RE: More on the comma experiment

Steven wrote,

>The source scale is 0-2-4-7-9-11-13-16-18-20,
>and the borrowed tone (deg 15) comes from the same scale on the
>dominant (13-15-17...)

But you never use 2, 11, or 18, so your "source scale" is really a typical
major scale. I don't think you can "explain" the 15 in terms of the dominant
-- why not just include it in your "source scale"?


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Paul wrote:

''It is these sorts of experiments that lead me to quarrel with Daniel Wolf

about his use of sine waves, which would invariably lead to the 10:12:15:17

solution, and never to the subharmonic one.''

This is a poor comparison (10 : 12 : 15 : 17) against ( /6 : /5 : /4 :
2/7). The first wins whether with sine waves or with strings. Try these
inversions instead: (17/2 : 10 : 12 : 15 ) against ( /7 : /6 : /5 : /4 ).
My own preference (and that of my three-and-a-half year old son who has
heard more gamelan pelog than any other live music) in this second set
whether with sine waves or more complex timbres is always for the
subharmonic version. I thinkl that the inversion chosen plays a large role
in the harmonic-subharmonic distinction. The 10:12:15:17 ''locks in'' to
it's tuning through the doubled difference tone (5).

And need I repeat for the nth time, that I chose sine waves for my spacing
work to avoid the whole issue of masking tones whose spectra shared too
many partials, thus obscuring which tones were fundamentals.

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