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  • Praetorius with Just Intonation

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    I did a re-recording of this piece I had done previously, because i wanted to experiment with the tunings - this time using "just intonation" settings in the Vienna Instruments. I also added a 2nd serpent. He was playing in the lowest range of the instrument and was a bit drunk during the recording but most of the time is pretty much in tune.

    Praetorius


  • That's a nice piece of music, William, and I enjoyed it listening to it. The music, the "musicians", so relaxed, so real. Thank you for sharing!


  • thanks MMKA - I did the humanize on top of the "just intonation"  to the max.  I may have overdone it, but I love pushing the inaccuracy.  Also, I love the sound of the ophicleide and serpents hitting those notes.  They are struggling to get a real pitch on those crazy instruments.  Maybe too much, but it is so real.  


  • I find this rendition very convincing. Never would have guessed it was done with samples.

    Stefan


  • Love it, William.

    I've no knowledge of late Renaissance/early baroque music but it seems to me you've brought this darling piece very much to life. I easily imagined people happily twirling and hopping around the dance floor to this piece back in the day.

    I assume you changed the root key to G in the VIPro tuner, because it all seems to hang together quite nicely - even though the serpent player does indeed sound like he's almost off his trolly, LOL.

    I ran the piece through Melodyne Studio. Celemony don't claim to be able to analyse polyphonic ensemble pieces, nevertheless the Melodyne analysis generally showed a reasonable match to JI in G major.

    One of JI's worst flaws is that the minor triad on the 2nd degree is broken and has to be avoided like the plague. This triad has a "defective fifth" (it's a comma short of the pure perfect fifth) which is grotesque and unusable, and the third is Pythagorean. In this piece Pretorius appears to have avoided using the A minor triad, and I guess composers in his day would all have known not to use a minor triad on the supertonic.

    Anyway, it's a really nice, very smart and very enjoyable step back to the simplicity of the early 17th century. Bravo, William.


  • Thanks Stefan and Macker - I did set the key in each matrix for G, though my extreme settings for tuning humanization may interfere with hearing the exact effect of just intonation! 


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    Hi William,

    lovely peice of music. I also did not know that we could adjust temparement/tunings in VI.

    I also noted other recent threads with discussions on tunings. This topic fascinates me but unfortunately I am swamped now with work for the next two weeks. But I will come back and read/listen in detail your posts in mid november.

    A quick note that this topic reminded me of the book "On the sensations of tone", by Heman Helmholtz, one of the great physicists of the 19th century. The book is one of the classic treatises on the physics of sound, but he also discusses ("rants" is more appropriate, although at a very sophisticated level) for several pages about why ET is terrible and how Bach and Beethoven exploited it to their benefit!

    Hope we can have a discussion about this in the near future.

    Best

    Anand


  • Nah, William, my ear says you've nailed it. The amount and variety of humanize is perfect for this particular lighthearted happy go lucky dance piece. Perfect JI can tend to have an austere, aristocratic, cold, unapproachable, unforgiving, inhuman character. The added human factor in this piece makes it rock - exactly as it should.


  • Macker, thanks - I like that list of adjectives.  

    Anand, I have looked at the Helmholtz - I love that era of science and that is a fascinating book.  That is great how he started ranting about ET.  Some people get extreme about it. 

    I am having a complete mental block, but there is a famous American avant-garde composer who built his own instruments and had wonderful insane theories about the complete and utter evil of ET and all the wretched composers who were its slaves.  I can't remember his name now!!  He was most famous in the 1960s and had a somewhat countercultural appeal.  I have several LP records of his, but they are lost within my collection...  


  • Very interesting, William. Hope to know the name of that composer (and maybe you can find his music on youtube) and discuss this subject more in a few weeks.

    Anand


  • I remembered the name in the middle of the night - Harry Partch.


  • Hi William,

    I couldn't resist listening to this ancient dance (as a predecessor of the 18th century dances I usually deal with). You've hit the very essence and spirit of the music in your performance. The tuning makes it more a period performance and therefore more believable. The humanising is perhaps a bit exaggerated, but it contributes to the impression that a live band is playing. Very enjoyable indeed!

    As to the temperaments and tunings, I didn't care much about at the time. I loved the Werckmeister III most to play the 18th century music, but since we had modern instruments in my ensemble, it was not an issue to use other than modern tuning (although the strings could play the historic way). Knowing about all these temperaments and their implications, it made my admiration for the old masters grow a lot. Composing had a lot more limitations (as to the use of scales and instruments) than nowadays. Despite all this, they wrote such beautiful and everlasting music!

    Thanks for sharing your piece and opening such a discussion.

    Jos


  • Thanks Jos. Since this used the historic instruments I decided to try the Just Intonation.  On modern instruments it might be more correct than ET if comparing ensemble playing of solo instruments to a keyboard, but whatever.   I actually like throwing things out of tune. I played too long in concert bands.  


  • I love this piece. It sounds so cheerful making me think of Christmas morning. The performance is charming. Personally I think the humanize settings used adds to the charm.


  • Thanks Paul !  


  • PaulP Paul moved this topic from Orchestration & Composition on