source file: mills2.txt Date: Fri, 26 Jul 1996 10:18:53 -0700 Subject: Xen music in Quebec From: Kami Rousseau Hi tuners, here is a post from your quebecois correpondant. I have a lot to talk about, so I divided my post into sub-topics (if the typos bother you, please respond via private email): **** a)Stretched JI : For beatless chords in an harmonic context, we have JI. For ease of modulation, there are all the various ET's (octave or non-octave). All this stuff is fine, but I have been feeling incomfortable since I red McLaren's article about psychoacoustics. I learned that musicians prefered stretched octaves and found the 5/4 flat. It was demonstrated that classical musicians *do* use stretched intervals. (Some aspect of perception, by Shackford, is a good example.) These studies make me feel inconfortable. Well, I found a plausible alternative about a week ago. Why not strech the scale? A typical result would be : [1/1 9/8 5/4 4/3 3/2 5/3 15/8 2/1] ** 136/135 (Or you could try 61/60 as the exponent, to make it more obvious) If listen to a "61/60" major chord and compair it to the 4:5:6 chord, you might think that the chord has moved by a microtone. If this happens, either concentrate on the fundamental of the chord or use a smaller exponent. I think of this new model is good, because it is a compromise between JI and the "real world" scientific data. Larry Polansky and Linus Liu postulated something similar. **** b)Reference pitch : First, a stupid question : Where is A4=440Hz on the piano staff? I have seen references to Yamaha using a different octave, can anyone clear this up? I find that 'A' is not a pretty note to start a scale on. Could we use C=512cps? **** c)The Real World : There are not many concerts lately. When will we be able to hear live microtonal music again? (Manuel?) I tried to organize a GT earlier, with not much success (I received a single answer.) GT is short for "get together", it is an occasion to meet the other musicians of your area. Maybe we could have a jam session or something? The physical location seems to be a problem : New England is not densely populated. Maybe Boston would be a better place. (But I am not sure I can afford a ride there.) Anyway, maybe some of you will be interested in a group activity in this area. **** d)Help me! : The xenharmonic culture is non-existant where I live (Sherbrooke, next to Montreal, qc.ca.) I have written a small journal called "Liberte d'accord" (Freedom of tuning) to educate the local musicians. When I handed a free copy to the town's authority in music writing, the answer I got was a 15 minute speech about the supremacy of jazz music. That discouraged me a little bit. How do you make microtonal popular? How do you explain to a normal person the signification of expressions like 1200*log2(x) and 3//13? --Kami http://www.interlinx.qc.ca/~kami/ kami@interlinx.qc.ca Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sat, 27 Jul 1996 01:30 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id QAA07046; Fri, 26 Jul 1996 16:30:06 -0700 Date: Fri, 26 Jul 1996 16:30:06 -0700 Message-Id: <31F94F86.A85@adnc.com> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu