A summary~
Why Just Intonation?
1. Just Intonation is based on the harmonics relations one finds in nature and is a natural product of the sounds we hear.
2. Just Intonation represents the most consonant intervals. It likewise can create great dissonances thereby extending the range of tension between the two.
3. Just Intonation is tunable by ear due to its acoustical qualities that are unambiguous in nature. This in turn gives one a palette of limitless emotional depth and flexibility.
4. Just Intonation is a modular system. . It is infinitely expandable in terms of intervals at one disposal. Just intonation scales are also ‘open’ scales. While they can form self-contained consistent structures, they are always capable of being augmented in many different ways. This though does not require having to change or discard the pitches one already has, the array of building blocks are the same.
5. Just Intonation allows perceivable structural possibilities that cannot be realized effectively any other way. While ambiguousness has it place in all the arts , It should be by choice.
6. One can have many different intonation systems and scales yet still have common tones, intervals and even scales common between them that can act as bridges. These easily can exist side by side. In a free world of any pitch at any time one can move from one system to another freely by common tone scales or chords.
7. As Just Intonation produces scales with unequal size intervals, this gives one the possibility of more different size intervals with fewer notes.
For example there are Just Intonation pentatonics that give one more different intervals than 12-tone equal temperament. As another example one particular 7 limit 12 tone scale harmonic known as Centaur will give one 50 different intervals within the octave.
8. Just Intonation allows for the possibility of each key or area of the tuning having its own unique flavor and quality.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Directions
The Direction has been known for some time. There is little new to add to that.
What else can we be working toward if not total and direct freedom of expression- to convey or release whatever compels us, either personal or trans-personal, or both, by any and every means possible. Our territory is depth and the deeper the better.
In order to do this we have to keep our tools in place whether these be methods, systems, and yes processes. They provide little in themselves and yet often they are indispensable. Kandinsky was wise to point out that such paths quickly can make us its slaves. Such failures is all around us, usually in myopic segregated camps.
These tools are mere means that at their core enable a true fruition, a flow of energy from one moment to another. Can we think or express anything that is not somehow directly related to the previous? A work must preserve this by neither omitting too many steps in-between causing its disruption or stagnating it by the unessential. A focus on a ‘well made plan’ or ‘well made process” too often stop a work in its tracks.
We should liberate the concept of the idea as being based solely in the word, otherwise humans would have no necessity of anything beyond it. The ‘explanation’ of works and the forces behind it often eschew the true spirit that moves toward where it seeks. When words are used it only function might be nothing more than another element of that flow. Hence its methods and processes should be no more restrictive than the work itself. Formulas and common practice just will not do.
It is not that we will not have our “constants”, an element Pound always pointed out as being part of any work, and likewise ourselves as one also would be no different. We might accept our resonance to some and not to others, an aspect of our own antennae. The goal is to have as many open as possible.
An Aside.
It is not that History(ies) is capable of being resurrected but it is immortal as an active part of the fabric in the continuum of our present. More often than not when we find ourselves at an old intersection with the same old things on the corner, we have approached it from new directions than before. This is what is easily mislabled as “influence”.
What else can we be working toward if not total and direct freedom of expression- to convey or release whatever compels us, either personal or trans-personal, or both, by any and every means possible. Our territory is depth and the deeper the better.
In order to do this we have to keep our tools in place whether these be methods, systems, and yes processes. They provide little in themselves and yet often they are indispensable. Kandinsky was wise to point out that such paths quickly can make us its slaves. Such failures is all around us, usually in myopic segregated camps.
These tools are mere means that at their core enable a true fruition, a flow of energy from one moment to another. Can we think or express anything that is not somehow directly related to the previous? A work must preserve this by neither omitting too many steps in-between causing its disruption or stagnating it by the unessential. A focus on a ‘well made plan’ or ‘well made process” too often stop a work in its tracks.
We should liberate the concept of the idea as being based solely in the word, otherwise humans would have no necessity of anything beyond it. The ‘explanation’ of works and the forces behind it often eschew the true spirit that moves toward where it seeks. When words are used it only function might be nothing more than another element of that flow. Hence its methods and processes should be no more restrictive than the work itself. Formulas and common practice just will not do.
It is not that we will not have our “constants”, an element Pound always pointed out as being part of any work, and likewise ourselves as one also would be no different. We might accept our resonance to some and not to others, an aspect of our own antennae. The goal is to have as many open as possible.
An Aside.
It is not that History(ies) is capable of being resurrected but it is immortal as an active part of the fabric in the continuum of our present. More often than not when we find ourselves at an old intersection with the same old things on the corner, we have approached it from new directions than before. This is what is easily mislabled as “influence”.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
New Research Reveals a Hidden Meaning in The Footpaths of Anaphoria’s Abdiz Valley
One of the most perplexing mysteries of the footpaths found in the most rugged terrain on the island has been the many branching tributaries it seems to take without explanation. These pathways, form an entangled array rarely more than a few meters away from each other that required extensive work to build even though it follows the landscape. Scholars have studied them for years sensing a meaning that has evaded them till now. An ancient cryptographic text found in the area being studied at the Center Of Alphabetical Sequence has revealed the paths turns out to be a score to an ancient music in 6 part harmony sung while people walked long it in groups. The text preserves what appears to have been once the oral instructions memorized by those who walked and sang upon these paths. The text also reveals the story how the music appeared in a dream to a old man who knew it related to this uninhabited area of the valley. The fragment ends there. So the mystery is not completely solved for now. What does it sound like? Prof. Mij says we won’t know till they actually go there and try it out next month with his group of singers.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
(Reposting from gamelan list) Wayan Lotring. This is a film made by Jacques Brunet
One of Bali's greatest composers
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
An example from Robert Lowell
The other day I happened to glance at a book of poetry by Robert Lowell, reading a collection of his poems entitled ‘Near the Ocean’. I was completely unfamiliar with his work except recognizing the cover from many times before. It was work the grabbed me instantly. ( I am sorry I could not find an online version) .
While I know more about his overall poetic practice now after researching him, at the time the form struck me. The majority of the lines were rhyming couplets, but exceptions appeared frequently. Sometimes these stretched the limits of rhyming while other times he made no effort to force the work into this mold.
Here was a good example of how an artist can be informed by a method or system or even an idea and not become a tool of the tools they choose. What the balance should be so we prevent being lead into some robotic existence or blind worship of an arbitrary. This seem a pathetic state for the arts to choose.
Should we pursue looking for the methods or a way to find our way without them. I prefer the latter. But if we do use them we should always being the one leading as opposed to being lead.
While I know more about his overall poetic practice now after researching him, at the time the form struck me. The majority of the lines were rhyming couplets, but exceptions appeared frequently. Sometimes these stretched the limits of rhyming while other times he made no effort to force the work into this mold.
Here was a good example of how an artist can be informed by a method or system or even an idea and not become a tool of the tools they choose. What the balance should be so we prevent being lead into some robotic existence or blind worship of an arbitrary. This seem a pathetic state for the arts to choose.
Should we pursue looking for the methods or a way to find our way without them. I prefer the latter. But if we do use them we should always being the one leading as opposed to being lead.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
THE ACT OF SCALE FORMATION-Erv Wilson
THE ACT OF SCALE FORMATION ( Erv Wilson in a letter to Gary David from the 1960's)
The act of scale formation is inseparable from the other creative aspects of music formation. The human voice illustrates admirable how scale formation participates fully in the whole creative process of song. The scale is perhaps as unique to the song as are its rhythms and melodies. And like rhythm and melody, the scale neither precedes, nor follows the song, but progresses in the full flow of real time as a soft and sensuous and endlessly malleable expression of human consciousness.
Particularly in fixed-pitch instruments the role of scale tends to be diminished, if not entirely put aside. Even in a polyphonic keyboard instrument, whose ostensible goal is scale-making, the spontaneous, song-like scale is far from being achieved. In the design of a new instrument, one does well to recognize the technical limitations, and to compensate accordingly. (1) The fixed-tone needs to be bendable. (2) The fixed-pitch must have alternate inflections. One makes “knowledgeable guesses” as to what these will be, basing one’s judgment on past creative explorations. These are assigned to a Generalized Keyboard in an appropriately organized pattern. (3) One must have the facility for introducing, in performance, and in creative explorations, new pitches/inflections that may not have been anticipated when the “best-guess” tuning was assigned to the keyboard. Particularly as we “compose” we must be able to create our tunings, immediately from the console, as part of the same, if I may say, somewhat ritualized, creative act. To whatever level is optimally feasible, we should espouse creative tuning as part of the “live performance” (again, a ritual). The wall separating the “composer” from the “performer” should not be designed into the instrument.
The keyboard may be visualized as a Navajo loom upon which intricately lovely and endlessly variable scale patterns may be woven. A canvas. Arbitrary limitations to this variability must not be designed into the instrument. The keyboard is an art, and an interface, a crossroads and a bridge. The keyboard is a ship. In the tunable generalized keyboard we have the birth of a new art and the rebirth of an old art, as ancient as man. The keyboard must Breathe, poetically speaking, for it is the extension of a living process. The scale is a volatile genie that knows how utterly to transform its shape. Every effort must be made to accommodate this mercurial creature-of-the-psyche through the keyboard. The keyboard/console must animate the scale. While undoubtedly it is valid and admirable to study the scales of other peoples and other times, we are concerned primarily with the creative processes and the development and expression of our own arts. We see the keyboard in an attitude of creative anticipation, and to jealously guard against closed, limiting, non-living attitudes, and the great body of “tacit assumptions” and “forgone conclusions” (which, incidentally, we do not assume ourselves to be free from) which might hobble or render ineffectual those subtle intuitions of beauty.
Design philosophy, in a word, should be OPEN. Keep it general(ized), viable, versatile, changeable. Guard against the proverbial cul-de-sac, the one-track, the squirrel cages! My heavens!
The keyboard is a transient lens through which a cosmos of musical relations may be observed. Keep it volatile. Forgive the metaphor! Or interests are primarily “just” and in that regard the acoustic universe is seemingly endless.
The act of scale formation is inseparable from the other creative aspects of music formation. The human voice illustrates admirable how scale formation participates fully in the whole creative process of song. The scale is perhaps as unique to the song as are its rhythms and melodies. And like rhythm and melody, the scale neither precedes, nor follows the song, but progresses in the full flow of real time as a soft and sensuous and endlessly malleable expression of human consciousness.
Particularly in fixed-pitch instruments the role of scale tends to be diminished, if not entirely put aside. Even in a polyphonic keyboard instrument, whose ostensible goal is scale-making, the spontaneous, song-like scale is far from being achieved. In the design of a new instrument, one does well to recognize the technical limitations, and to compensate accordingly. (1) The fixed-tone needs to be bendable. (2) The fixed-pitch must have alternate inflections. One makes “knowledgeable guesses” as to what these will be, basing one’s judgment on past creative explorations. These are assigned to a Generalized Keyboard in an appropriately organized pattern. (3) One must have the facility for introducing, in performance, and in creative explorations, new pitches/inflections that may not have been anticipated when the “best-guess” tuning was assigned to the keyboard. Particularly as we “compose” we must be able to create our tunings, immediately from the console, as part of the same, if I may say, somewhat ritualized, creative act. To whatever level is optimally feasible, we should espouse creative tuning as part of the “live performance” (again, a ritual). The wall separating the “composer” from the “performer” should not be designed into the instrument.
The keyboard may be visualized as a Navajo loom upon which intricately lovely and endlessly variable scale patterns may be woven. A canvas. Arbitrary limitations to this variability must not be designed into the instrument. The keyboard is an art, and an interface, a crossroads and a bridge. The keyboard is a ship. In the tunable generalized keyboard we have the birth of a new art and the rebirth of an old art, as ancient as man. The keyboard must Breathe, poetically speaking, for it is the extension of a living process. The scale is a volatile genie that knows how utterly to transform its shape. Every effort must be made to accommodate this mercurial creature-of-the-psyche through the keyboard. The keyboard/console must animate the scale. While undoubtedly it is valid and admirable to study the scales of other peoples and other times, we are concerned primarily with the creative processes and the development and expression of our own arts. We see the keyboard in an attitude of creative anticipation, and to jealously guard against closed, limiting, non-living attitudes, and the great body of “tacit assumptions” and “forgone conclusions” (which, incidentally, we do not assume ourselves to be free from) which might hobble or render ineffectual those subtle intuitions of beauty.
Design philosophy, in a word, should be OPEN. Keep it general(ized), viable, versatile, changeable. Guard against the proverbial cul-de-sac, the one-track, the squirrel cages! My heavens!
The keyboard is a transient lens through which a cosmos of musical relations may be observed. Keep it volatile. Forgive the metaphor! Or interests are primarily “just” and in that regard the acoustic universe is seemingly endless.
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