# Harry Partch: Right or Wrong?



## millionrainbows

Read this:
http://www.tonalsoft.com/sonic-arts/...tch/errors.htm

Then discuss: was Partch right or wrong?

I'll take the first statement which is refuted, and explore it.

Quoted from the article, we see Partch's statement, and several refutations. I will take the first one:

"The number of cycles--per second--determines the pitch of the tone." Harry Partch, "Genesis of a Music," 2nd Ed., Da Capo Press: New York, 1974, pg. 76.

"For sine tones in particular, the pitch does not depend exclusively on the frequency; the intensity is also relevant." - Johan Sundberg, "The Science of Musical Sounds," Academic Press, Inc.: San Diego, 1991, pg. 45.

Note that Sundberg says "for sine tones in particular." This is an exception, not a constant. This is an anomaly caused by sine tones, not a "fact" which can be refuted. Partch's statement is a general fact, and this refutation of Sundberg's is dealing with a particular anomaly of sine tones, and deficiencies of the ear when dealing with artificial tones. A bad choice for a 'refutation' of a generally agreed-upon fact: pitch is frequency.

Pitch IS frequency, literally. That's what an octave is, a 2:1 or 1:2 relationship. This statement of Partch's is self-evident.

A criticism of sine tones: they do not exist in nature; they are artificial tones, created by sine-wave generators. Sine waves have no harmonics; they are all 'fundamental' tone. The closest thing we have in the real world is the flute tone.

Without harmonics, sine waves are hard to locate in space, because our ears use minute phase differences to 'locate' sounds in space. This is one problem.

Another problem is that without harmonics, sine waves are hard to identify pitch-wise as well.

La Monte Young exploited these characteristics of sine waves in his installation art. He set up several sine-wave generators, with speakers, in various parts of a large room in one of his & his wife Marion Zazela's "installations." The sine waves were slightly detuned from one another, causing the tones to seem to "float" in different areas, or to "go through" one's head.

*If anything, Young's art shows the idiosyncrasies of sine waves, and the accompanying foibles of the human ear when dealing with such tones, not some "constant principle" of pitch.*

Pitch is still pitch, and pitch is frequency, or cycles per second, and an octave is still 2:1, no matter what anomalies are caused by sine waves and our imperfect ears.


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## Vox Gabrieli

I'm glad you created a separate thread for this, the Tonality thread had started to derail! None-the-less, very interesting debate.

I still think Partch's "Genesis of a Music" is still a very suitable _standard_ ( a term that is tossed in very lightly ) for music theory repertoire and the reign of digital frequencies like sine waves. All of these discrepancies of psychoacoustics, and harmonic-series timbres seem otiose to point out in the talk of music.


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