User:Aura/Aura's Ideas on Tonality

Introduction

It seems that some people in the community want to know how my system relates to the more well-known approach of Aaron Hunt- a simple question with a complicated answer. Although this page is late in coming, I think it is time to really begin to let people see the underpinnings of my approach to music in general and microtonal music in particular, and hopefully begin to answer this question.

A Strange new World

From looking things up, it seems that Hunt and I have both been influenced by music theory of Harry Partch. However, there are significant differences, as while Hunt has been influenced by the work of Martin Vogel and Dr. Patrick Ozzard-Low, I, for my part, have been influenced rather heavily by what little I know of the works of Hugo Riemann, and I've even picked up a few tricks concerning Locrian mode from Alexander LaFollett, as well as learning from my own experimentations with Locrian. While I can't remember which came first, I must say that the influence of Riemann's concept of Harmonic duality on my work is strongly connected to my discovery that Ancient Greek modes were built from the Treble downwards, and, because 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, 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, I think it would be a good idea to also 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, doing this involves discarding the commonly-held dogmatic assumption in Modern Western Music Theory that all music is built from the Bass Upwards. Furthermore, it involves renaming some of the diatonic functions encountered in Modern Western Music Theory to be better accommodating to Treble-Down Tonality, something which Hunt's system fails to do. So, in order to do this, what sort of foundation shall we use? Well, for one thing, I propose we take Riemann's concept of harmonic duality- as well as Partch's argument that the Overtone Series and the Undertone Series are equally fundamental- much more seriously. Nevertheless, Hunt has done a fantastic job in integrating the ancient idea of a comma and the modern idea of the Just-Noticeable Difference in pitch perception, and I have even taken from the research on his site in this area to establish core aspects of my standards in terms of pitch representation quality. However, I differ significantly with him in terms of what intervals can be regarded as "commas" as opposed to "chromas", as due to my prior experience with 24edo, I can only assume that chromas, in addition to the standard definitions, can also be intervals that are less than 50 cents, yet greater than 25 cents.

Hunt is right in pointing out the fundamental nature of the Octave in Bass-Up tonality, as well as his reasoning for why this is the case. However, it is evident that holds to the spurious Roman view that the Ancient Greeks built their music from the Bass Upwards, thus, he only sees an incomplete picture when it comes to why the Octave is fundamental when it comes to the acoustic physics. As stated by the Wikipedia article on the Undertone Series, Henry Cowell has rightly pointed out that subharmonics are rather difficult to avoid in resonance, and this physical phenomenon can been demonstrated in systems such as this relatively simple one. Thus, the fact the Octave occupies the same positions relative to the fundamental in these systems as it does in harmonic systems lends itself to the reasonable assumption that physical properties of the subharmonic series act as an additional basis for the Octave being fundamental in acoustic physics. However, there's more to the physics of Treble-Down tonality than this, for as this video demonstrates, [1], there are physical phenomenon in the analog world in which we live that produce notes that are not directly on the subharmonic spectrum, notes which our current understanding of physics fails to account for. Furthermore, as I was talking with Sam about our respective ideas of consonance, one concept that emerged from our discussion was the idea of "contra-linear consonance", which can be paired with Sam's own ideas on what I'll refer to here as "linear consonance", and my own observations on this comport with other observations on Treble-Down tonality.