source file: m1347.txt Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1998 09:30:27 -0500 Subject: TUNING digest 1343 From: Daniel Wolf Hello: After a pause, I am better able to keep up with the tuning list. Although I'm not familiar with Prof. Hatch's recent work, I suspect that the solo vocal music he is working with are solos, in the sense of ''sung= by _single_ singers WITH gamelan'', either the entire ensemble or the smaller subsets used during Andhegan or Palaran sections. Since the idiophones and gongs (which are actually membranophones) are tempered in various ways (simultaneously, and often haphazardly) in order= to play in all the _pathet_ (~tonality + mode), the intonation of singers= and the rebab become extremely critical in parsing the underlying tuning.= = Javanese singers - like singers universally - vary greatly in ability and= attention towards intonation. In Java, some teachers pay close attention = to intonation while other pay virtually no intention. I heard Ki Suhardi mak= e corrections of septimal comma size, striking his gender to play a pitch a= nd then singing slightly above or below the tone. In my rebab lessons with him, Pak Hardi really had me focus on tuning. For example, I had to tune the upper string to gender tone 6 but the lower string had to be a beatle= ss fifth below, which was close to the pelog gender's pitch 2, but sharp of= the gender's slendro 2 and this tuning was used by the rebab for both slendro and pelog. In melodic passages, the problem of tuning consecutive= slendro intervals (which vary from around a 9/8 to a 7/6) required considerable attention. Except for playing the open strings together at certain points, the lessons were conducted monophonically, without use of= other instruments. I think that the tuning of monophonic singing or playing should not be dismissed as a theme for research. Many singers or players, even without perfect pitch memory, can keep a reference pitch in memory over extended periods with great accuracy. Room resonances often assist in this, and a situation like the Javanese _palaran_, offers plenty of opportunity for reinforcing reference pitches from which a singer or rebab player can correct her intonation. The studies of Boomsliter and Creel suggested some ways in which a solo might proceed interval-by-interval in a just context, and my old favorite= , the _Handbook of Irish Music_ by Richard Henebry has some data, albeit poorly organized, deeply suggestive of underlying just patterns. (The bes= t Sean-Nos (Irish solo singing) singers have rock solid pitch memory and ma= ke pitch discriminations between pitches where one would expect to find syntonic comma shifts). I know that there are significant objections to conclusive statements about vocal and unfixed-pitch instrumental intonati= on - largely argued from the position that vocal tones are too transient - b= ut I think that anyone studying performance practice close enough aquires skill in identifying a subjective pitch center from which constructive observations can be made. Daniel Wolf Frankfurt = =