source file: mills2.txt Date: Sun, 10 Nov 1996 11:41:55 -0800 Subject: New Post from Brian From: John Chalmers From: mclaren Subject: miscellany -- Paul Erlich's problems with his VFX-SD seem vaguely similar to glitches in my VFX before it was returned to the factory for a ROM upgrade. The initial ROMs on the early VFXs had some bugs in the INTERPOLATE function: prior to the ROM upgrade, my VFX produced some extremely bizarre scales during INTERPOLATE and EXTRAPOLATE. Perhaps a ROM upgrade? Steve Curtin can tell you how to find out the ROM version--the procedure involves holding down a number of buttons at once, can't recall which ones. Because the VFX has a 1.5625 cent resolution, but shows intervals in cents, some equal temperaments won't exhibit accumulated roundoff error at the octave after INTERPOLATE (i.e., the ETs which divide nearly evenly into 768) while others will. As Steve Curtin points out, none of these minor bugs are important. At worst, you can simply enter the octave scale step by step into the synth and then press EXTRAPOLATE. The VFX sounds to these old ears like one of the most sonically luxuriant synthesizers available. The original VFX and the VFX-SD sound even more impressive to me than the later-generation TS-10/12. The VFX is one of the great classic synths--in a class with the Arp 2600, the Moog 90x modular, the Prophet 5, the Oberheim 4-voice, the DX-7, the Synergy II+. Steve Curtin is right on the money when he says that Ensoniq makes the best-sounding fully retunable wavetable synths. Nothing else compares with the VFX/TS-10 series. And not only do these Ensoniq synths sound great, they've got *multiple tuning tables.* This is A HUGE ADVANTAGE. JI composers/performers, take note: with the TS-10's 16 different tuning tables, you can do a *lot* of just intonation modulation with no trouble at all. -- In a post nasty, brutish and short, a certain forum subscriber claimed for the Nth time that since Bang On A Can now plays at Lincoln Center, this somehow invalidates my criticism of the Alice Tully Hall/Lincoln Center/Juilliard Conservatory 12-TET mindset. Hello? Was there a visit from the Brain Fairy? Did someone find a quarter under hi/r pillow and daylight shining through both ears? In fact Bang On A Can moved to Lincoln Center *very* recently, *despite* the vociferous protests of the Mostly Mozart fans (who have found their programs of moldy mediocre music suddenly curtailed). For most of its life, the Bang On A Can festival took place in grotty little clubs and dingy basements. The Bang On A Can concerts *only* moved to Lincoln Center because of the overwhelming demand by the hoi polloi who couldn't get into the SRO concerts in grungy closet-sized "art galleries" & basement "performance spaces." (Q: What do you call a bathroom in New York? A: Performance art space.) Given the hostility of the Lincoln Center establishment, Bang On A Can will likely vanish from Alice Tully Hall any day now. Naturally this does not *in any way* invalidate my criticism of the Alice Tully Hall/Lincoln Center/ Juilliard Conservatory 12-TET mindset. The specimen of warped logic according to which my posts on this subject were criticized is a classic case of the reductive fallacy, equivalent to saying that because a few Jews escaped Hitler's gas chambers, there was no Holocaust. Logic 101, anyone? "All rocks are living organisms; All animals are rocks; Therefore...all animals are living organisms!" Marvellous! Merely because one lone group which *sometimes* plays microtonal music was forced into Lincoln Center by popular demand does *not* mean that Juilliard Conservatory has stopped brainwashing its students into playing 12, always 12, only 12, forever 12. Merely because a few microtonalists sneak in the back door of Alice Tully Hall does *not* mean that the directors and concert managers and 99.99999+ of the musical programs in Alice Tully Hall are no longer locked rigidly into 12, always 12, only 12, forever 12. Merely because three of Harry Partch's instruments appeared once in one (count it, 1) composition by Julia Wolfe at Lincoln Center does *not* mean that all of the prestigious uptown music venues in New York no longer freeze out microtonalists and no longer concentrate with unholy fervor on music in 12, always 12, only 12, forever 12. Ye gods. Is that what passes for reasoning in college nowadays? I thought I'd heard it all when Brooke Shields chirped "Smoking can kill you, and if you're killed you've lost the most important part of your life," but the twisted logic behind this kind of criticism is a new low. A single black person escapes lynching, therefore there's no oppression of blacks in the deep South...? A handful of microtonalists sneak into Lincoln Center, therefore there's no prejudice against and systematic refusal to program non-12 music throughout New York symphony halls...? For sheer warped twists of bizarre illogic, this kind of wacky reasoning takes first prize. As Molly Ivins has pointed out, instead of making English the official language throughout the U.S., we ought to make sanity the official method of reasoning. A word to the wise, folks--the book "Clear Thinking" was written by Hyman Ruchlis and published by Prometheus Press in 1990. Do us all a favor. Pick up a copy. -- In a similar vein, various people claim my critique of the12-TET academic/symphonic/conservatory mindset constitutes some sort of "conspiracy theory" on my part. A forum subscriber who need not be named has for more than a year persistently and flagrantly made this constant error in reasoning. And so (since no one else seems to want to stand up for clear thinking) as usual it's up to me to expose the obvious fallacy. There are two logical errors here. The first is the conclusion that because a pervasive and profoundly damaging mindset exists throughout our culture, therefore some sort of "conspiracy" exists. The latter does not necessarily follow from the former. No "conspiracy" is required for a damaging and ruthless and universally shared mindset to exist & flourish & oppress. Think back a moment to the early 60s, when all those repulsive fat Southern sheriffs waddled up to Northern news reporters while black people were being lynched, shot, hosed, clubbed and savaged with dogs for demanding equal rights under the constitution. The fat white Southern sheriff would invariably tip back his hat, stare at the reporter, and drawl, "What are you, boyyyyy? Y'all some kinda CONSPIRACY THEORIST? Ain't no CONSPIRACY down here, boyyyy. We all just good ole folks down heahhhh." No evidence suggests that all southerners met in weekly groups and asked eached other "Hey, how can we oppress them niggers this week?" A conspiracy was *unnecessary*... Because white people in the deep south had a *mindset* according to which black people were inferior, dangerous, smelly, vicious, and subhuman. And so the net effect was the same as though there had been a conspiracy. The net effect was that black people were systematically oppressed by white Southerners from 1865 until 1965. This is the second logical error: confusing cause with effect. Simply because a presumed cause is not present does not invalidate the existence of an observed effect. All it means is that the presumed cause was wrongly hypothesized. It does not conjure out of existence the observable and clearly obvious effect. Thus, simply because there is no "conspiracy" among symphony directors and college music teachers and conservatory teachers does *NOT* mean that microtonalists aren't systematically marginalized, oppressed, denied recognition and refused performance venues. Rather, this merely means that microtonalists suffer from systematic prejudice and oppression because of a pervasive mindset, rather than some sort of conspiracy. And so what? C'mon, people...elementary logic here. This isn't quantum mechanics. You can reason it out. Does it matter AT ALL whether microtonalists are being marginalized and denied recognition because of a conspiracy, or because of a mindset, or for some other exotic reason? Who cares *why* it's happening? The point is, IT'S HAPPENING. The fact exists that microtonalists are systematically refused space in music textbooks, systematically refused time at concerts, systematically refused performance opportunities, systematically refused, denied, prevented, shut out, marginalized, excluded, locked out, silenced. Get a clue. The *result* is what matters. Not the presumptive cause. Ai caramba. Don't they teach elementary logic in the universities any more...? The goal of higher education is supposed to be to train people how to *think.* In that case, we might as well close all the universities tomorrow and turn 'em into hot dog stands. Because the goal is *nowhere* in sight. -- Some time back I stated that "In the era of wooden machines (viz., the piano, the harpsichord) it would have been impossibly difficult & expensive to build a 5-octave instrument with 31 equal tones to the octave. If such an instrument could have been built, its keys would have been too narrow to be fingered; and the instrument itself would have been too mechanically complex and too fragile to survive an actual performance." -- mclaren Manuel Op de Coul responded: "No no. More expensive yes, impossible to build not and well playable. See my post of 13 aug. 1994..." Manuel goes on to describe a harpsichord with 6 manuals of 37 keys tuned in 31-TET and built in 1796, for which Mozart wrote some little pieces. While this is fascinating, the wretched lack of pictures on the Internet (a crude stone-age communcations medium *far* more low-tech than the letter, which at least allows xeroxes of photographs to be included) puts me at a loss here. Manuel, how far are the key rows situated from one another vertically? Could, for instance, Beethoven's Hammerklavier sonata be performed on it? How about highly chromatic polyphonic passages? Could you play Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue on this 1796 31-TET contraption? How easily can 31-TET chromatic passages be performed? Or is this keyboard you mentioned useful only for playing 12-out-of 31-TET? My examination of the pre-Maudslay-lathe technology of the 1700s tells me that exotic non-12 harpsichords/pianos/clavichords with lots of keys had to be either [A] so complex that their wooden key-actions wouldn't work for long without repair, or [B] due to mechanical considerations, the keys were so awkwardly arranged as to either prevent truly chromatic microtonal passages, or performance of standard 12-TET works. Any details you could give in this regard, Manuel, would be most interesting. (I mention Maudslay because of course his lathe, invented in the 1840s, was the start of the modern machine tool revolution and thus of the modern symphony orchestra, whose instruments cannot be tuned accurately sans precision machine tools. Since you're all scholars, you have of course never heard of Henry Maudslay, nor has anyone mentioned or noticed his importance to the growth of the modern symphony orchestra.) -- The redoubtable Paul Erlich posted in digest 755: "There is indeed a tonality diamond on p. 22 of `The Musician's Arithmetic.' It gives cents values for all 16 seven-limit intervals, transposed to within one octave. Of course, four of these intervals are 0 cents. So Partch most likely did get the idea from Meyer, but he rotated it 90 degrees counterclockwise." -- Paul Erlich Erlich is one of the few members of this tuning forum to actually show some gumption and study some references. Most of you prefer to sit around with your fingers stuck in your noses, posting trivial nitpicks on this or that item of minutia--rather than getting the "Exposition" did not admit undertones as the source of intervals, and therefore it implies that earlier drafts of the "Exposition" did not contain the Tonality Diamond. Because of the timing of the Meyer and Cowell books, either one could have influenced Partch in his discovery of the Tonality Diamond--or both. The plot thickens because (as John Chalmers pointed out) the Meyer text was published as a part of a special series not available in most libraries. Did Partch have access to a library in which the Meyer text was available? We don't know. It seems impossible to determine which of the two texts had most influence on Partch. It does seem clear, given Partch's redaction of his typewritten text of 1933, that the idea of the Tonality Diamond was already present in the back of his mind. Thus both the Meyer and Cowell books likely did not give him the idea directly, but rather served as midwives to an inspiration already present and waiting to be born. (My guess is that Partch read both books prior to 1931, but this is only a guess.) This is one among a number of new data presented in an article titled "The Evolution of Harry Partch's Tuning System." Naturally, it will when published be treated with the utmost contempt and disdain, and thus I look forward to yet another important article never being cited, never being mentioned, never being noticed. Gosh. What a surprise. Folks, it's easy to tell who the significant composers and theorists are in any generation-- they're the ones who are *never mentioned in the presitigious journals*, *never cited in the music theory literature*, *never heard*, *never acknowledged.* Thus, the one composer most completely rendered an Orwellian unperson by the musical establishment of the 1950s-1970s (Harry Partch) is accurately described by Kyle Gann in his latest Village Voice article as "the central American composer" of the last half of the 20th century. Naturally! Typically! Inevitably! Is there a limit to human stupidity? Is there some boundary to human obtuseness? Is not the most convincing proof of the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe the fact that none of it has tried to contact us? -- Incidentally, those of you curious about the number of pitches of an n by n Tonality Diamond need wonder no longer. The number of pitches is n^2 - n. Thus, the 6 x 6 Tonality Diamond has 36 - 6 = 29 essential utonal/otonal pitches. Notice that this is *not* the same as giving the answer to the question: "How many pitches are there in an n-limit Tonality Diamond?" This latter question cannot be computed in closed form because specifying the limit of the Diamond does not necessarily specify the number of n by n rows/columns of the Diamond. For example, a 17-limit Tonality Diamond could be built from the generator row 3 5 7 11 13 1 7 and the generator column /3 /5 /7 /11 /13 /17. Buboth utonalities and otonalities. --mclaren Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sun, 10 Nov 1996 21:17 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA02461; Sun, 10 Nov 1996 21:18:08 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA03401 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id MAA01065; Sun, 10 Nov 1996 12:18:05 -0800 Date: Sun, 10 Nov 1996 12:18:05 -0800 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu