Reply to Dante Rosati

>>>Actually I think the Riley piano noodlings are somewhat more
congenial
>>>than Keith Jarrets ego-the-size-of-the-universe noodlings.
>
>>Hmm, I don't get that feeling from Jarrett... His stuff isn't
>>earth-shattering, but I do find it sensitive and tasteful, and he's a
>>far better pianist than Riley, whose piano stuff may be important from
a
>>tuning point of view, but not as far as what he plays, IMO, judging
>>from Harp of New Albion, which is a cheap bunch of runs.
>

>Keith's modest liner notes from "Vienna Concert":

>"I have courted the fire for a very long time, and many sparks have
flown
>in the past, but the music on this recording speaks, finally, the
language
>of the flame itself."

>I rest my case. :-)

I see nothing egotistical in that quote. It is the statement of an
artist's lifelong personal struggle to capture a burning creative
inspiration.

Dante, have you tried writing to Mark Rankin at either of the addresses
posted so far? If not, I volunteer to write him for both of us.

Dante wrote,

>81/64 is closer to
>9/7 than to 5/4.

Not quite -- it is a septimal comma (27.3 cents) flat of a 9/7 but only
a syntonic comma (21.5 cents) sharp of a 5/4.

>Can 81/64 be read as 9/7 under some circumstances?

Sure -- how about a dominant ninth chord in Pythagorean tuning?

>So
>maybe its not about how high you can hear, but how close is the ratio
>you're trying to hear to a low (odd) limit ratio with its black hole
>attractor? The closer it is, and the lower the odd limit of the ratio
it's
>near to, the harder it is to hear it "as itself"

Yes, that's exactly what's implied by the quantitative theory I adapted
from Van Eck and use for determining "harmonic entropy". I posted the
quantitative details of the former a long time ago, and all my postings
on the latter are collected at
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/td/entropy.htm. Basically it confirms
Harry Partch's Observation One, that the "field of attraction" (measured
in logarithmic units) of a simple ratio is inversely proportional to the
interval's odd limit.

>Rather than trying to gain an advantage (this is not a competition) any
>changing of terms or inconsistancies on my part are simply the result
of my
>trying to get a handle on issues that are somewhat new to me. I can
only
>ask for your patience and try to formulate my thoughts more carefully
in
>future.

Certainly -- and I am not immune to the same phenomenon, but I have
thought deeply about these issues for many years. My apologies again if
I got crabby.