For Bill, regarding this list

Bill,

You are passionate and devoted to your investigations, and no one questions those motives. You have, however, managed to put your own spin on what the purpose of the tuning list is, and it doesn't match up with what this forum is really concerned with. If you read the statement on the home page:

"This mailing list is intended for exchanging ideas relevant to alternate musical tunings: just intonation; paratactical tunings; experimental instrument design; non-standard equal temperaments; MIDI tuning-system specs; concert postings; gamelan tunings and other non-western tunings; historical tunings; the experimental tunings of Harry Partch, Lou Harrison, Martin Bartlett, James Tenney, and so on; software reports; recordings; books; research sources, etcetera."

All of that comes before anything else, and it should be very clear that it is NOT a place for theoretical discussions that relate to 12tet/edo. In fact, this is one of the *only* places to speak about everything BUT 12tet/edo! So with that much said, I'll just mention a couple of your points, and then butt out.

"To say MIDI isn't tuning-related is ridiculous, since synthesizers are the only instruments that allow alternative tunings."

I can't believe you actually wrote that - there are a lot of instruments that are microtonal. There have been for centuries. There are entire bodies of music, repertoires of depth, that pre-date (and will probably post-date) MIDI. Not to mention that one of the biggest difficulties has been to get MIDI to *BE* microtonal, something many of us have worked on for years. BTW, the first piece of MIDI gear I owned and used was purchased over 25 years ago. Many of us have been actively using MIDI for a long time.

"And, last but not least THE GROUP MODERATOR ALLOWED THE POST THROUGH! Are you second-guessing him/her?"

To say that this list is virtually unmoderated would be one of the universe's biggest understatements. There have been times when we've pulled our hair out trying to get a hold of Mark for one reason or another! That your post got through means absolutely zero - *every* post gets through.

"Where else to better discuss meta-theoretical issues than on this list, which is de-facto meta-theoretical because it is about alternative tunings and their rationale."

Again, that is your spin on it, because this was not intended as a "meta-theoretical" list, but a list about alternative tunings. When you have some hard data/discoveries that actually involve non-12, bring it on. Otherwise, it is noise in the signal, however well-intentioned.

"What I'm saying is that I've made discoveries that go way beyond even conventional 12EDO pitch class set theory, and a lot of it is applicable to other tunings than 12EDO."

Then apply them, and show us something. Most of us like music, not just lists of numbers, etc. (Well, maybe "most" is subjective!) I've actually taken the time to snag a few of your generated "melodies", and they didn't convince me of anything other than a person can put notes in ordered fashions in a lot of different ways. Maybe if they were integrated into a piece of music it might begin to make sense.

OK, that's enough from me. No one is trying to be rude, but this list has a fairly clear purpose, and with most people's time being short, we don't like to have a lot of extra noise in the bandwidth of the postings. If it really relates to an alternate tuning, it's use or development, fine. If not, you have plenty of other places to post. That small amount of respect I'm certain you can afford us.

Best,
Jon

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

> To say that this list is virtually unmoderated would be one of the
universe's biggest understatements. There have been times when we've
pulled our hair out trying to get a hold of Mark for one reason or
another! That your post got through means absolutely zero - *every*
post gets through.

I do a lot more moderation (mostly that means booting spam) here than
Mark, I suspect. Bill was on moderated status for a while, meaning his
postings had to be approved, but may not be any more. A question here
is how tightly do we want moderation from the point of view of staying
on-topic.

> Then apply them, and show us something. Most of us like music, not
just lists of numbers, etc. (Well, maybe "most" is subjective!) I've
actually taken the time to snag a few of your generated "melodies",
and they didn't convince me of anything other than a person can put
notes in ordered fashions in a lot of different ways. Maybe if they
were integrated into a piece of music it might begin to make sense.

Application would be nice. It seems to me that this business could
also be thought of as a way of classifying melodies at a very abstract
level, which has nothing to do with tuning but clearly would have
something to do with music.

Jon,

SNIP

> "To say MIDI isn't tuning-related is ridiculous, since synthesizers are
the only instruments that allow alternative tunings."
>
> I can't believe you actually wrote that - there are a lot of instruments
that are microtonal. There have been for centuries. There are entire bodies
of music, repertoires of depth, that pre-date (and will probably post-date)
MIDI. Not to mention that one of the biggest difficulties has been to get
MIDI to *BE* microtonal, something many of us have worked on for years. BTW,
the first piece of MIDI gear I owned and used was purchased over 25 years
ago. Many of us have been actively using MIDI for a long time.
>

I think you missed the operative word, being "alternative". Let's face it,
just because the strings can sound any frequency in their pitch continuum
does not mean that they are designed to accomodate alternate tunings. I
think what Bill means is the possibility presented by electronic equipment
in INSTANT retuning of FIXED notes.

> "And, last but not least THE GROUP MODERATOR ALLOWED THE POST THROUGH! Are
you second-guessing him/her?"
>
> To say that this list is virtually unmoderated would be one of the
universe's biggest understatements. There have been times when we've pulled
our hair out trying to get a hold of Mark for one reason or another! That
your post got through means absolutely zero - *every* post gets through.
>

Including mine!

> "Where else to better discuss meta-theoretical issues than on this list,
which is de-facto meta-theoretical because it is about alternative tunings
and their rationale."
>
> Again, that is your spin on it, because this was not intended as a
"meta-theoretical" list, but a list about alternative tunings. When you have
some hard data/discoveries that actually involve non-12, bring it on.
Otherwise, it is noise in the signal, however well-intentioned.
>

He does suggest that his speculations have microtonal implications. I say
let us hear him out.

> "What I'm saying is that I've made discoveries that go way beyond even
conventional 12EDO pitch class set theory, and a lot of it is applicable to
other tunings than 12EDO."
>
> Then apply them, and show us something. Most of us like music, not just
lists of numbers, etc. (Well, maybe "most" is subjective!) I've actually
taken the time to snag a few of your generated "melodies", and they didn't
convince me of anything other than a person can put notes in ordered
fashions in a lot of different ways. Maybe if they were integrated into a
piece of music it might begin to make sense.
>

I would personally like to see the microtonal implications rigidly detailed
on paper first.

> OK, that's enough from me. No one is trying to be rude, but this list has
a fairly clear purpose, and with most people's time being short, we don't
like to have a lot of extra noise in the bandwidth of the postings. If it
really relates to an alternate tuning, it's use or development, fine. If
not, you have plenty of other places to post. That small amount of respect
I'm certain you can afford us.
>
> Best,
> Jon
>
>

Let us stretch our tolerance one bit further in the case of Bill, provided
that he has some convincing statements to make.

Oz.

Gene,

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <genewardsmith@...>
wrote:
> I do a lot more moderation (mostly that means booting spam) here than
> Mark, I suspect. Bill was on moderated status for a while, meaning his
> postings had to be approved, but may not be any more. A question here
> is how tightly do we want moderation from the point of view of staying
> on-topic.

I had absolutely NO idea that this type of moderation was going on,
and I also hereby publicly apologize to Bill regarding the situation
of his messages "getting through". I can understand it, to a certain
degree, and I cut the spam out over on metatuning (but do no other
moderation). I hope if it ever comes to posts being deleted for some
reason, that reason will be made clear to the list.

Cheers,
Jon

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

>I hope if it ever comes to posts being deleted for some
> reason, that reason will be made clear to the list.

Spam, duplicate postings and postings with no new content (presumably
representing accidental posting) get deleted already. But mostly spam,
since the default here is set to moderator approval, which you need to
post non-spam on your first posting to get rid of.

Then there is a automatic marking of postings by Yahoo as probable
spam; this is mostly incorrect. For instance a recent posting by
Herman got marked as probable spam because he used the word "spam" in
it, and it had to be approved. This article would no doubt require
approval except as I am a moderator it probably will not.