source file: mills3.txt Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 06:00:26 +0200 Subject: Re: stray thoughts From: Johnny Reinhard Just some stray thoughts: is a "microtone" an interval at all? Isn't it mainly thought of as a pitch of a frequency that is snug up against a more tradionally ensconsed scaffold member, one of the 12 steps to heaven? If I played Mary Had A Little Lamb a quartertone sharp from convention's A=440, then each and every tone I advanced would be a microtone. By virtue of the tortured fingerings in sometimes embarrassing postures, these lambs were microtones. Why is it no one listening to my Mary... rendition on the bassoon would notice and remain convinced that there were absolutely no "microtones" at play (the rare perfect pitchers aside). A tone can be an interval of major and minor size, of numerous variations, actually. It is also the blend of harmonicities and inharmonicities of a plethora of amplitudes which all make up the klangfarben of vivid color in musical tone. Could a microtone be an interval that bridges to another microtone, or not? Must its pedigree be the remainder of real time arithmetical calculations (let's see, this note is only so far from the closest standard so since its smaller than a semitone in this case, as in any other similarly, I'll say it's a "microtone" interval in the sense that it's practically beneath notice melodically. Bela Bartok rapped the microtone interval in one of his published Harvard lectures saying that the semitone was an awful enough dissonance that it wasn't necessary to push it down further to a quartertone interval which always wants to rise back up. Now, a quartertone is a microtone interval. Which is more maleable, I wonder. Depends I guess... "Microtonal" is the personal sensibility one achieves when making the acquaintence of a progressive number of powerful sound angles...skipping stones on the sound continuum one moment, placing stones to cross a river in the next, knocking on familiar doors all along the way. "Microtonality" is the realm which houses the encylopedia of "microtonalisms" and "microtuning" in general. "Micro" expands the way a microphone expands the voice, the way the microscope expands the molecular, the way the microcomputer expands our minds. 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 http://www.echonyc.com/~jhhl/AFMM SMTPOriginator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu From: "Andrew L. Kaye" Subject: Music Notation Software & Synth query PostedDate: 16-10-97 15:10:13 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: 16-10-97 15:09:45-16-10-97 15:09:46,16-10-97 14:10:30-16-10-97 14:10:30 DeliveredDate: 16-10-97 14:10:30 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 C1256532.00484BA1; Thu, 16 Oct 1997 15:09:39 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA18659; Thu, 16 Oct 1997 15:10:13 +0200 Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 15:10:13 +0200 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA18639 Received: (qmail 27346 invoked from network); 16 Oct 1997 06:09:58 -0700 Received: from localhost (HELO ella.mills.edu) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 16 Oct 1997 06:09:58 -0700 Message-Id: <344611F4.1EC48801@fast.net> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu