source file: mills2.txt Date: Sat, 11 Nov 1995 13:37:59 -0800 Subject: 88CET #25: Recommendations From: Gary Morrison <71670.2576@compuserve.com> This is it. The end. The last one. The last in my series on 88CET. Of course that doesn't mean that I will not be talking about it anymore, but it's the last in this series serialized from my up-coming Xenharmonikon text. In this one, I'll present you some suggestions for what you might want to do with 88CET tuning. Unlike Lucy or Yasser, or to some degree Partch, I certainly don't claim that 88CET provides a revolutionary new framework in which to study xenharmonics. But it certainly is a distinctive-sounding tuning with some powerful capabilities. It's an efficient tuning in the sense that it provides a wide variety of musical resources - traditional as well as nontraditional - from a very small number of tones per octave. 88CET is certainly unusual, being a nonoctave-based, and having nontraditional thirds. As such, it takes time to get comfortable with it. For example, many find the 9:7 supramajor third very difficult to accept at first. So, if you're looking for a tuning whose possibilities blossom into exciting new music within a few hours, 88CET is definitely not for you. But 88CET certainly produces surprising, tantalizing, and unique results, probably more than average, once you work your way over that hurdle. If you're looking for a tuning that works nicely on traditional instruments, then you're in luck for certain types of instruments, but not others. It maps very well to traditional keyboards, so it works great on electronic instruments. It doesn't require you to spread an octave over a large span of the keyboard. It can also map nicely to orchestral strings (21221 pattern spanning across a perfect fifth), but it poses problems on many wind instruments. Another question to ask is whether to approach 88CET using Bill Sethares' mapped timbres or to leave the overtone spectra unmodified. Probably the most important criterion for answering that question is whether you want to compose for the somewhat bell-like qualities of these mapped timbres or for more traditional instrument qualities. I have intentionally composed most of my 88CET work for simulations of traditional instruments, mostly to avoid changing too many variables at once. At this early stage in exploring a new tuning, there is a risk of the music being perceived as "nondescriptly strange". Perhaps with these traditional-timbral works available, audiences hearing music with additional unusual qualities will be able to separate out what oddness is due to tuning and what are due to other factors. The second most important criterion for deciding whether to compose for traditional or mapped timbres is whether you want to build your music around the 14-step pseudo-octave. Clearly this significantly changes your approach to harmonization. But, whatever approach you take to 88CET, be patient, and try out the particular ideas I've presented in these postings. It's alien territory, so it's easy to stumble upon some really dreadful discords. It takes time to find locate consonances, whether traditional or nontraditional, and figure out how to use them. But once you do, I think you'll find it an intriguing tuning. Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sat, 11 Nov 1995 23:39 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id NAA01001; Sat, 11 Nov 1995 13:39:20 -0800 Date: Sat, 11 Nov 1995 13:39:20 -0800 Message-Id: <951111213454_71670.2576_HHB6-5@CompuServe.COM> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu