source file: mills2.txt
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1996 00:01:25 -0700

Subject: 7HS Tuning Comments

From: Gary Morrison <71670.2576@compuserve.com>

I suggested that a friend at work, Bill Meadows, who does a lot of multimedia
try out tuning in 7-tone-per-octave octave-repeating harmonic-series-based
tuning.  The ratios within each octave for this tuning are 7:7, 8:7, 9:7, 10:7,
11:7, 12:7, 13:7, and 14:7, obvious 7:7 being the unison and 14:7 being the
octave.  

   This is a tuning I've played with before, and I thought that Bill would very
good at using it in the way that I concluded would be best, after I used it in a
way I concluded to be less than ideal.  

   Bill tuned it up on his Kurzweil K2500 last night and found it rather
intimidating.  He likes to use the phrase "out of tune" because he knows that
that's inadequate to characterize a tuning except at a very high level.  

   Anyway, here are some suggestions I made to him that perhaps some of you
might want to consider playing with as well:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Yesterday afternoon I wanted to expound further on how to use that 7-step
octave-repeating harmonic-series-based tuning.  You said that you weren't sure
how to use it, noting semijokingly that it sounded "pretty out-of-tune".  

   My responses to that are:
1.  Hey, no pain no gain!  
2.  Is that really any more disconcerting than the microtonal scale-step size
    phenomenon you like to tantalyze your audience with?  I'm refering to how 
    you described 19 to Dave E. and me ... oh, probably 9 months back:  
    Tantalyzingly delaying an expected melodic resolution by approaching it in 
    small microtonal steps.  Is the out-of-tune nature of this tuning really
    all that much more disconcerting?  And whether it is or not, is that a 
    problem?  
3.  One thing you're really good at, and I'm not (yet) is music involving 
    long, sustained tones with faster stuff, often repeated figures, dancing 
    on top of the sustained chords.  This tuning, I suspect, is well-suited to 
    that sort of thing:
  a.  You can build large chords will little chance of a clash in the minor-
      second/major seventh sense of the word, because the pitch relationships
      are very simple.  
  b.  There exists a semi-standard mixing engineer/artist's analogy of the
      sounds they mix to a three-dimensional space:  left/right stereo gives
      you the left-right dimension with high- vs. low-pitch suggests top-
      bottom and quiet- vs. loud-volume suggests far and close.   Combine
      that with the fact that each tone of the octave has a distinct color to 
      it, and then play a musical, 3D version of ... Pollock was it?  - the 
      fellow who first painted with squirt-guns).  
4.  What it's probably not good for is what I used it for on that tape I gave 
    you early on, with the last three movements of a Symphonietta in that 
    tuning.  In that case I tried to build classical structures - traditional
    instrumentation, forms, melodies - with nontraditional harmony.  Well, I
    concluded that what I did in that regard went reasonably well, but that 
    that style is not what this tuning is built for.  
5.  Since when have you been concerned with audiences thinking your music 
    weird?!  


Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl
           with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Thu, 11 Jul 1996 15:39 +0100
Received: from  by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI)
	for <coul@ezh.nl> id GAA19542; Thu, 11 Jul 1996 06:39:20 -0700
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1996 06:39:20 -0700
Message-Id: <009A52C72F5A7420.82A7@ezh.nl>
Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu
Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu