Augmented seventh and perfect octave

[Meffy]

Caeser et sum lam forte
Brutus et arat
Caeser sic in omnibus
Brutus sic in at

Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.

(Sorry, I'll stop now and leave the thread.)

[MadBrain]

Well, in general, music that goes out of 12-tet is almost always tonal (for tunings that are close to 12-tet like meantone, pythagorean or "well" temperament) or modal (traditional arabic etc...). In general, the interval of a fifth (perfect of course) has a large effect on most tuning systems, because in general it's very hard to do stable melodies without a perfect 5th (look at all the scales used for melodies all around the world, it's pretty much the one interval that shows up all the time, along with the tonic of course). For these reasons, the best space for microtonal inventions for modal music is mostly between the tonic and the 4th, and between the 5th and the octave. This gives a good, stable basis to the scale (tonic, 4th, 5th), and the neutral 3rds, 2nds and narrow minor 2nds are interesting intervals.

If you're going to throw an augmented 5th in the chord, there's little need for the 3rd to be perfect, it will be hard to distinguish 12-tet's major 3rd +15 cents from the perfect major third with the large dissonance caused by the augmented second (same goes for the B#, whatever difference that's supposed to make).

[jancivil]

Well, in general, music that goes out of 12-tet is almost always tonal (for tunings that are close to 12-tet like meantone, pythagorean or "well" temperament) or modal (traditional arabic etc...). In general, the interval of a fifth (perfect of course) has a large effect on most tuning systems, because in general it's very hard to do stable melodies without a perfect 5th (look at all the scales used for melodies all around the world, it's pretty much the one interval that shows up all the time, along with the tonic of course).

Actually there are many North India ragas that TOTALLY avoid it. It's considered to mean stability, and according to the rest of the tones' meaning, and in absence means something denoting a lack.

[Aroused by JarJar]

I think you just just keep trying different tunings until you get something you really enjoy, groovy!

You can modulate from C Ionian to A Aeolian, and use triadic harmony,
in Just Intonation with eight notes per octave, using a "split keys" kind of approach-

1/1
10/9
9/8
5/4
4/3
3/2
5/3
15/8
2/1

10/9 and 9/8 are your two different D's

you'll figure out by ear when to use which, the 9/8 is for the fifth
above G and the m3 in the vii°. You can't do "everything" but
you can do a whole lot of modal stuff, with sweet triads, and it sounds great because it's Just. Then you can figure out what you need for some more modulations or taller chords, and add keys (split the A by adding a 27/6, put in F# at 5/4 above D (not the same as Gb!) etc.)

That's just one approach, there are many others of course. If you really want three Just thirds to equal an "octave", you can use 5/4,9/7,5/4 for an octave 7 cents sharp, sounds great. Lots of acoustic musicians sharp the octave a little anyway.

-Cameron Bobro

[duncanparsons]

Caeser et sum lam forte
Brutus et arat
Caeser sic in omnibus
Brutus sic in at

Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.

(Sorry, I'll stop now and leave the thread.)

Bene, cum Latine nescias, nolo manus meas in te maculare.

[this place is fun!]

Sorry, Thread Hijack over! [take me to caesar, sorry cuba...]

[Aroused by JarJar]

Yes, but will this difference be discernible to the average listener? Will they be able to tell when you're using B# or C?

Certainly.

Ok, with this tuning, you're able to produce 3 "perfect" Major 3rds:

C-E
E-G#
G#-B#.

Ok, now, why? Is there some musical reason you want these thirds to be pure?

Emotion, expression, feelings, ideas. Even if it is purely out of curiosity, that's still deeper than just using what has been handed to you.

Most of the non-12-tet tuned music I hear seems more interested in tempering intervals to make them "pure" on a case-by-case basis (so it's not unlike Barbershop singing) but they tend to write the same type of music that anyone else would write using 12-tet - which seems kind of counter to using non-12-tet tuning in the first place!

HTH,
Steve

I agree with that assessment, and that's a giant stumbling block for "microtonal" music. I also think that you get a kind of syndrome where
people who hear things very strictly according to the rules of 12-tET get into
other tunings BECAUSE it sounds so wonky to them, and they are not interested
in microtonal music that sounds plain old "good", or at least coherent, on its own terms. Perhaps this is because when music made with other tunings is "true to itself", it just sounds like music and few would even notice that it is "different", even when it is very different indeed. It has happened to me that someone explains to me that I'm not doing microtonal music (which I certainly am, and pretty radically) with this logic: it cannot be microtonal music because it doesn't sound bad!

The biggest barrier though is the incredible defense mechanism of the status quo, which will resort to any sophistry in order to maintain its position as somehow "natural".

-Cameron Bobro

[MadBrain]

The biggest barrier though is the incredible defense mechanism of the status quo, which will resort to any sophistry in order to maintain its position as somehow "natural".

-Cameron Bobro

I hear that all the time from avant garde artists, and I don't think status quo has such an enormous effect. If it did have that much effect, popular music wouldn't have changed so much from one end of the 20th century (ragtime) to the other (ambient trance). People are more open minded than that.

I think you should remember that 12-tet has relatively vast ressources: at least 30 melodic scales/modes (plus 10 others like whole-tone, locrian, etc...), at least as many chords, unlimited transposition, 12 notes with each a different role and/or feeling, etc... Music from a few important cultures use only degrees found inside equal temperament, so this music can be imported wholesale (most of the chinese,japanese and indian music systems are "compatible" with 12-tet). The most important things it's missing is neutral 2nds,3rds,6ths,7ths and perhaps altered tritone (ie split #4/b5). Matching that amount of diversity is hard without decreasing playability (see: 31 or 53-tet) or sacrificing transposition or chords, and that's why alternate scales are so rarely used.

[Aroused by JarJar]

The biggest barrier though is the incredible defense mechanism of the status quo, which will resort to any sophistry in order to maintain its position as somehow "natural".

-Cameron Bobro

I hear that all the time from avant garde artists, and I don't think status quo has such an enormous effect. If it did have that much effect, popular music wouldn't have changed so much from one end of the 20th century (ragtime) to the other (ambient trance). People are more open minded than that.

"People" certainly are open minded, it's "musicians" who tend to be uptight squares, in my experience. No audience member has ever commented on the "avant garde" aspects of my music, only whether they like the music or not, ie, emotional connection or not. Except in Macedonia, where their folk music uses all kinds of tunings and rhythms, where I was asked if I was using folk tunes from some other unfamiliar culture.

Squealing noises may have been avant-garde half a century ago, but today
they're just part of the status quo, in effect enforcing the idea that for the gentler emotions you need some crooning over triads, for example.

I think you should remember that 12-tet has relatively vast ressources: at least 30 melodic scales/modes (plus 10 others like whole-tone, locrian, etc...), at least as many chords, unlimited transposition, 12 notes with each a different role and/or feeling, etc... Music from a few important cultures use only degrees found inside equal temperament, so this music can be imported wholesale (most of the chinese,japanese and indian music systems are "compatible" with 12-tet). The most important things it's missing is neutral 2nds,3rds,6ths,7ths and perhaps altered tritone (ie split #4/b5). Matching that amount of diversity is hard without decreasing playability (see: 31 or 53-tet) or sacrificing transposition or chords, and that's why alternate scales are so rarely used.

The sheer amount of resources is meaningless, what good do six dozen screwdrivers do me when I need a hammer? It's about "emotion and expression" to use the cliches. No amount or arrangement of major or minor thirds is going to give me a median third, and the "far-away" feeling of a 350 cent third isn't the same as the round feeling of the third I heard sung by a cuckoo bird (369 cents).

You can play for hours with seven tones in the octave, it's not about practibility.

The real reason "alternate tunings" aren't used much in the West is in order to force individual "emotion and expression" into a handful of easily digested categories- or to completely avoid genuine individual expression altogether. The endless circulating "modulations" (actually, transpositions) of 12-tET help create the illusion of freedom required to maintain the social status quo.

Another reason not to use 12-tET is that without a simple, fixed grid, making music is just plain more work, and it's work that can't be done mechanically.
Perhaps the greatest tool of maintaining social order in the West is the illusion that everyone can do or be anything. The poor only rise up to slaughter the rich once they realize that they will never ever be rich themselves, to put it poetically (or maybe literally).

So you must maintain the feeling of "hey I could do that if I really wanted to" in the hearts of the audience in order to be "mainstream". Then you get a hyperdeveloped mass adulation of sports of course, as the last place of performance where the natural truth that no, I would never be able to run like Bolt, can be openly enjoyed. (See also, cosmetic plastic surgery)

We're "free" to manipulate an inherited fixed set of pitches to our hearts content, but when
you leave that grid you're automatically catagorized as incompetent (out of tune) until you demonstrate that you're far from incompetent indeed, at which point you must be shuffled off into "ahhhhrrrt" or "avant-garde", ie, the theatrical or intellectual, a sick irony for it's "emotion and expression" that drives people out of the matrix in the first place. "Theatrical" and "intellectual" require known shared languages, while "alternate tunings" bend or break familiar language to get to non-language communication (or just to sound like ass, doing alternate tunings obviously doesn't automatically make a person a good musician, ).

-Cameron Bobro

[jancivil]

Music from a few important cultures use only degrees found inside equal temperament, so this music can be imported wholesale (most of the chinese,japanese and indian music systems are "compatible" with 12-tet).

Not if you are really interested in the actual sound of the thing, they are not. That's really nonsense.

I don't think status quo has such an enormous effect. If it did have that much effect, popular music wouldn't have changed so much...

- seems to show that you are unclear on the concept of 'the status quo', among other things.

[vurt]

But as Steve and Jancivil asked: why? What's the point?

what was the point of any piece of music?
i say go for it, an idea is an idea, never be discouraged by naysayers.

In conclusion: the idea was not so good after all...

prove it, either way.

[jancivil]

I dint say 'nay', I said 'por que'.


'whole-tone scale'; derivation: equal division of octave.
compare:
'pure thirds'; ¿the best fit for an idea derived from this equal & symmetrical division of octave?

= 'medium' not best suit for 'idea'?