Isomorphic Controllers and Dynamic Tuning

On Monday of this week, the article “Isomorphic Controllers and Dynamic Tuning— Invariant Fingering Over a Tuning Continuum” was accepted for publication by Doug Keislar, the Editor of MIT Press’ Computer Music Journal.

A draft version can be found here. The final version – to be published in the CMJ by year’s end – was improved considerably by comments from very knowledgeable reviewers and especially by extensive, detailed, and insightful comments by Doug.

The article was co-authored by Andrew Milne, Bill Sethares, and me. Andy did most of the heavy lifting on music theory and mathematics, with Bill contributing to both of those subjects and also the academic tone & references. Mostly, I contributed a relentless focus on isomorphism and lots of motivating questions. We have been working on this article since May of 2006. More than a year! I hadn’t realized.

I have no idea what reception the paper will have in the academic community. Euler’s 1739 treatise on music was described by Nicolas Fuss as having “too much mathematics for musicians, and too much music for mathematicians,” and that is very likely to be true of our paper, too. We are certainly no more deserving of a positive reception than was Euler.

I do hope, however, that our paper will be seen in future as having laid the groundwork for three significant musical advances:

Dynamic Tuning: New musical effects arise from the ability to change the tuning of a polyphonic keyboard instrument in real time while retaining consistent fingering across a tuning continuum. Potential effects include polyphonic tuning bends, temperament modulations, and even new chord progressions.

Dynamic Timbres: Adjusting timbres in real time, such that their partials align with the notes of the current tuning, may be able to deliver consonance all across a tuning continuum and thereby help make Dynamic Tuning pleasing to the ear.

Dynamic Music Theory: The consonance of tuning-aligned timbres may be able to extend the rules of tonal harmony – previously restricted to harmonic sounds – to a wider range of pseudo-harmonic sounds. This generalization could eventually be seen as being both simpler and more powerful than traditional music theory.

For more information on the above, see this page and the documents to which it refers.