source file: mills2.txt Date: Sat, 15 Mar 1997 13:53:16 -0800 Subject: Re: Natural Phenomena and Microtones From: Gary Morrison I think that Johnny R's most recent series of thoughts regarding (partly) choosing pitch relationships giided by scientific principles, natural phenomena, or mysticism, had some very valuable thinking behind it. Thanks Johnny! I think that microtonal exporation can learn a lot, as music over time has, from the history and methods of scientific exploration. Scientific exploration has shown clearly two very bad attitudes: 1. Saying that something apparently unrelated to the topic of interest cannot possibly have any bearing on that topic. (I realize that I recently - well, up to a point anyway - reacted this way to somebody's proposal.) 2. Asserting that something apparently unrelated to the topic of interest really is related based upon no clearly-observable reason. So let's suppose, for example, that somebody builds a tuning system based upon the orbital periods of the moons of Jupiter. The history of science has showed us clearly that there are two very bad ways to approach this idea: The first is to closed-mindedly reject the idea that the orbital periods of the moons of Jupiter could possibly have any meaning to our ears, and refuse to even listen to music generated in that manner. A far greater mistake is to listen to it with a predisposition against it. The second big mistake is to construct such a tuning, play with it for a moment, and say, "yeah! Wow! That really DOES sound good" and claim a major musical discovery. A major musical discovery must be thrown open to such questions as these: 1. Does a fair number of others also react positively to it, or is it just you? 2. How confident are you that the tuning is what they're reacting to, rather than the rhythms you happened to choose for that particular composition, for example? 3. All in all, do you and others react less positively, or at least differently, to fairly similar music built upon a different tuning? 4. Have you composed enough music in this tuning, and in enough variety of styles, orchestration, texture, and so forth, to be confident that you, much less your audience, REALLY understand this tuning? 5. If you can't explain any sort of reason, based upon well-known principles, to believe that a tuning SHOULD sound great, can you at least describe what it is about how the tuning touches you that makes it seem so meaningful? Can you for example, say something like, "wow, everytime I hear that interval, it just blows me away", or are you merely reduced to aspecific nebulocities like, "it just sounds so right!" 6. Does it seem to lose whatever quality it seems to have when you slightly detune its pitches from the orbits of the Jovian moons? Do many others feel a similar sense of loss regardless of factors like, for example, the order in which you present the two examples? 7. Again, regarding original and slightly-detuned versions of the same composition, using some random means of playing one or the other, can or others you consistently tell one from the other? 8. Ask yourself truthfully (and more importantly answer yourself truthfully!) what are the chances that you're reacting positively to it simply because you have something invested - even financially - in it? Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sat, 15 Mar 1997 23:33 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA25521; Sat, 15 Mar 1997 23:33:19 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA25515 Received: from by ella.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) id OAA13836; Sat, 15 Mar 1997 14:31:34 -0800 Date: Sat, 15 Mar 1997 14:31:34 -0800 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@ella.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@ella.mills.edu