88CET Name

One of Brian's recent posts mentioned - in essence - a concern that calling
the approximately 13.63TET scale I've been discussing for a while now "88CET"
puts undue emphasis on its 88-cent constructor interval. That at the expense of
the more important intervals in terms of musical organization.

I agree that that's a meaningful concern. Still, I came to the conclusion
early on that naming it after its step size was the only precise way. Like
Wendy Carlos' Alpha and Beta tunings, and unlike Pierce-Bohlen or octave-based
equal-temperaments, 88CET doesn't split any simple harmonic relationship into
even pieces.

But as far as I'm concerned, you're welcome to think of it as 3 equal steps
per 7:6, 4 steps per 11:9, 5 per 9:7, 7 per 10:7, 8 per 3:2, 10 per 5:3, 11 per
7:4, 18 per 5:2, or 41 per 8:1. That assuming you realize that its
approximations to those frequency ratios are close but not exact.

In either case, I'd prefer there to be a single name for the tuning, so that
we don't risk calling it seven different things and not realize that we're
talking about the same thing! For example, I think it would be a bad idea to
call Carlos' Alpha "78CET", since plenty of literature already exists on it
under the name "Alpha".

By the way, I have an all-new 88CET lecture/demo with more music on it. If
you want to hear some of the sounds I've been blabbering about, lemme know.
Unfortunately my DAT deck is in the shop at the moment, so it'll be a while
before I can send out copies. Grumble...


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By the way, Neil's "new fast-picking country tune" that Johnny mentioned will
be on the up-coming 19 for the 90s CD. And lemme tell ya, it's a total killer -
a blazin' fury of 16th-notes at about 132bpm!

I'm not sure what's going on with 19 for the 90s, by the way. I haven't
heard from Brian in (I think) over a month. I hear he got sick for a while.
But anyway, don't panic; we haven't abandoned it by any stretch of the
imagination. And I think you folks will like it.


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