source file: mills2.txt Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 09:59:58 -0800 Subject: To Gary, Diatonic Analysis Insufficient From: Matt Nathan > From: Gary Morrison > > > > > ...tone should be considered a "wandered" tonic, or the major > > > > third of the V of ii (near C# in C) should be considered a > > > > "wandered" tonic. " > > > Frankly I wouldn't buy that. If the harmony makes clear > > > that you're playing a vi chord, then its third is the tonic. > > > That's built into the definition of diatonic triads. > > Sure, but definitions are not music. I say let the > > music make the definitions, not the reverse. ... > > If a diatonic analysis is crippled enough to confuse 81/80 > > with 1/1, then it doesn't fall within the realm of usefulness. > > Well, then I recommend you avoid diatonic-triad nomenclature > and concepts (e.g., "V", "ii", or "vi") if you're not interested > in diatonic harmony! True, I know, but I was reponding to the topic, also it's hard to criticise something without saying its name. Note that in my examples I used ratio notation. > I'm certainly not suggesting by any means that that > is the only valid or useful mindset from which to write > music. But it's far from useless just > because it doesn't comprehend the idea of a comma. It's useless for describing music which doesn't stick to 7 pitches. I'm also trying to argue that much of what is called diatonic music actually makes use of progressions which imply more than 7 pitches, and if played on instruments which are pitch-adjustable, including voice, the progressions can naturally lead the ear of the performer to play these pitches. In these cases, diatonic notation and thinking is worse than useless; (IMO) it's harmful, because it gives a truncated explanation of musical reality. > The ideas of traditional harmony has value applied to certain > microtonal systems - as much or as little value as it has in > 12TET. Traditional theory is based upon triadic harmony, but > its most basic emphasis is functional harmony: > * Leading tones want to go up, > * Sevenths want to go down, > * Dominant seventh chords want to resolve to tonic chords, etc. I can agree heartily with a melodic-tendancy basis for functional harmony, but there is still the sense of tonality which is like the reference map that functional harmony plays over. When you move into "romantic" chromaticism as an extension of diatonic thought with added deceptive resolutions, secondary dominants, "distant" modulations, etc. it becomes even more important to consider the real harmonic areas which these voice leading tendancies are leading you into. I suggest that 12-tone chromatic tonal music implies more than 12 pitches and that a chromatic analysis is just as incorrect and harmful (by not telling the whole truth) as a diatonic analysis is for much of supposedly diatonic music. > Functional harmony is also the basis behind wandering tonics: > If you can convince an audience that some pitch is the leading > tone, and you resolve it upward by half-step, then they'll > believe that the pitch you land on is the tonic, even if it's > not the tonic you started on. Taken out of the framework of > functional harmony, and of tonality, the idea of wandering > tonics is no longer meaningful. Let me recount one of my formative microtonal experiences: the first 81/80 I heard. In the mid 70's, then-schoolmate Kraig Grady introduced me to Erv Wilson and Erv played for me the following sequence, 1/1 5/4 5/3 10/9 40/27 160/81, then he paused, and followed it with 2/1. Believe me, when my ear heard the real tonic it could tell THAT was home, no matter that my diatonic-solfege-trained brain had analyzed "do mi la re so do". The fact that the final melodic 81/80 movement was so small and yet so clearly correct convinced me by-experience of the reality of microtonal hearing. What I'm trying to say is that even though you may write music which you think leads your audience to a "wandered tonic", if you follow it with the real tonic, they will recognize it. This makes me think it better to call the supposed "wandered tonic" by another name, to reflect the ear's ability to differentiate, rather than reflecting the false assumption at the base of a diatonic analysis. > So it's certainly not unreasonable to think that the tonic > could wander down to the original pitch of the leading tone, > for example. But if it does, it's still functionally the > tonic, because that's how our ears will perceive it. Maybe that example should be called a modulation rather than a wandered tonic, or maybe it's all a matter of who's listening. All I can really go by is my own ear. Matt Nathan Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Mon, 24 Feb 1997 19:35 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA18000; Mon, 24 Feb 1997 19:35:02 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA18004 Received: from by ella.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) id KAA14568; Mon, 24 Feb 1997 10:33:05 -0800 Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 10:33:05 -0800 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@ella.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@ella.mills.edu