CROSS Manifesto

Today Citizens for the Return Of Sanity to Sound (CROSS) is posting its manifesto on my blog. CROSS has two simple goals:

1. Eradication of equal temperament. Sound is a physical reality governed by mathematical laws, but you wouldn't know that from equal temperament. It just chops the octave into twelve identical bits and calls it a day, not caring how these intervals actually sound.

2. Elimination of the Key of Gb Major. I'm sorry, but there is no need for this key to exist. SIX flats??? That's just being greedy. Come on, move it up half a step and put it in G Major.

The time to act is now, and here is what you can do:

Write your congressman (woman, thing, whatever) about this problem.

Retune pianos into extended sixth-comma mean tone.

Graffiti. Me, I have always thought graffiti was kind of cool. Now I would never advocate defacing a beautiful stone, brick, or wooden building, but one cannot be said to "deface" something that was never "faced" in the first place, if you see what I mean. Ugly concrete buildings (for example, the music school at our local university) are practically screaming to be covered with spray-painted slogans such as: "Equal Temperament is Pure Evil," "Gb Major is for Losers," and of course "Return to Sanity - Return to Sixth-Comma Mean Tone!" In fact, watch this space for possible video footage of me decorating the music school with such maxims. (Or wimping out and writing it in chalk on the sidewalk...)

Famous Hat