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Yo Margie baby, you're spinning some serious threads here. I predict posts will be branching off these topics (equal temperment and compositional process) for a month, easy. > first let me say that i am no music theory expert. > sometimes i obsess about this because i think my > compositions may sound ignorant due to my > shortcomings. All you need to focus on, in my humble etc., is, "Do I feel that something is lacking in my own compositions? Do I want/need to know more?" > but, other times when i listen to say, > other cultural music like music from bali or > thailand...i hear beauty that i love and i know the > scales are not adhearing to western thought. also, > with electronic music and sound art, it seems to me > that no key in necessary and that this is actually > desirable and standard. but, then i wonder if that is > how it is for all audiences and players? Some people are rather put off by anything outside their circle of experience. I know a guitar player who is really, really good at jazz, country, classic rock, etc. When I played some of my sound-mangling patches on my Boss GT-3 (robot voices, ring modulation stuff, pseudo-synth sounds, etc.) his response was, "When are you ever going to use *that?*" And I'd been using it for my own recordings for about two years at that point. (And just by the way, I consider myself right up with him in the jazz/country/rock realm, so it's not a matter of my making funny noises cuz I can't play "All the Things You Are.") Some people have the "dog-hears-something" response to new sounds. You know, some new sound comes along and they cock their heads sideways, like, "what wuz *that?*" And they check it out and blend it into an ever-morphing landscape of tastes and aesthetic yadayada... > > does it bother you to hear things that are not in key > according to western standards? if so, why? I think the only time it bothers me is when the music is supposed to be in tune (according to Western standards), and the performer imposes poor technique on it. I practice along with my 9-year-old son who is learning the oboe, and, oh-boe! is he "not in key according to Western standards!" But I love it. On the other hand, if I have to listen to some mediocre blues-rock singer with poor pitch control, I will not like it much at all. Someone else mentioned out-of-tune jazz, which would bother me. But tuning is about the moment: music, audience, and musician. Out-of-tune jazz played by alert, aspiring youngsters would not bother me at all. Out-of-tune jazz played by unfocused adults would bother me. There's been a style in rap tunes where some male gangsta thug tries to sing some ballady chorus (usually contrasted to a really sweet female vocal in the same song). That USED to piss me off until I realized that it was the artist's intention to piss me off (or at least push my buttons about it). And now I just kinda file it away. I don't LIKE it any better, but I don't get all hot and bothered. Western equal temperment evolved to handle a certain musical impulse: harmonic motion through different key centers. If the music doesn't come from that impulse, the tuning changes. I love gamelan, I love the ragas of India, I love Korean music, I love the blues, I even love the friggin' Grateful Dead trying to sing in harmony. And YOU have got some serious music going on your myspace page, girl! I mo buy summa that, nomsane? Douglas Baldwin, coyote-at-large www.thecoyote.org coyotelk@optonline.net "Let these minutes and hours Show my mind strange new flowers" - Jackson Browne