I Give Up

Concordance is an unsalvageable mess. Absolute error from JI, odd-limit of nearest JI ratio, harmonic entropy, and inter-partial critical band effects all fail to give a complete picture of even the dyadic concordance of tempered intervals. At the end of the day, the only reliable metric turns out to be my own ears. I cannot help but conclude that the only consistent way I can give helpful guidance to the use of EDOs 5 to 41 is to ignore JI, ignore the math, and just go with touchy-feely impressionistic descriptions.

*sigh*

Back to the drawing board. This brings the total of pages I've written and then discarded to about 120.

-Igs

If we stick to describing, not defining, all these things can give various descriptions, I think. Except harmonic entropy, which I think is probably numerology. But yeah none of these things, alone or combined, gives a complete picture- and that's without musical context complicating things.

However, I think it is important to notice this: in art, we can take things that are, in relation to phyisical "reality", roughly true, or sort of true, or even just plain hogwash, and make them true within the work of art.

For example, sheer proximity to Just intervals doesn't cut it as a guaranteed measure of consonance, concordance, or anything else really. However, it can be made to be a meaningful measurement if the raw pitch materials are deliberately chosen and arranged to facilitate the creation of structures based on the tempering out of commas. Of course these structures remain inert until brought into motion- these means that the "regular temperament paradigm" of these tuning lists assumes that certain modalities will be applied to pitch structures.

Notice something else, too- it's really only the "microtemperaments" which actually incorporate, or better said permit the incorporation of, rational intervals into their structures in a real way. The "high error" temperaments could be built with impunitty around the tempering out of imaginary commas.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> Concordance is an unsalvageable mess. Absolute error from JI, odd-limit of nearest JI ratio, harmonic entropy, and inter-partial critical band effects all fail to give a complete picture of even the dyadic concordance of tempered intervals. At the end of the day, the only reliable metric turns out to be my own ears. I cannot help but conclude that the only consistent way I can give helpful guidance to the use of EDOs 5 to 41 is to ignore JI, ignore the math, and just go with touchy-feely impressionistic descriptions.
>
> *sigh*
>
> Back to the drawing board. This brings the total of pages I've written and then discarded to about 120.
>
> -Igs
>

Igs>"Concordance is an unsalvageable mess. Absolute error from JI, odd-limit
of nearest JI ratio, harmonic entropy, and inter-partial critical band
effects all fail to give a complete picture of even the dyadic
concordance of tempered intervals. "

    The methods I've seen to analyze triads I find largely faulty (alas, I resort to my ears as well).  But dyadically...I trust an application of theories on grounds such as the following

A) Critical band really starts to bite under 12/11 or so.  There is a huge difference between a 15:16 and 11:12 dyad and similar differences for a 14:15:16 and 10:11:12 chord...regardless of what timbre said dyads/chords are played with.
  I've now made an Adaptive JI program that stretches 1/1 21/20 6/5 type stacked chords (ALA from 1/4 comma meantone) into 1/1 12/11 6/5 chords and boy, what a difference...and am working on an algorithm to turn 1/1 21/20 9/8 type chords into 1/1 12/11 8/7-like ones (stacking over 3 semitone-like intervals, I've found, is just too rough: even if it's stacking 12/11's).

B)  Fifths are very sensitive.  Of course, 3/2 is preferred...but 14/9, 22/15, 11/7...can be OK if strong dyads are played with them.   Even if ALL "other" dyads in a chord are good...and chord with a 23/15-ish Wolf Fifth will sound much worse than that chord with a perfect fifth...and a 40/27 fifth or 16/11 fifth almost always poses similar issues to my ears.

C)  Any dyad over 11-odd limit not near any lower limit dyad not divisible by 3 (numerator or denominator...independently) is virtually always bad news far as concordance.
  20/11, 16/11, 13/11...are all obviously much worse to my ear than anything else 11-limit...things like 14/11 work because they are close to lower-limit dyads (IE 14/11 = about 9/7).  Same goes for 13/10, 16/13, 20/13 (bad) and 13/9 (relatively good).  

   Tenney Height and Harmonic Entropy appear to shove all 9 and 11-limit intervals into one "evil" category so far as consonance.  An easy example...neither gives any special consideration to 11/9 which, I swear by use, is nearly as strong/stable and with its own flavor in triads as a 5/4 major third or a 6/5 minor third.
   They quite often not being able to recognize things like a strong 11-limit interval vs. a weak one and often calling them "weak versions of low-limit intervals".  Is there an odd limit where things mostly just blur?...I believe so, but it's more like 13 or 15limit...certainly not 11-limit or sometimes 9/limit.

>"I cannot help but conclude that the only consistent way I can give
helpful guidance to the use of EDOs 5 to 41 is to ignore JI, ignore the
math, and just go with touchy-feely impressionistic descriptions."

   Understood.   The only thing I've found I can predict as good or bad is individual dyads...and the only thing I've found reliable with chords are fairly vague rules like "if 65%+ of the dyads in a chord are around 7-odd-limit or lower intervals the chord is likely to sound stable.

  With equal temperaments I get confused because you get weird things like a dyad dead-center between 5/4 and 9/7 that are not far enough from either or low enough limit to stand out on their own and seem to randomly get pushed in different directions depending on the context.  And, contrary to harmonic Entropy...yes I think 9/7 has a quite prominent "field of attraction" and has little competition (the 14/11 fairly near it, with 14 not being dividible by 3...offfers little competition...and everything else between 5/4 and 9/7 is quite high limit).

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

> Notice something else, too- it's really only the "microtemperaments" which actually incorporate, or better said permit the incorporation of, rational intervals into their structures in a real way. The "high error" temperaments could be built with impunitty around the tempering out of imaginary commas.

I think the region where rational intervals actually provide a good description is wider than this. Meantone in, say, 31edo has a fifth which is audibly flat, but it clearly works like an approximation of 3/2. You hardly need go so far as a microtemperament like ennealimmal, or even a high-accuracy temperament like miracle, to get the clear sense of rational intervals and genuine approximations to JI. That said, I don't trust these kind of metrics with the sort of screwed-up temperaments Igs is worried about. But since I am not interested in using putrid sounding chords, this doesn't much concern me so far as my own practice goes.

12edo is an interesting example, and suggests to me that so long as there is a good fifth around to anchor things, you can push the rest of it pretty far. 17edo, 24edo and 29edo make for interesting comparisons, but in a lot of cases here people need to focus on higher limit intervals to understand how these are really working.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> Concordance is an unsalvageable mess. Absolute error from JI,
> odd-limit of nearest JI ratio, harmonic entropy, and inter-
> partial critical band effects all fail to give a complete picture
> of even the dyadic concordance of tempered intervals.

Nonsense! Though after prolonged exposure to the B.S. that's
taken over this list, one's own mother could appear a doorstop.

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:

> Nonsense! Though after prolonged exposure to the B.S. that's
> taken over this list, one's own mother could appear a doorstop.

Then please, Carl, explain it to me.

As it currently stands, I see things that the Setharesian school can explain that HE can't (the higher discordance of 14-ET vs. 21-ET, or 12-ET vs. 17-ET), and things that HE explains that the Setharesian school doesn't (the higher discordance of utonal chords vs. otonal chords). So far no one has shown me a theory that predicts the concordance of any non-Just chords with 100% accuracy for overtone-rich timbres (i.e. an ideal saw wave, not a sine). Do you have another trick up your sleeve?

-Igs

Igs>"Setharesian school doesn't (the higher discordance of utonal chords vs. otonal chords"

    At least in extreme examples, Sethares' ideas do seem to work.
    Try this.  In 12TET play the chords c c c# g and c f# f (same dyads, different chords).  Note the chord with the semitone at the lower frequency (c c# g) seems to beat a lot more and this corresponds with the fact the critical band gets narrower/"more tolerant" at higher frequencies.  Same goes for c d f# vs. c e f# with sine waves, although it's not at noticeable since the chords aren't spread out over as wide a frequency range.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Michael <djtrancendance@...> wrote:
>     Try this.  In 12TET play the chords c c c# g and c f# f (same
> dyads, different chords).  Note the chord with the semitone at the
> lower frequency (c c# g) seems to beat a lot more and this
> corresponds with the fact the critical band gets narrower/"more
> tolerant" at higher frequencies.  Same goes for c d f# vs. c e f#
> with sine waves, although it's not at noticeable since the chords
> aren't spread out over as wide a frequency range.

Not so fast, though. You forget that in a 6:7:9, the narrower interval is at the lower frequencies, while in a 14:18:21, it is at the higher frequencies, yet 6:7:9 is audibly more concordant.

-Igs

It's not wasted work though :) It brought you to the point you are now at ;) MatC

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:
> Back to the drawing board. This brings the total of pages I've written and then discarded to about 120.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "genewardsmith" <genewardsmith@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "lobawad" <lobawad@> wrote:
>
> > Notice something else, too- it's really only the "microtemperaments" which actually incorporate, or better said permit the incorporation of, rational intervals into their structures in a real way. The "high error" temperaments could be built with impunitty around the tempering out of imaginary commas.
>
> I think the region where rational intervals actually provide a good description is wider than this. Meantone in, say, 31edo has a fifth which is audibly flat, but it clearly works like an approximation of 3/2. You hardly need go so far as a microtemperament like ennealimmal, or even a high-accuracy temperament like miracle, to get the clear sense of rational intervals and genuine approximations to JI. That said, I don't trust these kind of metrics with the sort of screwed-up temperaments Igs is worried about. But since I am not interested in using putrid sounding chords, this doesn't much concern me so far as my own practice goes.
>

The "fifth" of quarter-comma meantone is accompanied by, and in fact owes its existence to, a perfect 5:4. Sure you can make meaningful rational structures with this material.

Perhaps "microtemperament" wasn't the right word, as I was thinking "very accurate all told" vs. "the kind of "temperaments" Igs is using- you can make meaningful rational structures with different modalities of 41-edo for example.

But I maintain that without accurate approximations involved, a structure based on rational intervals is a speculative thing which could be easily replaced by any other speculative structure, as long is it were to be consistent.

> 12edo is an interesting example, and suggests to me that so long as there is a good fifth around to anchor things, you can push the rest of it pretty far. 17edo, 24edo and 29edo make for interesting comparisons, but in a lot of cases here people need to focus on higher limit intervals to understand how these are really working.
>

Yes- excellent 3:2s in 12-tET. That (and 2:1 of course) make for audible rational structures. The alleged 5:4 certainly does not- a structure based on a pure 5:4 deviates radically from one based on a 12-tET M3, in the very first iterations, for it is a simple truth of 5:4 that in three steps of the interval you arrive at a very strong dissonance with the octave, whereas three steps of the 12-tET M3 gives you a pure octave. This is radically different.

Strength and beauty in 12-tET come not feeble mimesis of naturally occuring proportions. It is the willful pride of NOT being a 5:4 that gives the M3 of 12-tET its value. As it is the humility of the 3:2 in quarter-comma meantone, surrendering its brilliance to the sweetness of the 5:4, that makes that system of intervals strong.

In neither case are structures built on the true properties of the rational intervals. In quarter-comma meantone, the artificial (in the old sense of the word) world created can create the illusion of a structure based on both 5:4 and 3:2, due to the purity of the third and fifth's endurance to temperament, but the price is the gauze and candlelight.

Anyway we seem to be in agreement that in 14-edo we are not going to find a meaningful structure based on rational proportions found within the more or less audible harmonic series.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "lobawad" <lobawad@...> wrote:
> Anyway we seem to be in agreement that in 14-edo we are not going to > find a meaningful structure based on rational proportions found
> within the more or less audible harmonic series.
>

Reall? The 9/7 is only a little more than 6 cents off, and the 7/6 a little less than 10 cents off...these are not huge errors. They're scarcely worse than 22-EDO's approximations of 5/4 and 6/5! The proportions are *there*, the identities are *there*, and it's not because of some magnitudinous error that 14 sounds bad. It's something else. The partials, I guess.

-Igs

Structure, not individual dyads.

And the identity of the 7:6 is iffy, you've noted this yourself. Despite its proximity, it doesn't "really" sound as much like 7:6 as it "should". As far as the 9:7, I find it doesn't fly. Unlike the approximation found in 11-edo, which I find to be strong to treat the tuning as the fourth root of 9:7, making 9:7 the principle structural unit as 3:2 can be used in 12-tET.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "lobawad" <lobawad@> wrote:
> > Anyway we seem to be in agreement that in 14-edo we are not going to > find a meaningful structure based on rational proportions found
> > within the more or less audible harmonic series.
> >
>
> Reall? The 9/7 is only a little more than 6 cents off, and the 7/6 a little less than 10 cents off...these are not huge errors. They're scarcely worse than 22-EDO's approximations of 5/4 and 6/5! The proportions are *there*, the identities are *there*, and it's not because of some magnitudinous error that 14 sounds bad. It's something else. The partials, I guess.
>
> -Igs
>

Let me put it this way Mr. Jones- how would you go about building a structure on 7:6 and 9:7? Well one obvious way is that you'd have contrasting subminor and supramajor triads. Which is great, but the physical reality of the rational intervals is that these two septimal intervals give you a pure 3:2. Which is great. (Subjectively speaking) in JI you'd have anguished+ wild-eyed = stable and strong. In 14-edo you've got grievous+apeshit=tormented. Regardless of subjective interpretation, it is an inescapable fact that the huge contrast between component intervals and resulting interval found in the Just structure isn't found in the 14-edo version.

BTW I like 14-edo very much and find it suited for some downright pretty stuff.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "lobawad" <lobawad@...> wrote:
>
> Structure, not individual dyads.
>
> And the identity of the 7:6 is iffy, you've noted this yourself. Despite its proximity, it doesn't "really" sound as much like 7:6 as it "should". As far as the 9:7, I find it doesn't fly. Unlike the approximation found in 11-edo, which I find to be strong to treat the tuning as the fourth root of 9:7, making 9:7 the principle structural unit as 3:2 can be used in 12-tET.
>
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "lobawad" <lobawad@> wrote:
> > > Anyway we seem to be in agreement that in 14-edo we are not going to > find a meaningful structure based on rational proportions found
> > > within the more or less audible harmonic series.
> > >
> >
> > Reall? The 9/7 is only a little more than 6 cents off, and the 7/6 a little less than 10 cents off...these are not huge errors. They're scarcely worse than 22-EDO's approximations of 5/4 and 6/5! The proportions are *there*, the identities are *there*, and it's not because of some magnitudinous error that 14 sounds bad. It's something else. The partials, I guess.
> >
> > -Igs
> >
>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "lobawad" <lobawad@...> wrote:
>
> Let me put it this way Mr. Jones- how would you go about building a structure on 7:6
> and 9:7? Well one obvious way is that you'd have contrasting subminor and supramajor
> triads. Which is great, but the physical reality of the rational intervals is that these two
> septimal intervals give you a pure 3:2. Which is great. (Subjectively speaking) in JI you'd > have anguished+ wild-eyed = stable and strong. In 14-edo you've got
> grievous+apeshit=tormented. Regardless of subjective interpretation, it is an
> inescapable fact that the huge contrast between component intervals and resulting
> interval found in the Just structure isn't found in the 14-edo version.

And yet the same "tormented" fifth in 14 is also found in 21, but it sounds just peachy when it's got a nice 13/11 standing between it and the root. I dunno, I don't think we can lay the blame on the bad fifth of 4/7 of an octave...although maybe a comparison with 35-EDO would be illuminating.

-Igs

There's no blame on anything- it's context and interrelationship. It's not a bad fifth per se that disrupts the rational structure, it's the fact that in the rational, two septimal piquants make a 3;2 and in 14-edo they make something that still sounds more like a septimal piquant.

Since contrast is a big part of structure in music...

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "lobawad" <lobawad@> wrote:
> >
> > Let me put it this way Mr. Jones- how would you go about building a structure on 7:6
> > and 9:7? Well one obvious way is that you'd have contrasting subminor and supramajor
> > triads. Which is great, but the physical reality of the rational intervals is that these two
> > septimal intervals give you a pure 3:2. Which is great. (Subjectively speaking) in JI you'd > have anguished+ wild-eyed = stable and strong. In 14-edo you've got
> > grievous+apeshit=tormented. Regardless of subjective interpretation, it is an
> > inescapable fact that the huge contrast between component intervals and resulting
> > interval found in the Just structure isn't found in the 14-edo version.
>
> And yet the same "tormented" fifth in 14 is also found in 21, but it sounds just peachy when it's got a nice 13/11 standing between it and the root. I dunno, I don't think we can lay the blame on the bad fifth of 4/7 of an octave...although maybe a comparison with 35-EDO would be illuminating.
>
> -Igs
>

And remember, I never said these tunings offerno structures, just that they do not offer meaningful approximations of rational structures.

14-edo has plenty of structures, it is a pleasure. The triad you suggest in 21 is completely different to 14-edo's near (in brute proximity) equivalent: it offers two utterly familiar and semi-consonant intervals, 13/11 and the 12-tET M3, which combine to make the tormented "fifth". That offers completely different structural possibilities. For example, root movement by "fifths" would offer pretty mild internal intervals and gnarly root movement, while 14-edo would offer the same root movement but the internal intervals would be pretty spicy, too.

There are plenty of ways of writing music without thinking of tertian
structures within scales, though.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "lobawad" <lobawad@> wrote:
> >
> > Let me put it this way Mr. Jones- how would you go about building a structure on 7:6
> > and 9:7? Well one obvious way is that you'd have contrasting subminor and supramajor
> > triads. Which is great, but the physical reality of the rational intervals is that these two
> > septimal intervals give you a pure 3:2. Which is great. (Subjectively speaking) in JI you'd > have anguished+ wild-eyed = stable and strong. In 14-edo you've got
> > grievous+apeshit=tormented. Regardless of subjective interpretation, it is an
> > inescapable fact that the huge contrast between component intervals and resulting
> > interval found in the Just structure isn't found in the 14-edo version.
>
> And yet the same "tormented" fifth in 14 is also found in 21, but it sounds just peachy when it's got a nice 13/11 standing between it and the root. I dunno, I don't think we can lay the blame on the bad fifth of 4/7 of an octave...although maybe a comparison with 35-EDO would be illuminating.
>
> -Igs
>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "lobawad" <lobawad@...> wrote:
>
> And remember, I never said these tunings offerno structures,
> just that they do not offer meaningful approximations of
> rational structures.

Hi Cameron,

I dig your music enough that I have to ask if you've ever
stopped to read the nonsense you post to these lists? I mean,
you only live once... I bet there's better things you could
be doing.

-Carl

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 10:23 PM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Cameron,
>
> I dig your music enough that I have to ask if you've ever
> stopped to read the nonsense you post to these lists? I mean,
> you only live once... I bet there's better things you could
> be doing.
>
> -Carl

None of this please.

-Mike

Mike:

> > I dig your music enough that I have to ask if you've ever
> > stopped to read the nonsense you post to these lists? I mean,
> > you only live once... I bet there's better things you could
> > be doing.
>
> None of this please.

Well, maybe not none, but certainly not half of what you, Igs,
"lobawad", Michael, and john777 posted lately should have been
posted here.

For many years I defended discourse here against considerable
criticism from many of the people it should have been serving.
I pitied them, who spoke ill of it, as bitter. Collaboration
is hard, and if you didn't want to put in what it took that
was no reason to disparage those who did.

But it's time to admit that discourse here is now below any
defensible level, and has not got much promise of improvement.
The mailing list medium itself is completely antiquated for
this kind of work. Perhaps you could try the new groups mode
and see if that revitalizes things.

Let it be noted that I have never refrained from posting a
lot or rapidly. I did it in hopes that misunderstandings and
misconceptions could be cleared up that much sooner, and
eventually progress be made. It hasn't happenned. The Q
factor has been in steady decline for almost a decade. You
can see it in the archives for yourself. The number of unique
participants, the ability to reach consensus...

Perhaps it's as much my fault as anyone's. Perhaps it's
the zeitgeist. Perhaps it's just my first midlife crisis.

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:

> But it's time to admit that discourse here is now below any
> defensible level, and has not got much promise of improvement.

It seems to me that things keep rolling along, and new insights have not stopped coming. Actual examples of people using the ideas being generated still seem to come at a slower pace than the generated ideas, but given time I am sure someone will actually use, for example, the stuff about albitonic scales or MODMOS under discussion of late, and for which Mike deserves credit.

The objection you are making seems to be focused on the issue of the theory of consonance, and the obvious way to respond to that, it seems to me, would be a detailed exposition of your views. I agree that arguments about whether 9/7 is more or less consonant than 11/6 without anyone even posting actual sonic examples in a variety of timbres, much less a multi-subject listening test, are pretty pointless, but the solution to that should be obvious.

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 3:47 AM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
>
> But it's time to admit that discourse here is now below any
> defensible level, and has not got much promise of improvement.
> The mailing list medium itself is completely antiquated for
> this kind of work. Perhaps you could try the new groups mode
> and see if that revitalizes things.

If we're to be frank, your contributions to the discourse as of late
have been far below the quality that they once were.

It doesn't take a genius to understand that your usual demeanor around
here is because you love science and hate pseudoscience. But while at
one point your criticisms were useful in maintaining the quality of
research that's gone on around here, this is no longer the case. You
claim that the problem is that the list has fallen into pseudoscience
and decay, as if I and Igs and the other people you just mentioned
every so often feel the urge to start worshipping a golden cow and
it's up to you to stop it.

But the actual problem is that your criticisms are the textbook
definition of unconstructive. There is a simple question that I ask
myself when I hear criticism: "Is there something quantitative I can
change in response to this?" The answer in the case of your criticisms
is nearly always "no."

At one point I really enjoyed conversing with you because you served
as a challenge to make sure that my ideas were really on point. But
there came a point when your criticisms started getting less concrete
and more along the lines of "this is ridiculous," "this is nonsense
and is dragging the list downhill," "I demand xxxx (unreasonable)
research to be done before you speculate any more on this," comparing
the stuff we say to the media's response on Fukushima, etc. You will
say things and if I don't understand what you're saying, I will ask
you to clarify, and you simply will not. You'll take a break from the
discussion for a week and come back asserting that you don't know what
happened, but you're sure whatever it was must have been "bullshit."
You won't read anything posts exceeding a length of two paragraphs,
despite that we'll be discussing mathematical concepts that are not
able to be explained in two paragraphs. This makes constructive
conversation with you completely impossible.

I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but this is not a
one-off behavior, and despite that you clearly view your actions as
being necessary in the name of "science" it has nothing to do with
peer-review or scientific criticism either. From my limited vantage
point from across the internet, it has to do with you being in a good
mood some days and being constructive, and being in a bad mood other
days and responding to random posts with unconstructive insults. In
this case, your post to Cameron was the latter.

> Let it be noted that I have never refrained from posting a
> lot or rapidly. I did it in hopes that misunderstandings and
> misconceptions could be cleared up that much sooner, and
> eventually progress be made. It hasn't happenned. The Q
> factor has been in steady decline for almost a decade. You
> can see it in the archives for yourself. The number of unique
> participants, the ability to reach consensus...

I have tried to discuss things with you a number of times to reach
"consensus." So far the results have been bad. I'm willing to stick my
neck out there and propose hypotheses that explain disparate elements
of music theory, despite that this opens me up to criticism.
Unfortunately, the criticism I've gotten is rarely concrete or
constructive, and my attempts to solicit your view of the big picture
that we're trying to reach "consensus" about have been met universally
with failure.

If you'd like to work constructively towards consensus, then I'm sure
we're all ears. As you can see, in your recent absence, If not, I'm
going to continue posting stuff about porcupine and MODMOS's on
tuning-math, whether anyone responds or not. Either way, your post to
Cameron here was inappropriate.

-Mike

--- Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:

> If we're to be frank, your contributions to the discourse as
> of late have been far below the quality that they once were.

Your worsening habit of posting layer upon layer of speculation
at a rate to which no one could possibly respond is a likely
source of your dissatisfaction.

> But the actual problem is that your criticisms are the textbook
> definition of unconstructive.

You didn't consider my earlier admonishment to slow your rate
of posting constructive? Nor my present suggestion of trying
the new groups system?

-Carl

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 6:01 AM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
>
> Your worsening habit of posting layer upon layer of speculation
> at a rate to which no one could possibly respond is a likely
> source of your dissatisfaction.

If you have a problem with reading clearly labeled, fairly worded,
on-topic speculation on a list that aims to be about "research," then
you're in the wrong place.

> > But the actual problem is that your criticisms are the textbook
> > definition of unconstructive.
>
> You didn't consider my earlier admonishment to slow your rate
> of posting constructive?

I didn't realize that was what you were suggesting. That is an attempt
at constructive criticism, but in this case, I don't feel the problem
is coming from there being too many posts. Nor is it coming from
"speculating too much." There are lots of problems, and one of them is
that you are either unable or unwilling to engage in reasoned,
rational, emotionally neutral discourse.

> Nor my present suggestion of trying the new groups system?

That's worth a shot, but isn't going to fix the main problem around
here by any means.

-Mike

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:

> Well, maybe not none, but certainly not half of what you, Igs,
> "lobawad", Michael, and john777 posted lately should have been
> posted here.

Where else should it have been posted?

> But it's time to admit that discourse here is now below any
> defensible level, and has not got much promise of improvement.
> The mailing list medium itself is completely antiquated for
> this kind of work. Perhaps you could try the new groups mode
> and see if that revitalizes things.

You've given ample account of things that are happening here, which you wish were not. Care to give account of things that aren't happening here, which you wish were?

> Let it be noted that I have never refrained from posting a
> lot or rapidly. I did it in hopes that misunderstandings and
> misconceptions could be cleared up that much sooner, and
> eventually progress be made. It hasn't happenned. The Q
> factor has been in steady decline for almost a decade. You
> can see it in the archives for yourself. The number of unique
> participants, the ability to reach consensus...

I've read through much of the archives, and I've been reading the lists since at least 2005 anyway. The posts back then were sparser, the egos calmer, and the tone was more frequently genial, but I don't see fewer disagreements, and the disagreements in general were no less trivial). I do see a lot of conventions being established with great rapidity by a few people. Perhaps a lot of the problems you're seeing now are due to the fact that a lot of new people have joined the list and are confronting conventions (and in general a whole way of approaching tuning) that they had no hand in establishing, and which are also very poorly documented, but which are accepted almost dogmatically by the people who remain from the early days of the list.

Much of the unproductiveness that goes on here these days comes from the fact that the new people have arrived here from many different backgrounds, and are unwilling to dogmatically accept the "advances" made in the early days. In the early days, it seems like the demographics of the list were more homogenous, and perhaps this is one reason consensus was so much easier to come by. I don't blame anyone for being frustrated by the fact that strangers wander into this list and start trying to tear down the established conventions willy-nilly without first spending adequate time to understand them. Nor do I blame anyone for being frustrated when other strangers come in, absorb a bit of the conventions, and then turn and run off in a tangent with them.

However, I see this response as an inevitable consequence of exposing non-academic musicians to the concepts that evolved here. If the people here who established the conventions did so with the genuine desire that they should infiltrate the larger musical community, it was naive of them to expect people not to misinterpret or challenge those conventions. Especially when the conventions are nowhere summarized in transparent English.

I mean, as a philosophy major, I am no stranger to dense, abstruse treatises on heavily abstract subjects, nor am I a stranger to byzantine logical constructions--I've read Carnap's _The_Logical_Structure_of_the_World_, for "Bob's" sake, and it doesn't get more arcane than that!--and yet it's taken me *years* of one-on-one discourse with Paul (and more recently, Carl) to get a decent grasp on the foundational principles of the various existent conventions here. Understanding *what* was being talked about wasn't the hard part, but the *why* and the *how*--why are these conventions important, and how do I apply them to music? And I'm *still* not convinced of their worth, after all of this.

If two of the best teachers on this List need so much time to explain this material to a person like myself--educated, diligent, logical, and genuinely interested in understanding them--what does that say about the potential relevance of this material to the musical world at large?

To you List "Fathers" who are so deeply frustrated by the current state of things here: perhaps you should not be entirely blaming the influx of new people for the degeneration. Perhaps you should take some responsibility yourselves for not taking the time to consider how the conventions you so quickly established might be received by the larger musical community in general. If you had, then perhaps the state of things would not be so deplorable.

-Igs

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:

> That's worth a shot, but isn't going to fix the main problem around
> here by any means.

I think adding to the problem of too many existing groups and forums will not fix anything.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:

> I do see a lot of conventions being established with great rapidity by a few people.

These conventions are? I don't know what you mean without at least a few examples.

> I mean, as a philosophy major, I am no stranger to dense, abstruse treatises on heavily abstract subjects, nor am I a stranger to byzantine logical constructions--I've read Carnap's _The_Logical_Structure_of_the_World_, for "Bob's" sake, and it doesn't get more arcane than that!

I think Being and Time is at least less comprehensible.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "genewardsmith" <genewardsmith@...> wrote:
>
> > I do see a lot of conventions being established with great rapidity by a few people.
>
> These conventions are? I don't know what you mean without at least a few examples.
>

Mostly related to regular mapping/regular temperament/etc: commas, vals, monzos, prime-limits, etc. But also metrics for measuring discordance, or consistency, or stuff related to psychoacoustic identity. In short, stuff found in the Tonalsoft encyclopedia that is not found in works published by non-List members.

> I think Being and Time is at least less comprehensible.
>

I concur, but that's mostly because of its unsystematic use of language. I wouldn't compare anything that came out of the Tuning List with Heidegger.

-Igs

Igs>"If two of the best teachers on this List need so much time to explain
this material to a person like myself--educated, diligent, logical, and
genuinely interested in understanding them--what does that say about the
potential relevance of this material to the musical world at large? "

   Probably that if the teachers are not only knowledgeable and explain things well...that there are some gaping holes in practical applications of the material.  Especially when Igs, perhaps the most prolific composer around here, finds an absence of new practical uses for the material. 

    Personally I think both the impatience of the teachers and high learning curve of the material matched with far more equations than instantly testable applications make this a very hard way to get anyone into microtonality who is not already deep in academic music.
  I don't think the fact Chris and so many others on here are professional musicians so much reflects the "caliber" of the list as it does how bad we are doing at attracting people who aren't already relatively interested in and fairly experienced with microtonality.

--------------------

>"To you List "Fathers" who are so deeply frustrated by the current state
of things here: perhaps you should not be entirely blaming the influx of
new people for the degeneration. Perhaps you should take some
responsibility yourselves for not taking the time to consider how the
conventions you so quickly established might be received by the larger
musical community in general."

   Boy is that a mouthful...that is what I have been suggesting all along.  And yet, mentioning that topic has got not only my threads ignored at some times...but me name called, threatened, and worse.

   The whole attitude of "if the 'student' is not learning, it must be a problem with the student's effort, not the teacher or the subject" really has to stop before we all can reach consensus and make solid new developments.  That...and make any progress beyond "teaching what's already there" (which is already a self-contradictory topic in many ways because so many theories point, even older/more-established ones, point against each other).

   Weird thing...most things I actually thing sound good on this list...including John's scaled, Igs's experiments in "bad" tunings, Mike B's equal beating experiments, Jacky Ligon's use of Rational Intonation...have been complained about by the "fathers" as being irrelevant, even to the point of saying the person who created said ideas must be being a bit crazy.  On the flip side, "Father" Gene has posted a great deal of excellent scales and provided practical ways to go about solving even goals he doesn't appear to agree with...but in general the most interesting and accessible things I see on this list...seem to be from "students" not "teachers".  Perhaps this is largely because the "students" often don't have a fixed mindframe and often don't hesitate to completely reverse direction if an established theory they are learning has too many gaping holes in it for their purposes: there's no ego-defending if their infinitely-studied theories fails. 
There's new learning Newton all your life and then being shown Einstein may have had the answer...or doing that and then running in to Quantum Physics. :-D

  One shining example of someone with enough guts to try just about anything and, even after becoming a relative master at it...admit it has a whole lot of weaknesses....is Igs.  I wish more people on this list saw it as a journey, not a destination (why keep asking "are we/you there yet?!").

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "genewardsmith" <genewardsmith@> wrote:
> >
> > > I do see a lot of conventions being established with great rapidity by a few people.
> >
> > These conventions are? I don't know what you mean without at least a few examples.

> Mostly related to regular mapping/regular temperament/etc: commas, vals, monzos, prime-limits, etc.

These are simply definitions.

But also metrics for measuring discordance, or consistency, or stuff related to psychoacoustic identity.

These don't seem to be conventions either, unless you claim that there is a convention as to what the correct measure for discordance is. If there is, I wish someone would tell me what it was. "Consistency" is yet another definition. What is the point of objecting to definitions? Nor, by the way, do I see a lot of "challenges" to these definitions, including any by you. How do you "challenge" the definition of prime limit? The best you can do there is simply ignore it, like John O'S.

Beyond the fights that break out - I don't see this place having a
huge problem.

This is a room full of people, every voice and point of view can be
heard. I'm not so sure a real consensus is a legitimate goal in an
artistic field. Look at how many different styles and types of
paintings were done with essentially the same oil paint. I would not
remove one picture -they all are valuable.

Psycho-acoustics and all the parameters that go along with it *could*
be a consensus but I doubt it ever will because human bodies, upon
which the field relies, are not precision made copies of each other.
Its all statistical data that can be used to make generalizations that
require some hand waving and foot notes and exceptions. I certainly
think we can learn from the study of it though I think nothing will
ever explain 100% our perception of sound as music because the 100%
population of identical listeners simply does not exist.

an aside (Though I'm still looking for that amazing artist (is it a
school now?) whose painting from a foot or two away was a jumble of
color but from across the room looked like real 3D. I saw it in a
gallery on Oak Brook IL (where MacDonald execs live and buy this
stuff.))

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 4:11 PM, Michael <djtrancendance@...m> wrote:

>
>   One shining example of someone with enough guts to try just about anything and, even after becoming a relative master at it...admit it has a whole lot of weaknesses....is Igs.  I wish more people on this list saw it as a journey, not a destination (why keep asking "are we/you there yet?!").
>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Michael <djtrancendance@...> wrote:

>    Probably that if the teachers are not only knowledgeable and explain things well...that there are some gaping holes in practical applications of the material.  Especially when Igs, perhaps the most prolific composer around here, finds an absence of new practical uses for the material. 

I think Chris is clearly the most prolific composer around here, and he finds a use for a wide variety of things.

>     Personally I think both the impatience of the teachers and high learning curve of the material matched with far more equations than instantly testable applications make this a very hard way to get anyone into microtonality who is not already deep in academic music.

Math is not for everyone. Why must it be? It's been around for thousands of years, and is not going to go away. I suggest finding a way to accommodate yourself to the inevitability of its presence in the world of ideas. It's around, it's sound, get used to it. :)

My point, if it's not clear, is that not everyone has to get into the math.

> On the flip side, "Father" Gene has posted a great deal of excellent scales and provided practical ways to go about solving even goals he doesn't appear to agree with...

Thanks, "Son".

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "genewardsmith" <genewardsmith@...> wrote:
> These don't seem to be conventions either, unless you claim that there is a convention as
> to what the correct measure for discordance is. If there is, I wish someone would tell me
> what it was. "Consistency" is yet another definition. What is the point of objecting to
> definitions? Nor, by the way, do I see a lot of "challenges" to these definitions, including any > by you. How do you "challenge" the definition of prime limit? The best you can do there is
> simply ignore it, like John O'S.

It's not a matter of objecting to definitions, more like objecting to ways of thinking about tuning. See, for instance, the arguments between Carl and Lobawad, or the (older) arguments between Carl and Ozan.

I'm talking more generally about ideas about what "counts" or is valid in tuning theory. Whether it's musically valid to talk about rational intervals above a certain Tenney Height. Whether or this or that EDO is actually a temperament. Whether this or that temperament has a low enough error to actually be a temperament. How rational identities define or describe musical identities. Whether this or that tempered interval approximates this or that rational interval. How to define or describe chords in Just intonation. What information is important to know about a tuning/scale. Whether a temperament can even exist in the abstract or if it only exists when music takes advantage of the vanishing commas.

The people who established this list established at least some consensus as far as answers to these questions go. That consensus became the conventional way of thinking about tuning on this list. People who have been here awhile seem to either forget or ignore that there might be other ways of answering these questions, ways which may not be as "accurate" but which may nonetheless be conducive to making music, helpful for describing music, and in general may be as useful (if not more useful) than the consensus.

Yet time and again, I've seen Carl go after people who ignore or challenge the conventional way of thinking about things, calling their ideas nonsense and saying they don't know what they're talking about and they should just keep their mouths shut about theory and go back to making music. Which is ludicrous, because their views on theory inform their process of making music and thus serve them as useful tools, which means they might serve others in the same way. The true test of any theory of music is in the music it leads to.

As for my own challenge to the conventions here.... All I can say is that I've tried to adhere myself to the strict standards of "what's valid" as described to me by people like Carl and Paul, so that I can distill these ideas down to something I can communicate to musicians less schooled than myself so that they can actually be used. But I can't even answer the simple question of "how do we know what will sound good and what won't?" The conventional answer is to always reference JI in some way, because almost every bit of theory in this community is tied in some way to JI. But when you depart significantly from JI, it stops being a useful guide-post, even though it doesn't become impossible to make "good-sounding" music in significantly-unJust tunings. And I'm not saying that I think any interval can sound good, either; some chords in 14-EDO or 16-EDO or 9-EDO sound worse than others, but references to JI don't really explain it. In fact, looking at tunings in general in terms of "departure from JI" has never gotten me anywhere...every time I think it is getting me somewhere, I run into some inconsistency that knocks the whole thing down. I *do* like some tunings better than others, but nothing I've encountered here helps me to understand *why*. Is it something inexpressible that just comes down to my personality type? And if so, doesn't that mean it's going to be like that for everyone--a matter of personal taste? If so, doesn't that kick dirt all over the potential usefulness of ANY theory?

-Igs

>"Psycho-acoustics and all the parameters that go along with it *could* be a consensus but I doubt it ever will because human bodies, upon which the field relies, are not precision made copies of each other."

   Exactly.  The good news, as I see it, is we have a LOT of options people have already looked into and I swear, of those, most people could find at least one that works for them.  Not just HE, Tenney Height, JI, or critical band dissonance but also "rootedness", virtual pitch, equal beating, and a whole lot more...

>"This is a room full of people, every voice and point of view can be heard. I'm not so sure a real consensus is a legitimate goal in an artistic field. "

     Hmm...well by "consensus" I mean, at a bare minimum, the idea that even often conflicting ideas and theories can all have a place in the art of music.  Far as music goes I think it's a productive way to view things: even though I don't get Phish (the band), a fair share of people do...thus making their work deserving of being called musical (meaning musical...to a fair share of people other than the creator).
  Same goes for theories...I think the idea everything from about 16/11 and 17/11 gets sucked into the definition of a "bad version of a perfect fifth" implied in HE fails for me...but I'm not going to say that idea can't be valid for other people, who often think, for example, 22/15 and 16/11 OR 40/27 and 14/9 are virtually no better/worse than each other.
  And that is even though it frustrates me because it means far less people try to generate scales without pure fifths and therefore often with much more and newer possibilities for other intervals.

   The problem we have to watch out for, IMVHO, is people who are very quick to shut down virtually any theory that's not established yet and have just about no patience for anything that has not been academically (or by professional musicians...same idea) documented.  We don't need to be introducing any bizarre "barriers to entry" for this artform...

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "genewardsmith" <genewardsmith@...> wrote:
> I think Chris is clearly the most prolific composer around here, and he finds a use for a
> wide variety of things.

That he does. Everything except for the theory behind the scales, it seems.

> Math is not for everyone. Why must it be? It's been around for thousands of years, and is
> not going to go away. I suggest finding a way to accommodate yourself to the inevitability > of its presence in the world of ideas. It's around, it's sound, get used to it. :)
>
> My point, if it's not clear, is that not everyone has to get into the math.

The math, at least for me, is rarely the problem. You don't need anything beyond the most basic high school math to read a temperament mapping, to understand the intervals a comma equates, to read a graph of harmonic entropy, to calculate Tenney Height, to construct a CPS like Wilson's hexanies, or to make sense of the results of Graham's temperament finder. The math is used to make the scales, not to tell us how to use them.

> > On the flip side, "Father" Gene has posted a great deal of excellent scales and
> > provided practical ways to go about solving even goals he doesn't appear to agree
> >with...

And he also rarely if ever complains about the state of discourse on this list, almost never strays from the topic at hand, accuses someone of being insane for disagreeing with his taste in tunings, or loses his wry and detached sense of humor.

We should all strive to be a bit more like Gene.

-Igs

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:

> But I can't even answer the simple question of "how do we know what will sound good and what won't?"

That's probably because it isn't a simple question at all, but a very difficult one. It would be nice to have someone who's already come along and done a factor analysis on all the different kinds of goodness/badness people perceive, and who has already divided people up according to some scheme of typology based on those factors. But so far as I know, it's still pretty primitive. But of course, that isn't the sort of thing I've focused on. Maybe Mike or Carl knows better.

For me, getting tempered intervals within a few cents of just ones seems to work to give me what I like, so I am pretty happy with the theory.

Igs>"The conventional answer is to always reference JI in some way, because
almost every bit of theory in this community is tied in some way to JI."

  Agreed.  Even in temperaments we talk about approximations of JI.  I, for one, stick with dyadic JI for the most part because insisting on optimizing triadic JI often means MUCH less chords and varieties of structures are available.   It's not that straight Ji chords don't work...it's that following that mantra means making scales with far less good non-triadic, JI-complaint chords available.
  Thus I focus on often very high-limit chords balanced out by dyads in much lower limits and good critical band dissonance that make the chords work fairly well despite often not fitting under 15-odd-limit or so. 

   But I'm trying to broaden my horizons...though I find few options can produce a lot of triadic-JI compliant 3-note chords (IE 4:5:6) outside of mean-tone you can see on the list I'm trying to find ways to chain non-meantone-like triads together into scales.  Mostly though, I've found the way to go is

A1) Make a scale with a bunch of good dyads.  Namely I've found...adding notes to 1/4 comma meantone diatonic works very well.  Turns out, usually with a ton of good dyads, your chance of forming good triads often goes up significantly.

A2 Try to surround clustered intervals with slightly stretched ones that can be switched to when you run into clustered chord.  IE between 4/3 and 5/4 you get a 15/14-ish interval...but making the 5/4 into an 11/9 provides some relief to the critical band dissonance without significantly alternating the dyadic feel.

B1) Use adaptive-JI style program to try and align as many of the dyads into triads as possible...shifting the notes by up to 10 cents or so to try to get a fit.

B2) If B1 fails...try to shift the notes you are playing at once into an equal-beating scale

C) Ultimately, aligning ALL overtones to the underlying scale via DSP processing ALA Sethares...only the timbre would change on a per-chord basis rather than just a per-scale basis. :-)

   All this time theories seem to say "well, you can EITHER do A or B".  My philosophy, and methods as of lately, means trying to use as many theories as possible simultaneously.

>"Yet time and again, I've seen Carl go after people who ignore or
challenge the conventional way of thinking about things, calling their
ideas nonsense and saying they don't know what they're talking about and
they should just keep their mouths shut about theory and go back to
making music. Which is ludicrous, because their views on theory inform
their process of making music and thus serve them as useful tools, which
means they might serve others in the same way. The true test of any
theory of music is in the music it leads to. "
   Exactly...if it "the car wins the race"...why complain "its engine is somehow still 'wrong' "?

>"I *do* like some tunings better than others, but nothing I've encountered here helps me to understand *why*."

   Well...I'll say things well aligned to JI sound good to me...but will say the same as you about TET scales...JI often explains very little about them...especially ones like 14TET where the "in between notes" seems to act as different "JI ratios" in completely unpredictable ways depending on context (that often don't follow HE's "fields of attraction" in the slightest.  It would be, agreed, great to have a theory that would explain such "randomness" in the so-called sour TET tunings...JI seems fine to explain the "sweet" JI tunings...but falls flat on its face with finding gems in "sour" tunings.

--- On Thu, 3/24/11, cityoftheasleep <igliashon@...> wrote:

From: cityoftheasleep <igliashon@...>
Subject: [tuning] Re: I Give Up
To: tuning@yahoogroups.com
Date: Thursday, March 24, 2011, 3:09 PM

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

> These don't seem to be conventions either, unless you claim that there is a convention as

> to what the correct measure for discordance is. If there is, I wish someone would tell me

> what it was. "Consistency" is yet another definition. What is the point of objecting to

> definitions? Nor, by the way, do I see a lot of "challenges" to these definitions, including any > by you. How do you "challenge" the definition of prime limit? The best you can do there is

> simply ignore it, like John O'S.

It's not a matter of objecting to definitions, more like objecting to ways of thinking about tuning. See, for instance, the arguments between Carl and Lobawad, or the (older) arguments between Carl and Ozan.

I'm talking more generally about ideas about what "counts" or is valid in tuning theory. Whether it's musically valid to talk about rational intervals above a certain Tenney Height. Whether or this or that EDO is actually a temperament. Whether this or that temperament has a low enough error to actually be a temperament. How rational identities define or describe musical identities. Whether this or that tempered interval approximates this or that rational interval. How to define or describe chords in Just intonation. What information is important to know about a tuning/scale. Whether a temperament can even exist in the abstract or if it only exists when music takes advantage of the vanishing commas.

The people who established this list established at least some consensus as far as answers to these questions go. That consensus became the conventional way of thinking about tuning on this list. People who have been here awhile seem to either forget or ignore that there might be other ways of answering these questions, ways which may not be as "accurate" but which may nonetheless be conducive to making music, helpful for describing music, and in general may be as useful (if not more useful) than the consensus.

Yet time and again, I've seen Carl go after people who ignore or challenge the conventional way of thinking about things, calling their ideas nonsense and saying they don't know what they're talking about and they should just keep their mouths shut about theory and go back to making music. Which is ludicrous, because their views on theory inform their process of making music and thus serve them as useful tools, which means they might serve others in the same way. The true test of any theory of music is in the music it leads to.

As for my own challenge to the conventions here.... All I can say is that I've tried to adhere myself to the strict standards of "what's valid" as described to me by people like Carl and Paul, so that I can distill these ideas down to something I can communicate to musicians less schooled than myself so that they can actually be used. But I can't even answer the simple question of "how do we know what will sound good and what won't?" The conventional answer is to always reference JI in some way, because almost every bit of theory in this community is tied in some way to JI. But when you depart significantly from JI, it stops being a useful guide-post, even though it doesn't become impossible to make "good-sounding" music in significantly-unJust tunings. And I'm not saying that I think any interval can sound good, either; some chords in 14-EDO or 16-EDO or 9-EDO sound worse than others, but references to JI don't really explain it. In fact, looking
at tunings in general in terms of "departure from JI" has never gotten me anywhere...every time I think it is getting me somewhere, I run into some inconsistency that knocks the whole thing down. I *do* like some tunings better than others, but nothing I've encountered here helps me to understand *why*. Is it something inexpressible that just comes down to my personality type? And if so, doesn't that mean it's going to be like that for everyone--a matter of personal taste? If so, doesn't that kick dirt all over the potential usefulness of ANY theory?

-Igs

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:
> We should all strive to be a bit more like Gene.

Gene replication is for another list.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Michael <djtrancendance@...> wrote:

>   Agreed.  Even in temperaments we talk about approximations of JI.  I, for one, stick with dyadic JI for the most part because insisting on optimizing triadic JI often means MUCH less chords and varieties of structures are available.

This is very true, and even if only for purposes of voice-leading, you may want those extra structures. In any case, they have long played a role in music.

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 6:34 PM, Michael <djtrancendance@...> wrote:

>
> C) Ultimately, aligning ALL overtones to the underlying scale via DSP processing ALA Sethares...only the timbre would change on a per-chord basis rather than just a per-scale basis. :-)
>
>    All this time theories seem to say "well, you can EITHER do A or B".  My philosophy, and methods as of lately, means trying to use as many theories as possible simultaneously.

Past couple trips to Guitar Center found this:

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Morpheus-DropTune-Octave-Guitar-Effects-Pedal-105622781-i1475412.gc

it is a pedal that retunes the guitar, polyphonically for stuff like
drop D tuning and such with regular pickups.
Now this still works just in 12 equal as far as I know but.... look
at the technology - just one more step and - microtonal or adaptive
JI.
And this is not the only one I saw - there are 1 or 2 other brands.
And of course real time auto-tune like vocal pitch correction and real
time adaptive vocal harmony pedals and rack mounts are out there as
well. So here we go. The ability to re-tune in real time during real
performances is almost in hand.

As far as all things reference JI - perhaps non-octave tunings are the
way to go around this?

Chris

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:

> To you List "Fathers" who are so deeply frustrated by the current
> state of things here: perhaps you should not be entirely blaming
> the influx of new people for the degeneration. Perhaps you should
> take some responsibility yourselves for not taking the time to
> consider how the conventions you so quickly established might be
> received by the larger musical community in general. If you had,
> then perhaps the state of things would not be so deplorable.

Are you f* kidding me?

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:

> Yet time and again, I've seen Carl go after people who ignore
> or challenge the conventional way of thinking about things,
> calling their ideas nonsense and saying they don't know what
> they're talking about and they should just keep their mouths
> shut about theory and go back to making music.

No, I haven't done that. First I engaged them in the noromal
respectful manner, for a period of years. Then, I asked them
to examine their thinking process. Finally, I suggested they
may not be cut out for music theory. Nothing wrong with that,
only a fraction of people probably are. Finally, when they
persisted to bombard the list with dozens of messages a day,
I asked them to cut back. Now they're upset. And that's
because they have misjudged the quality of their understanding,
the size of their audience, and the importance of their writing.
So I told them directly what the quality of their understanding,
size of their audience, and importance of their writing is.
Whether or not this is "constructive" is up to them.

I have never asked anyone to take one iota of theory on faith.
Your post was: lengthy, fanciful, and untrue. -Carl

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 8:08 PM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
>
> Nothing wrong with that, only a fraction of people probably are. Finally, when they
> persisted to bombard the list with dozens of messages a day,
> I asked them to cut back. Now they're upset.

I don't remember getting upset. Actually, I feel great right now. So
while you continue to go on throwing hissy fits about the glory days
of tuning, I'm going to continue finishing up this counterpoint and
posting stuff on MODMOS's to tuning-math.

What makes no sense to myself, Igs, and apparently Gene as well is why
you'd complain about being the only person on the list to "know what's
going on," but evade every attempt from everyone to figure out what
exactly is going on. If you really are as enlightened as you claim,
and you really are distraught that so many people on the list aren't
seeing things correctly, I'd expect that you'd want to explain what
the correct view of things actually is. So far we have Igs earlier in
this thread asking you, myself asking you in the maqam thread, a
number of unproductive messages offlist, and yet no simple answer.

Either way, if you're distraught about people not knowing things, I
would expect you'd explain them straight away. Why you haven't done
that is certainly an interesting question, especially if you claim to
have the knowledge to arbit who else is cut out for music theory.

-Mike

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:
>
> I have never asked anyone to take one iota of theory on faith.
> Your post was: lengthy, fanciful, and untrue. -Carl
>

You don't "ask" people anything. You tell them how it is, and welcome them to accept the "truth" or go on ignoring it.

And as of late, you've developed an annoying habit of ignoring questions I pose directly to you, while taking pot-shots at anyone who attempts to give me a helpful response. Which is a shame, because you act like you have all the answers, and that from your enlightened perspective, all of my questions and uncertainties are silly and could easily be put to rest with a wave of your magic hand.

-Igs

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@> wrote:
>
> > To you List "Fathers" who are so deeply frustrated by the current
> > state of things here: perhaps you should not be entirely blaming
> > the influx of new people for the degeneration. Perhaps you should
> > take some responsibility yourselves for not taking the time to
> > consider how the conventions you so quickly established might be
> > received by the larger musical community in general. If you had,
> > then perhaps the state of things would not be so deplorable.
>
> Are you f* kidding me?

Nope.

-Igs

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> You don't "ask" people anything. You tell them how it is,
> and welcome them to accept the "truth" or go on ignoring it.

I see you're stuck in defensive mode. Too bad!

> And as of late, you've developed an annoying habit of ignoring
> questions I pose directly to you, while taking pot-shots at
> anyone who attempts to give me a helpful response. Which is a
> shame, because you act like you have all the answers,

The reverse is true. The discussion here of late fails
precisely because it assumes it can answer things it can't.

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:

> > > Perhaps you should
> > > take some responsibility yourselves for not taking the time to
> > > consider how the conventions you so quickly established might be
> > > received by the larger musical community in general. If you had,
> > > then perhaps the state of things would not be so deplorable.
> >
> > Are you f* kidding me?
>
> Nope.

The "fathers" you refer to produced more than they consumed.
Any deplorable condition is the fault of people who have done
the opposite. -Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:

> I see you're stuck in defensive mode. Too bad!

You and me both, apparently.

> The reverse is true. The discussion here of late fails
> precisely because it assumes it can answer things it can't.

How do you know it can't? It would be helpful to have you back your assertions up with some sort of argument or evidence or anything by way of explanation.

-Igs

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:

> The "fathers" you refer to produced more than they consumed.
> Any deplorable condition is the fault of people who have done
> the opposite. -Carl

Oh, is that so? That's quite the teaching philosophy you've got there, Carl.

-Igs

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 10:58 PM, cityoftheasleep
<igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> > The "fathers" you refer to produced more than they consumed.
> > Any deplorable condition is the fault of people who have done
> > the opposite. -Carl
>
> Oh, is that so? That's quite the teaching philosophy you've got there, Carl.

Igs: just give it up. We are going in circles and it's now very hard
to maintain a sense of good humor about all of this.

You are not going to find the answer that you seek by directly asking
Carl. That is the point. To me, that is a significant truth. You can
keep pestering him if you want, or you can just ask Paul. Read between
the lines here. There is no secret, it isn't that he's just not
reading your posts, it's that he does not know. Why he can't just
admit that is an interesting question, but I'm getting tired of the
constant back and forth.

This thread has degenerated into trollbait the likes of which haven't
been seen on these lists since Marcel was around.

-Mike

> You've given ample account of things that are happening here,
> which you wish were not. Care to give account of things that
> aren't happening here, which you wish were?

* There are still good things happening here and plenty of
potential for more. It's just getting lost in a high volume
of other stuff. Stopping this can be constructive in itself.
Over the 14 years I've been doing this the #1 complaint I've
heard is, "I would like to be involved, but can't because of
the high message volume".

* I've suggested quite a few research projects over the years.
I'd be happy to help on- or offlist with any of them.

* I believe Graham made a list of open tuning-math problems
at some point.

* For someone handy with web development who is interested in
psychoacoustics, a listen-and-vote platform would be great for
experiments. Alternatively, I believe there are polling web
apps out there, if someone wanted to take the time to try them
and figure out if any are suitable.

* I already suggested we convert the group to the new Yahoo
groups format. At this point the risk/benefit profile of
such a move is looking better and better. The archives would
have to remain intact for it to be an option. If somebody
owns a less crucial list (like tuning-research, say) the
transition could be tested there first.

* People pushing branded tuning systems, formulas, etc. just
need to be read their rights on day 1.

* Read all posts since your last visit before posting any
replies. Reply to multiple messages in a single post when
possible. Take rapid-fire conversations offlist and post a
summary of conclusions later.

* Try limiting yourself to 3 posts each day. Try writing your
posts and then editing down to half the original length before
pushing send.

* Try searching the archives. Anyone suggesting that beat
rates are of first-order importance in concordance should be
familiar with the existing discussions here before adding
to them.

* Try phrasing things as a question. I'm not sure which
direct questions to me I've missed (perhaps because I'm no
longer reading everything here) but I'm always available
offlist.

-Carl

     If you take the following 5-tone chords (or 4-tone chord if you don't like the tempered interval between 9/8 and 10/9).

A) 1 (9/8 or 10/9) 4/3 3/2 5/3 2
B) 1 (9/8 or 10/9) 4/3 22/15 5/3 2

...and space chord B at about 15/14 on from A you get the 10-tone scale

1 (9/8 or 10/9) 4/3 3/2 5/3 2 and
15/14 * (1 (9/8 or 10/9) 4/3 22/15 5/3 2) =

1, 1.071, 1.12, -1.2, 1.338, 1.434, 1.5, 1.568438, 1.673, -1.793
---------------------------------------------------------
      The closest JI ratios to the scale are
 1/1 15/14 <<10/9 or 9/8>> 4/3 <<9/7or 13/9>> 3/2 11/7 5/3 9/5

    The dyads are pretty accurate (IE within 8 cents of just in most cases).

 HOWEVER as you can see above, there is a nice collection of widely spaced TRIADS available...plus it includes a mode of the diatonic scale.

   Perhaps I should be asking it a different way...what's wrong with this scale so far as containing many usable near-just triads?
   I have always been known as a dyads-only optimization guy and I'm really looking to change that... 8>).

Can you give us a scala file of this please?

-Mike

On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 1:24 AM, Michael <djtrancendance@...> wrote:
>
>      If you take the following 5-tone chords (or 4-tone chord if you don't like the tempered interval between 9/8 and 10/9).
>
> A) 1 (9/8 or 10/9) 4/3 3/2 5/3 2
> B) 1 (9/8 or 10/9) 4/3 22/15 5/3 2
>
> ...and space chord B at about 15/14 on from A you get the 10-tone scale
>
> 1 (9/8 or 10/9) 4/3 3/2 5/3 2 and
> 15/14 * (1 (9/8 or 10/9) 4/3 22/15 5/3 2) =
>
> 1, 1.071, 1.12, -1.2, 1.338, 1.434, 1.5, 1.568438, 1.673, -1.793
> ---------------------------------------------------------
>       The closest JI ratios to the scale are
>  1/1 15/14 <<10/9 or 9/8>> 4/3 <<9/7or 13/9>> 3/2 11/7 5/3 9/5
>
>     The dyads are pretty accurate (IE within 8 cents of just in most cases).
>
>  HOWEVER as you can see above, there is a nice collection of widely spaced TRIADS available...plus it includes a mode of the diatonic scale.
>
>
>    Perhaps I should be asking it a different way...what's wrong with this scale so far as containing many usable near-just triads?
>    I have always been known as a dyads-only optimization guy and I'm really looking to change that... 8>).