Wolfram Alpha

I am working on mapping the harmonic series into my midi piano and I wanted to see how close to JI I ended up. (I'm currently trying to duplicate the Michael Harrison sound sort of)

It seems that Wolfram Alpha is able to give reasonable answers to questions like fraction closest to 1.125

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=fraction+closest+to+1.125

Not sure it is universal yet - just thought I'd pass that along.

Chris

Alpha is a very nice tool. Microsoft Excel does this with a formatting option: Select a cell, select Format, "custom" and type in ??/??. It turns a decimal into a fraction with two digits in the numerator and denominator. You can use as many question marks as you'd like to get a fractional approximation of any decimal value. I use it all the time in ratio multiplication.

Prent Rodgers

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "christopherv" <chrisvaisvil@...> wrote:
>
> I am working on mapping the harmonic series into my midi piano and I wanted to see how close to JI I ended up. (I'm currently trying to duplicate the Michael Harrison sound sort of)
>
> It seems that Wolfram Alpha is able to give reasonable answers to questions like fraction closest to 1.125
>
> http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=fraction+closest+to+1.125
>
> Not sure it is universal yet - just thought I'd pass that along.
>
> Chris
>

Thanks Prent - that is good to know since I am in fact using excel!

Chris

On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 10:11 AM, prentrodgers <prentrodgers@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> Alpha is a very nice tool. Microsoft Excel does this with a formatting option: Select a cell, select Format, "custom" and type in ??/??. It turns a decimal into a fraction with two digits in the numerator and denominator. You can use as many question marks as you'd like to get a fractional approximation of any decimal value. I use it all the time in ratio multiplication.
>
> Prent Rodgers
>
> --- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "christopherv" <chrisvaisvil@...> wrote:
> >
> > I am working on mapping the harmonic series into my midi piano and I wanted to see how close to JI I ended up. (I'm currently trying to duplicate the Michael Harrison sound sort of)
> >
> > It seems that Wolfram Alpha is able to give reasonable answers to questions like fraction closest to 1.125
> >
> > http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=fraction+closest+to+1.125
> >
> > Not sure it is universal yet - just thought I'd pass that along.
> >
> > Chris
> >
>

These are good tips.

I found that one can do the same thing with the Chromey Calculator extension for Google Chrome[1] which acts as a unified front-end for both Google Calculator and Wolfram Alpha. Both "fraction 1.125" and "rationalize 1.125" work.

- Dave

[1] https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/acgimceffoceigocablmjdpebeodphgc

On 8/27/2010 10:11 AM, prentrodgers wrote:
> Alpha is a very nice tool. Microsoft Excel does this with a formatting option: Select a cell, select Format, "custom" and type in ??/??. It turns a decimal into a fraction with two digits in the numerator and denominator. You can use as many question marks as you'd like to get a fractional approximation of any decimal value. I use it all the time in ratio multiplication.
>
> Prent Rodgers
>
> --- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "christopherv"<chrisvaisvil@...> wrote:
>>
>> I am working on mapping the harmonic series into my midi piano and I wanted to see how close to JI I ended up. (I'm currently trying to duplicate the Michael Harrison sound sort of)
>>
>> It seems that Wolfram Alpha is able to give reasonable answers to questions like fraction closest to 1.125
>>
>> http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=fraction+closest+to+1.125
>>
>> Not sure it is universal yet - just thought I'd pass that along.
>>
>> Chris