Ummm, theres nothing to keep anyone from discussing
practical music making on this list. We have had
recent posts regarding

homemade instruments,
a recent plea for a discussion of what
a higher limit theory of harmony might
be or at least a chord progression
some concrete information on getting
MIRACLE up and running on composers
home work areas
people announcing compositions they've
placed on the web (and discussions
about those compositions)
the very practical aspect of notations
for microtonal music

There has also been a wealth of other practical
information regarding computer music tools
(CSOUND, FTS, JdL's work)...

And there has been MIRACLE, which may (or may
not) be a holy grail of sorts. The music will
decide. I have tried, but don't really follow
it. I have no idea why 31EDO, which seems
to have the same basic identitys as MIRACLE
( 3*best_16/15 = best_11/9,
2*best_16/15 = best_8/7 )
is not miraculous, but since I'm getting a
31tet guitar, I won't be ready for the
differences for quite awhile.

There are other threads that I ignore more than
MIRACLE, and some I've hoped would blossom more
than they did, (I wish some smart folks had
chimed in with more regarding a higher limit
theory of harmony. Someone commented on
tabulating all the dyadic resolutions and I'll
bet most members of this list have attempted
or wanted to attempt a similar excercise, so,
please make that data available).

Sorry to rant, but when I see another group
starting up, I become a little incensed. There
is NOTHING preventing 'practical music making'
posts in this forum and on some level, all the
posts that are here can lead to someones
practical music making.

I don't think there really is a 'tuning police'
here, but everyone should be sceptical on this
forum of any means of specifying pitch which
is either greater precision a reasonable ear
will care about (what is reasonable can be
debated) and/or greater precision than
technology can realize. If someone wrote a
percussion part and specified a section
in a part as being in the following tuplet

|--------------- 256 -----------|
85 notes 86 notes 85 notes
tied tied tied

one would really wonder whether the specific
differences from a triplet were really
perceivable.

Now maybe these things were important to the
composer to get the piece written. That is a
practical aspect which should not be ignored
similar to "is 407c a sharp 5/4, a 14/11, a
19/15 or a 81/80". It can be any or all of
those things to how the composer is thinking
about it, and hopefully those will influence
the composer to produce interesting, novel
and different works. On the other hand, a
requirement for a trill between 81/80 and
19/15 is probably... <sigh>

Regarding the upper limit chord theory
question, I started an answer based on the
fact that seventh chords have become an
acceptable consonance in twentieth century
tonal music. I wrote out a three voice
triadic harmonization of 'Autumn Leaves'
which is

ii V I IV full cadence to vi

and then a three voice jazz renderring

G F# F# E E D# E
C C B B A A G
A D G C F# B E

where seventh chords are generally
consonant. However, I don't believe
eventh chords imply 7-limit in Western
music, so this line of pursuit failed...

Is there a non-drone, non-blues theory
of 7-limit that describes a body of
music? I suspect that some of the
meantone theory dealing with augmented
intervals would be as close to a place
to start as any. I don't think a
similar extension even to 9 occurs.

Beats me, rant over, keep composing and
theorizing out there.

Bob Valentine