On Sep 25, 2009, at 8:36 PM, howard posner wrote:
The odd thing about that assumption is that we now live in era in
which everyone in the West is taught a tuning system in which
intonation is never perfect but never weird, and yet the music most
people listen to departs from that system constantly, usually to
achieve something outside the box. Singers slide in and out of the
ET norm (deliberately in the case of Sinatra or Freddie Mercury,
maybe accidentally in the case of Mick Jagger and Jim Morrison) and
guitarists pull notes all over their their ET-fretted instruments.
Gregor Piatigorsky once complained "Someone sent me some Beatles
albums and I found that they didn't sing in tune." There were
millions of other listeners who didn't seem to mind.
I don't know if Arto has really disproved that the pyramids exist,
but I think you have proved the non-existence of Jimi Hendrix and
B.B. King.
Yeah, well, on the subject of pop music Piatigorsky was full of it!
Howard's right: sliding in and out of the box is where it's at. Or
maybe GP would have preferred "Hey Jude" sung as though it were
Nessun dorma!
D
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