source file: mills2.txt Date: Fri, 20 Oct 1995 23:48:07 -0700 Subject: TUNING digest 535 From: gnut@osn.de (Stefan Schleifer) I tried to unsubscribe from your list for 5 times. From now all your messages will be send back automatically. >Received: from eartha.mills.edu (eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20]) by osn.de (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id FAA13798 for ; Sat, 21 Oct 1995 05:52:38 +0100 >From: tuning@eartha.mills.edu >Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) > for id VAA09797; Fri, 20 Oct 1995 21:52:35 -0700 >Date: Fri, 20 Oct 1995 21:52:35 -0700 >Message-Id: <199510210452.VAA09797@eartha.mills.edu> >Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu >Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu >Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu >Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu >Precedence: bulk >To: gnut@osn.de >Subject: TUNING digest 535 >X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas >X-Comment: Alternative Tuning Distribution List > > TUNING Digest 535 > >Topics covered in this issue include: > > 1) 88CET #22: Wandering Tonics and #Parts > by Gary Morrison <71670.2576@compuserve.com> > 2) Unsubscribing > by mayyar@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Mohan Ayyar) > 3) Approximations, Mongolian music > by Joshua Brandon Holden > 4) > by "John H. Chalmers" > 5) Re: Dean Drummond's address > by "Adam B. Silverman" > >---------------------------------------------------------------------- > >Topic No. 1 > >Date: 20 Oct 95 00:59:13 EDT >From: Gary Morrison <71670.2576@compuserve.com> >To: Tuning List >Subject: 88CET #22: Wandering Tonics and #Parts >Message-ID: <951020045912_71670.2576_HHB31-2@CompuServe.COM> > > "Relativistic voice-leading" has an important consequence: wandering tonics. >Here is a traditional-harmony chord progression in 88CET: > > B B > A A A# >(2nd-line treble) G > D D > C# > B B > A > F > E > D D >(2nd-space Bass) C C > >Func. Harmony: I IV64 ii V7/V V43 I6 > > > The equivalent progression in 12-tone notation is: > > G G > F F F# >(1st-line treble) E > C C > B > A A > G > F > E > D D >(2nd-space Bass) C C > > ("IV64" is an attempt at an ASCII-text rendition of a roman-numeral IV with >the usual harmony-text 6-over-4 figured-bass notation for the chord inversion. >"64" denotes a second-inversion chord, "6" a first inversion, and "43" a third >inversion seventh chord.) > > Because 88CET has no octave, each inversion of what you convince your >audience is a tonic triad, places the tonic at a different pitch. So the tonic >wanders over the course of this progression from (in the 88CET notation) the >second-space bass-clef C of the opening I chord, to the pitch-class of the D >(somewhat less than an octave above the C) of the final chord. That even though >our ears "calculate" the tonics to be the same based upon how the parts move. > > Wandering tonics have a very surprising effect if accomplished over a short >progression - short enough that the audience can remember the new and old tonic. >The harmony says that you've gone full-circle back to where you started, but you >mysteriously ended up somewhere else. If the progression is too long, >especially if it has a lot of temporary tonicization, the audience will probably >not notice the effect at all. > > Traditional harmony in 88CET poses another difficulty: lack of octave >doubling makes it very difficult to sustain more than three-part traditional >harmony. The possibilities for smooth voice-movement when voices can't move >through octave-doubles of other chord tones, dwindles rapidly. Even in >three-part harmony, you end up having to use lots of chords with fifths below >their roots, or ninth chords (fifths above their fifths). Secondary dominants >become more common than usual solely so to take advantage of the additional >chord tone! > > >------------------------------ > >Topic No. 2 > >Date: Fri, 20 Oct 1995 18:10:38 +1000 >From: mayyar@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Mohan Ayyar) >To: tuning >Subject: Unsubscribing >Message-ID: <199510200810.SAA18546@extra.ucc.su.OZ.AU> > >Can someone please advise how to unsubscribe (temporarily) >from the tuning list. > > >_____________________________________________________ >Mohan Ayyar >Sydney, Australia >mayyar@extro.ucc.su.oz.au >WWW URL http://www.usyd.edu.au/~mayyar/music.html >Ph: 61-2-8315295 >Fax: 61-2-6715676 (by prior arrangement) >Mobile: 0414 500 277 > > >------------------------------ > >Topic No. 3 > >Date: Fri, 20 Oct 95 10:36:47 -0400 >From: Joshua Brandon Holden >To: tuning >Subject: Approximations, Mongolian music >Message-ID: <199510201437.HAA07381@eartha.mills.edu> > >"John H. Chalmers" writes: > > See also Neubauer , Otto (?, Neuberger, etc.) The Exact Sciences in > > Antiquity. Sorry I don't have a better reference to this book. > >That would be Otto Neugebauer, who I believe founded the Brown department >of the History of Mathematics. > > AUTHOR Neugebauer, O. (Otto), 1899- > TITLE The exact sciences in antiquity. > EDITION 2d ed. > PUBLISHED New York, Harper & Brothers [1962] > DESCRIPT'N vii,240 p. illus., facsims. 21 cm. > SERIES Harper Torchbooks, TB 552. > NOTE Includes bibliographical references and index. > LC SUBJECT Mathematics, Ancient. > Astronomy, Ancient. > LCCN 57012342. > RLIN/OCLC RIBG0626061-B. > >Enjoy! > > ---josh > >Joshua Brandon Holden Brown Math Department holden@math.brown.edu > "It's never too late to have a happy childhood!" ---Cutter John >YAZ/socrates > >------------------------------ > >Topic No. 4 > >Date: Fri, 20 Oct 95 7:55:52 PDT >From: "John H. Chalmers" >To: tuning >Message-ID: <9510200755.aa14515@cyber.cyber.net> > >From: mclaren >Subject: Tuning & psychoacoustics - post 25 of 25 >--- >As an empirical science, psychoacoustics is largely concerned with >measuring the reactions of the ear/brain system to specific acoustic >stimuli. However, human hearing is a hierarchical process made up of many >layers of abstraction. >Small acoustic stimuli shade imperceptibly into larger ones, leading >inexorably to such large-scale percepts as "key center," "cadence," and > "discordance" and "concordance." As Eberhard Zwicker points >out, "It is clear that psychoacoustics plays an important role in musical >acoustics. There are many basic aspects of musical sounds that are >correlated with the sensations already discussed in psycoacoustics. >Examples may be different pitch qualities of pure tones and complex sounds, >perception of duration, loudness and partially-masked loudness, sharpness >as a an aspect of timbre, perception of sound impulses as events within the >temporal patterns leading to rhythm, roughness, and the equivalence of >sensational intervals. For this reason it can be stated that most of this >book's contents are also of interest in musical acoustics. At this point we >can concentrate on two aspects that have not been discussed so far: musical >consonance and the Gestalt principle." [Zwicker, E. and H. Fastl, >Psychoacoustics: Facts and Models, 1990, pg. 312] >Zwicker characterizes the hierarchical perception of musical tones by >drawing a distinction between sensory consonance (perceived roughness, >sharpness, and noisiness of the tone) and harmony, (perceived tonal >affinity, tolerability, and root relationship of tones or sequences of tones >to a scale). >So doing, he posits that both modes of perception are hierarchically involved > in the sensation of musical consonance. >Both experience and experiment tell us that the process of listening to >music involves levels of neural organization above the purely physical >acoustic operation of the inner ear. While the point of maximal stimulation >on the basilar membrane indicates a simple mechanical Fourier analysis of >sounds entering the ear, the firing pattern of neural fibers in the auditory >nerve encodes pitch and spectral information in the nerve system in a >complex way. >The path between primary auditory nerve and cerebral cortex is not a simple >one. Many feedback loops control the processing of auditory information, >and there are many opportunities for higher brain centers to alter the raw >input travelling up the auditory nerve--and vice versa. >The anatomy of the pathway between the auditiory nerve and the cerebral >cortex is complex: the cells of the primary neurons (that is, those in the >auditory nerve) are located within the modiolus of the cochlea; these >primary nurons terminate in the cochlear nucleus, a mass of gray matter >located in the dorsal and lateral portion of the medulla oblongata. Here the >physical nerve connection breaks. From this point there is a synpatic >connection (mediated by neurotransmitters) to the neurons of the inferior >colliculus. After another synpatic gap in the neural pathway, the third- >order neurons converge on the medial geniculate body, the final relay station > on the auditory path to the cerebral cortex. It's worth nothing that the >medial geniculate body not only collates fibers from the audtiory nerve, but >also from other sensory systems and from the cerebral cortex as well. Thus >the geniculate body serves not as a passive relay station so much as an >active filtering and integrating locus. >>From the geniculate body, the fourth-order auditory neurons connect with >the cerebral conrtex by way of a thin sheet of radiating nerve fibers. These >radiations include corticofugal fibers running from the cortex back to the >medial geniculate body. >Thus the auditory neural pathway contains a complex feedback loop, >controlled by several sets of higher brain loci, running between the auditory >nerve and the cerebral cortex. >Most of the fourth-order neurons enter a small region ofthe posterial half >of the horizontal wall of the Sylvian fissure, which acts as a focal zone for >the entire auditory cortex. The complexity of the auditory region of the >Sylvian fissure is daunting: each cochlear fiber makes connections with >thousands of other neurons grouped in at least thirteen regions, and >populated by many different types of neurons. To make the process even >more complex, not all of these neurons respond identically. Some produce >strong signals when presented with tones in a >particular frequency range but do not respond to tones in other frequency >ranges. A small fraction of neurons emit strong signals when two different >frequencies are sounded together, but these same neurons produce little or >no response when either frequency sounds alone. Some neurons are most >strongly stimulated by sounds at specific amplitudes: sounds outside this >narrow amplitude window cause no resopnse from suchneurons. For yet other > auditory nerve fibers, the higher the sound's amplitude, the stronger the >response, until a satuation point is reached. Some neurons respond best toe >amplitude-moedulated tones, others to frequency-modulated tones. Some >neurons respond with paritcular vehemence to sounds coming from a >particular region of space, and some neurons respond best to sounds that >are moving in space. >Because these cortical loci consist of neural pathways, they are formed by >learned response and can be changed. Thus, the impact of culture and >experience on musical perception is at least as great as the physical >sensory correlates of musical tone--if not greater. >"I once attended...a concert in Bangkok that was totally mystifying. I could >see that the audience was utterly enraptured, swooning at moments of >apparently overwhelming emotional beauty that made no impression on me >whatsoever; not only that, I couldn't distinguish them from any other >moments in the piece." [Eno, Brian, "Resonant Complexity," Whole Earth >Review, May 1995, pg. 42] >This points to a important caveat. While the results adduced so far provide >evidence for this or that musical tuning system ont he basis of sensory >consonance, psychoacoustics cannot describe or validate the higher levels >of musical organization implicit in a tuning system. >Thus the internal structure of a tuning is different from the sensory >consonance produced by intervals within that tuning. For example: Risset's, >Pierce's and Sethares' timbral mapping procedure, following the >implications of research by Plomp and Levelt and Kameoka and Kuriyagawa, >allow a composer to control the level of *sensory consonance * in a given >tuning, but mapping the component partials of a sound into a given >maximally consonant set for a specific scale does *not * change the >inherent tonality of the scale, its Rothenberg propriety, the Barlow >harmonicity or the Wilson efficiency of the scale. >In short, by changing timbre, note duration, and compositional style one can >change the surface affect of music produced in a given tuning: but the >deeper structural elements of the tuning remain invariant. >Ivor Darreg described one of the deeper structural invariants in a given >tuning as its "mood:" "In my opinion, the striking and characteristic moods >of many tuning-systems will become the most powerful and compelling >reason for exploring beyond 12-tone equal temperament. It is necessary to >have more than one non-twelve-tone system before these moods can be >heard and their significance appreciated." [Darreg, Ivor, "Xenharmonic >Bulletin No. 5, 1975, pg. 1] >David Rothenberg proposed that the Rothenberg propriety of a scale >explains some aspects of the scale's deep structure; Clouth and Douthett >duplicated some of this work in their article "On Well-Formed Scales." >John Chalmers has speculated that Rothenberg propriety explains the sense >of tension in such tunings as Ptolemy's intense diatonic. >In addition to the "mood" or overall "sound" of a given tuning, Darreg and >McLaren (1991) pointed out that each tuning exhibits some degree of >inherent bias toward melody or harmony. The Pythagorean intonation and >13-tone equal temperament, for example, are both strongly biased toward >melody, while 31-tone equal temperament and 13-limit just intonation are >strongly biased toward harmony. >Douglas Keislar made this same point in his 1992 doctoral thesis. In it, >Keislar describes research which demonstrates that altering the surface >characteristics of the music--timbre, tempo, spatialization--does not >change the deeper structural characteristics of the tuning. Thus, while >mapped overtones will make a comopsition in 13-tone equal temperament >sound more acoustically smooth, it does not change the essentially atonal >character of the 13-tone scale, nor does it materially affect the scale >"mood." Similarly, changing the timbres of a composition in Ptolemy's >intense diatonic tuning will alter the degree of sensory roughness or >smoothness; adding reverberation will mask to greater or lesser degree >some of the overall "sound" of the composition. But the sense of aesthetic >tension created by scale intervals which are, in Rothenberg's usage, >improper, will remain unchanged. >Thus the implications for tuning suggested by psychoacoustic research >must be viewed as separate from larger musical and perceptual questions. >Because current psychoacoustic experiments focus on questions of sensory >perception, there remains a dichotomy between what Easley Blackwood has >called "concordance and discordance" and sensory consonance and >dissonance. In fact sensory consonance is a misnomer: the effects are more >accurately described as sensations of auditory roughness or smoothness. >Depending on the tuning or the composition, intervals which are perceived >as rough may prove concordant, while intervals which prdouce the auditory >sensation of smoothness may strike the listener as discordant--that is, out >of place musically. In Western music, the best example of this phenomenon >is the perfect fourth, which sounds acoutically smoother than the major >third but which by itself generally constitutes an unstable and musically >discordant interval. >In Balinese and Javanese music, the best example is the stretched 1215- >cent octave, which sounds acoustically rough but which produces as sense >of musical concordance when performed by a gamelan. >The most striking example in my own experience was a 1990 concert by >the Women's National Chorus of Bulgaria. One of the duets (a folk song >from the Thracian plains) ended on a large major just second (9/8). The >Western audience sat without moving forwhat seemed a long time: only >when the singers bowed did the audience realize the duet was over, and > applaud. In this case the contradiction between learned perceptions of >concordance and cadence, and the sensory perception of roughness in the >cadential intervals, prevented the audience from correctly perceiving the >cadence. >It is important not to confuse sensory roughness or smoothness, as >measured by psychoacoustical experiments, with higher-level perceptions >of musical consonance and dissonance. Many advocates of just intonation >have baselessly conflated the two categories, while advocates of Fetis' >model (viz., all auditory responses are predominately learned responses) >excessively emphasize the abstract levels of hierarchical auditory >perception while unjustifiably discounting the purely physical processes at >work in the human ear/brain system--in particular the frequency-analysis >operations of the basilar membrane and the periodicity-extraction >mechanism of the neurons in the auditory nerve. >Ultimately, what Zwicker calls Gestalt musical perception is mediated not >only by the physics and acoustics of the inner ear, but also by primary, >secondary, third-order and fourth-order neurons, a variety of different >brain locations, and the operant conditioning imposed by experience, culture >and musical tradition. The conclusions of this series of posts must be >taken in that context, and understood in that larger framework. >--mclaren > >------------------------------ > >Topic No. 5 > >Date: Fri, 20 Oct 1995 19:15:18 -0400 (EDT) >From: "Adam B. Silverman" >To: tuning >Subject: Re: Dean Drummond's address >Message-ID: > >I've tracked him down but lost his address. Quicker than writing to Mode >records would be writing to SUNY Purchase, where I think he teaches a >class, and leads a Partch ensemble on the original instruments. > >Adam B. Silverman > > >------------------------------ > >End of TUNING Digest 535 >************************ > > gnut@osn.de (Is there another gnut out there? Let me know) ..racing towards an early grave. Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sat, 21 Oct 1995 09:23 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id AAA13283; Sat, 21 Oct 1995 00:23:10 -0700 Date: Sat, 21 Oct 1995 00:23:10 -0700 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu