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Re: Researching micro tunings "hands-on" (was: A = 440 Hz OR 432 Hz?)



On Nov 8th Per Boysen wrote:

"Dave Draper wrote:

    "Mr Bosanquet's 'An Elementary Treatise on Musical Intervals &
> Temperament', on openlibrary.org <http://openlibrary.org>. His cycle of 53 is mentioned in the
> Helmholtz book, along with pics of his 53-notes-per-octave organ!!
> (Maybe he was a 53-fingered alien?)


Thanks, Dave. For sure a resource worth bookmarking!


> http://soundcloud.com/davedraper-1/one4harry-exc

Nice recording! Lovely fm artifact noise outbursts here and there. So
you were in fact playing it by SYSEX?"

Thanks Per. Yep, it's sys-ex Jim, but not as we know it! The DX7-II can map a controller to an edit (sys-ex) function, thus making it channel-specific. Then Notator could map a keyboard to the controller...I guess I could recreate this in Bidule easily enough, but my SY99, despite having 16 DX7s (& more) on board, lacks the controller mapping facility.

and Mark Francombe wrote:

"Fantastic Harry!<br>This is a DX7 II? Its sounds alot like scanning thru wavetables, like on my Korg MS2000, or the Blacet Miniwave (in my modular synth). That must have been tough with no knobs??"

& thanks too Mark. See above for 'no knobs', but...I just unearthed another bit of archeaology - a much simpler busk, just one note/chord with a pulsing voice, & the modulating oscillator(s) 'played' on an expression pedal (& possibly mod wheel too - I don't remember!). Not strictly looping of course, either of these, but I might put some drum'n'bass to this one sometime!!....

http://soundcloud.com/davedraper-1/dervishfiddler

I didn't catch up with these posts originally - my email server fails to forward all the attachments to the digest sometimes - but I've also been looking at the Hermode website http://www.hermode.com/ <http://www.hermode.com/html/tuning-history_en.html> lately, reading about various algorithm models for analysing the key of a piece of music on the fly, in order to adjust the tuning. Not simple. But also full of assumptions about the music, such as the adjustments being "...implemented according to recognized chord structures" and "..the degree of purity here has been reduced somewhat, so that the retuning steps remain inaudible". These kind of statements remind me of the assumptions about note-masking in the development of mp3 encoding, and one wonders "inaudible to whom"?? Of course the whole diatonic system & equal temperament has evolved from the system of 'duodenes', groups of fifths & thirds forming major & minor scales, so the rules for the progression of harmonies (hey, no paralell fifths or octaves guys!) and the twelve notes of the western scale are inextricably bound. The question of how modal music, let alone twelve-tone music, might fare in such dynamic retuning, or whether it requires it, remains a bit of a mystery. And of course when we get to eastern European quarter tones, Indian ragas & the like, all bets are off. Still, why so many culturally distant musics share tonal similarities has always fascinated me. But hollow pipes & stretched strings have the same properties all over the world.

Dave Draper