Re: Melodies move by step in any form of music?

On May 31, 9:02 pm, Danny Schorr <.@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Sun, 01 Jun 2008 01:36:02 GMT, "Steve Latham" <llat...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> wrote:
>
> >When you move from A to Bb, you've skipped, I don't know, and infinite
> >number of notes. All of the frequencies between 440 and 466 (I'm
rounding)
> >are being skipped.
>
> No, No, No - there must be some threshold to be crossed where the ear
> accepts that you've ventured from a "wide unison" to a minor second.
> Otherwise the whole conception of 12TET would fall apart.
>
> Danny

Not really. You, me, just about every musician that has studied music
has had to accept that the notes on the piano are the notes that we
have to work with. Then we find out that it is 12 tet and the real
notes that were used at the origin were a lot different. We then learn
about quarter tones and their use in the Arabic quarter tone music.
Yes, there is a threshold of when notes become a minor second rather
than a unison, but this is learned behavior or learned definitions of
what the tones and notes are.

As one ventures into modern music more deeply, we find passages that
use very small micro tones. We learned the 12 tet. We learned to hear
the quarter tones and "blue notes" that you slid or bend into the
prober tuning. (when does a minor 3rd become "blue note"? II don't
know either but  I know it when I hear it!) SO we can learn to hear
the microtones by listening to them and using them if we have the
interest or motivation. Face it, there are strong forces of nature and
physics that influence our music, but we had to discover them and then
learn how to hear them and to use them. All these things are around us
all the time. Right now, somewhere in the world, a Muslim Iman is
calling to prayer the faithful by singing quarter tone modes to signal
that it is time. There are pianos whose strings are off to produce
microtonal variations even within the same note. A slide trombone
player is playing tones that will fit more closely to the ringing with
the trumpet rather than the actual note that is on the out of tune
piano and the conception of 12 tet is still intact. We musicians may
not always be rocket scientists, but we do have the ability to adjust
our perception and to make what we have work because we are able to
learn what it is supposed to be and to hear things in this context. If
you want to hear C G C as  a two note scale, you can learn to do it.
You can, if you prefer, just consider it one of those theoretical
arguments that does not affect most of our every day life.

But the 12 tet came to be because musicians discovered that by
learning to hear this system as truth, that they could do more
interesting things and open up doors to new types of music that were
not available to them before learning to hear the 12 tet. Who knows if
the CGC scale will do the same? Probably not, but this is the kinds of
things that must be explored if we are to continue to look for new
horizons of music. Some will work out and some will not, but if we
don't explore all the possibilities, how can we expect to progress?

The performing musician doesn't need to know about this to be a great
musician and/or composer or improviser.  But someone has to look at
these questions  in order that we can find new avenues to explore.
This is sometimes the work of the theorists.

LJS

I can't find your earlier post at the moment, something about the CGC
having an E in it that would be skipped? somehing like that. BUt the
notes CGC also can represent the partials 2,3,4  in the second lowest
three notes that occurs in the OTS making it a very natural sound and
in these partials, nothing is being skipped.