source file: mills3.txt Date: Sat, 11 Oct 1997 17:16:21 +0200 Subject: notation again From: Paul Rapoport Re-entering the notation fray from a slightly different perspective, I will claim the following. Indicating pitches in cents or by their frequencies is inadequate because neither shows relationships among notes. They belong to a simple scale which requires users to interpret them in a non-simple, ratio-deriving way. It makes much more sense to use signs which show the ratios implicitly or explicitly, and thereby the relationships among the notes, which are not present using cents or frequencies. It is arguable that you have to teach musicians more at the outset if you use signs, but the result is an understanding of what they are doing which again is not available to them the other way unless they convert what they see to something more meaningful--in their heads, perhaps, but still requiring an extra step away from an artificial series of numbers which is unrelated to the basic notation they have already learned. To put it another way, cents and frequencies achieve a level of descriptive adequacy, but signs showing tuning in pitches/intervals achieve a higher level, namely explanatory adequacy. I am misusing old terms from syntactic theory slightly but not heinously, I think. Johnny's use of emic and etic I found interesting. The distinction of within and outside a culture is not exactly where these terms came from--they came from the linguistic phonemic and phonetic, which involve more complicated concepts of signification and communication. I won't say any more, as these have developed in linguistic theory to points far beyond where they were when the terms were adopted by (ethno-)musicology. Paul Rapoport SMTPOriginator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu From: Ortgies.Ibo@t-online.de (Ortgies Ibo) Subject: Hõndels (G.F.Handel) extended meantone organ PostedDate: 11-10-97 20:09:59 SendTo: CN=coul1358/OU=AT/O=EZH ReplyTo: tuning@eartha.mills.edu $MessageStorage: 0 $UpdatedBy: CN=notesrv2/OU=Server/O=EZH,CN=coul1358/OU=AT/O=EZH,CN=Manuel op de Coul/OU=AT/O=EZH RouteServers: CN=notesrv2/OU=Server/O=EZH,CN=notesrv1/OU=Server/O=EZH RouteTimes: 11-10-97 20:09:27-11-10-97 20:09:28,11-10-97 20:09:55-11-10-97 20:09:56 DeliveredDate: 11-10-97 20:09:56 Categories: $Revisions: Received: from ns.ezh.nl ([137.174.112.59]) by notesrv2.ezh.nl (Lotus SMTP MTA SMTP v4.6 (462.2 9-3-1997)) with SMTP id C125652D.0063BC35; Sat, 11 Oct 1997 20:09:22 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA13913; Sat, 11 Oct 1997 20:09:59 +0200 Date: Sat, 11 Oct 1997 20:09:59 +0200 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA13950 Received: (qmail 10013 invoked from network); 11 Oct 1997 11:09:50 -0700 Received: from localhost (HELO ella.mills.edu) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 11 Oct 1997 11:09:50 -0700 Message-Id: <343FCF7D.1A5C@T-Online.de> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu