multidimensional scaling diagrams

Paul Erlich graced us with:

>Yes, and luckily they are ascii!

..and just when I was wondering why this is the first time in months that
two digests arrived in one day! Might I suggest, in the interests of
conserving bandwidth, that someone chip in and buy Paul some space on a
server somewhere so he can post this to the "Paul Erlich Memorial ASCII
Diagram Home Page"? Hmmmmm? I mean, we only recently fixed the emailer he
was using that was spewing out the HTML code every posting!! :)

[The previous was posted in a humorous and non-rankerous mode; nonetheless,
the basic premise stands.]

Oh, yeah, my dear Dan Wolf: I know, I *just know*, that with all your
intellectual prowess (witness your boundless knowledge of tuning, music and
cultures) -- can you get you email configured so the lines don't break and
the odd bits of ASCII thrown in? Your words are too good to make my brain
hurt that way... (it's almost as if your msgs were becoming "basic
mutilations" [intoned in an old, world-weary voice]).

[Again, my old correspondent Dan will take this in the good cheer it is
sent in...]

And to all others, healthy tuning to you. Do people really want to hear
opinions on the forum CD? Honest ones, with no-holds barred? I've been
having fun with it, but I like to my opinions to myself. Radical honesty
puts people off.......

Cheers,
Jon

P.S. My spell checker doesn't like "non-rankerous" and suggests
"non-cancerous"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jonathan M. Szanto | Corporeal Meadows: Harry Partch, online. . .
jszanto@adnc.com | http://www.corporeal.com/

Bram wrote [1601.3:]

> ,,, If I'm not mistaken, the 11-limit diamond only
> has 20 notes in it and the 13-limit one only has 30,
> so using them might be pretty reasonable.

The 11=Limit Tonality Diamond has 29 different tones,
the 13-Limit has 41.

See Partch, _Genesis of a Music_, p 159 and 454 respectively.

- Joe Monzo
monz@juno.com
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html

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When the digests are as long as they've been lately, i seldom get to the
bottom of them, but today I find this right on top, from Carl Lumma!

> Harpsichords may have the best harmonics of the bunch, from any era (of
> course, today's harpsichords are woefully similar to those made hundreds of
> years ago), but clavichord timbre has the least harmonic, weakest, and
> funniest amplitude envelope of just about any keyboard timbre imaginable.
> It is unusable for ratios above the 5-limit, and the difference between
> meantone and equal temperament (if you can set it at all!) is hardly
> noticable.

Yikes! I don't know where to start. I have a feeling I'm mainly listening
to the fundamental when tuning clavichords, at least more so than with
harpsichords and pianos. And in our world there's a lot of white noise in
that range -- one has to learn how to filter it out. When I built my first
clavichord, I had it in a room with a fish tank with a pump; I started by
learning I had to turn off the pump to tune. Then I started realising the
pump noise was annoying me anyhow, so I unplugged it permanently. The room
was more pleasant, the fish throve -- the noise had probably been annoying
them too. I have a feeling that people who wanted to tune the clavichord
in winter probably did it before they stoked the fire to make it roar,
also, for the same reason.

But I don't know how to even start arguing with someone who claims the
difference between Equal temperament and meantone is hardly noticeable on
a clavichord. Are you, sir, deaf?

> >I may also add, as a bit of music-cultural speculation, that the creation
> of >the the tuning profession probably had a net effect of densensitizing
> >players to the quality of keyboard intonation.
>
> I'll agree with that!

Given that just about all good players of early keyboards in the modern
world do their own tuning, it's not relevant to the question of clavichord
performance. But I would submit that the creation of eletronic tuning
gadgets has desensitised some speculators in the field of tuning, from
listening to the actual sounds in front of them. Funniest amplitude
envelope indeed! That's music we're talking about. Bah!

Judith Conrad, Clavichordist
Piano and Harpsichord Tuner-technician