Dynamic Tonality

Gentlepersons,

Please accept this invitation to explore the musical posibilities of Dynamic Tonality.

First, listen carefully to C To Shining C by Bill Sethares. The novel effect you're hearing is Dynamic Tonality.

Bill composed and created this piece using his computer keyboard and a Max/MSP-based synth, TransFormSynth, for which the installation instructions can be found at the bottom of this page.

Note that the effects of Dynamic Tonality can only be controlled by an isomorphic keyboard, which provides the same fingering in every key and tuning across the syntonic tuning continuum. The piano-style keyboard can't do this.

But don't worry! TransFormSynth (above) can turn your computer's keyboard into an isomorphic keyboard. Your computer is all you need.

I suspect that the more "traditionally tonal" a piece is, the more its use of Dynamic Tonality will stand out. You can have the popular appeal of tonality, and advance the state of the art, too.

What can YOU do with Dynamic Tonality?

I hope that this posting piques your interest. I look forward to hearing your comments -- and your compositions!

Thanks! :-)

Jim Plamondon

Austin, Texas

C To Shining C by Bill Sethares. The novel effect you're hearing is Dynamic Tonality.

The thing I'm wondering most about is why a piece called "C to Shining C" is in D... and why the wiki page states that it's all based on a Cmaj chord, while I'm hearing a Dmaj chord throughout. Is this tonality so dynamic that pitches differ by a whole tone or what? :blink:

Your writing sounds a lot like TimeCube!

Your writing sounds a lot like TimeCube!

Man I love TimeCube.

So it just uses different ratios for the microtonal adjustment? Nifty, but No one can accurately hear some of the shifts in freq: 380 cents to 386.3? But maybe that's the point.

Interesting, but it didn't grab me too hard. Rather use the concepts in other ways. :)

Nah...for my writing to sound like TimeCube I'd have to decry all humans as "evil bastards." While that might be cathartic, I can't see how it would be constructive. ;-)

More generally, to be a crank (as perhaps jujimufu is suggesting), I would have to "contradict rigorously proven mathematical theorems or to deny extremely well established physical theories, such as the special theory of relativity or a round earth."

However,

(a) I am not denying the well-established relationship between the Harmonic Series and Just Intonation; rather, I'm abstracting that relationship and generalizing it to apply to a wider range of tunings and timbres. This is the normal means by which science provides art with new tools.

(b) Mathematical proofs of the foundations of Dynamic Tonality have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals (see references here).

Regarding Ferkungamabooboo's suggestion that "No one can accurately hear some of the shifts in freq: 380 cents to 386.3."

The shift in the *width* (not frequency) of the M3 interval in "C to Shining C" is not from 380 cents to 386.3 cents as suggested by Ferkungamabooboo, but rather from 380 cents to 480 cents: a full semi-tone. Most people can distinguish intervals that are this far apart. I apologize to Ferkungamabooboo for the lack of clarity in that section of Wikipedia's description of Dynamic Tonality, and would welcome suggestions on how to clarify its wording to make such misunderstandings less common.

If I understand the structure and purpose of this forum correctly, then its readers are "young composers of avant garde and electronic music," in whch the avant-garde seek to "push the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the status quo, primarily in the cultural realm."

To push a boundary -- that is, to be avant-garde -- one must move out of one's comfort zone, stretch oneself, do something one has never done before, something one might even fail at. Truly great artists moved beyond the comfort zones of entire societies, doing things that NO ONE had ever done before -- thereby blazing a trail for the merely imitative to follow.

In choosing a boundary to push, an artist must make a trade-off between opportunity and risk. How can one weight the opportunity/risk trade-off presented by Dynamic Tonality?

The opportunity is vast. Dynamic Tonality provides the opportunity for entirely new structural effects in music, such as polyphonic tuning bends, tuning progressions, temperament modulations, and the like. The closest analogy I can think of is the discovery of the blues scale and 12-bar form in the previous century -- a novel structure that opened a vast new creative frontier.

Yet the risk is low. Although Dynamic Tonality is entirely new, its effects merely extend the time-honored framework of tonality (as did the blues, arguably). One's compositions can explore and exploit the as-yet unkown emotional affect of Dynamic Tonality's new structural resources (thereby meeting academia's need for novelty) while still delivering tonal familiarity (thereby meeting commercial music's need for familiarity). You can have your cake and eat it, too.

This combination of high opportunity and low risk is rare in art. Picasso, Pollock, Armstrong, Schoenberg, Coltrane, etc. took much larger risks to open asrtistic frontiers that were (arguably) smaller. (This assertion could start a huge flame war; let's please skip it by agreeing that "only time will tell.") They could have simply continued to do what everyone else did, with tiny variations; instead, they chose to challenge themselves, push boundaries, and open new frontiers.

As young composers, you have the least to lose, and the most to gain, by exploring and exploiting the novel musical frontiers opened up by Dynamic Tonality. Every grant making board, music critic, review committee, tenure committee, and talent scout is looking for something NEW...but not too new. Something that's challenging, but not too challenging. Something that pushes one boundary, while respecting others. Something like Dynamic Tonality.

I hope that you will choose to explore it for yourselves.

Thanks! :-)

Jim Plamondon

Austin, Texas

Regarding CMaj vs DMaj -- good point. :-)

The tuning moves smoothly between 19-tet (P5=695) and 5-tet (P5=720) along the syntonic tuning continuum (see attachment).

The only tone that's stable when the tuning changes is the tonic; all other pitches change. So, for example, A4 is never equal to 440Hz (standard concert tuning) except as the tuning passes momentarily through 12-tet (P5=700) (unless it's the tonic).

When the notes' pitches are changing like this, the traditional pitch-based note-names aren't terribly meaningful. I think the composer simply stopped thinking in terms of pitch names, but found the name "C to Shining C" to be catchy, and to imply pitch-movement.

I've read a bit about these dyanamic tonality ideas, and I honestly believe they're worth looking into.

But I think perhaps you should approach potential users a bit differently, especially online. I've studied microtonality for a few years now and the terminology can get awfully obscure. Many musicians today have never heard of syntonic tuning or commas, limmas, pythagorean thirds or subminor triads. It just sounds like gibberish unless you've heard these things and experimented with them. For many western musicians, 12 ET feels pefectly natural or inevitable, and the piano defines what "in tune" means. So I think it might help to go a bit further in explainig "polyphonic tuning bends, tuning progressions, temperament modulations, and the like," so that we know why we might want them.

Now on to a real question, your chart mentions septimal and undecimal intervals but it doesn't look like your "syntonic tuning continuum" is particularly adapetd to such chords....

... So all this really is is just changing the tuning as you play? Or through the course of a piece? That's it?

Yeah, uh. Despite the fancy names and TIMECUBE, this is still pretty simple. I mean, anyone playing string instruments can try this out in a jiffy, just pitchbend all the time or mess with the tuning knobs while you play.

Overcomplicated non-theory is overcomplicated...

(Nevermind anyone writing electronic music can mess with the pitch bending, make chords, bla bla bla bla. You can do all this already, and it's been done a whole lot.)

It'd be better if this was some sort of system proposal of some sort, but I really don't see the point by now, specially if you work with stuff which isn't even tunable (music concrete, anyone?)

PS: Why is this in this forum at all? This sounds all more like advertising... Specially considering that this forum member there seems to be the same as the one that posted this video:

PS2: That video is hilarious, thx for the laff. "You've never heard anything like that because it's just been invented," LOL. It sounds like a goddamn infomercial.

PS3: Speaking of which, doesn't wikipedia have guidelines against promoting original material/research/bla? Or, for that matter, using it to promote your personal crap? This sure sounds like it...

For one, this shouldn't even be in this forum. At best, it should be in the "Advice and techniques" section. Secondly, this is an interesting idea.... but it's just pitch-bending. People have been experimenting with pitch-bending as least as long as electronic music has been around. It's nothing new, drop the illusions of grandeur. Thirdly annoying triple posts are annoying. That is all.

P.S. That video was so pompous that it bordered on unintentional hillarity. :D

...this is an interesting idea.... but it's just pitch-bending. People have been experimenting with pitch-bending as least as long as electronic music has been around. It's nothing new, drop the illusions of grandeur.

A pitch bend changes the tuning of all affected notes by the same interval.

A tuning bend does something entirely different: it changes the tuning of every note differently, depending on its distance from the tonic along a line of perfect fifths.

Consider playing a C major triad with C as the tonic, in 12-tone equal temperament. Bending the tuning up by (say) 25 cents

- leaves the pitch of C constant (because it's the tonic),

- raises the pitch of G by 25 cents (because G is one perfect fifth higher than C along a line of perfect fifths), and

- raises the pitch of E by 100 cents (because E is four perfect fifths higher than C along a line of perfect fifths).

If one added an F to the chord above, it would be lowered by 25 cents, because it is one perfect fifth lower than the tonic along a line of perfect fifths.

So, in a polyphonic (many note) tuning bend, every note is shifting in pitch by a different interval, determined by its dstance from the tonic along a line of perfect fifths.

Furthermore, with Dynamic Tonality, the structure of the underlying timbre is being changed in real time to align its partials with the tuning's notes. In the above example, the timbre's third partial is raised by 25 cents to align with G, and the timbre's fifth partial is raised by 100 cents to align with E. This delivers consonance even as the tuning changes; without such shifting of partials.

Fortunately, one doesn't have to understand the math to USE Dynamic Tonality, becuase the theory is encapsulated in the isomorphic keyboard's note-pattern. Just wiggle a joystick of shift a slider, and the tuning & timbre changes accordingly; your fingering patterns stay the same in every tuning.

So it's a highly controlled pitch bend.

It still doesn't convince anyone. It's a pitch bend which more details added to it, but in reality the same effect can be achieved simply by, uh, manipulating the pitch bend in cents and paying attention to detail. Why, after all, use YOUR system really when all you're really doing is just changing the pitches? Theoretically it doesn't really matter if you use a special (or whatever) keyboard or not, so the input method is irrelevant.

Moreover, if you really want to use the system you created there nobody's going to stop you. It's your personal thing and that's it. However, pushing it here on the forum as if it's something "new" or of common interest is a pretty bold thing to do, again, considering you're not doing anything particularly impressive (the same result can be achieved through many other means.)

If this is in any way a marketing thing to promote your special keyboard dealie, then go advertise it elsewhere. This isn't the place for it.

PS: Don't invent crap, you bend the pitch of the notes even if you want to call it "tuning" bend or whatever, the end product is just a simple pitch bend within more controlled parameters. That's it, stop dreaming.

[quote name=SSC;254691 Why is this in this forum at all? This sounds all more like advertising...

Speaking of which' date=' doesn't wikipedia have guidelines against promoting original material/research/bla? Or, for that matter, using it to promote your personal crap? This sure sounds like it...[/quote]

The foundations of Dynamic Tonality have been publised in peer-reviewed scientific journals (see the references at the end of Wikipedia's Dynamic Tonality article), so it is neither personal crap nor original research.

My original posting included a reference to a web site at which a free synthesizer implementing Dynamic Tonality could be downloaded, for use with one's computer keyboard. If I were selling the synth, then my posting here would be advertising, but I'm not.

I understand that the vast majority of people are ignorant about even their presumed areas of speciality, and resistant to change under the best of circumstances. However, don't artists bear a singular responsibility to question the status quo, to look deeper, and to find the common links among us all? If you can cast aside the blinkers of cynicism for even a moment, you may find what you're looking for in Dynamic Tonality.

I think it might help to go a bit further in explainig "polyphonic tuning bends, tuning progressions, temperament modulations, and the like," so that we know why we might want them.

QUOTE]

Quite right. My initial posting was intended to give the minimum necessary interest to spark interest, starting with a demo song.

I would love to be able to post additional songs, each demonstrating a different aspect of Dynamic Tonality, but I don't have any such examples. Dynamic Tonality is brand spankin' new. "C To Shining C" is the only demo song we've got so far. That is why I posted my original link to this forum: to see if I could get additional demo songs from its members.

Now on to a real question, your chart mentions septimal and undecimal intervals but it doesn't look like your "syntonic tuning continuum" is particularly adapetd to such chords....

Excellent point! :-)

The 7th partial doesn't fit the syntonic temperament very well, except in a narrow band of tunings around P5=696 cents (1/4-comma meantone & 31-TET). There, it aligns quite nicely with the augmented sixth (A# in C Major). This is perhaps why the augmented sixth was used extensively in the centuries-long period during which 1/4-comma meantone was the dominant keyboard tuning (German sixths and all that).

The narrowness of the band of septimal tunings is due to the augmented sixth being eight notes away from the tonic along a line of perfect fifths. For every cent wider one makes the perfect fifth, the augmented sixth increases in width by 8 cents. It's really flyin'. Widen the P5 by just 12.5 cents, and you've changed the width of the augmented sixth by an entire semi-tone. Therefore, the valid range of septimal tunings is inevitably narrow.

The same reasons make the syntonic temperament's unidecimally-valid tuning range even narrower.

Does that answer your question satisfactorily?

However, let me emphasize that the best way to explore this is experientially, by messing around with Dynamic Tonality on your computer keyboard, using the previously-indicated free synth. Just play with it, and a lot of these theoretical points will be illuminated in "aha!" moments.

The foundations of Dynamic Tonality have been publised in peer-reviewed scientific journals (see the references at the end of Wikipedia's Dynamic Tonality article), so it is neither personal crap nor original research.

My original posting included a reference to a web site at which a free synthesizer implementing Dynamic Tonality could be downloaded, for use with one's computer keyboard. If I were selling the synth, then my posting here would be advertising, but I'm not.

I understand that the vast majority of people are ignorant about even their presumed areas of speciality, and resistant to change under the best of circumstances. However, don't artists bear a singular responsibility to question the status quo, to look deeper, and to find the common links among us all? If you can cast aside the blinkers of cynicism for even a moment, you may find what you're looking for in Dynamic Tonality.

No, what you're showing there is simply the designs and ideas for the practical keyboard implementation of this mathematical system, nothing else. That's all very nice but I'm talking about what's going on as the end result. The musical end result could as well been produced through other means than your system, and yet sound exactly the same as it. Therefore, it creates a problem where the system becomes redundant as a real system by virtue of ambiguity and because it's better to have no system where no system is needed.

From a musicology point of view, the math or technology employed here don't matter really as much as what you're actually producing musically. And when what you are producing musically could've been done with or without the systems proposed the systems aren't taken with much relevance as they are only explanations of how the musical product was elaborated (but it could've been anything else.)

Serial music has this problem to some degree when it may sound as it could've as well not been serial; the serial part is a process of composition rather than a "system" like major/minor tonality is. Likewise, chance elements and other such things.

So, understand precisely what it is that you're saying here in terms of how it'll be seen by music theorists and musicologists. It's just a compositional process at the end of the day, but so is any made up arbitrary system (every time a chicken lays an egg I write a C!) This is entirely OK, there's nothing wrong with coming up with your own systems and sharing it with others.

But don't push it, because this isn't really innovation from a musical or theoretical standpoint. And, funny thing is, if you run this through the actual musicology circles for review, I doubt you'll get a different answer.

So to understand what I'm saying, think of it like this:

I made a machine that writes a C every time a chicken in my barn lays an egg. Or, alternatively, it writes an E every time a blue car passes on the 4th lane by the highway near my house. This is a system just as valid as yours in terms of "innovation." I'm applying simple arbitrary rules to things and deriving musical decisions from it. Sure, your system uses math, but so what?

If you want to not get laughed at or punched, don't bring up that crap about the status quo since you apparently have no grasp of what you are talking about, nor do you have any intellectual basis from which to challenge such thing EVEN IF that was the intention with a thing such as what you're saying here. Furthermore, it's fine to question people's knowledge of their professional fields (though that could as well be seen as nonsense without a real reason to bring it into question) but you really should be careful about speaking of ignorance.

Now, as for your thing with the keyboard and so on, I guess that if you aren't pushing a product then I can't really criticize you for something you aren't doing, right? Quite frankly, I do think it's cute what you've done there with the whole engineering of the keyboard and so on. It's nice, I'd sure give it a try sometime, but this does not negate any of what I've said since I'm talking about the peripheral/method, not the end musical product.

PS: Don't invent crap, you bend the pitch of the notes even if you want to call it "tuning" bend or whatever, the end product is just a simple pitch bend within more controlled parameters. That's it, stop dreaming.

I'm clearly failing to explain this well, for which I hope you'll forgive me.

Let's look at what's happening to just one note: the tonic.

First, make sure that the demo synth's "tonality diamond" control is set to "Max Consonance."

Then, play the tonic note and bend the tuning up by (say) 25 cents. If you were performing a pitch bend, that would bend the pitch of the tonic up by 25 cents, right? But since this is a TUNING bend, and we're playing the tonic note, it's pitch doesn't change at all.

However, the gap between the note's 2nd and 3rd partials widens by 25 cents; the gap between its 4th and 5th partials increases by 100 cents; and so on for other partials (according to a formula that is beyond the scope of this posting). These changes to the note's timbre ensure that its partials align with the notes of the altered tuning.

So, a tuning bend is not a pitch bend. A pitch bend changes the pitches of the fundamentals of all notes by a given interval, while leaving their timbres unchanged. A tuning bend systematically alters the pitches of the fundamentals of all notes by different intervals, and adjusts their timbres accordingly.

We can say "it's just a old pitch bend" and "no, it's a new effect" to each other in this forum all day long, but

a) if you try the demo synth, you'll hear the aural proof

b) if you read the peer-reviewed scientific papers referenced at the end of the Wikipedia article on Dynamic Tonality, you'll find the mathematical proof.

--- Jim

We can say "it's just a old pitch bend" and "no, it's a new effect" to each other in this forum all day long, but

a) if you try the demo synth, you'll hear the aural proof

b) if you read the peer-reviewed scientific papers referenced at the end of the Wikipedia article on Dynamic Tonality, you'll find the mathematical proof.

Um. Aural proof of what? Pitch bending based on predefined parameters and models which you so happen to call "tuning bend" but in reality it doesn't matter how you call it because the names already exist for the very same things you're doing?

Oh wait, peer reviewed scientific papers. Right. But have I ever talked about math here? No. This isn't the issue, the issue is all this really is is just a composition process or tool, but the end result can as well be replicated without it.

Face it, you are nobody to come and start calling things differently for no good reason. Nobody's going to buy it, because it's complicating something which really needs no complication. A pitch bend IS a pitch bend, and tuning IS NOTHING BUT manipulation of pitches. There are thousands of tuning systems but the possibilities are endless all the same, because all it really is, is just PITCH BENDING.

You can call a tree "blorg," but you'll have a hard time convincing anyone to use your new name for it if there's no real advantage in doing so other than you happen to think it sounds nicer.

I understand that the vast majority of people are ignorant about even their presumed areas of speciality, and ...

I apologize for making this remark. It was incorrect, unwarranted, and ungentlemanly. You derserve better. I am sorry. I won't do it again.

Um. Aural proof of what? Pitch bending based on predefined parameters and models which you so happen to call "tuning bend" but in reality it doesn't matter how you call it because the names already exist for the very same things you're doing?

In my post to which you're responding, there was some discussion of the dynamic alignment of a note's partials with the current tuning's pitches. Is this dynamic change in timbre irrelevant to your argument regarding the equivalence of pitch bends and tuning bends?

In my post to which you're responding, there was some discussion of the dynamic alignment of a note's partials with the current tuning's pitches. Is this dynamic change in timbre irrelevant to your argument regarding the equivalence of pitch bends and tuning bends?

That's precisely the point. You're always talking about the MEANS by which a musical result is produced. I'm doing it in reverse to show you that the same exact end result can be achieved just by manipulating regular pitch bending to conform to any particular model you set out.

I mean, the only crucial point is, to 100% mimic your process without using the formulas you're using would be tasking and silly, so in that case why not use the formulas. But this is very specific, and it's more about what the end product is going to be like. By which process though, that's something entirely different.

So really, there's no objective difference between what you're doing and regular pitch-bending because you're only, at the end, using formulas to control the pitch bends while I'm not. We can end up with the same result, after all, the basic elements remain exactly the same no matter what process we use so long as we shoot for the same final product.

What formulas or how you manipulate pitch bending is not the point here. The point is that it all can be reduced to much simpler terms, without using new terminology or inventing anything. What your system does is just set up a set of parameters by which pitch variation is controlled, but at the end it's just that. Pitch variations/bends/etc being controlled.

Very, very simple really.

Very, very simple really.

Nonetheless an interesting way to look at it.

That's precisely the point. You're always talking about the MEANS by which a musical result is produced. I'm doing it in reverse to show you that the same exact end result can be achieved just by manipulating regular pitch bending to conform to any particular model you set out.

I mean, the only crucial point is, to 100% mimic your process without using the formulas you're using would be tasking and silly, so in that case why not use the formulas. But this is very specific, and it's more about what the end product is going to be like. By which process though, that's something entirely different.

I apologize for being thick about this, but you're coming at this issue from a sufficiently different angle that I'm having trouble following your argument. let me paraphrase what I'm hearing back to you, to see if I'm understanding it.

First, your focus is "the musiical result," by which I gather you mean a MP3, WAV, or some other electronic sound file.

Second, you're suggesting that any such "musical result" that is generated using the means provided by Dynamic Tonality could also be produced by other means. For example, one could use a musical programming environment such as CSound to independently control (a) the pitch of each individual note and (b) the placement of each note's individual partials, such that the "musical result" of the CSound approach would be aurally indistinguishable from that produced by Dynamic Tonality.

Third, you're asserting that if the "musical result" produced by Dynamic Tonality can be attained by other means, for example by using CSound as above, then it is inaccurate and inappropriate to claim that Dynamic Tonality enables any "new musical effects," because those effects were and are attainable by pre-existing means (albeit perhaps only with considerable difficulty).

Is that an accurate paraphrasing of your argument?

I apologize again for getting testy about this earlier. I appreciate your taking the time to walk me through your line of reasoning.

Thanks! :-)

--- Jim

Is that an accurate paraphrasing of your argument?

Short answer: Yes.

The deal is, I'm only saying this because anyone with a considerable knowledge of the field and history is going to pick up something like this and treat it just as a method to produce a result, but not as something that enables something "new."

While the method may be interesting or new, the musical product (recordings, what one hears at the end of the process) hardly variates from what has already been done (therefore, should not be using new terminology because it isn't needed.) Thing is, the reason why emulating any process (for the same end result) is difficult is because you're flying blind to accomplish something which seems arbitrary or random but in reality isn't.

Think of it as trying to figure out serial rows or whatever other process just by ear or with a score. It becomes impossible, but it's not nearly as impossible to mimic the results with slight variation. It's a way of "faking it" but its effectiveness depends entirely on how hard you're trying and how much research you do.

So yeah, this is just a friendly heads up, that's all.

...anyone with a considerable knowledge of the field and history is going to pick up something like this and treat it just as a method to produce a result, but not as something that enables something "new."

I appreciate your taking the time to respond to this.

I have two concerns about this line of reasoning.

First, it is focused solely on recordings; it makes no allowance for live performance as a "musical result." I do not see why live performance should be excluded from the definition of "musical result." The rise of file sharing has decreased the importance of recordings as a source of income for most musicians, while the importance of live performance, especially touring, is increasing.

Second, even if it were true that the Dynamic Tonality could be simulated programmaticaly using CSound or whatever to painstakingly adjust the tuning of each note's fundamental and to re-arrange each note's partials to align with the notes of the current tuning, this programmatic approach would be impractical for use in live performance. The use of an isomorphic keyboard and Dynamic Tonality enable *real-time* adjustments to tuning and timbre.

Arguably, any conceivable musical effect is programmable using CSound or an equivalent -- but this simulation may require a combinatorial explosion of parameters. The combination of an isomorphic keyboard and a Dynamic Tonality-enabled synth reduces the parameters to just one -- the width of the tempered perfect fifth -- and enables real-time control over both this variable and note-selection in a tuning-independent manner. This dramatic reduction in parameters makes it possible for musician, performing live, to control in real time what would otherwise require far too many fingers & brain cells.

Would accept as valid the following claim? "The combination of Dynamic Tonality and an isomorphic keyboard enables, for the first time, real-time control of musical effects such as polyphonic tuning bends, tuning progressions, and temperament modulations, thereby making these effects available to live performers."