Re: [LAU] The Psychology of Music

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 6:51 AM, Neil <djdualcore@email-addr-hidden> wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 8:14 AM, Paul Davis <paul@email-addr-hidden>
> wrote:
> > http://www.huygens-fokker.org/scala/
> >
> > specifically: http://www.huygens-fokker.org/docs/scalesdir.txt
> >
> > You will find that there are over 4000 diferent scales there.
>
> Very cool!
>
> Another good book on the subject. Don't let the title put you off.
> The author isn't actually all that anti-ET.
>
> http://www.amazon.com/Equal-Temperament-Ruined-Harmony-Should/dp/0393334201
>
> Neil

I find 4000 a big put-off. Are there that many scales in use worldwide?? If
it were a few hundred one could at least make some headway. My guess is
that most of them are some kind of mathematical experiments.

The problem as I see it is like this:
Mathematically: The number of scales is worse than uncountably infinite
(powerset of R). So for mathematical tractability one needs to work with
genera, eg
- Equal tempered scales (not necessarily only 12 notes)
- Well tempered scales (all/notes usable, all subtly different aka Bach's
WTC)
- Meantones
- Justs with various cut-off rules

And then criteria for 'badness' http://x31eq.com/badness.pdf for comparing
these

Musician-ly: This is a pain. I just want better sound than ET. And a few
rules of thumb to make sensible choices.

Personally I can say that after I got my keyboards with a handful of
tunings a new world has opened to me. If only I could have done some of
that with timidity/fluidsynth...

Rusi

-- 
http://www.the-magus.in
http://blog.languager.org

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Received on Thu Feb 21 08:15:01 2013