source file: mills2.txt
Date: Fri, 22 Dec 1995 15:00:25 -0800

Subject: Dynamic tuning

From: vincent.kenis@infoboard.be (Vincent Kenis)

Hello

I sent a message a few weeks ago presenting a personal hypothesis about the
scales used in Baka Pygmies polyphony. In short my idea is that the
intervals in the Baka scale constantly adapt to each other according to the
musical context, in such a way that musically pertinent *differential
notes* ("virtual bass lines") are created.

I want to thank the people who took the time to write to me. BTW I was
really amazed by Mr McLaren's post, one week later, describing a new
composition by his friend Larry Polanski which, if I understand well, seems
to put my theory in practice :-)

However the main question in my message remained unanswered :

Don't *all* tuning systems, at least those related to polyphonic musical
traditions, actually consist of tones constantly adjusting against each
other according to the musical context so that they produce musically
pertinent sonic artifacts at a given moment ? Can a scale be anything else
than a rough description, a *static* hence necessarily misleading
approximation of a reality made of interactive, *dynamic* microtonal shifts
?

I have the feeling that, more than the ET, the comparatively recent
tendency to attribute a *prescriptive* and not anymore *descriptive*
function to musical notation is reponsible for denying the existence of
sonic artifacts such as differential notes (why write something that anyway
appears without anybody playing it ?) but also for having people believe
there are actually only two different basic intervals (half and whole tone)
and only 12 different notes in the octaves.

The concept of measure is another example of map taken for the territory. A
few centuries ago orchestra conductors would count not "one, two, three,
four" but "one, one, one, one" ("tactus"). Orchestras got bigger, bigger
orchestras needed more obvious points of reference not to drift
rythmically, so these unities became grouped by 3, 4 etc. This
unequivoquial division of time leaded to the flagrant rythmic
underdevelopment of western music compared to west african music for
example. And so a convention adopted for practical rather than musical
reasons had a durable influence on the way we understand music. No ?

I would appreciate very much any comments about my simplistic views from
you honorable crowd of theorists, scholars, mathematicians whose
literature, I confess, often flies way above my self-taught musician's
head.


Vincent Kenis

     @< @
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