Re: adaptive JI

I don't recall seeing this mentioned, but one example of adaptive JI is
barbershop sung *properly*. There was a discussion a couple of years back
on the barbershop forum on how it is done, and I have a link to it on my
page at http://www-math.cudenver.edu/~jstarret/bbshop.html. There are some
good examples on some of the Society for the Preservation and
Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America 19** Top Twenty
Barbershop Quartets CDs on the Pro-Arte label, although in recent years,
it seems that more people are using vibrato (yecch!). To sum up the
conclusions of the rather long thread, the consensus among barbershoppers
is that the melody voice sings freely, usually in some variation of
Pythagorean, and that the other voices adapted on the fly to make the
harmony as beatless as possible. In barbershop, "beatless" is called
"ring".

John Starrett
http://www-math.cudenver.edu/~jstarret/microtone.html

>I don't recall seeing this mentioned, but one example of adaptive JI is
>barbershop sung *properly*.

I agree, and would add that many brass quintet and string quartet
performances also qualify, although Barbershop is definitely the most
consistent genre, and the only one using the 7-limit consistently.

>There are some good examples on some of the Society for the Preservation and
>Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America 19** Top Twenty
>Barbershop Quartets CDs on the Pro-Arte label, although in recent years,
>it seems that more people are using vibrato (yecch!).

On what are you basing that? Barbershop is explicitly a vibratoless style,
and always will be. I have the CD you mention. It's quite good. You'll
notice that the champion quartet in 96 was Nitelife, and I recommend folks
skip right to their album, Basin Street Blues. It is, to this day, the
quintessential Barbershop...

http://www.harmonize.com/Nightlife/

Next, I would recommend the Gas House Gang. All of their albums are
excellent.

-Carl