source file: mills2.txt Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 17:09:32 -0800 Subject: Re: Johnston's notation defended (again) From: Johnny Reinhard Please understand this as a salve to understanding. 1200 points on a line representing an octave is a continuum. Would 1300 or 2000 points make a discernable difference? I think 1200 is just past the threshold of pitch accuity for human beings. In essence this is the digital equivalent to CDs and DATs. So much pitch information is available as to appear infinite. Nice proportion, I think. Ben Johnson once wrote a piece for me for bassoon and tuba. We spent so much time deciphering the notation into cents that valuable rehearsal time was lost. The piece was performed beautifully in tune, but perhaps at a third too slow, or more. I do not speak of "conflicts" in the notation, but "conflicting directions" of mathematical calculations. For a player to have to think up and then down, and maybe up again puts the music in a laboratory setting for analysis. Finding fingerings take time, rewriting the part takes time, and playing with new fingerings takes time, over and above a conventional 12ET piece. In AFMM concerts we do it all the time. The above story is a special case. If players can't feel the new intervals there is something much more seriously wrong than the notation used. Gardner Read has fully catalogued the plethora of pitch alterations in use. (20th Century Microtonal Notation, Greenwood Press 1990.) To Gary M., What if I asked you to paint with only certain colors in any one particular painted work. Isn't knowledgeable choice the ultimate path of music making. Isn't a system a control placed upon one's perspective, one's final fronteir, one's potential. Lou Harrison once told me that when he taught at Mills which was all-female he would never use the words "tuning system" in the title of a class: no one would show up. And yet, by all means compose using material that you are comfortable with, whether it be 88ET or Extended Just Intonation. Notation that is less a personalized mythology of meanings of relationships, and more a comparative of all that is available will further the cause of microtonal music significantly. Johnny Reinhard Director American Festival of Microtonal Music 318 East 70th Street, Suite 5FW New York, New York 10021 USA (212)517-3550/fax (212) 517-5495 reinhard@ios.com Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Mon, 28 Oct 1996 17:30 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA20505; Mon, 28 Oct 1996 17:30:02 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA20427 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id IAA20203; Mon, 28 Oct 1996 08:29:58 -0800 Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 08:29:58 -0800 Message-Id: <31961028162713/0005695065PK3EM@MCIMAIL.COM> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu