source file: mills2.txt Subject: Post from McLaren/HP From: John Chalmers From: mclaren Subject: Authenticity and Partch recordings -- In the British Harry Partch Society right now there's a debate raging about just how "authentic" recordings of Harry Partch's music should be. That's of some interest to this forum, because members of this forum are directly affected. Dean Drummond won't let Johnny Reinhard borrow or rent any of Partch's instruments because Johnny used a DX-7 in a recording of Partch's music instead of a chromelodeon. Let me point out something, people-- This kind of attitude is going to kill Partch's music dead as a steamrollered cockroach. What we need are *more* performances of partch, not *fewer* performances. Dean Drummond and company need to wake up and smell the latte. Johnny Reinhard should have access to every instrument Drummond has. Now, 1 of the performances about which members of the British Harry Partch Society had questions was a recording done by Ted Mook and a professional singer. This is the first CD appearance of Partch's Li Po Songs, and the first new recording in more than half a century (to my knowledge). I think it's fantastic that someone had the time, the energy, and the dedication to record Partch's Li Po Songs. So what if the recording doesn't sound like Harry Partch? Harry himself pointed out that he was far from an ideal vocalist. In places Harry's pitch wanders as much as 20 to 30 cents from the target notes, as Ted Mook has pointed out. Partch was under pressure when he made his recording, he didn't have adequate time or opportunity to rehearse and certainly didn't have access to the enormously helpful digital pitch references we have today. In short, Partch did the best he could at performing his Li Po Songs on that old 78 rpm record, but Partch just wasn't a professional singer. Ted Mook's project uses a professional singer, and to my mind the results are neither better nor worse than the original Partch recordings--they are *different.* So? What's the problem? Why shouldn't we have a bunch of *different* versions of Partch's music? Where's the harm in that, provided the pitches are correct? As long as the pitches are scrupulously retained and Harry's music isn't edited, expanded or (ye gods!) translated into 12-TET or some such abomination... Why *not* rearrange Harry's music for other instruments? In particular, certain members of the British Harry Partch Society have been up in arms about the recent Kronos Quartet arrangement of Partch's "Barstow" intoned by Ben Johnston. This is just incomprehensible to me. What in the world is wrong with arranging Partch's music for different instruments? After all, Dean Drummond did exactly that when he arranged Partch's "Two Studies On Ancient Greek Scales" for flute and zoomoozaphone. To these old ears, the results sounded wonderful. For that matter, another arrangement of those same pieces was done for just intonation guitar, this time by John Schneider. You can hear it on the CD "Just West Coast." It sounded just fine. If *these* arrangements of Partch's music weren't a problem, why should the Kronos Quartet's arrangement be a big deal? The other issue here is that if we demand that *all* performances of Partch's music be done *only* on original Partch instruments, then that's going to limit the performances of Partch's music to just about nothing. I mean, c'mon, people! Dean Drummond adn Danlee Mitchell are the only two people on the planet who have Partch's instruments in their possession. So that means that only two (count 'em, 2) people on the planet can give concerts of Partch's music if we insist on absolute fanatical authenticity and *never* allow Partch's muisc to be arranged for other instruments. In particular, I see no problem at all with the idea of using synthesizers for some of Partch's music--as long as the synthesizers produce creditable imitations of Partch's instrumental timbres, and as long as the synths are tuned to Partch's scale, and as long as the parts are played correctly. To insist that *only* instruments produced by Partch himself be used in performances would be to lock Partch's music away from the public. In my judgment, it's infinitely better for *lots* of people to hear synth versions of Partch's music, or string quartet versions of his music, or a zoomoozaphone-and-flute version of Partch's music, than for only a tiny few people who live in upstate New York to hear the Absolutely Authentic Real Thing. Ideally, of course, there would be many copies of Partch's instruments, plenty of Partch-trained instrumentalists, and so on. But we live in the real world. Given real-world constraints, isn't it better to hear *more* of Partch's music in *more* venues, than less? --mclaren ------------------------------ Topic No. 6 Date: Fri, 12 Jul 96 16:47:45 PDT From: Allen To: Folks Subject: Performing Harry Message-ID: <199607122357.QAA04009@eartha.mills.edu> Folks: I agree whole-heartedly with Brian about access to Harry's music and commented about that in a recent post about Kronos' recording. Some years ago I began an "electronic" orchestration of the same work with Partch tuned MIDI instruments and my own voices which emmulated Harry's timbres. About half way through I thought I might get the blessing of Danlee Mitchell and rang him up. His comments were that I was ignoring the "corporeal" visions Harry had about performances- although I didn't agree with this in the case of Barstow (I think I might agree in the case of some of the big pieces) I did Danlee and Harry's memory the courtesy of terminating the project. After hearing Ted Mook's recording and Ben's Barstow transcriptions- now let's see if I can find those old files!!!! Cheers- Allen ========================================================================= | Allen Strange | | http://www.music.sjsu.edu/Music/strange.html | |_______________________________________________________________________| | Electro-Acoustic Music | International Computer Music Association | | Studios | 2040 Polk St., Suite 330 | | School of Music | San Francisco, CA 94109 | | San Jose State University |VOX + (408) 395-2538 Fax + (408) 395-2648 | : 1 Washington Square | Email: icma@sjsuvm1.sjsu.edu | | San Jose, CA 95192-0095 | URL http://coos.darmouth.edu/ | | Telephone +(408) 924-4646 | ~rsn/icma/icma.html | | Fax +(408) 924-4773 | We hope to see you at the ICMC96 | | | On the Edge in Hong Kong | | | ICMC96@cs.ust.hk for info | |======================================================================= ------------------------------ Topic No. 7 Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1996 23:15:29 -0400 From: Mmcky@aol.com To: tuning Subject: Calculating the time it takes patterns to repeat in chords Message-ID: <960712231529_433213215@emout18.mail.aol.com> I want to thank Paul for comments on LCM. His posts helped me to arrive at my present belief that chords need to be normalized before their LCMs represent the time it takes the pattern they make to repeat. Now that I have begun to get over the shock of getting a job and moving to San Jose, I have some small amount of time to devote to music again. I have done the following computations for some chords with low LCMs. Because of having to do this in ASCII, I have resorted to putting numbers at the head of the columns of the table. Below is the information on what the columns of numbers mean. 1-3 Chord Periods Ratios 4 Normalization constant The LCM of all periods in all chords divided by the largest period in the chord 5-7 Normalized Chord Periods 8 Normalized Chord LCM 9 Un-normalized Chord LCM 10-12 Chord Frequency Ratios Here is the table. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 20 15 12 252 5040 3780 3024 15120 60 3 4 5 15 12 10 336 5040 4032 3360 20160 60 4 5 6 21 14 12 240 5040 3360 2880 20160 84 4 6 7 35 28 20 144 5040 4032 2880 20160 140 4 5 7 18 15 10 280 5040 4200 2800 25200 90 5 6 9 24 20 15 210 5040 4200 3150 25200 120 5 6 8 12 9 8 420 5040 3780 3360 30240 72 6 8 9 15 10 9 336 5040 3360 3024 30240 90 6 9 10 21 18 14 240 5040 4320 3360 30240 126 6 7 9 28 24 21 180 5040 4320 3780 30240 168 6 7 8 24 21 14 210 5040 4410 2940 35280 168 7 8 12 9 8 6 560 5040 4480 3360 40320 72 8 9 12 15 10 8 336 5040 3360 2688 40320 120 8 12 15 15 12 8 336 5040 4032 2688 40320 120 8 10 15 10 9 6 504 5040 4536 3024 45360 90 9 10 15 16 12 9 315 5040 3780 2835 45360 144 9 12 16 20 18 12 252 5040 4536 3024 45360 180 9 10 15 20 18 15 252 5040 4536 3780 45360 180 9 10 12 20 18 15 252 5040 4536 3780 45360 180 9 10 12 6 5 4 840 5040 4200 3360 50400 60 10 12 15 9 6 5 560 5040 3360 2800 50400 90 10 15 18 12 10 8 420 5040 4200 3360 50400 120 10 12 15 18 15 12 280 5040 4200 3360 50400 180 10 12 15 5 4 3 1008 5040 4032 3024 60480 60 12 15 20 7 6 4 720 5040 4320 2880 60480 84 12 14 21 15 12 9 336 5040 4032 3024 60480 180 12 15 20 9 7 6 560 5040 3920 3360 70560 126 14 18 21 12 8 7 420 5040 3360 2940 70560 168 14 21 24 8 6 5 630 5040 3780 3150 75600 120 15 20 24 12 10 9 420 5040 4200 3780 75600 180 15 18 20 7 5 4 720 5040 3600 2880 100800 140 20 28 35 8 7 6 630 5040 4410 3780 105840 168 21 24 28 5040 LCM of all Chord Periods If anyone see anything wrong with the reasoning represented here, I would appreciate it if they would let me know. Marion