THE RECOVERY OF THE TONALITY, THE 15 PREMISES

Nacho Bellido

My work began 10 years ago when I was a music composition student. During that time I had to confront my first compositional works in the atonal and dodecaphonic language. In a short time I discovered, influenced by reading the work of Alois aba, that maybe the path of musical evolution was not that which !choenberg began. My first e"periences in the microtones field were studying the works of #asser and aba. $ith these works I studied in depth this new field. I decided to leave the world of composition to dedicate myself to musicology and pedagogy. %hrough time and practical e"perience with guitars of different pitches I believe I have found sufficient practical ideas to begin to propose possible hypotheses which will permit us with time to create a new tonal scale.

One of the principle problems which we confront when we create a real and practical new microtonal scale is where to begin to work, the field of experimentation is so wide that easily we can become lost in a unlimited spectral of sounds and tunes which many times bring us to a dead end because of the amount of new sounds incorporated into the scale, as much as for the practical difficulty of realizing this new scale. Therefore it is necessary to create a framework to work within which permits us such limits and empirical work as to be able to realize a new tonal scale. These limits should be created from what I call premises which are no more than tools which help us with our work. They should not be rigid guidelines o unalterable, but rather tools which should help us and give us a general idea from which the limits of our investigation should originate. Premise ! The base of all our work will have a basic ob"ective, the recuperation of the tonality as we understand it in the western world, formed by harmonies and melodies with #psycho$ acoustic% functions ac&uired since infancy through the passive hearing of musical works which enable us to understand 'estern music. (ll that comes away from this field of investigation and only serves as mere speculation or experimental is distant from our ob"ective, this we reserve for musicologists which work is other fields.

Premise )! *erived from the idea that we are creating a new scale within the scope of western music, we do not pretend to create a global scale for all country, nor much less, as every culture have many different ideas and positions according to where they are born, with very different bases. In some case the harmony is important while in others it is the improvisation, etc. 'hat we are attempting is to give new sounds to our scale which allow our musicians to continue their creative path+ therefore, the first rule will be that our work will have to originate from a temperate western scale. I think to propose a new scale distant from our tempered scale would only move us away from our basic idea to continue from what has already been done. Premise ,! 'e ask ourselves if we continue with our tempered scale or if we try to recover another type of historical pitches, whether they are #mesotonics%, e&ual, etc. -ere we enter into a great debate that only will lead us to reenter in a field of speculation where we will waste time and energy in a useless search for the perfect tune. I don.t think it is important to enter into this debate because it was already discussed years ago without reaching a clear and practical ob"ective, and I say practical because we are not trying to follow a path of simple theoretical speculation, rather it is extremely necessary that we remained focused on the ob"ective we defined in the second premise. Premise /! I believe it is important to have clear and understand the reason why our current scale has ) sounds and why until now it has not incorporated more sounds by viewing the musical scale as something organic that continues to evolve. 0nderstand the evolving expansion of our scale from the origins of the basic scale of five sounds pentatonic to our chromatic scale of ) sounds. If we are able to identify the internal laws which underlie the diverse historical scale we will be able to propose new evolutionary ideas in order to incorporate new sounds into our tempered scale. Premise 1! There is a real practical impossibility of incorporating micro tonal sounds from other cultures, for instance the incorporation into our scale of different sounds of tunes from for example, 2avanese music, (rab music or other cultures would move away from our evolutionary idea from the western point of view. Therefore, different types of scales from other cultures are able to help us to limit our ob"ective and widen our perspective of sound, but they will never be able to convert into guidelines for our work. (nd within this idea we must understand that if this music has not evolved as we understand it, or rather from a western perspective, it is because they come from different musical standpoint, not analogous to ours.

Premise 3! The creation of new micro tonal sounds originates from the following difficulty. 'here the ear is able to sense as different or new within our scale determines the boundaries of sound perception4the limits of our scale, for now our located in the semi tunes or in 55 cents, and everything else is an unlimited field of spectral sounds which we know from experience with other scales of the world, which have the ability to educate the ear to differentiate smaller sounds than the semi tune, but the extent to which these sounds or others are useful to use is one of the complex &uestions which we must confront. Premise 6! The out of tune sound or new sounds. One of the basic problems is the education and to a certain point of listen deformation of our western culture, what is really impeding the discovery of where to truly find the new sounds that are able to incorporate into our future scale. (nd here we are able to see the complexity only considering that maybe, adding a new sound to our scale will be understood by our ear simply as a tempered note slightly out of tone. Premise 7! The #circular system% of tunes is at the base of our scale while the #divided string% is a part of non$'estern cultures therefore, even though we will continue to research using the circular system we can include ideas and theoretical concepts of the #divided pitches% in consideration that they have more historical experience with micro tunes and no temperate tunes. Premise 8! The study of 9hinese and :reek theory base of our music would not be the only source of ideas in our empirical work, the ear or listening would be indispensable, because it is what will guide us on our new sound "ourneys. 0nderstanding that musical theory of classic or modern times are sometimes written far from real practice and therefore to a certain point are impractical en the field of music practice. Premise 5! I believe that the new scale must be born out of experimentation with the classic tools like el mono chord , the computer will be used as a punctual timely and auxiliary tool due to the fact that the ideas must originate from the mental work as much as the auditory work. The only ways to confront the field of speculation is by imagining the whole of sounds and discern using the psycho$acoustic approach the sound elements which are truly #practical.% 'e are no able to enter into the area of sound speculation, which is itself complex, without a preconceived mental idea.

Premise

The tetra chord should be proposed as the field of initial work and not the scale of ) sounds, for various reasons, one is the great amplitude of the #sound spectrum% of the scale of ) sounds and secondly because the tetra chord itself already represents a tonal world on a small scale and therefore since four sounds are easier to manage for experimentation than the scale of twelve sounds which has more than one tetra chord. The tetra chord as a basic element of tonal stability is un&uestionable and therefore untouchable within the new scale, allowing us to certain point to maintain the tonal pillars of the new music within the micro tonal spectrum, aiding the progressive assimilation of the new sounds into the musical language of the future. Premise )! It is crucially important that the theorists within the field of sounds speculation work elbow to elbows with practical musicians to exchange ideas and redefine new musical concepts and find new tools with which to work in order to initiate a new revitalization of the world of composition within the micro tonal scale. Premise ,! The incorporation of new sounds by simply dividing the tempered scale into fourths or sixths of tones is absurd to a certain point, because I think that the approach does not understand the true psycho$acoustics laws and the complexities which exist within the scale and also that the problems of the tempered scale are made worse by problems of tune. The margins or limits where it will be possible to incorporate new sounds will be determined by melodic and harmonic practice within a rigorous empirical investigation, observing the different areas of research in our century in the field of micro tonal scales. ;ven though the first attempts at using micro pitches in the )5th century failed, and I offer as a small example, the scales of (lois -aba, 2oseph <asser, 9arillo, etc. This does not mean that these theories were on the wrong path, I think that the direction was correct but not the way to propose and set out the new micro tonal sounds, possibly due to the excessive strictness or at times the lack of theoretical specification. Premise /! -ow many new sounds should be incorporated into this scale= It is one of the &uestions that we can ask ourselves and here underlies one of the basic &uestions+ a limitation will always permit the practical possibility of the scale. 0nderstanding that a scale of )5 sounds will have great limitations+ I think that limits we should propose should be between , and )5 sounds.

Premise 1! 'hat will be tonal function of these new notes= 'e imagine a scale of, for example, ten and seven sounds+ we have incorporated five new sounds to the scale that would be situated between different notes. 'e would find, first of all, five new chords with good pitches almost temperate, these would form an auxiliary tonal function to the basic chords of the old scale, therefore these new sounds would be close to the , /, 1 grade, and would in theory form news movements in the progressions , later on these chords will be able to have a independent movement, giving more elasticity to the whole tonal movement . (nd lastly, the traditional chords would be able to incorporate these micro tonal sounds into there chords, first as passing notes and later as its own entity from within will appear new sounds mixtures, in the% classical% chords (nd then, what= (fter we really believe we have found the perfect formula, will then enter into the field of sociology and reeducation. The new scale will not have access to the musical world overnight. It will need a long period of time to assimilate not for our generation but for generations to come. 'e can be happy with our experimentation with the new sounds as ornamental or auxiliary, until familiarity with them permits them to have an independent character. *o we truly continue to believe in alternatives that are not a return to tonality with a new micro tonal scale= I doubt they exist. Practical experience is telling us that this is the path we should take, but if truly is not the right path, we can take for dead the creative world within music, as we can talk now without problems about the death of painting as a innovative and creative art. If this truly was the case, all we would be left with is to en"oy the wide musical creation of the past more than eight centuries listening to 9* recordings or going to live concerts, accepting that maybe, all art, like life itself, is born and dies, even though, it is difficult for man to accept the finality of things.