Re: [LAU] The Psychology of Music

On Thu, February 21, 2013 2:10 pm, Rustom Mody wrote:
> 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...
>

Do you mean you would like to have a keyboard app that has preset
sample/tuning for various different scales?

It's certainly possible to create your own now but I haven;t come across
an app that takes on that functionality yet.

It might be a nice addition to CMKeyboard if someone else hasn't already
started/finished.

--
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd
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