source file: mills2.txt Date: Sun, 8 Oct 1995 11:45:50 -0700 Subject: Re: RE Brian's posts From: Gary Morrison <71670.2576@compuserve.com> Brian's writings are a little like plastic explosives. They come in many shapes and forms, but no matter what shape they take, they detonate with explosive force! Usually this explosive force is one of amusement. (Although I think he's putting too much effort into pointing out who rather than what his research disagrees with, but let's not get into that.) I think it's important to listen to his research carefully, because the points he's raising are definitely meaningful. But recall what I've mentioned about Brian before: When he gets into something, it becomes his entire world for a while, and he sometimes loses perspective on the big picture. It's worth asking exactly how the information in Brian's psychoacoustics postings affects the art of composition. I think that it helps in important, but in more peripheral, ways than Brian seems to be suggesting. Consider his points about whole-number-ratio harmony. What did composers know before? We knew that whole-number ratios, up to a point, outline meaningful harmonies. And after all of these statistics about stretched octaves, low-frequency effects, neuron firing rates, basilar membrane anatomy, and so forth, what do we now know? We find that whole-number ratios, up to a point, outline meaningful harmonies. Hmmm... Sounds familiar, eh?! What matters, I believe, is that we now know more detail about that point exactly where the just-intonation model breaks down. We shouldn't conclude from this that the JI model is worthless. I think it's pretty obvious from thousands of years of history and individual exploration that it is meaningful. But it's only a model, and every model has its limits. Brian's posts may help us find those limits. Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sun, 8 Oct 1995 20:47 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id LAA29047; Sun, 8 Oct 1995 11:47:19 -0700 Date: Sun, 8 Oct 1995 11:47:19 -0700 Message-Id: <951008184429_71670.2576_HHB28-2@CompuServe.COM> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu