On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 6:51 AM, Neil <djdualcore@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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
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http://www.the-magus.inOn Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 8:14 AM, Paul Davis <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:Very cool!
> 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.
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://blog.languager.org
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