Blues tunings

I've been doing a study of blues music recently and am having trouble
understanding why some members of the Just Intonation community consider the
7-limit representative of 'blue' notes.

My listening, reading, and talking to artists in the field indicates that a
'blue' 3rd, for instance, can sound anywhere in-between a minor and major
3rd, with or without sliding. Artists such as Muddy Waters, 'Big Boy'
Crudup, some of the so-called Guitar Evangelists, some early Gospel singers,
and so on, sing many neutral intervals. A low minor 7th occurs very rarely,
and a low minor 3rd even less.

If ratios can describe intonation of 'blue' notes then the 11-limit would
describe such notes better.

Perhaps this subject has been done here before, if so I apologise,

sincerely,

Michael Dixon
MandLDixon@bigpond. com

> It a sad fact of life that patents are issued
> every day for items and ideas in long and common use.

Sorry if I'm getting too far off the subject of tuning here, but for the
record...

You can apply for a "utility" patent (as opposed to a "design" patent,
which covers visual appeal rather than practical value), if the invention:
1. Fits into a "statutory class". The PTO (Patent and Trademark Office)
keeps a
database of probably something like about 50,000 to 100,000 classes and
sub-
classes of patentable topic matter.
2. Is not a perpetual-motion machine.
3. Is not a plant, in the biological sense of the word (there's a separate
type
of patent for plants).
4. Is not an already known idea.
5. Is "unobvious". (I always thought that that word should be
"nonobvious",
but whatever...) You can't patent something all of whose components are
known, unless their combined effect is something surprising. For
example,
you can't patent asprin, but around the turn of the century, somebody
patented putting asprin into pig feed, because he found (probably
accidentally)
that doing so makes them reproduce more successfully.

Almost invariably, a patent examiner initially rejects a patent
application for one of the last two criteria, and the applicant files a
"protest" explaining why the examiner's claims don't make sense.

But anyway, as for a patented invention being "in long or common use", a
lot of people don't realize that patent law not only prohibits you from
patenting things that have not been patented before, but things that are
known in any way. That then leads to what are called "defensive
publications", wherein you conclude that you can't or don't see enough value
in patenting something, so you instead write a detailed article in a major
industry journal about it, solely to prevent anybody else from patenting
it. Probably somewhere around 20% of articles in engineering journals are
defensive pubs.

Now, it's also important to understand the claims of a patent (typically
the last third of a patent, wherein the inventor states what s/he claims as
intellectual property). They start extremely general and get more and more
specific. A court will often throw out the first few claims because they're
just too general. Patent attorneys include them largely to narrow the scope
of, or define terminology used in, the later claims. Claim #4 of a lot of
patents read something like "a system as in claim 3 such that...".

Although it's not likely, Yamaha might claim something as broad as a
guitar, knowing full well that anybody can defeat that claim, just so that
they can legally define what a guitar is for their later claims.

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End of TUNING Digest 1527
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At 03:39 PM 9/9/98 -0400, John Starrett wrote:

> I read with amusement and dismay Paul Hahn's reference to the
>patent issued to Yamaha for the use of 19TET on keyboards, guitars, wind
>and brass instruments. It a sad fact of life that patents are issued
>every day for items and ideas in long and common use. If I were to market
>a 19TET guitar Yamaha could legally stop me, even though I had been
>building them for years before they filed the patent.

Why don't you market a guitar fretted in 19-tone 1/3 Comma Meantone, with an
adjustable bridge? How precisely are guitars fretted, anyway?

>Luckily,
>microtonalism is just a passing fad, and we won't have to worry about
>anything like that.

Musicians in India won't have to worry about 19TET either, unless they simplify.

--Charlie Jordan

> Why don't you market a guitar fretted in 19-tone 1/3 Comma Meantone, with an
> adjustable bridge? How precisely are guitars fretted, anyway?

Down to about the nearest half millimeter or so.