source file: mills2.txt Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 22:58:14 -0700 Subject: RE Brian's posts From: MMCK@delphi.com Brian, Since you are not on line with us, but receive our messages later, there is some confusion in my mind how to address you. It's as if you were not present in the room, but the conversations were being taped for your later perusal. I have been following your posts with interest. I respect your scholarship, though I don't always agree with your point of view, and I find your writings entertaining and useful, though the phrasing could perhaps be somewhat gentler, on occasion. >From your point of view, I am well connected to the internet, and telephone, and therefore somewhat boring. You do have to admit that paper mail leaves something to be desired when it comes to the snappy comeback. :) I lived in the mountains without even electricity for many years, and I admit there are advantages, but I came to believe more in the advantages of being connected. As an advocate of Just Intonation for some thirty years, I found your posts on the advantages of stretched intervals to be somewhat disturbing. I even went so far as to stretch the intervals in one of my compositions, and listen to the difference. I was surprised at how little difference there was, but I still preferred the just intonation version. I freely admit that may be my own bias. I do agree that stretched intervals seem more pleasant than compressed intervals. My question is: Stretched from what? From your posts, I got the impression that you were comparing the stretched fifth to the 3/2 fifth, and the stretched third to the 5/4. In that case, even if you stretch the intervals, you are still basing your composition on Just Intonation--stretched just intonation. Just intonation, as implemented in the FasTrak sequencer is easier than any other system of composition, at least for me, and provides almost an infinite number of possibilities, even for the limited tuning granularity of the Sound Blaster. I can simply use one of several utilities to generate a scale. Experience has led me to have a general understanding of what procedures will lead to what kind of sound. Once I have generated the scale, I can use more utilities to generate a chord logic. With about two or three minutes work, I am able to begin composition. In less than two hours, I have the finished product. If I am dissatisfied with the tuning, I can change both the scale and the chord selection in just a couple of minutes. If I want to stretch the intervals, I can also do that in a couple of minutes. As we all know the possibilities of 12ET are pretty thoroughly explored by now, but any other ET temperament can offer only a little more variety, and they can be quite tedious to master. Witness the extensive postings on 88CET. All this just to learn one scale? Perhaps its non-octave nature makes it more of a challenge. As for people preferring stretched intervals, despite all your references, I am still not certain if this is really true, and if it is true, I am not certain how much they care. Would it make enough of a difference to get on the top forty? I imagine other factors may be more important. When I listen to commercial music of all types, I seem to hear a lot of JI. I was under the impression that there was no proven way to analyze music to determine the pitch of an individual instrument in a polyphonic recording. If that is not true then several seemingly very knowledgeable people in another forum have lead me severely astray. Anyway, thanks for the posts. Marion Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sun, 8 Oct 1995 17:12 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id IAA27174; Sun, 8 Oct 1995 08:12:29 -0700 Date: Sun, 8 Oct 1995 08:12:29 -0700 Message-Id: <9510080811.aa20550@cyber.cyber.net> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu