artificial scales

Kraig Grady posted:
>
> Gerald!
> This i think is a very dangerous assumption to make. There are those who
see
> it as not artifical at all!
>
> Gerald Eskelin wrote
>
>> -except for Balinese type artificial
>
>> divisions of the octave),
>
>
Thanks for responding, Kraig. I welcome any offers to help redirect my
language into more universally understandable terms. My use here was
originally (I think) learned from the Harvard Dictionary of Music in which
the term was applied (as I remember) to any scale that consists of pitches
not derived from acoustic intervals, such as arbitrary equal divisions of an
octave. In that sense, 12-tET is artificial. I have been told that Balinese
scales are often of this type. Is that not true? By the way, I don't think
of the term as being negative in any way.

Your follow up, please. And why did you use the word "it"?

Jerry

Gerald!
I do not think we quite understand everything that is going on with Balinese
( and the rest of indonesian) Scales. These scales have not been successfully
described by anyone. Since they are tuned by ear it seems reasonable (but not
conclusive) that there is some sort of acoustical phenomenon going on. For
instance, if you needed instruments to project volume, JI would be the worse in
that they are the softer valleys in the pitch continuum. The drop in volume helps
when tuning them! Beats on the other hand make it possible to be heard over a
larger area. That each village has its own tuning should make up stand back and
notice one of the greatest and largest explosions of new tunings since ancient
Greece!
Pardon by lack of poetic gesture by reducing a living force, a scale , to a
mere it.

Gerald Eskelin wrote:

>
> Thanks for responding, Kraig. I welcome any offers to help redirect my
> language into more universally understandable terms. My use here was
> originally (I think) learned from the Harvard Dictionary of Music in which
> the term was applied (as I remember) to any scale that consists of pitches
> not derived from acoustic intervals, such as arbitrary equal divisions of an
> octave. In that sense, 12-tET is artificial. I have been told that Balinese
> scales are often of this type. Is that not true? By the way, I don't think
> of the term as being negative in any way.
>
> Your follow up, please. And why did you use the word "it"?
>
> Jerry

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
www.anaphoria.com