source file: mills2.txt Date: Thu, 9 Nov 1995 14:38:39 -0800 Subject: Re: TUNING digest 554 From: "Adam B. Silverman" To answer some questions for clarity and pose a couple more: >From marc sabat: > Wondering if you've heard Tenney's Harmonium #5 for string trio (on > ARRAYMUSIC's CD "Strange City/Ville Etrange", Artifact Records > (http://www.io.org/~artifac/). > > I find this piece has fairly non-static harmonic motion. No, I haven't. I was referring (about static music) to the cornucopia of harmonic-series works of his like "In a Large Open Space", "Spectral Canon", "Saxony", etc. ----- from Johnny Reinhard: > If you define JI in 12 tones per octave and they are based on the the > better resultion of 12 ET than you should not be surprised if a listener > hears very little difference. "Big Gulp"'s tuning is 11-limit: 1/1, 33/16, 9/8, 28/12, 5/4, 21/16, 11/8, 3/2, 99/64, 27/16, 7/4, 15/8. It should be a good scale for piano music which sounds convincing yet distinctly xenharmonic. > Surely a restriction of only 12 keys is still a restriction and this can > be overcome by writing for another instrument (or more) playing with the > restricted keyboard. The additional instruments can play additional > microtones. Wyschnegradsky's *Meditation* has the cello (or in my case > bassoon) playing quartertones and sixthtones against a conventionally > tuned piano extremely effectively. Of course it is nice to write for an ensemble, but when it comes to analyzing a tuning purely, a solo keyboard may be ideal. Adding instruments, especially ones without fixed-pitch, would muddy up the sound and act as a "cover" for hearing the true relationships. I also find that the more action is involved (varied instruments, harmonic motion, etc.), the less xenharmonic a piece sounds. This is taken from comments of non-JI musicians who I have listen to it. A couple of questions: -Who is "Twinings"? I haven't heard his music. -Is the consensus that harmonic "pull" towards another tonality is the same in a just-equivalent of 12TET? Could the dominant triad not be more effective in 12TET because the triadic third is more dissonant (the sharper quality may lead the ear more strongly to the tonic). Thanks for the discussion and keep it coming. Adam B. Silverman Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Fri, 10 Nov 1995 01:44 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id PAA23740; Thu, 9 Nov 1995 15:44:02 -0800 Date: Thu, 9 Nov 1995 15:44:02 -0800 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu