re-introduction

hi, i haven't been active on this list in a long time, but have become
reinspired to do so again.

i've been a musician most of my life, but it wasn't until i found
this list a few years ago that i started to get a clue about what
pitch and harmony is. funny that you can get a college degree in
music and never realize what it means to be in tune, or that
equal temperment is so audibly out of tune.

i was drawn to this list in hopes of finding radical bizarre
dissonant tunings that would be fun to explore. the idea of
just intonation wasn't exciting, and it's taken me several
years to realize what it feels like to hear and sing in
just intonation. now i've come 180 from "perfectly in tune?
how boring!" to "perfectly in tune? so *thats* what harmony
is about!" :)

the problem i had with this list -- and why i stopped reading
it for a while -- is that the discussions here are *so* arcane!
i always thought i *liked* music theory, and i liked technical
arcana, but you all are in a whole different league. at first,
a few years ago, it was all very intriguing, and i tried learning
to follow the discussions here. but i had a very hard time
getting a bead on most of it, so i ended up discouraged to
the point of not reading the list anymore.

but before i stopped reading completely, i asked for advice
on basic level books from which i might get a groundwork.
i ended up getting two books. "genesis of a music", of course...
which i found a fun read, and interesting. i learned stuff,
but i still didn't really *get* a lot of the fundamental
concepts. the other book i got was "the harmonic experience".
now that is a long and weighty book. it's taken me well over
a year of digging through it to reach what seems like a deep
sense of the basis of harmony -- but it's happened! and that's
what's drawn me back to this list. i have a new respect and
understanding of both just intonation and equal temperment
and am eager to explore them more.

i still won't be able to follow *most* of the technical discussions
here, and i'm not sure i want to anyway. but i do have a lot of
ideas and questions, and hope to learn more. seems that i am
not especially interested in theory unless i see a way that
i could apply it to making music. sometimes i get a kick out
of the arcane jargon just for its own sake. the language
and terminology that gets flung around this list is kinda
fun to see sometimes. like a little window on an alien science.
but mostly i'm really only interested in what has direct
application to my own music making.

my mind tends to blank out when i see long strings of numbers.
in fact, one of the epiphanies i recently had regarding just
intonation is that i can *hear* math. written math has always
seemed somehow unreal to me. geometry made sense because i
could see it. and now i'm finding i can understand math
through hearing it! it's a stunning realization.

one thing i'm wondering about is -- how do people create music in
just intonation? i have synthesizers that offer 'pythagorean'
or 'just C' tunings. they are, i assume, a way to explore (correct
my terminology if i am wrong) a 12-note 5-limit lattice.
people here talk about using just tuned guitars. do those
also tend to a 12-note 5-limit space? this seems an interesting
harmonic space to explore -- and certainly useful for learning
to hear 'in tune', but the space of just intonation seems so
potentially large, and 12 notes seems rather small.
how do people explore the larger lattices? have people
created instruments (acoustic, computer or otherwise) that
allow them to improvise in a large just lattice? or do you
tend to work out the music mathematically on paper and then
enter the data into a program like csound?

not being much of a programmer (the same problem as with math --
strings of ascii code = blank mind), csound was always daunting to me.
but i have gotten the hang of using max/msp to do sound programming.
recently inspired by just intonation, i wrote a program. i just
wanted to hear what various low prime ratios sounded like.
i didn't care too much to systemtically identify them one by one --
"now let's hear a 7/5..." i just wanted to get my ear used to
hearing *any* low prime ratios, without necessarily knowing
intellectually which one was currently sounding. the program i
wrote has 8 voice-modules, each of which can play a single note.
the notes play with a long slow envelope. the program is seeded
with a reference tonic pitch. each module uses the tonic pitch
to randomly calculate a new note in the range [1-13] / [1-13].
then each voices plays its note at random time intervals.
they also occassionally recalculate a new pitch. all voices
are sine waves.

the result is a slowly-changing, dreamy music that drifts from
quite attractive consonances to rather sharp dissonances.
sometimes it sounds 'tonal', other times 'atonal'. the
voices repeat themselves just enough to make stable harmonic
spaces that slowly transform into new ones. i just made it
as a kind of 'test', but was surprised by how much i enjoyed
listening to it, i've even slept with it on -- the slow dreamy
qualities seem ideal for sleeping. now, having made it, i've
gotten many ideas for how to modify and expand on it, but,
unfortunately, it already taxes my cpu to its very limit. :/
someday i would like to get a kyma synthesizer...

i'm curious if other people have done things like this.
seems like a potentially good way to explore a just lattice
that extends far behind 12-notes and 5-limit.

well, that's all i have time for right now. i'm curious
how people create music with just intonation. do you
compose on paper? improvise on a just tuned instrument?
i'm especially interested in how people use computers
to work in just intonation. do you come up with a concept
and then systematically program it? or do you make
interactive programs/instruments?

thanks, and hello! paul