visual artistry => serious art

[Monz:]

> even if ... lattice diagrams have "nothing to do with music"
> ..., I still enjoy working with them purely from the visual
> standpoint.

I agree with you Monz. I don't think they have
'nothing' to do with music -- I do think they can have
a relationship with music. But I suspect that they are
not very useful as a compositional aid, or at least as
not as useful as would be impiled from the number of
them I have seen and the excited murmuring that follows
each new diagram. As a theory aid, yes, sure! Very nice
for that. And artistically very interesting. Many of
them quite pretty. I still remember the excitment over
Joe's pet, Sparky the one-legged Robot.

As an example of their danger, Sparky is a good
example. Joe had come up with or found a tuning that he
liked but then when Paul showed Joe that the lattice
looked like a one-legged robot, Joe abondoned his
'crippled' child. A sad day in the annals of
microtonality and composition. That one leggedness may
have been the most exciting part of the tuning.

I believe these sorts of events are the sorts of
reasons that many of us have serious problems with the
attention paid to lattices and some of the math and
theory focus. Yes, in theoory, the theorists and
composers will come together in our glorious ego-free
tuning utopia. But in practice I myself and Jacky and
Brian see people being oppressed by the theory heads
who don't write much music. They post a lot and novices
to microtonality get intimidated by them and never
produce. If they did produce, if the theory really was
inspiring and helpful, we would now, seven years into
the tuning list and decades or centuries into alternate
tunings, have a giant body of fantastic microtonal
music to draw from and be inspired by. But instead, the
music we have that is interesting and enjoyable sooms
to mostly come from those of the 'practical' bent and
not the 'theoretical' bent. But even so, in listening
to some of the classical music examples on a page
mentioned earlier, played on my Quciktime softsynth in
12tET, I have to admit that I find these works much
better composecr and far more interesting and having a
deeper and more profound emotional and spiritual impact
than just abmout anything I have heard in the
microtonal field. Not to say that I don't greatly enjoy
many modern works, but the real fact here is that Bach
and Beethoven and Chopin etc were real composers who
wrote great music that sounds fantastic even on a cheap
sound engine playing in 12tET and which has simply not
been surpassed. Of course they didn't watch TV or play
video games. Bach was known to walk for days to try out
a new organ. I guess he didn't have a drivers license.

Let's look at this group here. Jacky is clearly, by a
factor of TEN or a HUNDRED or a THOUSAND times better
composer than any of us here.

He stopped watching TV when he was 18.

And he tries to stay off the internet and go for walks
in nature.

If you guys are serious about this music stuff you need
to get serious about it and stop screwing around with
your lives.

Smash your damn TV sets with a sledgehammer if need be,
cancel your $35/month cable services (that will give
you plenty of cash to buy equipment to those of you who
can't write music because no one will give you free
equipment and you are starving though you can afford
cable TV and bottled water deliveries and imported
cheeses)

Dillentantes!! Awake from your TV dreamlands and start
living your lives! They are short lives as they are! If
you do not enjoy music enough to actually DO something
about it other than typing on the internet all day
long, find something you DO enjoy and stop arguing with
those of us who ARE doing things!

Get out of your houses!

Plant some tomatoes or basil!

Smash your TVs!

Cancel your newspaper/propaganda subscriptions!

Get rid of your gas-guzzling SUVs and stop crusing
around aimlessly looking for the government funded free
sex-change clinics!

Did I say -- SMASH YOUR TVs!!

SMASH YOUR TVs!!

SMASH YOUR TVs!!

SMASH YOUR TVs!!

Find something you enjoy and do it. Something that is
productive! Not sitting in a cave talking about the
shadows your see of yourselves flickering on the wall!
GET OUT OF THE CAVE!!!!

- Jeff