source file: mills2.txt Date: Sun, 15 Oct 1995 10:42:44 -0700 Subject: 88CET #20: Traditional Harmony in 88CET From: Gary Morrison <71670.2576@compuserve.com> I noticed early-on in my investigation of 88CET that it could produce traditional harmonies such as major and minor tenths, and of course perfect fifths. It didn't take long before that lead to major, and minor triads, and dominant seventh chords in certain voicings. That is of course in addition to the more obvious nontraditional chords. Nevertheless, I was very surprised to discover that 88CET can also produce traditional voice-leading between these chords, and thereby traditional cadences. Amazingly enough, within a few constraints, 88CET can produce very convincing renditions of almost any kind of traditional harmony - progressions of diatonic, secondary dominant, borrowed-chord, and even many of the traditional chromatically-altered chords. Why would anybody ever want to produce traditional harmony 88CET? We hear traditional harmony everywhere around us, so why try to attempt that in 88CET? Well, that's exactly why - traditional harmony is everywhere, so it has a very strong musical weight to it, and we can use that weight to our advantage. We can use it for shock value for example - lull the audience into a false sense of security with traditional harmony, and then bash them in the ears with a supramajor triad. Or we can use it for the exact opposite purpose - to introduce nontraditional possibilities slowly, and gently acclimate them. But there's a more important general reason to use traditional harmony in 88CET: Greater overall harmonic variety. Exploring new harmonic possibilities is very valuable, but there's no point in abandoning existing harmonies on principle; they're very useful and powerful musical ideas. Also, on related lines, exploring new harmony without a reference point in the traditional could actually end up obscuring the character of the new harmony. Harmonic character I have found to be absolute only to a certain point; without a reference point in something familiar, all they hear is something nondescriptly weird. And pretty soon it's not even all that weird anymore. This is what I've mentioned before about "raising the ante": If your music continues long enough above 3 on a harmonic intensity scale of 1 to 10, 3 starts sounding like 1. Major tenths start sounding like perfect consonances, subharmonic harmony starts sounding no more harmonically intense than major or minor. Dave Hill once demonstrated this in reverse. He played me some music from the earliest stages of the Renaissance, where thirds were still considered enticing dissonances rather than basic consonances. After you listen to music built around open fifth chords for five minutes or so, you start hearing it like they did: They'll sing what has the harmonic impact of diminished seventh chord in classical music (or modern popular music for that matter), and you almost feel a chill going up your spine. That until you listen carefully and notice that it's just a major triad! The effect of traditional harmony in 88CET I like to describe as "reverse shock therapy". Such harmonies become surprising in the same, but reverse, sense that injecting supramajor thirds for example into traditional harmony is surprising. The effect is somewhat analogous with the idea of accent by silence: a quarter rest within a train of undifferentiated quarter notes is accented. On a more intellectual note, it's almost comical to produce such manifestly "normal" effects in a tuning that is clearly derived with abnormality in mind. I'm still amused that it was possible at all. Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Mon, 16 Oct 1995 00:38 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id PAA29625; Sun, 15 Oct 1995 15:37:54 -0700 Date: Sun, 15 Oct 1995 15:37:54 -0700 Message-Id: <9510151537.aa14798@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