source file: mills2.txt Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 03:25:15 -0800 Subject: Re: Reply to Matt Nathan From: Matt Nathan PAULE wrote: > Matt Nathan wrote in TUNING digest 951, > > >Punning is purposely using the wrong pitch. > > Let's say you had a 6th chord, I'm sure we'd both be happy to tune it > > 1/1 5/4 3/2 5/3. > > Okay, now add the 9th. Do you add the 9/8 or the 10/9? The former forms a > yucky 40/27 against the 5/3, and the latter forms the same icky interval > against the 3/2. The best JI solution is to put the whole thing in > Pythagorean, but I like meantone even better, so you have a nice major > third. Anyway, the 9th of this chord is an example of how punning can be > necessary without getting into the aesthetic arguments over comma shifts, > scales as the basis of melody, etc. I've played around with exactly this idea in JI intervals before. I haven't tried it in the various meantones. Outside of musical context, just comparing these various pitch sets and say randomly arpeggiating them or something, I find the sound of the pythagorean the most entertaining. It's nice and stretched out sounding (adding one more fifth at B 243/128 starts to "stretch" my tolerence though). To me, this is still not a "problem". Each of these pitch sets is a separate sound with its own identity and possible musical uses, in other words, no punning. To me, it would only be punning if you really wanted one voicing, but your instrument only had another, so you substituted. That would be at least conceptually ugly. Maybe I'm using pun differently than Daniel Wolf or others? The "problem" here may be in trying to transfer what in 12tet is considered a consonant chord--a Major 6 9 chord--into JI and trying to make it serve the same purpose. I don't really consider any of the JI approximations of this as consonant. All of them contain relationships which tug at the ear. If I had a nice 8:10:12, or even 8:9:10:12 going on, I probably wouldn't want to add some version of a dissonant 6th, or if I did, it would be for a musical reason which would automatically suggest which pitch would be correct, for instance, if the A were left sustaining from a previous F chord as we moved to a C "add 9" chord then it would make sense as 5/3 and the dissonance against the 9/8 D would highlight its function and meaning. My question would be, "why try to use a structure which doesn't suggest itself musically?". If it occurs because of the juxtaposition of melodic fragments, then it would both be justified by and serve to highlight those melodies. If we were trying to make the most of the possible combinations of a predetermined pitch set as some sort of "challenge", then I think we would be making the wrong approach. (Sorry; I know you didn't want to get into the subject of whether melody and harmony should determine pitch set or the reverse, but that's what I'm thinking about these days. I reserve the right to change my position at a later date. ) Incidentally, if you use the 9/8 and the 5/3, but add a 4/3 to the chord, like 1/1 9/8 5/4 4/3 3/2 5/3 the thing starts to support its own dissonance in a really nice way since each little otonal 8:9:10 subset resonates on its own even with the 40/27's and stuff going on between them, at least to my ear. Matt Nathan Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Tue, 14 Jan 1997 12:37 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA11848; Tue, 14 Jan 1997 12:40:50 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA11845 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id DAA19664; Tue, 14 Jan 1997 03:40:46 -0800 Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 03:40:46 -0800 Message-Id: <32DB7040.3BF2@ix.netcom.com> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu