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

[Dave Draper <dh.draper@virgin.net>]

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