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DX21 xenharmonics?

🔗gbreed@cix.compulink.co.uk (Graham Breed)

2/16/1997 10:34:08 AM
I've just bought myself a second hand DX21, which didn't come with a manual.
Does anyone know if it has support for xenharmonic scales and, if so, how to
get them to work?

While I'm at it, does anyone have other info on it, like how the bulk dumps
are formatted?

Graham

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🔗Matt Nathan <mattn@...>

2/16/1997 7:42:16 PM
Charles Lucy wrote:
>
> >So far you have only followed this up with questions. I'm
> >waiting to see your better model. I hold that real strings
> >have partials which are nearly but not exactly harmonic.
> >It's up to you to show that this is not so, and that the
> >proper model is built on the value pi, and that this
> >justifies your tuning system for plucked and hammered
> >string instruments, and that this justifies your tuning
> >system for other instruments.
>
> >Matt Nathan
>
> Thank you for your thoughts. From a practical standpoint, whatever I
> should produce as proof, in terms of instruments, experiments, data etc.
> I have too strong a vested interest in "proving" that Harrison was
> correct. Hence whatever further experiments, I should set up, few would
> believe me.

You say people wouldn't believe you (you assume) because you
have a vested interest in having your model be accepted, so
you are excused from posting your model. It's interesting
that this logic doesn't also prevent you from posting claims
that you have a model.

> We come down to the problem of all "scientific" hypothesis logic,
> that a
> "Law" is only valid, until someone comes up with a better "Law".

Actually it is theories, not laws, which compete.

> In this case the prevailing "Law" is a mapping of harmonics based on
> exact integer frequency ratios,

I keep seeing posts and cross posts which explain that the partials
of real plucked or hammered strings are not exactly harmonic. I don't
see anyone arguing what you call "prevailing law". I think this is
what's called a "strawman"--when you state an opposing argument
noone actually holds, hoping that by then destroying that
argument you can indirectly prove your own argument. Unfortunately
it doesn't prove anything.

> and the proposed hypothesis is a mapping
> based on pi, as very clearly described by Harrison and at our
> websites.

None of the web sites which links you've posted have any
description of the mapping of partials. All your web sites
describe (and not very clearly) is that one can build an
extensible tuning system on 2 irrational intervals, neither
of which is pi. I suspect that there are an indefinite number
of such tuning systems using pairs of irrational intervals,
all of which would produce beating sonorities.

> As I have yet to afford a full equipped acoustic lab, (neither in UK
> or here in Hawaii), the comparisons are difficult to make except on
> an experiential level.

If you want to speak musically, and say you like the sound
of your scale, I have no objection at all, and I encourage
you. I too like the sound of the beating in the lullaby examples.

It's one thing to work with materials artistically to get a
pleasing result, it's another to investigate the physics
of acoustic bodies, the theoretical structures of tuning
systems, and the psychoacoustics of human perception.

I have no vested interest in any particular model; I'm
curious about all of them--that's why I read this list.
If you do indeed have a model, I suggest that this
particular forum is the _ideal_ place to discuss it--if
you would only begin to do so.

Matt Nathan

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