La Monte is a fine example of someone who uses JI to describe using high
number ratios . i like to use the term JI for my own too cause i believe
more is gained by expanding a word than adding new ones.

I will confess i am more of the nature of practicing serial monogamy
to particular tunings more than i am the one night stand type of guy.
Maybe wendy is maybe just like the girl that can't say no as the song goes.
to each their own.
but i don't feel trapped . actually i seem to flirt with a couple of
other tunings, but only one might actually make it to the ensemble stage.
That would be meta mavila ( which some see as of the Pelog family)
which works much better for my hammer dulcimer than meta Slendro, so
maybe i have a bit of a "french ' thing going on.



By that standard, all electronic music is JI; even floating point
numbers are rational. No one is saying that JI can't beat. But I think
there's a distinction worth making between RI and JI, and I was assuming
Wendy Carlos's reference to JI was in the context of low number ratio JI.

> Some of the most interesting beating music i have heard has been in
> JI.12 Et hasn't seem to have a problem with pure octaves on electronic
> instruments
> Whether having one off comma shows up more than having it spread out is
> all a matter of context.
> I have never had a comma problem,often i have found them indispensable
> musically

They certainly have their uses. But they can also get in the way or be
out of character. I wouldn't have thought that octaves on electronic
keyboards were a problem, either, until one day I tuned my keyboard with
1/7-comma wide octaves and heard what a difference it made. But problems
with octaves tend to be limited and not very noticeable if the rest of
the intervals are tempered, or if (as is typical with 12-ET keyboards)
timbres are deliberately detuned for a chorus effect.

Certainly it's possible to use large rational numbers to emulate some of
the features of tempered tuning systems, but calling that "JI" is a
matter of opinion. If your scale has a 63/50 in it (a not uncommon
interval in 7-limit JI), and you're using it in a context where it
really needs to be an exact 63/50, then it's JI. But if you're using it
as a 400 cent major third, it could really be any interval of around
that size, and you might as well call it a tempered interval. Anything
more complex than that, and you'd really have to have a very specific
context (e.g. LaMonte Young's Dream House) to hear it as JI.

Not that there's anything wrong with JI, but it's only one of several
possible tuning systems worth exploring. Regular temperaments, circular
temperaments, other EDO's or MOS's not considered as temperaments per se
(e.g. Erv Wilson's golden horograms), adaptive tuning that approaches
JI, and arbitrary tunings each have their own uses and limitations as
well, and each kind of tuning or scale has its own musical "flavor".
--
Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/index.html>
The Wandering Medicine Show
KXLU <http://www.kxlu.com/main/index.asp> 88.9 FM Wed 8-9 pm Los Angeles