but I am doing
> > it. If someone wants to show how it really should be done, I'd be
> > interested.
>
> Do you use velocity, and if so, where do you get them?

I use Nytonyx a lot, and Sibelius also, and cook things up or modify
them using Maple. Using this and that, I can get velocity data and
some controller data, to use, or modify, or combine; or fold, spindle
and mutilate. Sticking it into a midi sequencer and doing it by hand
would be useful, but I don't know how to do that.

> If you're using Nagler's humanize for onset staggering, it isn't
> very good.

I don't, but what would be good?

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Jon Szanto" <jszanto@...> wrote:

> Doing *what*? Is the controller data being directed at volume or some
> other cc, or is this just the pitch wheel data?

Controller 11 changes a lot since I can get Nytonyx to do that.
Velocity changes a lot.

> > I get a little frustrated in that it seems to me there
> > is a sort of implicit demand that I be equally good at everything.
>
> Gene, you were the one that brought up what bothered you, the
> cacophonous attribution.

Yes, and I let that thread die a long time ago, and did not revive it.

I, along with others, just hope to offer
> suggestions to help you go farther down the road (if you want to).
> Naturally, if I ever need to get help with math, you'll be one of my
> go-to guys! (if you don't read the New Yorker, I'll scan and send to
> you the recent cartoon about scaling the pinnacles of mathematics - it
> pegged me to a "T").

No, I never saw it. I went to a math conference once with a t-shirt
having a New Yorker math joke on it, and other people wore it too.
Maybe this will be a popular hit also.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <genewardsmith@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Wolf" <backfromthesilo@> wrote:
> >
> > Right on! He is a great example of what I'm talking about.
> > I don't think *anybody* listening to Robert Rich would have
> > the reactions that Gene described people having to microtones,
> > calling them grossly out of tune or cacophonous.
>
> I'd be interested in your reactions to these:
>
>
> http://www.xenharmony.org/ogg/gene/choraled.mp3
>
> http://www.xenharmony.org/ogg/gene/chrome.mp3
>
> http://www.xenharmony.org/ogg/gene/bodacious.mp3
>
> Are we talking cacophanous, or merely weird? If they aren't all that
> cacophanous, why the reaction?
>

I find the first to be the most "cacophonous" particularly due to the
obnoxious, constant vibrato in the timbre.

This is a bit off of the tuning issue, but at any rate, I don't think tuning
is responsible for most of how I perceive these pieces. So here's my
simple statement:

I teach my beginner students to think of musical experiences on a
spectrum from *boring* to *confusing*. In between is *interesting*.

Without any further explanation, I find the dynamics (volume and
similar features), timbres, and textures of all your pieces to be quite
extremely on the boring side. On the other hand, the melodies and
forms and polyphony is on the confusing side. In other words, I can
predictably expect constant electronic timbres and certain sorts of
rhythms overall. As far as melody and harmony, I have a very hard
time making sense of things on a first listen. I can tell that there
is enough structure that I could do better with further listening.
However, the timbres are so harsh overall that I could not bear
to listen to the pieces all the way through even once.

I doubt that otherwise similar music in 12TET would be heard that
differently by any casual listener. Simply put, the timbres and
lack of dynamic elements will turn off anybody who is not intellectually
intrigued by the tuning.

Sorry to be so harsh. But do realize that I'm not inherently saying
anything bad about your composing or tuning. But it gets
hidden by the other factors in what makes up the listening
experience.

-Aaron

>
> How ironic -- video game music is now cool and incredibly
> popular.
>

Yeah, and actually many critics who called my music "video game
music" still LIKED it, and I sold a lot of albums compared to the fact
that I had no way to present the music or get it out to the world.

But my point is that I hadn't thought of my own music like that at
all, and I didn't exactly want the association. I spent my time focusing
on the notes and rhythms and only since did I realize how much
timbre and other less notatable (is that a word?) factors truly impact
how listeners perceive music.

For anyone interested (though it is 12TET) my second (of three)
solo CDs is available and has a couple complete sample tracks
here:
www.earbuzz.com/aaronwolf

> > Why doesn't everyone like the Catler Brothers?
> > Not everyone likes instrumental jazz-fusion music! Where are the
> > microtonal pop-radio recordings?? When someone does that, then
> > we'll really see where this all stands!
>
> Even pop radio isn't what it used to be. There's some reason
> to think we're entering the "long tail" phase of media... in the
> near future, 22-tET musicians may entertain the same niche-type
> audiences as every other kind of musician.
>
> -Carl
>

I agree fully, and I'm excited that we seem to be reaching a generally
more diverse and creative musical era. But when I say pop-radio
in THIS case, I really mean music that has those elements that make
pop radio hits, which will ALWAYS be popular even without the
absurd pop radio medium, simply because there are forms that
are catchy and timbres that appeal to people more broadly and
immediately than others. And that doesn't make them necessarily
less artistic or worse or anything.

-Aaron

> > > Actually, if you look at my Scala seq files you often see
> > > scads of controller data; maybe I just am not doing it
> > > right, but I am doing it. If someone wants to show how it
> > > really should be done, I'd be interested.
> >
> > Do you use velocity, and if so, where do you get them?
>
> I use Nytonyx a lot, and Sibelius also, and cook things up or
> modify them using Maple. Using this and that, I can get velocity
> data and some controller data, to use, or modify, or combine; or
> fold, spindle and mutilate. Sticking it into a midi sequencer
> and doing it by hand would be useful, but I don't know how to
> do that.
>
> > If you're using Nagler's humanize for onset staggering, it isn't
> > very good.
>
> I don't, but what would be good?

There ought to be something, but I don't know of it exactly.
Sibelius has humanization of playback, but I'm not sure if it
can be recorded and I'm not sure if it involves staggering
note onsets. Superconductor also comes to mind, though I
don't know if it's still being developed. Jules Siegel had
a proprietary thing that he was too paranoid to even describe
to me (something about nested patterns, which sounded
promising) that apparently worked well.

I've found that very low settings with Nagler's humanize can
effectively remove the jarring effect when note-ons are
perfectly synchronized (that my mouse-entered MIDI in Encore
sufferred from). But it's no good for actually adding human
performance values.

It won't stagger onsets, but the best homophonic humanizer
I can imagine is Stephen's conductor program. Presumably
there's a way to pipe its output to a MIDI recorder, though
I haven't tried it.

-Carl

>
> For anyone interested (though it is 12TET) my second (of three)
> solo CDs is available and has a couple complete sample tracks
> here:
> www.earbuzz.com/aaronwolf
>
>

Not to be too hypersensitive, but I really had meant to point out that
this CD was completed at the end of 2007 and I was still in high school,
so it's been almost a decade. This doesn't quite represent where I'm at
now, although I admit to getting so wrapped up with learning and
theory and practicing, that it's been quite some time since I had
any really solid, completed new recordings made.

-Aaron

> > For anyone interested (though it is 12TET) my second (of three)
> > solo CDs is available and has a couple complete sample tracks
> > here:
> > www.earbuzz.com/aaronwolf
>
> Not to be too hypersensitive, but I really had meant to point
> out that this CD was completed at the end of 2007 and I was
> still in high school, so it's been almost a decade.

Do you mean 1997?

Adiabatic Kratt sounds neat. The other samples aren't
so promising, to be honest, but hey, I didn't have any 25-track
CDs when I was in high school.

> This doesn't quite represent where I'm at
> now, although I admit to getting so wrapped up with learning and
> theory and practicing, that it's been quite some time since I had
> any really solid, completed new recordings made.

I know the feeling.

-C.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Wolf" <backfromthesilo@...> wrote:

> However, the timbres are so harsh overall that I could not bear
> to listen to the pieces all the way through even once.

Yipe. I wish I could figure out how to get people to listen to the music
and not the soundfonts.

Here's Aaron Krister Johnson's very different version of Choraled:

http://www.xenharmony.org/ogg/gene/ChoraledWithATwist.ogg

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@...> wrote:
> For my part, I've always loved the sounds. I grew up in the
> 80s, and I used to go to arcades just to listen to the games
> being played. My favorite was Arkanoid. I thought anything
> that sounded like a robot was supposed to sound had to be cool.
> My dad had one of the talking cars of the era... I totally
> freaked when he brought it home.

I figure Carl already knows this because Keyboard Magazine recently
reviewed it, but for the rest...

If you have a Palm OS device, Bhajis Loops is a music app offers a
selection of 12-note/octave tunings:

http://www.chocopoolp.com/bj_features.php

The default sound set definitely includes the 80s video game sounds.
Some demos are here:

http://www.chocopoolp.com/go_songs.php

One of the latest interesting music projects to appear on a Nintendo
product is Electroplankton:

http://electroplankton.nintendods.com/

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Jon Szanto" <jszanto@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@> wrote:
> > How ironic -- video game music is now cool and incredibly
> > popular.
>
> Witness the 4,000 people that sold out a concert last summer,
> done during ComiCon, where the orchestra I play in did a
> live concert suite from the music for the "Final Fantasy"
> series. I can't ever remember audience members mobbing
> (or at least clotting) orch players for their autographs!
> :) It was one of the most amazing cultural phenomena I've
> witnessed in quite a few years.

I'm witness to this too -- i had to learn what "Legend of Zelda"
was, because a bunch of my students are bugging me to teach
them the theme music!

-monz
http://tonalsoft.com
Tonescape microtonal music software

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@...> wrote:
>
> > > For anyone interested (though it is 12TET) my second (of three)
> > > solo CDs is available and has a couple complete sample tracks
> > > here:
> > > www.earbuzz.com/aaronwolf
> >
> > Not to be too hypersensitive, but I really had meant to point
> > out that this CD was completed at the end of 2007 and I was
> > still in high school, so it's been almost a decade.
>
> Do you mean 1997?
>
> Adiabatic Kratt sounds neat. The other samples aren't
> so promising, to be honest, but hey, I didn't have any 25-track
> CDs when I was in high school.
>
> > This doesn't quite represent where I'm at
> > now, although I admit to getting so wrapped up with learning and
> > theory and practicing, that it's been quite some time since I had
> > any really solid, completed new recordings made.
>
> I know the feeling.
>
> -C.
>

Arg. It was late and I was tired last night. Actually that CD was finished in
1998! And it was April 1997 that I put out my first 33 track (not as consistent)
CD. For what it is worth, every single thing on those albums was entered
manually. There's not a sliver of preset beats or loops, it was all done
by me. And the sample tracks give an idea of the sound quality, but I didn't
even choose which samples to use, and out of 25 tracks, they are all
different stylistically and compositionally, but all have that home keyboard
MIDI sound (stretched to its limits mind you).

Point overall is that I can be proud of what I've done, but I know there's
lots of reasons this end result output isn't going to really appeal to a wide
audience. And I've been concerned since then to address these issues
so that I don't kid myself in the future. Just because I can hear the polyphony
and expression in my composition doesn't mean most listeners will get
past the mediocre sounds and the robotic performances. And nobody
actual gives a #@#% that I spent hours making my MIDI tracks better
than how most people's results are by obsessively adjusting every little
dynamic and duration, because better than something people dislike
doesn't mean it will be liked or is any good.

So I had a few people say that it was among their most favorite albums.
Great. But I think those SAME people would like it more if the sound
quality were improved, in addition to other factors.

And the whole point of my original essay/post was that microtonal
people need to accept and admit to these issues because most people
aren't hearing tuning or even compositional structure as the primary
factors in a listening experience.

-Aaron

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <genewardsmith@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Wolf" <backfromthesilo@> wrote:
>
> > However, the timbres are so harsh overall that I could not bear
> > to listen to the pieces all the way through even once.
>
> Yipe. I wish I could figure out how to get people to listen to the music
> and not the soundfonts.
>

Gene, I've come to the hard-to-accept realization that music isn't distinct
from soundfonts. The entire aural experience is the music. It almost sounds
like you're asking me to listen to the notation. Saying: I wish people could
listen to the dots on the paper. You can't listen to that, you can only look
at it. I highly suggest you stop trying to alter the way humans hear, and
instead say, "I wish I could get my music performed by expressive
instrumentalists who could do it justice." Or a realistic option:
"I'm sure glad technology has been constantly improving, so I'm sure
someday soon I'll be able to make a more listenable rendition even if
it will never be quite perfect"

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Wolf" <backfromthesilo@...> wrote:

> Gene, I've come to the hard-to-accept realization that music isn't
distinct
> from soundfonts. The entire aural experience is the music.

This brings to mind Beecham's quip, that the English don't much like
music but they love the sound it makes. It seems to me there is a hell
of a lot more going on in a Bach fugue or a Beethoven string quartet
than the sound it makes, and ignoring that aspect simply ignores what
is best and most interesting about music. The music I like best, at
any rate, was not composed for people who merely love the sound it makes.

It almost sounds
> like you're asking me to listen to the notation. Saying: I wish
people could
> listen to the dots on the paper. You can't listen to that, you can
only look
> at it.

Actually, some people *can* listen to it, but sadly, my abilities in
that direction are sorely limited.

I highly suggest you stop trying to alter the way humans hear, and
> instead say, "I wish I could get my music performed by expressive
> instrumentalists who could do it justice."

How does one do that, exactly? I'm not a music professional.

>Or a realistic option:
> "I'm sure glad technology has been constantly improving, so I'm sure
> someday soon I'll be able to make a more listenable rendition even if
> it will never be quite perfect"

Amen to that. I am sure the situation will continue to improve, but
meanwhile why disparage what we have as unlistenable?

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <genewardsmith@...>
wrote:
> why disparage what we have as unlistenable?

Because sometimes it is. And if we aren't able to put on our big girl
panties and deal with it, we can't expect listeners to enjoy it.
Aaron's trying to be helpful here, and I think we'd all like to see
each and every worthy piece that gets written/improvised/created end
up in the best possible light. Hope you can ruminate on that some.

Cheers,
Jon

>
> This brings to mind Beecham's quip, that the English don't much like
> music but they love the sound it makes. It seems to me there is a hell
> of a lot more going on in a Bach fugue or a Beethoven string quartet
> than the sound it makes, and ignoring that aspect simply ignores what
> is best and most interesting about music. The music I like best, at
> any rate, was not composed for people who merely love the sound it makes.
>

Please don't try to keep separating things like this. There's no "mere"
anything. The whole experience is what it is. It has parts, but is greater
than their sum. Would you expect people to enjoy a movie if the theatre
has the sound so loud it is truly painful and the focus of the projector is
completely out of whack? "But the point is the beatiful story!" you could say.
But nobody could make it out! There's a complete range of these things
and the are rarely at the extremes. Most well-acted, beautifully written
movies do not also have the absolutely greatest lighting, but the better
it is, great. And the best lighting for a drama is one that does not call
attention to itself. It is the lighting that best focuses your ear on the
elements that are meant to be focused on.

In your recording, the soundfonts distract me from the compositional
elements, because they are THAT extreme (to MY ears). A budget,
independant film simply will never have the quality or even the personell
to do everything as well as a big budget film, but sometimes the writing
is so good that we love the independant film more than the typical
hollywood hit. But this is NEVER the case if the indy film has sound
quality or video quality so low that average listeners have difficulty
making out the dialogue or identifying the characters.

It is foolish to try to ignore these things. And just as foolish to try
to dream up the greatest whatever that has every single element
in place perfectly.

The "music" of it all? I never said it was all in the timbre. But it
CERTAINLY IS in the actual aural experience in time. Not on the
paper. That's like enjoying a house by looking at the architectural
blueprint.

> It almost sounds
> > like you're asking me to listen to the notation. Saying: I wish
> people could
> > listen to the dots on the paper. You can't listen to that, you can
> only look
> > at it.
>
> Actually, some people *can* listen to it, but sadly, my abilities in
> that direction are sorely limited.
>

"Imagine" is the word you want. People can *imagine* it. They cannot
listen to it. And in order to imagine it they need something to relate
it to. Professional musicians relate to sounds and playing they are
familiar with. It is possible to listen to a MIDI violin and *imagine*
a real one. But if you are asking people to do this, you'll have to
either get a LOT closer to the real thing, or accept that your audience
is limited to an infinitesimally small group of trained and motivated
friends who like you enough to give your piece a chance and do all
the work of imagining its potential.

> I highly suggest you stop trying to alter the way humans hear, and
> > instead say, "I wish I could get my music performed by expressive
> > instrumentalists who could do it justice."
>
> How does one do that, exactly? I'm not a music professional.
>

If I had an answer that took less than years of dedication to acheive a
half-way result, I'd like to think I'd be a world-renound composer
already. The half answer is that the more you buy into currently existing
systems, genres, and formats, and try not to do anything way out of
the ordinary, the easier it is to find people to realize your music.

> >Or a realistic option:
> > "I'm sure glad technology has been constantly improving, so I'm sure
> > someday soon I'll be able to make a more listenable rendition even if
> > it will never be quite perfect"
>
> Amen to that. I am sure the situation will continue to improve, but
> meanwhile why disparage what we have as unlistenable?

I can listen to mediocre MIDI stuff. Really. I've made a lot of it.
And my barbershop thing, using REAL voices is robotic and
not perfectly mixed and beautiful even. And I expect at least
for tuning people to listen past that and hear the other elements.
It's all a range. The particular sounds of what you posted were
VERY fatigueing to me.

-Aaron

A quick further note:

I have Bill Sethares' Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale second edition.
And I'm obsessive and focused enough to have read the whole thing
and listen carefully to all the examples.
I found it very interesting.

All the pieces are less than professionally mixed and written, and
the computerized outputs are less than ideal. But I appreciated
almost everything for what he was trying to show by the example.
Additionally, a few pieces I really very much enjoy.

However, *some* of the pieces were not programmed, but were
played on a MIDI keyboard or something. And some of those
had a (lack of) groove, a rhythm SO completely terrible as to
be unlistenable. I essentially got the point, but the rhythms
literally made me so uncomfortable that it was a relief to hit
"stop."

I wouldn't demand that Bill learn to have a professional musical
sense of rhythm and timing, but I WOULD demand that he
do *something*, which could be fixing the timing electronically,
asking somebody else to play it, or yes, practicing and getting
just a LITTLE bit better to the point of being listenable.

-Aaron

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Jon Szanto" <jszanto@...> wrote:
>
> Because sometimes it is. And if we aren't able to put on our big girl
> panties and deal with it, we can't expect listeners to enjoy it.

Jon, I've already told you I'm sick of your comments on this, and that
they have been deleterious. You've promised several times to stop, and
several times you've broken that promise.

> Aaron's trying to be helpful here, and I think we'd all like to see
> each and every worthy piece that gets written/improvised/created end
> up in the best possible light. Hope you can ruminate on that some.

Aaron could not be bothered even to listen to what I wrote. I gave an
alternative AKJ made, and heard nothing about that either. I think he
is a spiritual Englishman. There *is* more to music than the sound it
makes, and until you get that, you are in the shallow end of the pool.

If someone wants to be helpful, what would they suggest as an
alternative, better sf2 string font than the rather harsh one I used?
It shouldn't be mushy, should bring out the parts with clarity, should
not have tuning problems and should be able to convery emotional
intensity.

Gene,

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <genewardsmith@...>
wrote:
> Jon, I've already told you I'm sick of your comments on this...

Right, I thought we were being more general in nature. I'll butt out
now. Do note, however, that it isn't just me, but others who are also
trying to give you some insight into the presentation of your
compositions. Up to you whether you find it helpful or simply ignore it.

> Aaron could not be bothered even to listen to what I wrote.

Not true.

> There *is* more to music than the sound it
> makes

We don't disagree, and Aaron already addressed that.

> and until you get that, you are in the shallow end of the pool.

Since I don't believe the statement that you make applies to me, I'm
not in the shallow end of the pool.

> If someone wants to be helpful, what would they suggest as an
> alternative, better sf2 string font than the rather harsh one I used?

The very same mistake you've made over and over again: it isn't the
font, it is how it is used. Not to mention that ANY string
approximation - or choral, sax, whatever - would end up using multiple
fonts for multiple articulation situations. Take the absolute,
world-best string sample, turn it into a soundfont, and you'll have
the same situation unless you learn to utilize it.

Back to you, Gene. I wish you well in finding a setting for your music
that pleases you AND pleases your listeners.

Jon

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Jon Szanto" <jszanto@...> wrote:

> Right, I thought we were being more general in nature. I'll butt out
> now. Do note, however, that it isn't just me, but others who are also
> trying to give you some insight into the presentation of your
> compositions.

Neither you nor these other people have any alternatives to offer.
What use are these comments, beyond depressing me into thinking it
isn't worth bothering to compose at all?

Up to you whether you find it helpful or simply ignore it.
>
> > Aaron could not be bothered even to listen to what I wrote.
>
> Not true.

He listened to a few seconds.

> > If someone wants to be helpful, what would they suggest as an
> > alternative, better sf2 string font than the rather harsh one I used?
>
> The very same mistake you've made over and over again: it isn't the
> font, it is how it is used.

And you have actual experience in this area?

Gene,

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <genewardsmith@...>
wrote:
> Neither you nor these other people have any alternatives to offer.

Nonsense. I've not only given you many pointers over the years, but
actually offered to donate software that would allow you new ways to
work. You chose not to accept any of this. Unfortunate.

> He listened to a few seconds.

He obviously has talents as a musician, as do you. Draw whatever
inferences you want.

> And you have actual experience in this area?

Yeah, a fair amount. And have worked, closely, with people that have a
lot more experience than me. But that hasn't ever impressed you
before, so it won't now either.

We're done here, right?

Cheers,
Jon

> Gene, I've come to the hard-to-accept realization ...
> The entire aural experience is the music. It almost sounds
> like you're asking me to listen to the notation.

That's a basic listening skill. If you can't do it, I'd say
you're a type-1 listener.

> You can't listen to that,

Sure you can.

-Carl

> This brings to mind Beecham's quip, that the English don't much like
> music but they love the sound it makes. It seems to me there is a
> hell of a lot more going on in a Bach fugue or a Beethoven string
> quartet than the sound it makes, and ignoring that aspect simply
> ignores what is best and most interesting about music. The music I
> like best, at any rate, was not composed for people who merely love
> the sound it makes.

Well put.

> > Saying: I wish people could
> > listen to the dots on the paper.
//
>
> Actually, some people *can* listen to it, but sadly, my
> abilities in that direction are sorely limited.

In fact, a lot of the same neurons are active as when they hear
the sound.

-Carl

> There's no "mere"
> anything. The whole experience is what it is.

Are you saying you can't identify a bad performance of
a great piece? You'd blame the Bach if you bought
Boston Pops plays the Brandenburgs?

-Carl

Funny enough, we currently have a listener on MMM calling
Sethares a musical god. I used to think the same, but
now I hear nothing but limitations in his music. Go figure.

-Carl

> A quick further note:
>
> I have Bill Sethares' Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale second edition.
> And I'm obsessive and focused enough to have read the whole thing
> and listen carefully to all the examples.
> I found it very interesting.
>
> All the pieces are less than professionally mixed and written, and
> the computerized outputs are less than ideal. But I appreciated
> almost everything for what he was trying to show by the example.
> Additionally, a few pieces I really very much enjoy.
>
> However, *some* of the pieces were not programmed, but were
> played on a MIDI keyboard or something. And some of those
> had a (lack of) groove, a rhythm SO completely terrible as to
> be unlistenable. I essentially got the point, but the rhythms
> literally made me so uncomfortable that it was a relief to hit
> "stop."
>
> I wouldn't demand that Bill learn to have a professional musical
> sense of rhythm and timing, but I WOULD demand that he
> do *something*, which could be fixing the timing electronically,
> asking somebody else to play it, or yes, practicing and getting
> just a LITTLE bit better to the point of being listenable.
>
> -Aaron

> > Jon, I've already told you I'm sick of your comments on this...
>
> Right, I thought we were being more general in nature. I'll butt
> out now. Do note, however, that it isn't just me, but others who
> are also trying to give you some insight into the presentation of
> your compositions. Up to you whether you find it helpful or simply
> ignore it.

Heh - that doesn't sound at all like you're butting out. In fact,
I've got to say, Jon, I've been sitting here wondering if you and
Gene had come to a new agreement -- now I realize you've just
broken the agreement.

-Carl

> > There's no "mere"
> > anything. The whole experience is what it is.
>
> Are you saying you can't identify a bad performance of
> a great piece? You'd blame the Bach if you bought
> Boston Pops plays the Brandenburgs?

Moreover, how can you even compare two classical pieces?
They don't come with performance values.

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Jon Szanto" <jszanto@...> wrote:
>
> Gene,
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <genewardsmith@>
> wrote:
> > Neither you nor these other people have any alternatives to offer.
>
> Nonsense. I've not only given you many pointers over the years, but
> actually offered to donate software that would allow you new ways to
> work. You chose not to accept any of this. Unfortunate.

Donate what software? I recall pointers, but I don't recall ones I
could actually use.

> > And you have actual experience in this area?
>
> Yeah, a fair amount.

Can you put up some midi files you've sequenced?

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@...> wrote:
>
> Funny enough, we currently have a listener on MMM calling
> Sethares a musical god. I used to think the same, but
> now I hear nothing but limitations in his music. Go figure.

Sethares is cool for those things he's cool for.

> > Aaron's trying to be helpful here, and I think we'd all like to see
> > each and every worthy piece that gets written/improvised/created end
> > up in the best possible light. Hope you can ruminate on that some.
>
> Aaron could not be bothered even to listen to what I wrote. I gave an
> alternative AKJ made, and heard nothing about that either. I think he
> is a spiritual Englishman. There *is* more to music than the sound it
> makes, and until you get that, you are in the shallow end of the pool.
>
> If someone wants to be helpful, what would they suggest as an
> alternative, better sf2 string font than the rather harsh one I used?
> It shouldn't be mushy, should bring out the parts with clarity, should
> not have tuning problems and should be able to convery emotional
> intensity.

Gene,

First off, please remember that lots of important elements of communication
don't translate into typed online text. I do not mean to be harsh and hurtful.
But I do think it is important to understand the frustrations of the reality
of trying to put music out there.

Anyway, I had meant to post earlier: I listened to AKJ's version of Choraled
and liked it! I made the other posts before I had a chance to load that. It
didn't play in my browser and I didn't realize until later how to get it to work.
I found it listenable and furthermore it seemed interesting. It did not strike
me as the greatest thing ever, but I kept it around, as I'm feeling that as I
give it a few more listens I may find some really neat stuff to appreciate.
I *certainly* feel that the timbres in that version, while not accessible to
the average public because they are still too computery and simple, are not
harsh or unlistenable. They are benign enough (even nice in some ways) that
I am definitely able to focus on the composition and tuning and other elements
and enjoy the music!

-Aaron

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@...> wrote:
>
> > There's no "mere"
> > anything. The whole experience is what it is.
>
> Are you saying you can't identify a bad performance of
> a great piece? You'd blame the Bach if you bought
> Boston Pops plays the Brandenburgs?
>
> -Carl
>

Ok, touché. Really, I do agree with you.

I think my main point is that it isn't very realistic to hand me a copy
of the Boston Pops Plays The Brandenburgs as an example of how
I should appreciate and love Bach. And furthermore, if that was the
only performance of Bach that existed, it might very well be that
almost nobody would realize that Bach is that great.

I myself pointed out how I ask and expect people listening to
my barbershop submission to realize the flaws and not dwell
on them, but see the value in the composition and tuning. It
is all a tough balance, and I'm just saying we need realistic
expectations. Microtonal MIDI soundfont music will never
be something that awakens the world to microtones, just
as my learning CD will not be what opens most people to
barbershop, but I did try to get a good tone and use good
studio mixing and effects. If I had presented it totally dry,
I'm certain that even people here would have had a slightly
harder time listening to it.

-Aaron

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <genewardsmith@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@> wrote:
> >
> > Funny enough, we currently have a listener on MMM calling
> > Sethares a musical god. I used to think the same, but
> > now I hear nothing but limitations in his music. Go figure.
>
> Sethares is cool for those things he's cool for.
>

I kept a couple tracks, particularly the ones with programmed rhythms
that were based on harmonic series scales, in my iTunes playlist. I really,
really like some of his stuff! REALLY! But some of the performances were
awful. That's just how it is. Gene, as you say, you can't expect someone
to be good at everything. I'm a jerk for trying to be sometimes. And I
always try to remind myself to forget about it. I should try to focus on what
I do well and present what I can be proud of.

-Aaron

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Wolf" <backfromthesilo@...> wrote:

> I *certainly* feel that the timbres in that version, while not
accessible to
> the average public because they are still too computery and simple,
are not
> harsh or unlistenable. They are benign enough (even nice in some
ways) that
> I am definitely able to focus on the composition and tuning and
other elements
> and enjoy the music!

Maybe I should make Csound versions of some things; it's easy to
produce innocuous timbres in Csound.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Wolf" <backfromthesilo@...> wrote:

> Anyway, I had meant to post earlier: I listened to AKJ's version of
Choraled
> and liked it!

Great! But be aware you can't hear what's going on in the music as
well in Aaron's version.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <genewardsmith@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Wolf" <backfromthesilo@> wrote:
>
> > I *certainly* feel that the timbres in that version, while not
> accessible to
> > the average public because they are still too computery and simple,
> are not
> > harsh or unlistenable. They are benign enough (even nice in some
> ways) that
> > I am definitely able to focus on the composition and tuning and
> other elements
> > and enjoy the music!
>
> Maybe I should make Csound versions of some things; it's easy to
> produce innocuous timbres in Csound.
>

Csound stuff I've heard in the past I liked overall. I would definiely be
interested in hearing that!
-Aaron

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <genewardsmith@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Wolf" <backfromthesilo@> wrote:
>
> > Anyway, I had meant to post earlier: I listened to AKJ's version of
> Choraled
> > and liked it!
>
> Great! But be aware you can't hear what's going on in the music as
> well in Aaron's version.
>

Oh? Please elaborate... I haven't listened enough to really get into it yet...

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Wolf" <backfromthesilo@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <genewardsmith@> wrote:

> > Great! But be aware you can't hear what's going on in the music as
> > well in Aaron's version.
> >
>
> Oh? Please elaborate... I haven't listened enough to really get
into it yet...

The parts don't come out as clearly, so it's harder to follow the
counterpoint, and the added effects are another factor. Not that I'm
objecting; Aaron did something I approve of by presenting his own view.

Gene,

I took your midi file and made an mp3 of it using a very simple organ-like timbre. Speaking for myself, I find it much easier to focus on the harmony and composition with this simple timbre, and I actually find it very enjoyable.

http://magnus.smartelectronix.com/examples/Gene_Ward_Smith_(Magnus_remix)_-_Choraled.mp3

http://tinyurl.com/kavut

The software I used were:

- Plogue Bidule (free but might not stay free)

- My own softsynth which is not released yet (but I'm sure other synth can make comparable sounds).

- My own reverb which is released (free).

In Bidule I built a patch as follows:

Midi file reader -> Synth -> Reverb -> Gain mix -> File recorder, Speaker

Then I encoded the resulting .wav using lame. (options: --noreplaygain --preset standard)

Where can I download AKJ's version?

-Magnus

On Fri, 17 Mar 2006, Gene Ward Smith wrote:

> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Wolf" <backfromthesilo@...> wrote:
>
>> Anyway, I had meant to post earlier: I listened to AKJ's version of
> Choraled
>> and liked it!
>
> Great! But be aware you can't hear what's going on in the music as
> well in Aaron's version.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> You can configure your subscription by sending an empty email to one
> of these addresses (from the address at which you receive the list):
> tuning-subscribe@yahoogroups.com - join the tuning group.
> tuning-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com - leave the group.
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> tuning-digest@yahoogroups.com - set group to send daily digests.
> tuning-normal@yahoogroups.com - set group to send individual emails.
> tuning-help@yahoogroups.com - receive general help information.
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Magnus Jonsson <magnus@...> wrote:
>
> Gene,
>
> I took your midi file and made an mp3 of it using a very simple
> organ-like timbre.

This seems to be the wrong link--I get the 29 seconds of Garritan
Personal Orchestra version which Rick McGowen did (it would be cool to
get the whole thing.) Your approach sounds interesting, sort of like
the plan to produce relatively innocuous timbres using Csound additive
synthesis I was contemplating. I can't seem to get the latest version
of Csound to work now, though...

Speaking for myself, I find it much easier to focus on
> the harmony and composition with this simple timbre, and I actually
find
> it very enjoyable.

Well, I hope to hear it, and thanks.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Magnus Jonsson <magnus@...> wrote:

> Where can I download AKJ's version?

http://www.xenharmony.org/ogg/gene/ChoraledWithATwist.ogg

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Magnus Jonsson <magnus@...> wrote:

> I took your midi file and made an mp3 of it using a very simple
> organ-like timbre. Speaking for myself, I find it much easier to
focus on
> the harmony and composition with this simple timbre, and I actually
find
> it very enjoyable.

Sorry, I found it. A kinder and gentler Choraled.

> > I took your midi file and made an mp3 of it using a very simple
> > organ-like timbre.
>
> This seems to be the wrong link--I get the 29 seconds of Garritan
> Personal Orchestra version which Rick McGowen did (it would be cool
> to get the whole thing.) Your approach sounds interesting, sort
> of like the plan to produce relatively innocuous timbres using
> Csound additive synthesis I was contemplating. I can't seem to get
> the latest version of Csound to work now, though...
>
> > Speaking for myself, I find it much easier to focus on
> > the harmony and composition with this simple timbre, and I
> > actually find it very enjoyable.
>
> Well, I hope to hear it, and thanks.

I got it just fine. There's a glitch right around 0:50.

It timbre is less annoying than in Gene's version, but it's no
more musical, and perhaps more boring.

-Carl

> The software I used were:
>
> - Plogue Bidule (free but might not stay free)

Bidule rocks.

> Then I encoded the resulting .wav using lame.
> (options: --noreplaygain --preset standard)

Lame does replaygain now? Well, you got it
right at 91dB, which is what I set my stuff to.

-C.

well everyone musics is limited or when they aren't outright superficial.
everyone is limited by themselves, if they re sincere.
that is the last thing i care about.
t
>
> Message: 2 > Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2006 02:15:11 -0000
> From: "Carl Lumma" <clumma@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: How do microtonal people hear?
>
> Funny enough, we currently have a listener on MMM calling
> Sethares a musical god. I used to think the same, but
> now I hear nothing but limitations in his music. Go figure.
>
> -Carl
>
>
> >
>
>
>
>
>
> -- 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

exactly, if someone does something that is useful for others, what more can we ask.
> Message: 6 > Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2006 02:33:17 -0000
> From: "Gene Ward Smith" <genewardsmith@coolgoose.com>
>
> >
> Sethares is cool for those things he's cool for. >
>
>
>
> >
>
> >
>
>
>
> -- 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

Gene,

If you would like to send me (or point me to) your files, I would be happy to help you get it working with Csound 5. Feel free to mail me offlist if you prefer (dave at superluminal dot com).

- Dave

Gene Ward Smith wrote:
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Magnus Jonsson <magnus@...> wrote:
> This seems to be the wrong link--I get the 29 seconds of Garritan
> Personal Orchestra version which Rick McGowen did (it would be cool to
> get the whole thing.) Your approach sounds interesting, sort of like
> the plan to produce relatively innocuous timbres using Csound additive
> synthesis I was contemplating. I can't seem to get the latest version
> of Csound to work now, though...

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@...> wrote:

> It timbre is less annoying than in Gene's version, but it's no
> more musical, and perhaps more boring.

What does the adjective "musical" mean?

On 3/18/06, Kalle Aho <kalleaho@mappi.helsinki.fi> wrote:
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@...> wrote:
>
> > It timbre is less annoying than in Gene's version, but it's no
> > more musical, and perhaps more boring.
>
> What does the adjective "musical" mean?

Literally it just means "related to music" but it often has the
connotation of "musically expressive" or "musically beautiful". They
are totally subjective concepts.

Keenan

That's interesting - both AKJ and I chose simple timbres with weak high harmonics. Other than that, AKJ obviously had a different angle and worked a bit harder than I did on his piece.

On Sat, 18 Mar 2006, Gene Ward Smith wrote:

> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Magnus Jonsson <magnus@...> wrote:
>
>> Where can I download AKJ's version?
>
> http://www.xenharmony.org/ogg/gene/ChoraledWithATwist.ogg

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Keenan Pepper" <keenanpepper@...> wrote:
> On 3/18/06, Kalle Aho <kalleaho@...> wrote:

> > What does the adjective "musical" mean?
>
> Literally it just means "related to music" but it often has the
> connotation of "musically expressive" or "musically beautiful". They
> are totally subjective concepts.

And not the same--the timbres I used were more expressive but less pretty.

Gene Ward Smith wrote:
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Keenan Pepper" <keenanpepper@...> wrote:
>> On 3/18/06, Kalle Aho <kalleaho@...> wrote:
> >>> What does the adjective "musical" mean?
>> Literally it just means "related to music" but it often has the
>> connotation of "musically expressive" or "musically beautiful". They
>> are totally subjective concepts.
> > And not the same--the timbres I used were more expressive but less pretty.

There may subjectively exist something like a pretty timbre, but certainly not an expressive one -- the expressive stuff is timbre (&c.) change.

Isn't controller 11 called "expression"? I never checked whether it is programmed to do something in preset sounds, but if midi manufacturers are worth their salt, it should be hardwired to some vibrato, filter or whatever unless they expect their boxes never to be hooked up with a sequencer.

klaus

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, klaus schmirler <KSchmir@...> wrote:

> Isn't controller 11 called "expression"?

I use both expression and velocity, but frankly I've never been able
to tell the difference.

> > > It timbre is less annoying than in Gene's version, but it's no
> > > more musical, and perhaps more boring.
> >
> > What does the adjective "musical" mean?
>
> Literally it just means "related to music" but it often has the
> connotation of "musically expressive"

Right.

> They are totally subjective concepts.

Yup, I was posting as to my subjective opinion.

-Carl

Hi Carl, Gene, and Aaron,

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@...> wrote:

> > > Saying: I wish people could
> > > listen to the dots on the paper.
> //
> >
> > Actually, some people *can* listen to it, but sadly, my
> > abilities in that direction are sorely limited.
>
> In fact, a lot of the same neurons are active as when they
> hear the sound.

Carl, i'm really glad that you posted that, because i
wanted to respond to this earlier but refrained.

I can state positively that when *i* read a score,
i can "hear" it in my head. That is, as long as it's
not *too* complicated -- so Ferneyhough, for example,
and for that matter Ben Johnston too, are not included here.

(to Aaron:) Yes, of course i realize that this is not
*really* hearing, but is in fact imagining. But to me,
there's really no difference.

When you read a book (a work of fiction) which has
characters speaking to each other, if the author is
a good writer, i'd bet that you "hear" the dialog in
the context of how you imagine each character to sound.

I know that when i read, say, _Tom Sawyer_, i can
*easily* "hear" Tom and Huck talking to each other.
For me, it's the same thing when i read a score.

Yes, i realize that this is very far from how the
"average" listener responds to a piece of music.
But i just wanted to point out that, at least for
me, what Gene wrote has some validity.

-monz
http://tonalsoft.com
Tonescape microtonal music software

Hi Gene,

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <genewardsmith@...>
wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Jon Szanto" <jszanto@> wrote:
> >
> > Gene,
> >
> > --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <genewardsmith@>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > Neither you nor these other people have any
> > > alternatives to offer.
> >
> > Nonsense. I've not only given you many pointers over
> > the years, but actually offered to donate software
> > that would allow you new ways to work. You chose not
> > to accept any of this. Unfortunate.
>
> Donate what software? I recall pointers, but I don't
> recall ones I could actually use.

Pardon me for butting in here -- since this is really
looking like a private discussion between you and Jon
-- but i know that *i* have indeed not only offered to
donate, but actually *have* donated software to you
(Tonescape) which i hoped you would use to compose and
also to play around with tunings.

I know that for a short time you did use it to work out
some tunings, but you don't seem to have composed
anything with it. And i just recently offerred you
the latest version, with no apparent results.

I realize that with very little on the Help menu,
it's not so easy to use (and that's exactly what i'm
working on right now) -- but in setting you up as
a test user, i told you i'm available nearly 24/7
for tech support.

-monz
http://tonalsoft.com
Tonescape microtonal music software

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <monz@...> wrote:

> I know that for a short time you did use it to work out
> some tunings, but you don't seem to have composed
> anything with it. And i just recently offerred you
> the latest version, with no apparent results.

I just finished a piece, and am thinking about hemiwuerschmidt but
that's about as far as I've gotten, so it's too soon to tell what's
next. I was going to look at Tonescape and give it another try,
though, but I can't promise I'll end up using it for composing.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <monz@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Carl, Gene, and Aaron,
>
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@> wrote:
>
> > > > Saying: I wish people could
> > > > listen to the dots on the paper.
> > //
> > >
> > > Actually, some people *can* listen to it, but sadly, my
> > > abilities in that direction are sorely limited.
> >
> > In fact, a lot of the same neurons are active as when they
> > hear the sound.
>
>
>
> Carl, i'm really glad that you posted that, because i
> wanted to respond to this earlier but refrained.
>
> I can state positively that when *i* read a score,
> i can "hear" it in my head. That is, as long as it's
> not *too* complicated -- so Ferneyhough, for example,
> and for that matter Ben Johnston too, are not included here.
>
> (to Aaron:) Yes, of course i realize that this is not
> *really* hearing, but is in fact imagining. But to me,
> there's really no difference.
>
> When you read a book (a work of fiction) which has
> characters speaking to each other, if the author is
> a good writer, i'd bet that you "hear" the dialog in
> the context of how you imagine each character to sound.
>
> I know that when i read, say, _Tom Sawyer_, i can
> *easily* "hear" Tom and Huck talking to each other.
> For me, it's the same thing when i read a score.
>
>
> Yes, i realize that this is very far from how the
> "average" listener responds to a piece of music.
> But i just wanted to point out that, at least for
> me, what Gene wrote has some validity.
>
>
>
> -monz
> http://tonalsoft.com
> Tonescape microtonal music software
>

Monz,

I'll grant you this. But I have a music degree and have been
studying and reading music for years, and I am still nowhere
near actually experiencing in my imagination the music from
a written score. I can take it element by element or part by part,
but I can't do anything close to experiencing the actual music.
However, if I read a barbershop score I can pretty much sense
a lot of the music, and same thing if I read a classical guitar
score. But in this case, a large part is relating similar note
patterns and sounds to what I've actually experienced. I think
what I'm really saying is: When it comes to unique, creative music,
I think only a miniscule percentage of even trained musicians can
get something from a score that is remotely on the level of an
actual realization.

On the same level, I love books, but I think that book-lovers
are fooling themselves when they argue that it's unfortunate
that movies are generally more popular and accessible than
books. I totally agree that books offer something movies
do not and I am an avid reader. But, movies, with visuals and
sound simply are more in touch with direct human perception
and do in fact reach people more directly. And yes, this results
in many people not developing as deep an imagination, and
that is unfortunate. But, we shouldn't deny the facts of human
perception that lead to this situation.

In the case of books, it is people's experience hearing actual
conversation and seeing movies and etc. etc. that gives them a
basis for their imagination when reading.

Back to the music of it all, I think the biggest issue is our poor,
piano-based notation system. I don't have a better suggestion,
but I can certainly say that I can *imagine* reading a music
notation that makes imagining the music much more easy.

Still, someone with limited or no experience listening to the *real*
sounds of a particular instrument or sort of music will be much
hampered in their ability to imagine it from the score.

-Aaron

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@...> wrote:
>
> > > > It timbre is less annoying than in Gene's version, but it's no
> > > > more musical, and perhaps more boring.
> > >
> > > What does the adjective "musical" mean?
> >
> > Literally it just means "related to music" but it often has the
> > connotation of "musically expressive"
>
> Right.
>
> > They are totally subjective concepts.
>
> Yup, I was posting as to my subjective opinion.

As Klaus Schmirler said expressive stuff is timbre change not timbres
themselves.

I would say expressiveness is a property of the instrument (or
synthesizer patch in electronic context). It is roughly the same as
timbral and dynamic diversity of the instrument.

Understood this way I don't think it is particularly subjective.

Kalle

Kalle,

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Kalle Aho" <kalleaho@...> wrote:
> As Klaus Schmirler said expressive stuff is timbre change not timbres
> themselves.

That isn't the only realm of expressivity in music.

> I would say expressiveness is a property of the instrument (or
> synthesizer patch in electronic context). It is roughly the same as
> timbral and dynamic diversity of the instrument.
>
> Understood this way I don't think it is particularly subjective.

What about rubato in a performance, or even the slight hold up of a
tempo before an important moment? What about the expressive use of
pitch? When vibrato might be used, and when not (and how much, how
wide, etc)?

There are many elements to "expression", and therefore to the
component of musical realization that might be called "musicality". I
have to laugh when I think of the lowly little CC numbered 11, known
as "expression". I did a test last night with some sound fonts, as the
musicality of sf had been called into question; I held some chords,
drew a bunch of CC11 curves, and loaded different fonts into the
player. All it did was add velocity curves, no change in timbre or
anything else. I don't know if this is universal with sf, or if there
are sf that have more programming to incorporate greater "expression"
changes than volume, or ??? I'm willing to be synths respond somewhat
differently.

But as far as "expressive musicality" is concerned, I'd listen to some
of the great musicians of the world, and try to put into words just
what makes their playing/singing so expressive. There is a lot of
information coming out of people in that elevated strata.

Cheers,
Jon

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Jon Szanto" <jszanto@...> wrote:
>
> Kalle,
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Kalle Aho" <kalleaho@> wrote:
> > As Klaus Schmirler said expressive stuff is timbre change not timbres
> > themselves.
>
> That isn't the only realm of expressivity in music.
>
> > I would say expressiveness is a property of the instrument (or
> > synthesizer patch in electronic context). It is roughly the same as
> > timbral and dynamic diversity of the instrument.
> >
> > Understood this way I don't think it is particularly subjective.
>
> What about rubato in a performance, or even the slight hold up of a
> tempo before an important moment? What about the expressive use of
> pitch? When vibrato might be used, and when not (and how much, how
> wide, etc)?

These are valid points. Now I think it was quite stupid to define
expressiveness so narrowly.

> There are many elements to "expression", and therefore to the
> component of musical realization that might be called "musicality". I
> have to laugh when I think of the lowly little CC numbered 11, known
> as "expression". I did a test last night with some sound fonts, as the
> musicality of sf had been called into question; I held some chords,
> drew a bunch of CC11 curves, and loaded different fonts into the
> player. All it did was add velocity curves, no change in timbre or
> anything else. I don't know if this is universal with sf, or if there
> are sf that have more programming to incorporate greater "expression"
> changes than volume, or ??? I'm willing to be synths respond somewhat
> differently.

I think some sound font editors allow you to send CC:s to different
destinations like filters and stuff. How much that feature is used is
another story.

> But as far as "expressive musicality" is concerned, I'd listen to some
> of the great musicians of the world, and try to put into words just
> what makes their playing/singing so expressive. There is a lot of
> information coming out of people in that elevated strata.

I for one have a hard time understanding the mind set of those who
think that music is just melody, rhythm and harmony (not talking about
anyone particular). These are of course very important musical
parameters but for me they provide just the skeleton of the music.

Kalle

Kalle,

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Kalle Aho" <kalleaho@...> wrote:
> These are valid points. Now I think it was quite stupid to define
> expressiveness so narrowly.

Oh, not stupid! I'm sure you were just "thinking out loud" (is there a
comparable phrase "thinking out soft"?) :)

> I think some sound font editors allow you to send CC:s to different
> destinations like filters and stuff. How much that feature is used is
> another story.

I imagine so. But it seems to me that sf are simply a convenient means
of packaging a sample - wouldn't response to CC messages be more
dependent on the sf player/host? The only other way I can think of
would be for a sf preset to have two samples - say, a bright one and a
dark one - and the CC would alter the balance between the two.

Well, I only use them for convenience, and don't really have a lot of
need for this. Besides, if I want to affect the sound in this way I
use effects plugins.

> I for one have a hard time understanding the mind set of those who
> think that music is just melody, rhythm and harmony (not talking about
> anyone particular). These are of course very important musical
> parameters but for me they provide just the skeleton of the music.

For me, saying that they are just the skeleton is a bit over-stated,
but I absolutely agree that they are but one part (albeit large) of
the musical experience. I tend to think that when thought of in that
manner - as a triumvirate - they show a Western bias. I'm sure most of
the readers of the list are aware of other musical cultures that don't
depend on all three elements, and certainly trends in contemporary -
both pop and non-pop - musics show interest and depth in other areas
of musical materials and construction.

Yep, music is a very big sandbox. Who to pop in the player next -
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson or Squarepusher?

Cheers,
Jon

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <monz@...> wrote:

> I can state positively that when *i* read a score,
> i can "hear" it in my head.

How do people learn to "hear" more than one line?

"Gene Ward Smith" wrote:

>How do people learn to "hear" more than one line?

Gene --

I can only describe my own experience, but it started with playing in ensembles as an instrumentalist or singer. Once you have your own part under control, you discover that you can follow other lines as well, gradually adding additional lines. This unfolds at the same time that you start to recognize vertical combinations from the perspective of your own part. Learning species counterpoint, and in particular being asked by my teacher to sing one part and play another, and eventually playing several lines, both composed and improvised, was critical to my own development as a musician.

This doesn't only apply to classical western music. When I first played Javanese music, I was really overwhelmed by the density of the ensemble. I asked Harjito for some guidance, and he said that as a child, he first listened to the saron part (a basic melodic outline), and then added the drum, and then the male vocal, then the rebab, then the female vocal, etc., gradually accumulating the whole ensemble. When I asked him what he listened to now, he simply said "everything", and having rehearsed with him for years, listening to him correct players, I can verify that he was not overstating his skills.

In practice, I suppose that my attention is continuously jumping about from line to line, and that I have internalized a large number of cues about how the lines work together (voice leading), but it does feel awfully smooth, as if the individual lines are essentially intact as melodies. (In fact, I may even overdue it a bit -- I recently heard a school orchestra concert, where the finale of the Brahms' 4th was played. In the underground, going home, I kept hearing an odd melody in my head. When I got home, and checked out the score, it turned out to have come from the viola part...)

DJW

On Sun, 19 Mar 2006 02, monz wrote:
>
> Hi Carl, Gene, and Aaron,
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@...> wrote:
>
> > > > Saying: I wish people could
> > > > listen to the dots on the paper.
> > //
> > >
> > > Actually, some people *can* listen to it, but sadly, my
> > > abilities in that direction are sorely limited.
> >
> > In fact, a lot of the same neurons are active as when they
> > hear the sound.
>
>
> Carl, i'm really glad that you posted that, because i
> wanted to respond to this earlier but refrained.

Me too!

> I can state positively that when *i* read a score,
> i can "hear" it in my head. That is, as long as it's
> not *too* complicated -- so Ferneyhough, for example,
> and for that matter Ben Johnston too, are not included here.

Yes, you do need a peg to hang your "reading" on. But
even reading the most complex modern score has some
elements in common with reading a more standard score.
Because of that, one can still form a very good impression
of how much of it will be realised in sound. This is like my
being able to understand a good deal of written Rumanian,
based on my knowledge of other Romance languages like
French and Spanish. There are gaps, but I'm not blind to
the whole meaning of the writing.

When it gets too complicated is when there are too many
parts to take in by eye at once.

> (to Aaron:) Yes, of course i realize that this is not
> *really* hearing, but is in fact imagining. But to me,
> there's really no difference.

Me too! And I hear most of my music "in my head" -
and very fully at that, long before I write anything
down or hear it in actuality.

> When you read a book (a work of fiction) which has
> characters speaking to each other, if the author is
> a good writer, i'd bet that you "hear" the dialog in
> the context of how you imagine each character to sound.
>
> I know that when i read, say, _Tom Sawyer_, i can
> *easily* "hear" Tom and Huck talking to each other.

Me too! In fact, after reading a novel set in Atlanta,
I have to consciously refrain from talking with a
Southern (US) drawl. And this is strange, because I've
never been there ...

> For me, it's the same thing when i read a score.

Me too!

> Yes, i realize that this is very far from how the
> "average" listener responds to a piece of music.

Don't know about that. Is there experimental
evidence about the response of average *musically
untrained* listeners?

> But i just wanted to point out that, at least for
> me, what Gene wrote has some validity.

Lots!

Regards,
Yahya

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--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Daniel Wolf <djwolf@...> wrote:
>
> "Gene Ward Smith" wrote:
>
> >How do people learn to "hear" more than one line?
>
> Gene --
>
> I can only describe my own experience, but it started with playing in
> ensembles as an instrumentalist or singer.

I think you misunderstood my question--I meant, in sight reading.

In my experience you learn to hear polyphony by listening to a lot of
it and paying attention, but that's actual sound.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <genewardsmith@...>
wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <monz@> wrote:
>
> > I can state positively that when *i* read a score,
> > i can "hear" it in my head.
>
> How do people learn to "hear" more than one line?

Lots and lots of practice.

When i was a kid, whenever i was sick and stayed home
from school, i'd spend the whole day in bed listening
to classical music while reading the score. And i admit
now, i often told my mom i was sick and had to stay home
when i really wasn't. There weren't many kids my age
who knew _Le Sacre du Printemps_ and *all* 10 of the
Mahler symphonies by heart!

My math problems also stem from the fact that while
sitting in math class, instead of listening to the
teacher and taking algebra and geometry notes, i sat
at the back of the class and studied the score of
Neilsen's "Inextinguishable" (4th) Symphony every day.

There are also competitive factors that came into play:
all through middle and high school, my best friend was
the other best musician in the school, and we competed
against each other all the time to see who could play
faster, sight-read better, etc. And when i got to college,
where intensive training in sight-reading was part of the
program, i was so much better than everyone else in the
class that i liked to show off, and in order to do that,
i *had* to make sure that i was good!

I'm not *really* writing this to brag, just to answer
your question.

-monz
http://tonalsoft.com
Tonescape microtonal music software