88CET #11: Doubling 2

Last time I mentioned some considerations for creating the essential effect
of doubling in 88CET even though it doesn't have an octave. Here are the
intervals that seem the most effective in that regard.

Bearing that first consideration in mind, I have found three 88CET intervals,
from least to greatest change in the character of a chord, to be useful for
doubling:
1. The triple-octave (41 88c steps).
2. The perfect fifth (8 88c steps).
3. The major tenth (18 88c steps).
These are probably the best candidate intervals to try adding to a chord, if you
want to increase its richness, but not significantly change its character. They
definitely could change the character of the chord depending on the intervals
you start with and the intervals you end up with, but they are certainly bland
compared with many of 88CET's most useful chord-building intervals, supramajor
or neutral thirds for example.

I have found that doubling in one or more perfect fifths below the lowest
chord-tone usually produces powerful chords of similar character with the
original chord. That is true provided that, in doing so, you don't create any
of those "taboo" false perfect consonances (octaves, twelfths, or double
octaves).

While on the subject of doubling in unusual intervals, it's probably worth
pointing out that 88CET can provide some very unusual and intriguing composite
timbres from doubling entire melody lines up or down by these intervals. For
example, a violin melody doubled on a flute a 7:4 higher seems to have a
synergistic sound beyond a mere timbral mixture as with doubling in unisons,
octaves, or fifths to a lesser degree. Some of these composites sound more like
alien synthesizer sounds, even if the constituent instrument simulations are a
quite realistic.


Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl
with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Tue, 19 Sep 1995 11:42 +0100
Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI)
for id CAA22302; Tue, 19 Sep 1995 02:42:25 -0700
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 1995 02:42:25 -0700
Message-Id:
Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu
Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu