source file: mills2.txt Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 14:01:32 -0800 Subject: notation From: Paul Rapoport If I read a notation that says 969 for this note and 840 for that, unless I know the theory and have memorized arbitrary numbers, these two mean rather little. But if I have a sign for the 7th harmonic and another for the 13th, then I know the relationships and can begin to hear and produce the intervals. On the other hand, I have produced music in which there is a variety of signs going up and down, and performers don't generally have a clue where the note is. Cents values would tell them. These two problems are different sides of the issue, but I will vote for the first every time. The reason is that although cents notations provide descriptive adequacy, only something like the other one provides explanatory adequacy. In other words, performers can learn cents notation, but surely to provide the right notes they need to hear (and in that sense understand) the interval structures. The structures provide the explanation, the ability to generalize and therefore learn in the classical sense. The cents values by themselves are a series of referents without relation, rather like letters of an alphabet without words, or perhaps words without syntax/semantics. None of this means that performers can't learn from cents, but they must go beyond the rather simple linear-looking (actually logarithmic) relationships they express. Johnny? Your turn. Maybe we're not even talking about the same thing. Paul Rapoport Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Fri, 1 Nov 1996 23:14 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA22206; Fri, 1 Nov 1996 23:15:18 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA22371 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id OAA15690; Fri, 1 Nov 1996 14:15:14 -0800 Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 14:15:14 -0800 Message-Id: <14536701.6302335@ycrdi.com> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu