"How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony"

[John]

Interesting book, maybe. I know that equal temperament is 'wrong' in that harmonies aren't pure. But how do you modulate otherwise? IAC:

Amazon's page:

https://www.amazon.com/Equal-Temperament-Ruined-Harmony-Should/dp/0393334201

John R.

[Andrew Schulman]

How do you modulate? Stuff your ears with cotton and then proceed (more or less depending on the system you choose).

This is a good book on the topic:

https://www.amazon.com/Temperament-Solved-Musics-Greatest-Riddle/dp/0375403558/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1482387244&sr=1-1

Andrew

[Dan Mozell]

There are many different historic tuning systems with different degrees of ability to modulate. Having intervals sound different in different keys was sometimes considered a plus.

[John Nguyen]

On Thursday, December 22, 2016 at 1:05:51 AM UTC-5, John wrote:

I think we need to go fretless got the guitar. Nothing can be compared to the aural pleasure of listening to a string quartet's pure third or sixth intervals.

[John Nguyen]

Goshhh! got = for, talk about impure harmony that impacts shifting in typing fingers :-)

[Andrew Schulman]

Darn, I was just going to make fun of you for this pour syntax.

Andrew

[David Raleigh Arnold]

On Wed, 21 Dec 2016 22:05:47 -0800 (PST)
John <johnre...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Interesting book, maybe. I know that equal temperament
is 'wrong' in that harmonies aren't pure. But how do you
modulate otherwise? IAC:

This stuff has no practical value to the guitarist.

The only note that matters much is the seventh
degree of the scale, and that can be easily
sharped by bending a bit. That is nothing like
"just intonation" BTW, in which case that note
is disturbingly flat, and functional harmony
doesn't happen.

Fretless guitars do not have enough sustain without
electronics and too many chords cannot be played
in tune.

Fretless electric guitars are cool played as
a horn.

Regards, Rale

[Matt Faunce]

On 12/22/16 6:44 PM, David Raleigh Arnold wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Dec 2016 22:05:47 -0800 (PST)
> John <johnre...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Interesting book, maybe. I know that equal temperament
> is 'wrong' in that harmonies aren't pure. But how do you
> modulate otherwise? IAC:
>
> This stuff has no practical value to the guitarist.
>
> The only note that matters much is the seventh

> degree of the scale [...]

You need to spend less time thinking, drawing deductions from your
cockamamie major premises, and more time listening and feeling.
--
Matt

[JPD]

Cockamamie major premise! Haha, I look forward to dropping that in conversation one of these days! :-)

[Matt Faunce]

If you've got friends like Rale you'll probably find good use for it.

An old lady I used to know used to say "his thinking is getting in the
way of his thinking." That's a better one for conversation. Mine is more
precise; and I've pointed out this mistake many times here before. It's
almost never an error of the minor premise or a mistake in drawing the
consequences; it's almost always a faulty major premise. But, yeah, I
get it: people don't check their logic, and so aren't familiar with
logical terms.

--
Matt

[David Raleigh Arnold]

If you haven't noticed that about the 7th, you
haven't been doing either.
Rale

[Matt Faunce]

That's a lame response. You wrote "The ONLY note that matters much is
the seventh..."

--
Matt

[dsi1]

As a practical matter, guitars are intrinsically equal temperament instruments. The great irony is that most people tune their guitars as if they were not - they'll tune it so that one or two chord sounds good. That's the breaks.

Speaking of breaks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfToONTEgpw

[David Raleigh Arnold]

On Tue, 27 Dec 2016 14:16:36 -0500

I certainly did, because it is the only one that is
noticeable by people used to equal temperament--
which includes all of us.

Perhaps I should have indicated the third in a
dominant 7th chord, but that's a distinction
without a difference, because there's only
one such chord to be formed with notes of
a major scale exclusively. Rale

[Matt Faunce]

Wrong. I'm tired of you.

Matt

[Steve Freides]

Eh.

Look into Turkish and other musical traditions where the octave isn't
divided up into equal parts - it's out there, not forgotten, just
forgotten by a lot of us.

All tuning - all - is a compromise. Once you accept that premise, the
differences seem not to matter so much.

-S-

[Matt Faunce]

Here's a nice demonstration:
https://youtu.be/iRsSjh5TTqI?t=2m

--
Matt

[Steve Freides]

Yamaha makes a version of their keyboards that let you tune in these
ways. I confess to know only enough about Turkish music to know how
ignorant I am of it. A singer in my church choir is a college student,
has one Turkish parent, and managed to enroll herself in a course in
Turkish art music at her university. I got a copy of the book they're
using, but it's all Greek, er, Turkish, to me.

-S-

[dsi1]

The way we prefer our octaves divided mostly depends on the music we grew up with. If we believe this, then there's no such thing as discordant harmonies - only unfamiliar ones.

[Matt Faunce]

On Friday, December 30, 2016 at 9:53:35 PM UTC-5, dsi1 wrote:
> On Thursday, December 29, 2016 at 8:29:45 AM UTC-10, Steve Freides wrote:
> > John wrote:
> > > Interesting book, maybe. I know that equal temperament is 'wrong' in
> > > that harmonies aren't pure. But how do you modulate otherwise? IAC:
> > >
> > > Amazon's page:
> > >
> > > https://www.amazon.com/Equal-Temperament-Ruined-Harmony-Should/dp/0393334201
> > >
> > > John R.
> >
> > Eh.
> >
> > Look into Turkish and other musical traditions where the octave isn't
> > divided up into equal parts - it's out there, not forgotten, just
> > forgotten by a lot of us.
> >
> > All tuning - all - is a compromise. Once you accept that premise, the
> > differences seem not to matter so much.
> >
> > -S-
>
> The way we prefer our octaves divided mostly depends on the music we grew up with.
>

True.

> If we believe this, then there's no such thing as discordant harmonies - only unfamiliar ones.
>

That's debatable. First, consider the difference between instinctive and learned behavior. No single fish can learn to thrive on land, but over many generations, under the right conditions, its descendants will evolve to eventually do so. So, I think if you expand "depends on the music we grew up with" to 'depends on the evolution of our music vis-a-vis our other evolutionary adaptations' then I think you're right. I think it's possible a species that had evolved in the right environment, in perhaps another world, would feel the tritone is more consonant than the perfect fifth.

It's hard to imagine that 'mathematical simplicity', as we understand it, is really a deeply (evolutionary) rooted psychological judgement. But that's only because it's hard to imagine what's beyond the practical limits placed on us by our own evolution.

Some people think the psychologist vs. anti-psychologist debate was settled by Frege and others, but it wasn't. The whole debate simply ran out of fresh ideas at a time when anti-psychologism was in style, (that is, in style in the West; Asians weren't participating in those debates.) So, the idea from the side they /felt/ was winning became the idea they assumed as true.

Matt

[Charlie]

Yikes!

I couldn't bring myself to watch this video. When I realized that this instrument, fine or not, was going to be broken, I shut the vid off. I just couldn't watch it.

Ya, I'm weird.

Charlie

[dsi1]

My guess is that this tune would have sounded awful to Western ears a couple hundred years ago. Not so today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm4LO22-cyY

[dsi1]

I suspect that this guitar breaking was a hoax. Mostly it was a prank played on Jennifer Jason Leigh. It worked great and she really did really did freak out. Don't worry, the guitar is safe and sound in Quentin Tarantino's secret vault. Here's the original gag.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FDLrJFp18Q

[Matt Faunce]

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?voDLrJFp18Q
>

In the movie Andre Rublev, there's a scene where a horse is killed. The
director, Andre Tarkovsky, wouldn't settle for fakery so you see an actual
horse getting murdered.

(I don't remember how. I saw the movie before knowing that the horse
actually dies. But I don't remember that scene.)

--
Matt

[dsi1]

On Sunday, January 1, 2017 at 10:56:35 AM UTC-10, Matt Faunce wrote:

There have been animals killed in the making of movies. It might be that a couple of mules were killed for the movie "Patton" although that's hardly verifiable. An ox was hacked to pieces in the movie "Apocalypse Now." I believe that's a thing that the Filipino tribesmen like to do during celebrations. On-screen animal killing was completely the norm in 70's Italian Cannibal movies. These days, that kind of behavior is frowned upon by mainstream movies. I don't mind animals getting killed in movies - as long as it's fake, of course. Hou'ole makahiki hou!

[Matt Faunce]

I just had this image of you, back in the day, watching a 70's Italian
Cannibal movie marathon.

--
Matt

[Andrew Schulman]

From Wikipedia:

Several scenes within the film depict violence, torture and cruelty toward animals, leading to controversy and censorship attempts upon completion of the film. Most of these scenes took place during the raid of Vladimir, showing for example the blinding and the torture of a monk. Most of the scenes involving cruelty toward animals were simulated. For example, during the Tatar raid of Vladimir a cow is set on fire. In reality the cow had an asbestos-covered coat and was not physically harmed; however, one scene depicts the real death of a horse. The horse falls from a flight of stairs and is then stabbed by a spear. To produce this image, Tarkovsky injured the horse by shooting it in the neck and then pushed it from the stairs, causing the animal to falter and fall down the flight of stairs. From there, the camera pans off the horse onto some soldiers to the left and then pans back right onto the horse, and we see the horse struggling to get its footing having fallen over on its back before being stabbed by the spear. The animal was then shot in the head afterward off camera. This was done to avoid the possibility of harming what was considered a lesser expendable, highly prized stunt horse. The horse was brought in from a slaughterhouse, killed on set, and then returned to the abattoir for commercial consumption. In a 1967 interview for Literaturnoe obozrenie, interviewer Aleksandr Lipkov suggested to Tarkovsky that "the cruelty in the film is shown precisely to shock and stun the viewers. And this may even repel them." In an attempt to downplay the cruelty Tarkovsky responded: "No, I don't agree. This does not hinder viewer perception. Moreover we did all this quite sensitively. I can name films that show much more cruel things, compared to which ours looks quite modest."[16]

[Matt Faunce]

Thanks. It's a judgment call. Tarkovsy made some of the greatest films,
if greatness is measured by how big and long-lasting the impact is on
me. The animal, still, was made to suffer before it died. On the other
hand, I'm still a meat eater and when I think about it I assume that the
cows I eat probably had suffered worse than that horse. And for what?
Hamburgers and steaks don't leave long-lasting, positive, artistic,
impressions.

I used to buy halal meat because the spirit of halal is to minimize the
suffering of the animal. But religious wackos don't go by the spirit of
the message, only the literal word. Idiots! And then most of them are
poser-hypocrites anyway.

--
Matt

[Matt Faunce]

Sorry, that came off as a little extreme. By "religious wackos" I meant
'the wackos from among the religious people', who, unfortunately make up
a sizable percentage. And, by "most of them are poser-hypocrites" I
meant that most people running lucrative business are poser-hypocrites,
who only pretend to be religious to cater to the many religious customers.

--
Matt

[dsi1]

On Sunday, January 1, 2017 at 2:44:51 PM UTC-10, Matt Faunce wrote:
> On 1/1/17 7:27 PM, Andrew Schulman wrote:
> > On Sunday, January 1, 2017 at 3:56:35 PM UTC-5, Matt Faunce wrote:

We used to have a family of wild pigs visit our condo in the evenings. People would line up at the fence to watch them. I met two guys the used to raise pigs. These guys had a genuine interest and affection for these animals. One of the guys told me how he would kill a pig. He would be at their side hugging them and soothing them with one arm. When they were calm, he would jab them with a sharp knife in their neck. They didn't feel a thing and would just bleed out. It seemed like a most humane way to kill.

My guess is that we won't be eating the flesh of animals for very much longer. Meat requires too much of our resources to produce. We'll probably be 3-D printing our own animal flesh soon. It's just logical. Enjoy that big juicy steak while you still can boys! :)

[David Raleigh Arnold]

On Thu, 29 Dec 2016 13:29:40 -0500
"Steve Freides" <st...@kbnj.com> wrote:

> All tuning - all - is a compromise.

__Yes, all.__ Regards, Rale

[Steve Freides]

Matt, your thoughts are entirely too deep for this newsgroup.

-S-

[Matt Faunce]

I think dsi1 got it... at least the first two paragraphs. The last
paragraph was a historic note which I don't expect anyone to know, but I
threw it in there because it nicely capped off my thoughts.

This subject is important because it's the one of the cruxes, if not the
crux, in the problem of bigotry in this world. As far as rmcg goes,
there are differences in artistic judgment here. Dsi1 has said
time-and-time-again that the standard is not as general as you might
think, i.e., that it's quite individual. His stance is on the radical
side, and has been scoffed at here; and I'm defending his ground,
although from my perspective. I'm not as radical as him.

Here's the playing field for the debate, in a nut-shell:

If there's an /absolute/ standard for concordance, simplicity, and
elegance, i.e., aesthetics, and Johnny-Trump-Voter thinks he's got a
clear feel for where that standard is, then he feels justified in
disparaging anything that misses the mark that he feels; and he will
more easily feel justified in thinking that any person missing the mark
is morally degenerate.

If the aesthetic standard is /relative/ to the cognitive environment in
which the person grew up and currently lives, then there is no
justification for disparaging anything that doesn't hit your mark.

o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o~~~o

(digging into this playing field a little deeper...)

The cognitive environments are different in (1) art, (2) science, and
(3) mathematics.
(1) In art, the cognitive environment is different from place to place
and changes over time. This is noticeable, e.g., when a Western person
listens to music of different tuning system, or when imagining what
Palestrina would think of Penderecki.
(2) In the 'hard science' the cognitive environment is shared by the
global community, and this changes when the paradigm shifts, e.g., as
happened in the Copernican revolution.
(3) In mathematics, the environment will (I guess) change after many
scientific paradigm shifts and a re-configuration of the relation of
mind to matter. The very nature of that relation (mind to matter) if
radically changed, will make old truths irrelevant to anything that is
considered relevant in life, and it will demand (or command) a whole new
system. This would be the case, for example, at a time and place where a
person's mind cannot be thought of as contained in a physical space
(like the brain, or brain-body), but is a network not contained by space
and time as we now conceive it.

If everything changes, and there's no over-arching law placing limits on
the change, e.g., God's inherently limited mind (I think it's
preposterous to think that God doesn't change), or an overarching
Platonic form (either set by God or that just happens to Be), then, like
art and science, even mathematics must change, albeit more slowly. As
far as I can see, my idea, that the mind-body reconfiguration causes the
change, is dependent on the idea that math is reducible to sets, and
sets are conceived as things in space.

--
Matt

[Richard Jernigan]

On Thursday, December 22, 2016 at 12:05:51 AM UTC-6, John wrote:
> Interesting book, maybe. I know that equal temperament is 'wrong' in that harmonies aren't pure. But how do you modulate otherwise? IAC:
>
> Amazon's page:
>
> https://www.amazon.com/Equal-Temperament-Ruined-Harmony-Should/dp/0393334201
>
> John R.

Taking a sudden swerve back to (kind of) on topic, here's Mark Grgic playing some Renaissance/Baroque pieces on a 1976 Friederich with the frets set for mean-tone temperament.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLI7sqnuBtWjn6JFjVBI2gziTl91WV7LKM&v=uXBCUL1jKt4

RNJ

[thomas]

Fretless Arabic music done right:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmdzIWZbsLw

If this doesn't give you an eargasm I'll refund your money.