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Microtonal phones

🔗monz@juno.com (Joseph L Monzo)

4/8/1998 7:36:21 PM
Just thought I'd mention this, since it
seems we're trying to document all the
places where we're hearing microtones:

The tones which sound when you press
numbers on the keypad of a touch-tone
phone are in ratios. I had figured them
out once, because their arrangement into
dyads follows a geometrical pattern
across the keys, but they were never
written down.

The dial tone is also some kind of just
major 3rd.

Also, when I called someone tonight,
the sound of their phone ringing in my
earpiece was a trill-like alternation of two
tones which formed exactly the 19/16 we've
been discussing in the Hendrix chord
-- I had just listened to a MIDI sequence
of it I made right before I made the phone
call, and not only were my ears particularly
sensitized to it, but it was also in the
same key (F#)!

It seems that microtones are creeping into
all sorts of nooks and crannies of our lives!

Joseph L. Monzo
monz@juno.com
4940 Rubicam St., Philadelphia, PA 19144-1809, USA
phone 215 849 6723

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