source file: mills3.txt Date: Sat, 13 Dec 1997 21:52:27 +0100 Subject: Liminatory Fulminations From: Gregg Gibson In response to my statement that the melodic limen of music is 55-60 cents, and that universally for the human species in general (not for aliens of course) several persons have, with varying degrees of impotent outrage, asserted that people - or at least the musical elite - can be trained to make essential melodic distinctions as fine as 10-20 cents. I do not believe this for a moment. Were this so, then even the simplest of our melodies would disintegrate into unrecognizable, essentially different melodies every time a different singer rendered them. This does happen if the singers are extremely unskilful, or simply bored with the old melody, but never as a matter of course. For even skilled singers occasionally stray from whatever tuning be taken as standard, by at least a comma. Note in passing that this means the melodic limen - the zone within which intervals retain a unique melodic character - would be more than double a comma, for if a singer strays by so much as half the melodic limen, he enters the melodic orbit, as it were, of the adjacent degree of the temperament being used. But let us grant, for the sake of argument, that we _could_ train singers to reliably and continually make such hyperfine distinctions as 10-20-30-40 cents ? far beyond anything known to the Arabs or Indians (known in practice not in theory) ? what would be the result? Well, singers that actually do make such distinctions - though quite at random - are not uncommon. In Western musical cultures they are said to be 'tone-deaf', 'incapable of carrying a tune' etc. A rock or opera singer so afflicted would be booed and hissed off stage within about 30 seconds. It occurs to me that there might seem to be a logical inconsistency between saying that listeners do not perceive a melody to be changed until at least one of its notes has been changed by at least 55-60 cents, and then observing that listeners notice even smaller variations and dislike them. But in fact there is no inconsistency; the human mind seems to desire that melody consist of definite pitch classes, about which there should be no doubt. If more than a very few notes of a melody betray these expectations by threatening to careen into the adjacent pitch class, the effect is heard as a mistuned interval. There is an immense difference between hearing a variation in pitch, and hearing a variation in pitch class and therefore in melody. I do not wish to refer here to what non-Western musical cultures label as 'non-music' or 'without tune' for despite my acquaintance with certain of these cultures I certainly do not consider myself qualified to pass judgement thereon, and I doubt if any Westerner is. But within the Western musical culture, which no less in popular than in academic music, is the dominant musical force of our time, the performer trained to deliberately and continually make such 10-20-30-40 cent distinctions - if this is possible, which I do not believe - would be hilariously laughed at by the people. I doubt if even the cowed audiences of our concert halls would refrain from giggling. Perhaps some would be delighted to have another reason to consider the populace morons, and themselves, great artists (unappreciated of course.) But a musical culture which deliberately courts popular disdain in so very aggressive a manner as deliberately singing like the tone-deaf is... how to put it politely? gravely aberrant. A more philosophical person might inquire: _why_ does the West, at least, classify some people as 'unable to carry a tune'? Because in the West at least - and this includes rock music no less than older music - listeners expect most notes at any rate to possess a definite, memorable pitch. Music in all the major musical cultures definitely consists of more-or-less fixed pitches, not of pitches free to wander with the same kind of freedom and endless pitch variety we associate with the spoken voice - though even there there is no absolute freedom. I do not wish to be dogmatic here; there seem to be elements of this free variation of pitch in some of the 'ornaments' of Indian music, for example. But even the most ornamented Indian melody stands worlds apart from the free pitch variation of the spoken voice. But this free pitch variation in music is what is implied by the assertion that 10-20-30-40 cent intervals can be melodically significant. Without falling into such absurdities, it is possible to argue that the melodic limen of 55-60 cents is incorrect, and the true limen is (slightly) narrower (or wider.) In the literature one can find values from the mid forties all the way up to nearly an equal semitone (the latter group rather untrustworthy) depending partly on the pitch at which the measurements are taken. It is possible that a people trained from childhood to focus most of their musical attention on enharmonic melody alone might score a few cents lower than a people accustomed to pentatonic melody, say. It would be very impractical for music to set the melodic limen so low that any very large part of a typical audience could not readily identify melodic changes. In this respect the true debate is not between the advocates of 19-tone equal and those of some system with a larger number of degrees, but between the advocates of 19- versus those of 12-tone equal. I am convinced that the melodic limen is narrow enough so that the ~63 cent tuning degree of 19-tone equal does always, save perhaps in the very low register (well outside the vocal range), effect a change in melody when a given note of a melody is flatted or sharped by this interval. But to argue that the melodic limen is so narrow as virtually not to exist, involves us in the severe logical and esthetic difficulties I have referred to. For all these reasons we can state categorically that the melodic limen exists, and is not more than marginally susceptible of adjustment downwards by training or special attainment. More than casually related to the question of the melodic limen is the determination of how many distinct pitches (or pitch classes) human subjects can remember in a given melody. This number is finite, and almost certainly lies between 5 and 9, apparently influenced by the musical culture. The weight of the evidence favors a value of 7 or 8. I trust I need not dig out the references to this experiment from my files - it is a locus classicus. The human mind possesses marvelous powers of discrimination, but the musician who continually demands that listeners stretch their discriminatory powers beyond what is pleasurable (or possible) for them will pay for his folly. The best possible thing for a creative artist, you know, is to be hissed at a few times. This concentrates the mind wonderfully, and purges the understanding of many silly notions. Our poor rock musicians, disrespected and for the most part ignored, have all had this privilege of being called inventive names in public, which is one reason why they are so very creative, and beloved by the common folk. They may suffer personally because of this, but their art is basically sane and mature (or as mature as it can be without the benefit of any coherent body of theory or intonation to guide them.) Academic musicians on the other hand live in a kind of cocoon, which they often try to break out of by deliberately adopting the most esthetically bankrupt musical principles they can find. Both kinds of musician like to be thought daring and iconoclastic. But the daring of a rock vocalist who shimmies his hips while occasionally throwing in a 1/3 tone, all the while watching to see if the audience likes him, and if he's going to eat that night... and the daring of the safely tenured academic who demands that some singer screech like a cat for a bunch of bored, vaguely offended symphony-goers, really have nothing in common at all. I have deliberately exaggerated to make a point. Academic musicians possess advantages that popular musicians can never hope to have. But the greatest advantage of all is an audience that worships your every note. And this is denied to those who imagine themselves musical gods, and ordinary people beneath notice. How is all this relevant to tuning questions? The system of intonation is one of the two or three most basic elements of music. It is not chosen by people seeking to puzzle or shock, or even by lonely souls experimenting with new systems in a vacuum. It is chosen by the culture itself because creative musicians, in intimate contact with the people, want and need that system of intonation. I am convinced our people need the 19-tone equal temperament in order to express on instruments (and hence more consciously and richly) what they are already expressing in their songs. As a side-benefit, this temperament also gives us back our own musical past, which 12-tone equal has grossly distorted and ossified. SMTPOriginator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu From: Gregg Gibson Subject: A Parlor Trick PostedDate: 13-12-97 22:36:20 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: 13-12-97 22:34:28-13-12-97 22:34:29,13-12-97 22:34:11-13-12-97 22:34:13 DeliveredDate: 13-12-97 22:34:13 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 C125656C.00768147; Sat, 13 Dec 1997 22:36:19 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA14651; Sat, 13 Dec 1997 22:36:20 +0100 Date: Sat, 13 Dec 1997 22:36:20 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA14656 Received: (qmail 22517 invoked from network); 13 Dec 1997 13:36:17 -0800 Received: from localhost (HELO ella.mills.edu) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 13 Dec 1997 13:36:17 -0800 Message-Id: <3493624F.6ED8@ww-interlink.net> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu