source file: mills2.txt
Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 10:41:44 -0800

Subject: RE: TUNING digest 952

From: PAULE <ACADIAN/ACADIAN/PAULE%Acadian@mcimail.com>

Matt Nathan wrote,

>I think rather the idea of a "scale" as a
>limiter
>of pitch choices is the problem.

It's a feature, not a bug.
(I hate that expression!)
Harmony is a recent development in music; a fixed set of pitches has proved 
an extremely valuable basis for organizing compositions and improvisations 
for much longer. You can keep a set of say, four pitches, plus octave and 
some fifth transpositions thereof, in your mind, and notice any new pitches 
as a "shift" in the music -- this is one reason modulation is so effective 
in delineating compositional structure.

>I personally like the sound of
>a
>slight pitch adjustment in an inner voice corresponding with a change in
>harmonic
>context. I find it almost a spiritual affirmation as the subtle correction 
is
>made; it sounds so right.

It makes me queasy. Sometimes a syntonic comma will pass by unnoticed, but a 
septimal comma -- I'm running for the toilet.

However, I have written a (mostly) triadic piece where successive shifts of 
chromatic semitones, 36/35s, 49/48s, and a limma, adding up to a perfect 
fourth, have a certain melodic integrity, but only in 22-tet because all 
these intervals are represented by 55 cents! Any effect, no matter how 
unpleasant in isolation, can become beautiful if it becomes a basic, 
repeating structural element. Many in the avant-garde have noticed this.


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