On 8 Jul 2005 at 7:39, Ken Durling wrote:
> At 03:37 AM 7/8/2005, you wrote:
> >Because a serious musician can set a metronome to 80 and at least try
> >to make an attempt to follow that tempo, while nobody has a metronome
> >that I've ever seen which will give a 69.75 tempo so nobody can even
> >try to follow it, even if they want to.
>
> No but often we ask ourselves or others to "lay back" on a beat, or to
> "push" it slightly without actually altering the basic pulse. Maybe
> this is a way to try and notate that. Set your metronome to 69 and
> lean on it ever so slightly.
Well, standard metronomes don't have 69 as a setting, but the
original marking was 60.75, not 69.75.
The difference between 60.75 and 61 in a piece of 100 measures is
0.026985090737367604398569790191362 minutes, or
1.6191054442420562639141874114817 seconds:
100 measures of 4/4 is 400 beats.
beats per minute time (minutes)
60.75 6.5843621399176954732510288065844
61 6.5573770491803278688524590163934
Difference: 0.026985090737367604398569790191362
in seconds: 1.6191054442420562639141874114817
So, basically, you're talking about less than 2 seconds difference in
a 100-measure piece, if it's performed with absolutely metronomic
regularity.
My guess is that "69.75 pushed slightly" is going to yield something
substantially faster than 70.
I don't think we are wired to perceive such tiny differences. I think
it would even take 5-10 or more measures of these two tempos played
simultaneously before we'd even notice the difference. And I doubt
that anyone could tell you which was which just be listening to them.
> On the other hand, and this has probably been mentioned, I've read
> that B.F. is more concerned with the *effect* produced by a virtuoso
> musician essaying some of these "extreme" effects, than their absolute
> accuracy. And, one is not to read that as " he doesn't really care
> how it sounds" - the effect (of intensity) will only result if you
> make a concerted effort. I think it's a response to the prevalence of
> the virtuoso tradition, a sort of "that will give them something to
> do." We want to hear the result of the interaction.
I don't see what double decimal point precision of tempo markings
accomplishes in that regard.
> I once saw a performance of a piece that involved 5 players all with
> headphones listening to the same source tape; the idea was that they
> all improvised in response to it, while the audience could not hear
> the source, just the combination of five different responses to it.
> When I first became aware of what Ferneyhough was doing it reminded me
> of this experiment. The response to the score is the piece.
I can't see any obvious meaning to 60.75.
--
David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton
David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc
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