source file: mills2.txt Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1996 23:30:51 -0800 Subject: Re: Harrison Lucy From: Daniel Wolf <106232.3266@compuserve.com> David Doty wrote: This is none other than the tuning that Charles Lucy has attached his name to and has been trying to sell as a musical panacea for the past several years. Comment: Erv Wilson has pointed out that the reason tunings like these (Harrison, Lucy) are so pleasant despite the poor fifths is that the triads produce first order difference tones that are scale members. In doing so, I think Wilson has provided the generalization for which the Harrison scale is one possible example. Wilson has also generated some pelog- and slendro-type scales based upon series of difference tones (as it is easier to imagine a metallophone being tuned by difference tones of fundamentals than by beats between irregular spectra, this is at least a plausible idea for Indonesian tunings). >From what I have read, Lucy's own descriptions of ''his scale'' are deficient in many points, both mathematical and musical. His insistance that his scale has something to do with _pi_ is almost as perplexing as his failure to recognize that it has a lot to do with _phi_, and his inability to give a significant musical justification - outside of a footnote in Erv Wilson's direction - is curious. I think that David Doty's review in _1/1_ is a completely reasonable attempt to read Lucy. Further, there is the whole packaging as a copywritten (or is it even patented?) ''system'' with expensive documentation and seminars and products that gives the whole Lucy Industry a cult-corporate image unusual in the tuning community. I have always assumed that tunings were raw material and were in the public domain (while actual compositions and instrument designs were respectively copyright- or patentable); I do realize that sampling has created some legal changes in terms of what constitutes public domain material, but has the situation for tunings been changed as well? I think that a reasonable ethic for the tuning community would be to reject ownership of tunings as intellectual property except as aspects of musical scores or of instrumental designs (i.e. keyboards), while at the same time attempting to be as honorable as possible with regards to attributing origins of tunings used in compositions or instrumental designs. For example, it should be reasonable to expect Karlheinz Stockhausen to attribute the tuning of _Sternklang_ to Harry Partch, although Partch himself never sought a copyright on any version of the Diamond tuning. Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Mon, 16 Dec 1996 11:01 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA05347; Mon, 16 Dec 1996 11:03:20 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA05291 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id CAA17231; Mon, 16 Dec 1996 02:03:17 -0800 Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 02:03:17 -0800 Message-Id: <199612160501_MC1-D22-1AD6@compuserve.com> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu