source file: m1588.txt
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 14:20:24 -0800

Subject: Bells and Gershwin

From: Carl Lumma <clumma@nni.com>

[Erlich]
>One of the most important things to consider, if you are trying to
>achieve consonance on the carillon, is that bells have completely
>inharmonic partials. If constructing an optimal tuning for the bells, I
>would need to know the frequencies of the partial tones of the bells. JI
>maximizes consonance only for instruments with harmonic partials, such
>as human voices, bowed strings, brass, and reed instruments, and
>periodic synthesized tones (and even then there are some chords where JI
>is not necessarily best).

First-order combination tones, and the fundamentals themselves, give a very
nice effect in JI with most bells, at least up to the 9-limit.  It's a
different effect than the zero-beating stuff heard on Setheras' Cd's, but I
like it at least as much.

[Haverstick]
>    In regard to Judith Conrad's report of ecstatic Indians hearing
>their music on the piano...is it possible they started drumming so loud
>because they were trying to drown out the piano? Perhaps they were not
>quite as ecstatic as the white folks thought...wouldn't surprise me.
>Indian music is about as far removed from European musical concepts as I
>could imagine, and to harmonise it would add nothing, as far as I can
>see. Their music was (is) intimately tied into their whole cultural view
>of life...to remove it from it's context robs it of it's deeper
>meanings. It's not "supposed" to sound like white folk's music because
>it isn't...but often, throughout history, white's can only relate to
>other cultures by trying to make the other culture over in the image of
>the white guys. It' s like when Gershwin wrote "Rhapsody in Blue;" after
>it's performance, one critic remarked that Gerswin had made a "lady" out
>of jazz...what a crock of nonsense...Hstick

Man, I'll agree with this!


Carl