Dawson Berry: Difference between revisions

'''Dawson Berry''', otherwise known by the pseudonym "'''Aura'''", is a composer and partially self-taught music theorist, who got his start in microtonality in the year 2014, with the song "[[:File:Folly of a Drunk.mp3|Folly of a Drunk]]" and got started with his concept of "Treble Down Tonality" a year earlier in the year 2013.  Although he is in many respects classical-minded for a microtonal composer, he is a pioneer in the realm of Microtonality who likes to to explore intervals and temperaments where few have explored before, and to find the beauty in intervals that other music theorists have overlooked, ignored, or dismissed.

In line with this, he is an advocate for the usage of [[27/16]] as the major sixth above the Tonic in Just [[5-limit]] diatonic scales in place of [[5/3]] on account of his belief that while intervals with small rational ratios between the right two notes can establish tonality, intervals with small rational ratios between the wrong two notes in a scale can destroy a sense of tonality. Perhaps notoriously, he is also an advocate for the deliberate usage of the [[40/27]] grave fifth in composition when not working with Meantone, as he would argue that it is a distinct interval in its own right with its own distinct role and properties as opposed to simply being a mere poor-quality knock-off of the more well-known [[3/2]] perfect fifth. Moreover, he has significant interest in [[159edo]], which he uses for composition due to its near-perfect approximation of the 2.3.11 subgroup, and is currently pioneering large chunks of [[Alpharabian tuning]]- the JI tuning for this particular subgroup.

Aura has been influenced by some aspects of the music theory of [[Harry Partch]], but would cite the little he knows of the works of [[Wikipedia:Hugo Riemann|Hugo Riemann]] as a more significant influence, as the influence of Riemann's concept of Harmonic duality on his work with Treble-Down Tonality is strongly connected to his finding out that [https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/11274/what-are-the-greek-modes-and-how-do-they-differ-from-modern-modes Ancient Greek modes were built from the Treble downwards], and how when the Ancient Romans borrowed the Greek terminology, they evidently made the mistake of assuming that the Greek note names were built from the Bass upwards, [https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%A4%CF%81%CF%8C%CF%80%CE%BF%CF%82_(%CE%BC%CE%BF%CF%85%CF%83%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%AE) resulting in a disconnect] between the Ancient Greek musical system and Modern Western Music Theory.  In light of this information, and in light of the development of Western Music Theory since the time of the Romans, Aura proposes that Riemann's concept of harmonic duality- as well as Partch's argument that the Overtone Series and the Undertone Series are equally fundamental- should be taken much more seriously, and that there should be new innovations that build on the more historically accurate version of the Ancient Greek modes and Treble-Down Tonality in general to the same extent as has been done for Bass-Up Tonality.  However, he is aware that doing this involves discarding the commonly-held dogmatic assumption in Modern Western Music Theory that all music is built from the Bass Upwards, and thus, has proposed terminology for renaming some of the diatonic functions encountered in Modern Western Music Theory to be better accommodating to the existence of Treble-Down Tonality.

* The [[Nexuma|Nexus comma]] (1771561/1769472)

He is currently working with [[Sergey A Kryukov]], mainly in the capacity of lending his ideas to the creation of virtual instruments.  For more details, see [[User:Aura|his user page]].