tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32354680.post8800660321844272924..comments2023-11-03T09:05:31.265-04:00Comments on Soho the Dog: Arguments, agreements, advice, answers, articulate announcementsMatthewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10936327293692397100noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32354680.post-47882319488969986812007-07-07T18:45:00.000-04:002007-07-07T18:45:00.000-04:00That should have been "*by* moving voices," of cou...That should have been "*by* moving voices," of course.Kyle Gannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15654626779478007970noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32354680.post-22831586370978023172007-07-07T18:12:00.000-04:002007-07-07T18:12:00.000-04:00Well, there's no generalizing about microtonalists...Well, there's no generalizing about microtonalists, because their motivations and methods thoroughly cover a tremendous range. But Partch was driven partly by an extremely micro-chromatic voice-leading he called Tonality Flux:<BR/><BR/>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonality_flux<BR/><BR/>David Doty and I have followed a similar path, creating harmonic progressions my moving voices less than 70 cents where possible. (I was a Max Reger fan pretty early in my development.) Ben Johnston cites pure consonance as a motivation, but much of his JI music, from the first examples, is 12-tone, and even when it's not it tends toward scales of 22 or 32 steps. The closest I can think of to a major diatonic microtonalist is Terry Riley, and I'd have to heavily qualify that. There's a common myth that just intonationists are attracted to JI by a love of pure harmonies, and therefore write simply diatonic music. I address it here:<BR/><BR/>http://www.kylegann.com/JIreasons.html<BR/><BR/>Anecdotal evidence suggests to me, rather, that developing one's perception of tiny increments is a more common motivator, but you'd have to survey a lot of people to be able to generalize.Kyle Gannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15654626779478007970noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32354680.post-81389344782715948252007-07-06T15:37:00.000-04:002007-07-06T15:37:00.000-04:00Kyle: Mea culpa for the stupid generalization. I w...Kyle: <I>Mea culpa</I> for the stupid generalization. I was primarily thinking of the historical moment when just intonation and microtonality started sneaking back into Western classical music—the 40s and 50s. Hardly an excuse, though—I've been spending a fair amount of the past months with music of varying degrees of non-equal-temperedness, from Ben Johnston to Kaija Saariaho. Sometimes my brain just turns off.<BR/><BR/>I would be curious to know whether composers who work with just intonation came to it through diatonicism and then realized how cool it would be to adapt it to chromaticism, or whether they were chromatic from the start and just continually dissatisfied with the equal-tempered results. I'd bet there's varying paths—for me, I like the sounds of natural horn partials and string harmonics interacting with triadic sonorities, but I'm still unconvinced by my tentative efforts to integrate them into the dense crunches of harmony I seem to always come back to.Matthewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10936327293692397100noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32354680.post-12172309014948609862007-07-06T14:26:00.000-04:002007-07-06T14:26:00.000-04:00"...composers who work with more chromatic than di..."...composers who work with more chromatic than diatonic sounds tend not to explore alternate tunings so much..."<BR/><BR/>My experience suggests exactly the opposite. Many, many of us who work in just intonation do so in search of a more seamless chromaticism than a paltry 12 pitches can provide.Kyle Gannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15654626779478007970noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32354680.post-90521878256417531952007-06-29T11:53:00.000-04:002007-06-29T11:53:00.000-04:00The paper jodru refers to is here, if you're curio...The paper jodru refers to is <A HREF="http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/short/104/26/10944" REL="nofollow">here</A>, if you're curious. (Cool stuff.)<BR/><BR/>I'm with you on the divinity. I always picture God sitting in a club chair, reading the <I>Financial TImes</I>, checking the caller ID every time the phone rings, and deciding it's just not worth picking up.Matthewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10936327293692397100noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32354680.post-8648362747697726972007-06-29T10:01:00.000-04:002007-06-29T10:01:00.000-04:00What's even more interesting is the recent researc...What's even more interesting is the recent research that turned up a genetic link between tonal and non-tonal language speakers.<BR/><BR/>Maybe there is a divinity that shapes our ends.<BR/><BR/>More likely, the divinity is too busy to bother, though.jodruhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03316056147287208728noreply@blogger.com