Dynamic tonality
[3] A vibrating string, a column of air, and the human voice all emit a specific pattern of partials corresponding to the harmonic series.
The resulting misalignment between "pseudo-just" tempered tunings, and untempered timbres, made temperament "a battleground for the great minds of Western civilization".
[4][5][6] This misalignment, in any tuning that is not fully Just (and hence infinitely complex), is the defining characteristic of any static timbre paradigm.
Piano-like keyboards affording more than 12 notes per octave were developed by Vicentino,[4]: 127 Colonna,[4]: 131 Mersenne,[4]: 181 Huygens,[4]: 185 and Newton,[4]: 196 but were all considered too cumbersome / too difficult to play.
[4]: 18 The goal of dynamic tonality is to enable consonance beyond the range of tunings and temperaments in which harmonic timbres have traditionally been played.
The tonnetz is a lattice diagram representing tonal space first described by Euler (1739),[12] which is a central feature of Neo-Riemannian music theory.
For example, one could learn to play Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Do-Re-Mi" song in its original 12 tone equal temperament (12 TET) and then play it with exactly the same finger-movements, on exactly the same note-controlling buttons, while smoothly changing the tuning in real time across the syntonic temperament's tuning continuum.
Similarly, using a synthesizer control such as the Tone Diamond,[17] a musician can opt to maximize regularity, harmonicity, or consonance – or trade off among them in real time (with some of the jammer's 10 degrees of freedom mapped to the tone diamond's variables), with consistent fingering.
This enables musicians to choose tunings that are regular or irregular, equal or non-equal, major-biased or minor-biased – and enables the musician to slide smoothly among these tuning options in real time, exploring the emotional affect of each variation and the changes among them.
This example proves that dynamic tonality offers new means of creating and then releasing harmonic tension, even within a single chord.
Dynamic tonality was developed primarily by a collaboration between William Sethares, Andrew Milne, and James ("Jim") Plamondon.
With two thumb-sticks and internal motion sensors, a jammer would afford 10 degrees of freedom, which would make it the most expressive polyphonic instrument available.
