91. /6JI
This is 7/6, 8/6, 9/6, 10/6, 11/6, and 2/1. I thought it sounded very similar to something from a zelda game but I searched and searched and can't actually find anything similar to it. The zelda music is very chirpy and fast paced in comparison. Maybe something deep inside a castle that wasn't posted online or I couldn't find.

My curiousity in alternate scales taken all the way should mean trying to isolate a single variable. But that kind of rigor would ruin the enjoyment. Needs to be both. This inbetween thing where I'm both just curious what such and such might sound like while at the same time somewhat bothering to make things that I actually like the sound of.

Mostly driven by curiousity though.

90. /3 and 4 just intonation.
This was an experiment using just the ratios: 5/4, 4/3, 3/2, 5/3, 7/4, 2/1. Which is to say, just dividing by 3 and 4. I figured it would be so consonant that I could perhaps otherwise just randomly play notes and it might still seem musical/pleasing to the ears. So, it is pretty close to random. Although a relatively high note is generally followed by a relatively low note with really high notes and really low notes spaced out somewhat evenly. Otherwise I again want to not know where I'm at in the song. Just a whole bunch of notes that can't be predicted but are yet relatively consonant. And that one can find bits of traditional melody within it, but which it doesn't follow, instead wandering off again and again.

This was the first scala file I made. Making the file took about 30 seconds. Once I finally figured out how to do it. I could make a youtube tutorial that would take 10 seconds.

Also I see myself much younger waking up early and something like a church (but not really) playing something like this very loudly each morning (or once a week? or whatever calendar system would be used..) so that it reverberates throughout the community much like church bells, etc sometimes does in our world. This would be played as a sort of improvisation. Where there are some basic parameters combined with plenty of the random. As the player does it over and over again, they get better at it. This here was, BTW, me actually playing (with quantisization, etc afterwards). But I haven't practiced, with more practice there would be less of the random... although again, that would mean more of knowing where you're at in the song (how close to it's end/death) with respect to it being a recording.

In this other world the technology is in some ways greater while in other ways seems medieval. I guess the idea is using more wisdom with regards to technology. So, I get up to a verdant world in a connected commnity and I walk a relatively short distance to wherever it is I'm going. This plays in the background. It's a positive bit of music for a much more positive world than this one.

As it's reverberating all around us, it would have more reverb than the version I finally posted online. The idea then is to play it loud from a room or two away, with doors closed, etc so that the listener can control the amount of reverb themselves. (You can always put more yourself, but you can't take away recorded reverb.)

Partch's 43

It may seem ridiculous to start talking about inventing things when yur talking about things you don't know crap about (the arrogance of youth, the simple stupidity..., etc). But well, nothing wrong with getting initial thoughts down before getting stuck into the established track.
Harrison must be doing something else with his justly tuned piano. Have to read up some more I guess.

I read Guy Gavriel Kay's viking fantasy, something about Light of the Sun... title made no sense relative to the book that I could see. I've read half of another titled Prospero's Children. And part of that Gene Wolfe ancient Greece book.

None of these people know how to properly tell a story. OTOH Robin Hobb is king. I shall attempt to start putting together a story/ies keeping Hobb's expert writing in mind.

I've spent the last 4 days laid up with I guess back spasms. Not too painful but I can't stand up straight and can hardly walk (not too painful unless I try to stand up straight). The worst part is just watching the time pass by, praying I'll have healed enough to go work for 14 hours (on my feet probably a good 5) on Monday night. I already called off for Friday night. If I call off Monday night that will be two call offs. We get 5 for an entire year. At which point we receive a written infraction (whatever that means). Fired at 11.

Which is absurd. It's a hospital by the way. This means people routinely come to work sick and spread their diseases to their patients. It should be against the law to have such a policy about sick days at a hospital. It is a threat to the public's health.

It's not as big a deal for me as I usually go years at a time without catching colds or flus. But the back thing worries me. It seems to be an increasingly chronic problem. Will have to start taking additional steps to try to fix this problem. But it seems to follow no rhyme or reason...

I don't think sitting in a chair is really a good idea so for now I lay in bed praying I'll heal enough to handle work Monday night. It's not looking like I'll quite be better enough that I should attempt such a thing. I suppose I could get out my old laptop and try to outline some kind of template while I lay in bed...

At some point I need to actually truly begin the writing. I hold back almost as if I think my real life hasn't yet started.
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I think Michael Harrison's justly toned piano is beautiful by the way. There is perhaps something positive to be said for the extra dissonance along with the extra consonance.

Despite going off into dissonance there still seems to be something limited about the songs he's written with it though. (Also the pounding repetitive dissonant tone clouds of song 4 and 10 are kind of awful.) If one stayed in consonance, just intonation IS limited. With Harrison, I think he's still staying enough within it (it still sounds like music) that it is limited. I want though to experiment with the same tuning next and see if it is indeed limited. Probably so.

Limited or not, when working instead with VST technology it might make more sense to add many additional tones to the standard 12 to potentially remove dissonance from the just intonation (so you had a choice). So for example, having a second D note that was tuned to be consonant (1.5/1) with the originally justly tuned A note, etc. Although this concept taken all the way could mean a huge scale. One could instead limit this scale somewhat, maybe just tripling it for example to add more possibility, if indeed the justly toned 12 is as limited (although beautiful) as it appears in Harrison's work.

This does appear to come back somewhat to the justonic concept. Although is a combination of the two and was thinking might be easier or lazier to not actually bother with justonic and instead just make a separate scala file that added additional... secondary D, E notes, etc.

But there are all kinds of additional issues. Does one retune the additional notes based on the triad or the fifth, etc? There is no answer really. Would depend on each individual song. Would be very complicated.

About the justonic: I don't even think the justonic really makes all that much sense either. You play for example a C/E/G chord, then a D/F/A followed by a E/G/B chord in succession. In just intonation the first is perfect consonance, the following two are dissonant. But using the justonic, say where it used the lowest note as the root, all would be consonant, but the last G would be a different G than the first.

What this is to say, is that the step up by the middle note would be different than the step up by the bottom note... I think this in and of itself is similar to the issue of dissonance. I need to hear extended music written with justonic. I think it would have a vertigo-like effect.

While 3/2 is assoclated with power, 5/4 is more expressive of sentiment and emotion. To my ear, these qualities of the primes show up to some extent in combined intervals; for example, the included interval 5/3 (a "major sixth") seems to convey some "fiveness" and some "threeness." This would imply that the character of any just interval includes expression of the prime factors that make it up. Of course, all this is highly subjective.

In early times the interval 5/4 was considered discordant; its acceptance as consonant came centuries after 3/2 gained popularity. Then it became firmly established as an essential component of traditional triadic harmony.

http://www.redshift.com/~dcanright/harmser/

Power versus a more nuanced expression of differing feelings. Sort of like forcing people in line versus actually using reason and communicating their differences. Originally the 5/4 sounded discordant but as the ears spent time hearing it became 'musical'. With time a much larger and discordant scale could become acceptable. Would such routinely listened to by an entire society influence the actions in the same direction?

justonic and long explanation of just intonation

http://www.justonic.com/demos.html
Do I really care? Not sure.


These commas exist only outside the confines of the twelve notes tones of equal temperament. In fact, tempered tunings were developed over the past four hundred years precisely to avoid the commas that are heard whenever music with moderately complex harmonies is played in just intonation. I have discovered that incorporating the commas into the harmonic fabric of my music frees it from the need for tempered tunings and opens up a new approach to tonality.-Michael Harrison (as opposed to justonic)

Throughout the history of Western classical music there has been a gradual evolution from the use of relatively wide and consonant intervals to increasingly narrow and more dissonant sounding intervals. For example, organum, early two-part music that developed from the 9th to 12th centuries, used the consonant open sounding intervals of perfect fourths, fifths and octaves. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the relatively dissonant intervals of seconds, thirds, and sevenths were interwoven into the polyphonic fabric of the music, which was still organized contrapuntally as opposed to tonally. At the beginning of the 18th century, music began to be formally organized around tonal centers. As major, minor, and other key relationships developed, it became essential to create a tuning system that permitted moving easily between different key centers. In the 19th century, the evolution of even more complex chromaticism resulted in stretching tonal harmony to its limits. In the 20th century, Schoenberg’s concept of “emancipation of dissonance” led to the free use of any interval combination in equal temperament. I propose that this evolution is still in progress, and that its next stage is the “emancipation of the comma.”

etc...