source file: mills3.txt Date: Thu, 25 Dec 1997 14:27:21 +0100 Subject: Why septimal harmony works From: gbreed@cix.compulink.co.uk (Graham Breed) Gregg Gibson wrote: (those who choose to wage the war to make 7:4 consonant I advise to do some reading, thinking, and listening; even if they manage the feat, they will find themselves involved in the thankless task of attempting to erect a system of tonal relations outside the senario, and based on very weak consonance at best) I made the rather petulant remark before that stupid people can't write 7-limit harmony. What I meant is that, to get it to work, you really need to examine the chord ratios, using lattice coordinates or otherwise. Most people aren't going to go to all that trouble just to use some fancy chords. If extended just intonation were taught as thoroughly as tonality, though, you could use standard chord progressions and it wouldn't be that difficult. It's just us pioneers who have to work it all out the hard way. The problem of syntonic commas really disappears when you move beyond 5-limit consonance. With a 5-limit chord progression, you're usually going to end up with a 5/1 from the tonic meeting a 1/5 from the tonic, ignoring the other primes. If you allow factors of 25 in your chords, or use chords that have no 5's in like 4:6:9 or 4:6:7 -- neither of which are well approximated in 19 equal -- everything works out fine. Everyone other than Gregg who has written on septimal intervals and chords seems to be hearing what I hear. This is reassuring, as it would be most unfortunate if I were to write music that sounded more dissonant to my audience than it does to me. SMTPOriginator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu From: gbreed@cix.compulink.co.uk (Graham Breed) Subject: Re: More on Just Intonation 2 PostedDate: 25-12-97 14:29:03 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: 25-12-97 14:26:49-25-12-97 14:26:50,25-12-97 14:26:18-25-12-97 14:26:19 DeliveredDate: 25-12-97 14:26:19 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 C1256578.0049DB9B; Thu, 25 Dec 1997 14:28:39 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA25553; Thu, 25 Dec 1997 14:29:03 +0100 Date: Thu, 25 Dec 1997 14:29:03 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA25540 Received: (qmail 20352 invoked from network); 25 Dec 1997 05:28:31 -0800 Received: from localhost (HELO ella.mills.edu) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 25 Dec 1997 05:28:31 -0800 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu