IVOR DARREG

Teen Tunes

No, we don't mean the latest rock concert at the local gathering place, although it could come to that in the future. Many musicians and singers today are "bending" their tones, away from the standard 12 pitch-classes of the ordinary keyboard chromatic scale.

That is a search for something beyond the trite patterns of our standard musical system; but tone-bending as usually done is felt as subconscious deviation, whereas it would be much better if this affair could be systematized and made explicit rather than implicit.

Teen here means the almost untried ways of tuning instruments and fretting guitars etc., to scales having 13 through 19 tones per octave, instead of the usual 12. Tunes calls attention to the fact that most of these scales are primarily melodic, and that many of the new melodies yet to be composed in them will have unique new personalities, new moods, new expressive p6wers, and above all, CONTRAST with everything that has gone before.

This isn't a crusade to abolish the 12-tone system; this is a living and growing movement to have new kinds of music to contrast with the old kinds, which must remain in order to be contrasted with! And just one new system is not enough--indeed it would be a terrible waste to propose say 19 or 24 tones per octave and refuse to explore anything else--the va'lue of these teen systems will be the contrast they have to one another.

19-tone has tremendous harmonic resources; 17 favors melody but also has a peculiar upside-down kind of harmony all its own; the other teen systems are not so harmonious but their melodic variety and expanded palette of expression makes them worthwhile. Our other reason for mentioning Teens at this time is that none of these systems should be called microtona i--the impression produced by the smallest interval in the 13- or 14-tone system is not all that small or finicky or hard to appreciate at once. Even the 18 and 19-tone systems have only third-tones, not quartertones, and the "bent" leading-tones of the average violinist can be and often are that small, in the interval they form with the next tone in the melody.

The really microtonal systems, such as 31-tone, have an entirely different effect; they have other offices to fulfil. The 22- and 24-tone systems are in a "gray area" which may or may not have a "micro" effect, depending on circumstances. In his Doctorate Thesis, the composer and theorist Joel Mandelbaum spoke of a "first zone of complexity" for the tuning-systems 13 through 24. Some of you may prefer that term. What we are doing here is as we said, calling attention to the characteristics of the 13-to-19-tones-per-octave tunings, and that the 22- and 24-tone systems are in a kind of gray area beyond this first class. This is not silent speculation-on-paper; this is established by building and modifying instruments and composing new pieces in different systems, and a number of people also composing, and by solo and group improvisations.

The Less-Than-Twelve systems, especially 7 9 10, are worth exploring also. Of course 7 is contained in 14 and 21, while 8 is contained in 16 and 24, and 11 is contained in 22, all of which means it will not be necessary to dedicate many instruments to less than twelve tones per octave. Some idea of this relation among systems can be gained from the way the 6-tone system (whole-tone scale) is contained in 12.