Tunings and music

The discussion about different systems, such as 17 and 34, and how people perceive them is interesting to me. Some people say they would never use such and such a system because of the flat 5ths, or the way the intervals look on paper. My approach is to wonder what kinds of music I could compose within the strengths/weaknesses of a given tuning structure. 19 is great for twisting blues/jazz/country forms, for example, because of it's similarities to 12, but I wouldn't want to try fast moving chordal music with 34 because the notes on the guitar are so close together; yet, it has a wonderfully harmonious sound for chords. But, Brazilian type music might not work so well in 34, it's mighty hard to finger complex chords in that system. The comma in 34 is also a great compositional device, it can be used very effectively for subtle movements. The theoretical uses of a tuning are one thing, but actually composing in a system, and learning the many ways it can sound, are much more important...and, being a performing composer/musician, the music is always the issue for me. With temperaments there's always a compromise of some sort, but "Giant Steps" is killer in 19, flat 5ths or no....I just kind of figure that in, that's the price I'm gonna pay for changing the sound of jazz a bit.

And, I've been messing with my 21 tone Harmonic guitar a bit, and there's a realization there as well...as we get higher up in the Harmonic Series, if we bring certain notes down to within the range of an octave, which must be done often, we are not really hearing the note where it actually sounds; we could say we're tempering the Harmonic Series. Of course, many notes are beyond the range of hearing, so it's also a compromise to make them hearable.
Theory is fun, of course, but the music we make is always better...Hstick

myspace.com/microstick

Also, whether one writes for electronics changes things: there are no
physical boundaries such as number of notes or frets when using CSound
for instance!

-A.

microstick@msn.com wrote:
> The discussion about different systems, such as 17 and 34, and how people perceive them is interesting to me. Some people say they would never use such and such a system because of the flat 5ths, or the way the intervals look on paper. My approach is to wonder what kinds of music I could compose within the strengths/weaknesses of a given tuning structure. 19 is great for twisting blues/jazz/country forms, for example, because of it's similarities to 12, but I wouldn't want to try fast moving chordal music with 34 because the notes on the guitar are so close together; yet, it has a wonderfully harmonious sound for chords. But, Brazilian type music might not work so well in 34, it's mighty hard to finger complex chords in that system. The comma in 34 is also a great compositional device, it can be used very effectively for subtle movements. The theoretical uses of a tuning are one thing, but actually composing in a system, and learning the many ways it can sound, are much more important...and, being a performing composer/musician, the music is always the issue for me. With temperaments there's always a compromise of some sort, but "Giant Steps" is killer in 19, flat 5ths or no....I just kind of figure that in, that's the price I'm gonna pay for changing the sound of jazz a bit.
>
> And, I've been messing with my 21 tone Harmonic guitar a bit, and there's a realization there as well...as we get higher up in the Harmonic Series, if we bring certain notes down to within the range of an octave, which must be done often, we are not really hearing the note where it actually sounds; we could say we're tempering the Harmonic Series. Of course, many notes are beyond the range of hearing, so it's also a compromise to make them hearable.
> Theory is fun, of course, but the music we make is always better...Hstick
>
> myspace.com/microstick
>
>

microstick@msn.com wrote:
> The comma in 34 is also a great compositional device, it can be used
> very effectively for subtle movements.

That's a useful point. One of the things about commas that doesn't get mentioned as often as tempering is that you can also expand them (as in the case of 34-ET), or even in some cases make them go negative (as in the case of 64-ET, which has a major third of 21 steps, and a fifth of 37 steps: four fifths is 148 steps, minus two octaves is 20 steps, so the comma is -1 step).

Other tunings with a comma in the size range of 34-ET (73-ET, 97-ET) are more complex and have thirds that aren't as good. There are smaller ET's with larger commas, but their thirds aren't as good either (although 22-ET is reasonably good for its size). I don't think you can get much smaller than the size of 34-ET steps before it starts sounding like a comma shift instead of a tiny melodic step. (41-ET might be about the lower limit....)