While my Centaur tuning was originally
designed for 7-limit ear training back in the days when electronic means were
too unstable to use, it has been imposing itself in recent years for a variety
of projects. The occasion for this has been in having to write for ensembles to
play music in another tuning but one that is also manageable to those not
specializing in such things.
One such
project was for the Australian group, Ensemble Offspring and it soon again
became useful in composing a String Quartet to be work shopped in Aberdeen. The
latter had its real premiere last Nov. in Los Angeles by a string quartet led
by Melinda Rice. As I invited to do another piece by Melinda as well as a another
group, Locana, which includes a cello and violin, a new question arose: is there
a 7 limit tuning that preserves the open string tunings in fifths yet gives some of the basic material also found in Centaur.
Since a shape of an interval learned on one
string easily translates to another, the limitation to 12 pitches was unduly
restricting. Hence the next point where things fell into a nice shape was with a
19 tone scale which differs by only one note from one worked out by Terumi
Narushima in a lesson. Since the context is its use with strings, certain
options present themselves as easily transposed from one string to another.
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