John and Paul are both right

First, I do enjoy hearing the pump work in adaptive tuning, but I think I'd
find it a bit disconcerting, to say the least, if it were carried to the
extent of forcing the piece to end on a different pitch than it began. I
don't like it much when _human singers do it, and they can do it
surprisingly smoothly.
But the kind of pumping that makes an interval shift by a noticeable amount
to accommodate a particular chord is quite neat to my ears.
Yeah, in the shape note style, I guess I'd agree that the tuning is a freely
interpreted Pythagorean thing.

Jay Williams wrote,

>First, I do enjoy hearing the pump work in adaptive tuning

you mean hearing the pump disappear in adaptive tuning?

>, but I think I'd
>find it a bit disconcerting, to say the least, if it were carried to the
>extent of forcing the piece to end on a different pitch than it began. I
>don't like it much when _human singers do it, and they can do it
>surprisingly smoothly.
>But the kind of pumping that makes an interval shift by a noticeable amount
>to accommodate a particular chord is quite neat to my ears.

That's not pumping. Pumping is the first thing you were talking about, where
the ending pitch is different from the starting pitch.

At 08:08 PM 2/11/00 -0500, you wrote:
>From: "Paul H. Erlich" <PErlich@Acadian-Asset.com>
>
>Jay Williams wrote,
>
>>First, I do enjoy hearing the pump work in adaptive tuning
>
>you mean hearing the pump disappear in adaptive tuning?
Right. We had company and my um, front and rear brain hemispheres musta got
confused.
Thanks.

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Jay Williams said:
>
> First, I do enjoy hearing the pump work in adaptive tuning, but I think I'd
> find it a bit disconcerting, to say the least, if it were carried to the
> extent of forcing the piece to end on a different pitch than it began. I
> don't like it much when _human singers do it, and they can do it
> surprisingly smoothly.

As a newcomer here, I am still learning the jargon. Can I assume that
"adoptive tuning" is similar to what I experience as scale steps moving to
accommodate changing roots? Is the "pump" an expression referring to that
process?

If so, this experience might be relevant.

The LA Jazz Choir (my group) was doing a sound check on stage at the Dorothy
Chandler Auditorium (Los Angeles Music Center) and was singing (without
accompaniment) a two-and-a-half-minute passage of very chromatic music (an
Earle Brown arrangement of "Midnight Sun"). At the conclusion of that
segment, the orchestra director for the show, Peter Matz, came out of the
wings with a big smile on his face and walked to the piano and played the
chord we were singing--a tribute to the fact that with all of the "pumping"
we had done we came out in the same key we started with.

The point of all of this (other than to enjoy a bit of reminiscing) is that
adjusting chord members (scale steps) does not seem to mess with the
singers' concept of tonic. Interesting, huh? (I hope.)

> But the kind of pumping that makes an interval shift by a noticeable amount
> to accommodate a particular chord is quite neat to my ears.

I doubt that an audience would hear the "pumping" going on in our
performance. However, the singers themselves often remarked about how far
they had to move in order to accommodate the shift.

> Yeah, in the shape note style, I guess I'd agree that the tuning is a freely
> interpreted Pythagorean thing.

"Shape note" style? As in "southern gospel"? Pythgoras who? Did he write
southern gospel????

Smiles,

Jerry