perception

>>2) What is the highest EDO that a average
>> listener can differentiate? I don't mean the scale but a
>> piece of music.
>
>
> Differentiate what? The nearest pitches from each other? The EDO as a
> whole from other EDOs?

You can't simply ask this question.

The answer depends on context. What instrument/timbre? What's the tempo? Do we have time to hear beating between notes in a harmony? Is the music one line, or is it with chords? Are lines doubled, or solo? Is it played by humans or computer? How wide is the instrument's vibrato?

Etc. etc. etc. etc.

Do you think you could tell the difference of even 24-EDO, or even, 12-EDO, in a (not so great) opera singer?

On the other hand, with the RTCMIX (www.rtcmix.org) STRUM instrument, I can hear intervals, melodically, of a difference of just a few cents.

Hi Chris,

{you wrote...}
>Etc. etc. etc. etc.

Techno-speak! :)

>On the other hand, with the RTCMIX (www.rtcmix.org) STRUM instrument, I can hear intervals, melodically, of a difference of just a few cents.

A story I've told often before, so I'll just paraphrase: in my first Partch production, we had to sing a descending line that included intervals a couple cents apart, and *not* EDO (obviously). At first, it seemed impossible; in time, those very small intervals seemed - in context, and with practice - as wide as a country mile.

Sure, there are limits. But some of the most important limits are the ones we refuse to place on ourselves.

Cheers,
Jon

> A story I've told often before,

It's the first time I heard it :)

Also, it's not just the smallness of the spacing that counts. It took
me a while to learn to sing (kind-of) accurate quarter-tones... on the
other hand, when I wrote a vocal melody that went 5/4 - 35/32 - 9/8 -
1/1, I picked it up right away without even hearing it, even though
35/32 - 9/8 is 35/36, or about 49 cents. But because I hear the
second and third notes in the sequence relating to the first and
fourth, it's easy. I would suspect that I could sing a lot closer
intervals that way then in a large edo without rational
approximations.

-chris