source file: mills2.txt Date: Sat, 15 Mar 1997 07:53:14 -0800 Subject: Re: Natural Phenomena and Microtones From: Johnny Reinhard The exchange between Neil Haverstick and Paul Hahn got me thinking. At first, Paul makes eminent sense about going too far afield looking for intervallic relevance in seemingly unrelated natural occurrence. And I don't share Neil's passion for religious connection to art, as did so many of the Baroque musicians that equated the major triad with the trinity. However, in practice I have had great success in mapping out diverse natural phenomena and employed them successfully in my compositions. Examples include mapping the splittings of cosmic rays (Cosmic Rays String Quartet), golden mean (in Dune for bassoon), and quadratic primes (in Rama for trombone). Using material from other semantic realms seems the very stuff of music material, certainly in the words we use to describe the nearly ineffable qualities of music. Iannis Xenakis recently announced in NYC "Sound and visual things are very close in the mind, but we are not conscious of that," and he's an accomplished architect. For weeks I have been teaching my classes at C.W. Post the importance of the overtone series. I point out repeatedly how the major triad is outlined by 4:5:6, how the "perfect" intervals are only the first 4 of the series, how they exist as definitive consonance, how the fundamental gets the most repeats in the series and is of the highest amplitude, second only to the "dominant" interval of the 3rd harmonic. I explain that temperament surgically alters the precise intervals, and there are prescribed directions for each precise overtone-derived interval. To modulate between keys is expensive in "notes needed" for sure transition and has been culturally accepted at 12-per-octave. 12 may have to do with the shape of our hands, the ability to visually discern "inches" of the octave, to what seems to me the smallest number visible mathematically by the most numbers, proportionately. Ultimately, I come repeatedly to the conclusion that there is no overtone series, per se. Merely the resonance of the ordering of rational numbers from 1, onwards. Any thoughts on how the "overtone series" would alter if on a different celestial object? Johnny Reinhard Director American Festival of Microtonal Music 318 East 70th Street, Suite 5FW New York, New York 10021 USA (212)517-3550/fax (212) 517-5495 reinhard@idt.net p.s. Things are going great for MicroMay '97 (May 16, 21-23) in New is it. John Schneider, Jon Catler, Wim Hoogewerf, guitar heaven. p.s.s. Oh, and then there's my polymicrotonal cello concerto Odysseus played by David Eggar p.s.s.s. And premieres by Wendy Carlos, Percey Grainger, Mordecai Sandberg, Ganesh Anandan, and many others p.s.s.s.s. And Carrillo, Wyschnegradsky, Partch, Gabrieli, Bach more later Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sat, 15 Mar 1997 17:22 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA23819; Sat, 15 Mar 1997 17:22:43 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA23816 Received: from by ella.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) id IAA01433; Sat, 15 Mar 1997 08:20:44 -0800 Date: Sat, 15 Mar 1997 08:20:44 -0800 Message-Id: <332AE064.474E@dnvr.uswest.net> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@ella.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@ella.mills.edu