source file: mills2.txt Date: Fri, 6 Sep 1996 01:02:58 -0700 Subject: Re: McLaren re: notation From: Jim Flannery Musical habits include scales, modes, theories of counterpoint and harmony, and the study of the timbres, singly and in combination of a limited number of sound-producing mechanisms. In mathematical terms these all concern discrete steps. They resemble walking -- in the case of pitches, on steppingstones twelve in number. This cautious stepping is not characteristic of the possibilities of magnetic tape, which is revealing to us that musical action or existence can occur at any point or along any line or curve or what have you ... Since so many inches of tape equal so many seconds of time, it has become more and more usual that notation is in space rather than in symbols of quarter, half, and sixteenth notes and so on. -- John Cage, 1957 When you agree to work in standard notation, you automatically agree to a huge number of contraints on your composition--you agree that there are a lot of things you simply won't do. Having no interest in making any such agreement, it seems obvious to me that multiple simultaneous time signatures, tempo streams, accelerandi/ decelerandi, multiple simultaneous tunings and hocketing impossible in a real-world performance are the absolute minimum any imaginative composer would settle for.... There is no way to write this piece down using conventional western notation without so distorting the notation by tying notes across barlines and using bizarre accidentals that the structure of the piece would be completely and utterly obscured. Thus, the notation for my compositions is: the original MIDI files. -- post from mclaren, 1996 Ah Brian, welcome to the Cagean conspiracy. We always knew you were really one of us. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- / -- -- -- -- -- / -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- / / It isn't enough for yr heart to break because everybody's / / heart is broken now --Allen Ginsburg 1962 / / Jim Flannery jim@scientia.org / / Newgrange Media newgrange@sfo.com / -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- / -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- / -- -- -- -- -- / Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Fri, 6 Sep 1996 11:36 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA24028; Fri, 6 Sep 1996 11:37:40 +0200 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA23876 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id CAA13491; Fri, 6 Sep 1996 02:37:37 -0700 Date: Fri, 6 Sep 1996 02:37:37 -0700 Message-Id: <2.2.16.19960906023506.445f7a90@pacificnet.net> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu