source file: mills2.txt Date: Mon, 23 Dec 1996 13:02:07 -0800 Subject: Re: Systematizing Tuning Again From: Matt Nathan Gary Morrison wrote: > I suspect that Matt Nathan and I are saying the same thing in two > different ways. Matt is concentrating in particular on tuning systems that > have an indefinite number of pitches, like JI or meantone tunings. Actually, I'm not concentrating on any particular systems. I'm suggesting that it's a simpler organizing principle to consider the audio spectrum as the pitch resource rather than any individual pitch system which must then be forced into all duties including analytic. The latter is something that bugs me about Charles Lucy's claims for his (adopted) system, which I told him in conversations when I met him. He says the Lucy system can be used to approximate other scales of the world. My question is: Why bother; why not just use the scale you're trying to approximate? Tuning systems are guides into the infinite resource, they are not that resource. They provide a way of drawing individual choices from the daunting infinity of possibilites; a way to get started. I'm interested in tuning systems because each suggests a way of hearing, and I enjoy hearing in different ways. I am however just as interested in drawing pitches from the infinite resource using my ear and inspiration, and analyzing it later if need be. Beauty often has an underlying mathematical structure, and mathematical structure often appears beautiful, as Joseph Schillinger pointed out, which probably says something about the construction of mind. While it's entirely valid to construct a pitch set using some formal process and then see what music we can make out of it, we shouldn't forget that pitched music is neither limited to nor necessarily described by that particular formal process. > But if we're not saying the same thing, then let me suggest that the > analogy I posed between particle physics and tunings is based on a > similarity between laws of harmony and counterpoint, and the laws of > physics. Picking pitches chaotically makes it more difficult to create a > sensation of inevitability and thus logical resolution in a cadence. Who said anything about picking pitches chaotically (although that sounds really interesting, see below)? I had a feeling responding to an analogy might have been a bad idea. Your analogy means something specific to you which it didn't suggest to me, and misunderstanding ensued. Oh well. Speaking of chaos, I have found a few places on the web where you can download and listen to fractal sounds, including this site which uses the pixels values from a sequential scan of a Mandelbrot rendering to choose from a (not choatically derived) pitch set (a 6-note octave-repeating scale in 12tet: 0 2 4 7 9 11, or x.x.x..x.x.x, or a major scale without the 4th degree). I'd be interested to hear what it would sound like with a chaotically derived pitch set. http://www.vanderbilt.edu/VUCC/Misc/Art1/Sonify/Mandi.html Here's a good starting place for finding fractal music on the web: http://www-ks.rus.uni-stuttgart.de/people/schulz/fmusic/ Matt Nathan Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Mon, 23 Dec 1996 23:22 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA01622; Mon, 23 Dec 1996 23:24:41 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA01626 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id OAA28412; Mon, 23 Dec 1996 14:24:38 -0800 Date: Mon, 23 Dec 1996 14:24:38 -0800 Message-Id: <32BF0698.7A5C@ix.netcom.com> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu