Larry A. Hanson

I was saddened to hear of Larry A. Hanson's death from Neil in his
post this morning. Larry was a brilliant and creative theorist
who had been collaborating with Ervin Wilson since 1978. In addition
to his championing 34-tet and commissioning the guitar that Neil plays
so well, Larry independently invented a unique type of generalized
keyboard in 1942 for his wife Evelyn, a concert pianist. Although his
keyboard was also intended for 53-tone equal temperament, the design
was different from Bosanquet's.

After the war, he called Loren Hammond of the Hammond Organ Company,
who, alas, showed little interest. Larry put his notes aside until
1977, when his daughte Chris came across them while helping him
straighten up some files. In 1978, Chris saw an article about Tom Stone
and his interchangeable fingerboard guitar in Rolling Stones magazine.
This article led to a meeting with Ervin Wilson, who was immediately
enthusiastic about Hanson's design. Ervin pointed out that Larry's
keyboard could be construed as based on a two-interval pattern (MOS)
generated by cycle of 19 minor thirds.

At Ervin's urging, Larry published a definitive article on the keyboard
in Xenharmonikon 12 (1989), when Daniel Wolf was the editor. Erv prepared
drawings which showed how various equal temperaments and several forms
of Just Intonation (the 13-limit Ogdoadic Diamond and two 5-limit
triadic arrays) could be mapped over the array of keys. At this time,
Larry also invented a new type of digital shaped like interlocking,
block "7's" to facilitate fingering.

Larry also maintained his interested in the purely theoretical side of
xenharmonics. He was extremely good at finding relevant articles on
number theory in the Cal Tech Library (from which graduated in 1942),
and he applied his mathematical ability and computational skills to
many theoretical problems in tuning theory, usually in collaboration
with Ervin Wilson. He was a great resource for the xenharmonic community
and he will be greatly missed by all of us who knew him and worked with
him.

--John




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Let me be a bit more clear about the problem:

The problem - or virtue, depending upon your outlook - with cavity
resonators is that the volume of the cavity can accomodate a wide frequency
range as long as the opening is properly adjusted.

Bill Colvig just builds big boxes, starts with a small hole and keeps
widening it until he reaches the pitch he wants. I have used the
Guatamalan-style resonators described in a small book about marimbas as
starting points, but it would be sure handier to have a formula!

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Another source of information, mostly for roughly bulb-like shapes,
Helmholz resonators. I don't personally know the theory myself, but I
presume it's in his book.



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