Why I Haven't Been "Composing"?

Besides the lack of access to 12EDO compositional facilities,
the fact is that I've found the state of what I call "pre-
compositional"
(the theorizing/analysing of the general possible musical means of
expression as opposed to the theorizing/ analysing of individual
compositions) music theory to be so pathetic that it would be
irresponsible to not try and do something about that.

In the 12EDO world, about all we've had is Joseph Schillinger
and Nicholas Slonimsky.

My primary motivation for all of the studying and contemplating
that I've done was that when I discovered the concept of "interval
class"
(a pair of intervals which when combined span an octave) in
pitch class set theory around 1986, I wanted to find out what the 1440
(720 prime forms and 720 inversions) possible orderings of the
smaller forms of the six 12EDO interval classes
(1,2,3,4,5, and 6 semitones) sounded like melodically.

And that led me to try and find an objective/stylistically neutral
contour choice (whether or not an interval in a sequence is ascending
or descending) ordering algorithm, which I did, but wasn't aware at
the time that it was the already-discovered Morse-Thue sequence.

How can one compose when they haven't heard all of the possible
interval orderings of their chosen tuning system?

I gave up on listening to composers' compositions because the
tonality is so deeply buried in a jungle of other musical parameters
that I considered it a waste of time and energy, and that I should
just start from scratch analysing melody.

--
Bill Flavell

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Bill Flavell" <bill_flavell@...> wrote:

> How can one compose when they haven't heard all of the possible
> interval orderings of their chosen tuning system?

Any edo small enough to do that with is too small to be very well in
tune, I suspect, though I'm not sure what you are counting as an ordering.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <genewardsmith@...>
wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Bill Flavell" <bill_flavell@> wrote:
>
> > How can one compose when they haven't heard all of the possible
> > interval orderings of their chosen tuning system?
>
> Any edo small enough to do that with is too small to be very well in
> tune, I suspect, though I'm not sure what you are counting as an
> ordering.

It would be a function of the number of interval classes in the
particular EDO tuning. The number of orderings would be N!
(N factorial?), I think.

Bill Flavell
>