Harry Partch - BBC Documentary - Part 2 of 6

be more specific on Penderecki. he has "some" avant-garde compositions.. "some" the majority of his compositions are Serial. Luigi Nono is another great Serial composer.

interesting art!,
There is no "best art" all art is different!

I like Maestro's Cage expression !

I always figured I had quite a musical ear but if this the "full musical scale" apparently I'm tonedeaf. But in reality it's just the ravings of a diseased mind.

What he says about living in a hobo community--about the human-ness of being with those who aren't always vying for place, and not spending one's life always in the company of "important" people, is really true.

I've travelled around the world many times and have always felt the most welcome, the most part of a community, amongst those peoples us westerners would consider impoverished or destitute (that isn't how they consider themselves, btw)it's an eye-opening experience, to say the least.

Some of it sounds just terrible, but I found myself enjoying that poem quite a lot. I guess if you're experimental with music the same way cooks are experimental with food, you'll find yourself going to some very strange places. And in the same way, a lot of the time the layman simply won't get it.

The Greeks used a pentatonic scale, which sounds very nice, but (correct me if I'm wrong) is more constricting. I guess it's just a matter of how adventurous your are.

The Greeks used the tetrachordal system. Wikipedia tetrachords. They became the basis of our church modes, our diatonic scale accomodates the majority of the tetrachords used.

Argh! Just when I start thinking this guy's a complete nut job, I begin to admire him.

no.

Well I think the idea of microtones is perfect but the reason we probably have 12 tones in a scale is because our human ear is capable of easily and comfortably differentiating between those 12 tones. If you introduce more, it becomes much to complex for the average person to hear. I don't think anyone to find all the notes a person uses in speech on partch's microtonal keyboard, its ridiculous.

Or, it is because it is the system you've been listening to your entire life. Consider that turkish, and older indian methods used a 24 note division of the octave. Some Dutch folk music has used 31 (though I do not know much about that).

And it's not just about the tones, but the overtones generated as the notes relate to each other.