again performer rejects Sims-Maneri notation

Again, I had another performer, a violinist, who rejected the Sims-Maneri notation. To paraphrase his comments, he said he had played in many microtonal pieces and with many microtonal notations, but he absolutely *hated* the 72-tET Sims-Maneri and never could grasp it in performance.

I'm renotating several of my Sims-Maneri pieces in HEWM-Sagittal to remedy these problems, which keep surfacing.

Joe Pehrson

On 28.09.2009, at 19:47, jpehrson2 wrote:
> Again, I had another performer, a violinist, who rejected the Sims-
> Maneri notation. To paraphrase his comments, he said he had played
> in many microtonal pieces and with many microtonal notations, but he
> absolutely *hated* the 72-tET Sims-Maneri and never could grasp it
> in performance.
>
I am curious: does he make his complain a bit more specific than
"never could grasp it in performance"?

BTW: you are talking about the following notation?
http://www.joemaneri.com/book1.html

Thank you!

Best
Torsten

>
> I'm renotating several of my Sims-Maneri pieces in HEWM-Sagittal to
> remedy these problems, which keep surfacing.
>
> Joe Pehrson
>
>
>

To make it clear I'm asking a question here not stating an "experiment".

I have heard around this list...that a major reason for use of temperaments such as mean-tone or 5-limit JI and not just straight harmonic series scales is the extra degree of tonal color. In other words, I straight harmonic series points to one root tone while something like mean-tone points to many (different ones based on the chord chosen).

Taking this into account here's the question: what experiments have been done involving tempering the harmonic series itself IE taking the scale
6:7:8:9:10:11:12(octave)
and tempering each interval slightly (IE by up to 7 cents or so) to add tonal color?

I suspect that the results could be more consonant than 5-limit JI and yet still keep the greater degree of tonal color offered by JI...but, of course, I'm not sure if there are any loop-holes which would cause that to not happen. Any thoughts?

> To make it clear I'm asking a question here not stating an "experiment".
>
> I have heard around this list...that a major reason for use of temperaments such as mean-tone or 5-limit JI and not just straight harmonic series scales is the extra degree of tonal color. In other words, I straight harmonic series points to one root tone while something like mean-tone points to many (different ones based on the chord chosen).

I'm a relative noob to this list still, but I always have personally
thought that very way. I find writing a piece using exclusively the
notes of the harmonic scale (let's say harmonics 8-16) to be extremely
boring for this very reason. There's virtually zero root movement
happening there. The meantone major scale does not have that same
problem, and neither does the 5-limit JI major scale, although you
might have to be creative and figure out comma shifts and so on.

> Taking this into account here's the question: what experiments have been done involving tempering the harmonic series itself IE taking the scale
> 6:7:8:9:10:11:12(octave)
> and tempering each interval slightly (IE by up to 7 cents or so) to add tonal color?

I posted a while ago (search through the archives) some files that
were 4:5:6:7:8:9:10:11 (with sines) but stretched or compressed evenly
throughout the whole chord. At one point I flattened it so much that
the 11:4 on the end actually became a perfect fourth plus an octave,
and I compressed each other interval in the octad evenly to make it
line up that way. The outer dyad still functioned as a 4:11 even
though it was as flat as an 8:3, and it certainly did sound different
than the raw 4:5:6:7:8:9:10:11. I think I preferred the stretched
version to the flat one and in some cases even to the perfectly in
tune one.

This would all change if sines weren't used. At that point, it would
really start to depend on how much you care about beating, or whether
you're willing to deal with more beating for the added benefit of
having some more "tonal color" as you put it.

> I suspect that the results could be more consonant than 5-limit JI and yet still keep the greater degree of tonal color offered by JI...but, of course, I'm not sure if there are any loop-holes which would cause that to not happen. Any thoughts?

Haha... Let's not get in another 1000 page argument about what the
word "consonant" means again. But I remember you posted a while ago
your example where you compared a segment of the harmonic series to a
very detuned sounding major scale from your experiments with phi... I
certainly did like the detuned major scale a lot. You seem to be
attracted to the sonic possibilities of purposefully detuning
intervals for added color. I'm not sure if it really had anything to
do with phi, but it definitely was a very colorful sound, beating
aside.

As for the theory behind things, I'm still trying to figure out how
"tonal color" and feeling and so on emerges from regular old "in tune"
intervals (or even 12-tet). Figuring out what sonic effects purposely
detuned intervals would have is way over my head. My involvement with
detuning intervals generally sees them as an undesirable but necessary
artefact of a temperament. But back in the days when the baroque crowd
would post here, I remember some interesting stuff coming from Margo
Schulter, Tom Dent, and so on about using purposefully wide and narrow
thirds (I think Margo referred to them as "neo-medieval" or something
like that) and what characters they had. You might be able to find
some interesting stuff in the archives by searching for their posts,
specifically Margo.

Other than that, I don't know of many people who are really all about
purposefully detuning intervals, but that doesn't mean it can't be
done or even codified into a theory. I say give it a shot.

Cheers,
Mike

Hi Joe,

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "jpehrson2" <jpehrson@...> wrote:

> I'm renotating several of my Sims-Maneri pieces in
> HEWM-Sagittal to remedy these problems, which keep surfacing.
>
> Joe Pehrson

I'm so glad to see this! If you recall, several years ago when
you contemplated which tuning system to settle on as your own
practical "standard" and you chose the 72-edo version of blackjack,
i strongly encouraged you to use my 72-edo-based HEWM notation
but you decided instead to go with Sims-Maneri.

The way i see it, the chief advantage of HEWM is that it was
deliberately designed to be easy to type the accidentals in ASCII email.
There is no ASCII-to-"real-symbol" equivalence: the HEWM accidentals
_are_ exactly the same as the ASCII symbols.

http://tonalsoft.com/enc/h/hewm.aspx

-monz
http://tonalsoft.com/tonescape.aspx
Tonescape microtonal music software

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Torsten Anders <torsten.anders@...> wrote:
>
> On 28.09.2009, at 19:47, jpehrson2 wrote:
> > Again, I had another performer, a violinist, who rejected the Sims-
> > Maneri notation. To paraphrase his comments, he said he had played
> > in many microtonal pieces and with many microtonal notations, but he
> > absolutely *hated* the 72-tET Sims-Maneri and never could grasp it
> > in performance.
> >
> I am curious: does he make his complain a bit more specific than
> "never could grasp it in performance"?
>
> BTW: you are talking about the following notation?
> http://www.joemaneri.com/book1.html
>
> Thank you!
>
> Best
> Torsten
>

***Yes, this is the notation. Well, he claims he can practice it over and over and then forgets what he's doing when he tries again. Actually, I emphasize with him. I think it's the large quarter tone sharps and flats that throw everything off, since they really are not directional at all. I think the system works much better with the newer HEWM-Sagittal that several people worked on, on this list a few years ago, "spearheaded" (no pun intended:) by Sagittal masters George Secor and Dave Keenan...

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <joemonz@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Joe,
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "jpehrson2" <jpehrson@> wrote:
>
> > I'm renotating several of my Sims-Maneri pieces in
> > HEWM-Sagittal to remedy these problems, which keep surfacing.
> >
> > Joe Pehrson
>
> I'm so glad to see this! If you recall, several years ago when
> you contemplated which tuning system to settle on as your own
> practical "standard" and you chose the 72-edo version of blackjack,
> i strongly encouraged you to use my 72-edo-based HEWM notation
> but you decided instead to go with Sims-Maneri.
>
> The way i see it, the chief advantage of HEWM is that it was
> deliberately designed to be easy to type the accidentals in ASCII email.
> There is no ASCII-to-"real-symbol" equivalence: the HEWM accidentals
> _are_ exactly the same as the ASCII symbols.
>
> http://tonalsoft.com/enc/h/hewm.aspx
>
>
> -monz
> http://tonalsoft.com/tonescape.aspx
> Tonescape microtonal music software
>

***Hi Joe,

So nice to correspond again!

Well...I made a mistake, obviously. I thought I was going with a STANDARD, and that was important to me. However in the intervening 6-7 years or so I have found performers who complain about the Sims-Maneri (no negative aspersions cast on the wonderful Joe Maneri, I can assure you) and the more I thought about it, it *is* really confusing. It's the dumb-looking, large and non-directional quartertone symbols which throw everything off, in my view. The HEWM-Sagittal is *much* more intuitive on the overall. I agree with my recent performers: it only takes a couple of goony symbols to throw off the entire thought and performance process! Best to you!