Re: how much do you care about your music being in strict equaltemperment keys?

[Douglas Baldwin <coyotelk@optonline.net>]

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