Who's Afraid of the Big Bad 9:7?, Part 1

This is the first in a series of posts. I'm not sure how many I'll break it
down into, but I'll try to keep each short, and easy to digest.

Many of you have lived through my endless dronings about 88CET tuning, which
has a reasonably close approximation to a 9:7 supramajor third. In connection
with that, several people have mentioned over the list, or to me directly, that
they find 9:7 irritating, or some similar adjective. At least one list
subscriber has also suggested that it sounds more like an off 5:4 than a harmony
in its own right.

From my 88CET work, I have developed a somewhat different concept of 9:7.
But even before I started really experimenting with it, it definitely struck me
as an interval with meaning in its own right much more than as an off 5:4.

Hopefully these postings will give you some perspectives and tips about how
to approach 9:7, so that you and your audiences can appreciate it better for its
own special sensation.

But before I go on, I suppose I ought to make clear that 9:7 is certainly not
relevant only to 88CET tuning. Pierce-Bohlen tuning also has a 9:7 interval
approximation, and its approximation is very similar with 88CET's (about 4 cents
sharp). There are many other tunings - octave-based or not - that also
approximate this interval, such as 11TET, 22TET, 25TET, 33TET, 36TET, 41TET, and
72TET.

Next time around I'll give you my first two tips about 9:7s.


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