Re: [tuning] Re: New file uploaded to tuning = dead JI'ed horses and cats

--This is your way of looking at it.--The way I see it there is only 1 way music works and music is --constructed.
    Hence the term that's been floating around, RATIONAL NUMBER RATIO FUNDAMENTALISM is not an exaggeration...and by simply attempting to do otherwise (IE make working irrational number generated scales), people like myself are considered "heretics").
  Hey, at least now someone formally admitted this "only one way music works" issue.

--As this way is as of yet unexplained / not understood there is nothing --that is "98%" there.
--We are 0% there.
   Then how come virtually every scale mentioned here is diatonic-ally based and sounds either exactly the same to most people as 12TET or "just slightly different" (IE mean-tone)?  

   If we're truly at 0% with our understanding of JI, how come there haven't been some radical improvements from 0% made by all the geniuses on this list who have been at this for 20+ years...or virtually anyone over the last few hundred?  
   Ok, maybe Wilson and some of his scales truly differ from diatonic; which partly explains why he's one of my favorite micro-tonal geniuses.  But still, the difference is far from dramatic to the average listener and I, for one, haven't gotten any 12TET listeners to count any of his scales over about 6-notes per 2/1 octave in size as "consonant".

   That's why I say we're at 98% understanding of JI...and might be better off pointing all the dramatic work that goes on here to something that is less perfectly explored.
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--Right now all fails, and we make music in 12tet which apparently --approximates (atleast a subset) of how music
really works.

   I'll agree, 12TET approximates a subset.  Then again, things like higher limit JI, apparently, very well approximate one way to make just about every possible combination of low-numbered-ratio-based scales work.  And, if you consider both the number of ratio-based scales in history and the limits of combinatorics, you can already figure that, if you've made a JI scale, someone has already made one VERY VERY close to it that most likely sounds VERY similar.

  Again, we agree to disagree...and my opinion is that such huge multitudes of research have occurred around JI that it is very close to, if not already reaching, it's potential.  If anything I'd recommend helping work to make it more convenient and inviting for, say, musical instrument and software manufacturers to build JI instruments if you want to "improve JI".  Then again, people like Kraig Grady have already done (and/or are still
doing...Kraig apparently invented several JI instruments including guitars) just that sort of intelligent marketting of JI over the agreeably inferior standard of 12TET.

-Michael

--- On Thu, 4/9/09, Marcel de Velde <m.develde@...> wrote:

From: Marcel de Velde <m.develde@...>
Subject: Re: [tuning] Re: New file uploaded to tuning = dead JI'ed horses and cats
To: tuning@yahoogroups.com
Date: Thursday, April 9, 2009, 6:35 PM

AGREED!  Meaning, it appears we got about 96% of the way to ratio-based consonance hundreds of years ago and now more like 98% of the way with JI and Wilson's scales (which are not too far from JI themselves)? 

    Can you say "diminishing marginal returns"?!  I figure that we really should move our efforts to something else meaning...something that shows more potential for improvement and opening possibilities NOT already discovered through tuning geniuses hundreds of years ago.

--I
suspect that you are flogging a dead horse; and you might be better
--employed exploring other ways to (mixed metaphors) skin a cat.
  Again, agreed...though I wouldn't exactly say low number ratio-based tuning is a dead-horse just one with a lot of diseases that's hard to make healthier than it was at its prime even with the best doctors (LOL).

  If rational-number- based tuning is 98% of the way to its capability, you "still" have another 2% (near-dead-horse) gain possible (and enough people here smart enough to manage to squeeze that measly extra 2% juice "off of the fruit of rational ratio-based tuning"). :-D 

************ ********* *
   But (Charles) the point I think we both agree on is this...

  Why work so hard for a very small gain on an art-form that's been near perfect for so long (rational numbered ratio-based tuning), why not instead move on to something with something more like 40% of untouched capacity like irrational-number- generate
tunings.

This is your way of looking at it.The way I see it there is only 1 way music works and music is constructed.As this way is as of yet unexplained / not understood there is nothing that is "98%" there.
We are 0% there.There is only failure and success.Right now all fails, and we make music in 12tet which apparently aproximates (atleast a subset) of how music really works.So there is no diminishing return for success. When there is success there will be 100% gain.
This is a beautifull and important enough promise to me to make me have a go at it fully.Should I fail I'll set up another internet company, I'm good at that and have plenty of plans laying around, I'll be successfull in work one way or another.
But untill I've given my true passion which is solving JI a full try, I can't stop or I'll have a nagging feeling for the rest of my life that goes something like "what if I'd... ".
So I'm in it for the big prize, not interested in marginal improvements in temperaments or things like that.Perhaps in half a year or so I'll be so lost that I become convinced that I can't solve the JI problem.
That will be the time to direct my life elsewhere.Won't be music, I'll only do that when it can be done in perfection and better than anybody else before.But right now I have several angles left that still have a fair chance of 100% success

Marcel