Ben Denckla's Masters Thesis

Hey Ben (fellow MIT alum!),

Thank you for "shamelessly plugging" your thesis, "Dynamic Intonation for
Synthesizer Performance", at:

http://theremin.media.mit.edu/~bdenckla/thesis/main.html

I started reading it, and "couldn't put it down" (the laptop PC, that is).
It got to be 2:00 am, so I added a link to it from one of my pages
(http://www.pacificnet.net/~nowitzky/justint), so I wouldn't lose it among
my thirteen gazillion bookmarks.

I did get as far as the name of your computer program, "Helm". I take it
that stood for "Helmholtz" (My hero!).

Easley Blackwood's book, "The Structure of Recognizable Diatonic Tunings",
is on my list of things to read too, but it ain't machine-readable, so it'll
have to wait.

About your 30 Sep 1997 post to the TUNING list - As far as the idea that a
lot of music relies on the "blurring provided by temperament" (courtesy
James Kukula's phraseology), I'm still not convinced.

Here's my line of thought: What if you "blurred" the distinctions between
pitches even more? Suppose, as an example, a melody, first played in major,
then in minor. (It happens a lot in those "variations on a theme".) You
could blur this melody into a "7tET" (7 equal intervals per octave), which
would wipe away the distinction between major and minor. But you'd
definitely lose something in the translation. In simplistic terms, you
would no longer have that "happy the first time, sad the second" feel to it.

That's all for now (since it's now past 3:00 am). I look forward to reading
the rest of your thesis.

--Mark Albin Nowitzky (MIT BS EECS '79)
+------------------------------------------------------+
| Mark Nowitzky |
| email: nowitzky@pacificnet.net |
| www: http://www.pacificnet.net/~nowitzky |
| "If you haven't visited Mark Nowitzky's home |
| page recently, you haven't missed much..." |
+------------------------------------------------------+


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From: Manuel.Op.de.Coul@ezh.nl
Subject: dynamic JI
PostedDate: 01-10-97 17:17:26
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>I was wondering why no one doing dynamic intonation seems to make use
>of research in the area of automatic key recognition of music. There
>is work done by Jamshed J. Barucha who uses a connectionist model

Interesting. I came up with "decent" key recognition algorithm nearly a
year ago based upon ... well, oversimplifying it a bit ... tallying up a
histogram of note frequency on a circle of fifths.


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From: mr88cet@texas.net (Gary Morrison)
Subject: Re: Blackwood's proof
PostedDate: 09-10-97 16:08:11
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> Interesting. I came up with "decent" key recognition algorithm nearly
a
> year ago based upon ... well, oversimplifying it a bit ... tallying up a
> histogram of note frequency on a circle of fifths.

The advantage of a connectionist network model is that you only need a few
input tones to get a reasonable response. The different activation levels
of the key units
is what indicates the key. So if C has the highest activation then F and G
come next
to that as in the circle of fifths. The network consists of layers with
nodes for tones,
major chords, minor chords and keys. The links have a weight and are
symmetrical.
An interesting conclusion of the article by Barucha is that even though the
weight
of the links between source chord C major and its parent keys F, C and G
are equal,
the parent keys are not activated to the same degree. It is in decreasing
order:
C, F, G which are the keys in which the chord is on the tonic, dominant and
subdominant.
This in accordance with the hierarchy of harmonic functions in music
theory.

Manuel Op de Coul coul@ezh.nl


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From: John Starrett
Subject: Re: Guitar refretting
PostedDate: 10-10-97 23:39:15
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