Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning Xenwiki on Wikipedia

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> Unbelievable.
>
> Maybe we should just get our foot in the door by getting it on Gene's page
> first, then present it like it's Gene's work or something, or an offshoot of
> his work, or something that Gene oversees. Yes, it sucks because it
> downplays the rest of our contributions, but we can always expand outward
> after that.

I'm having trouble understanding these attitudes about Wikipedia.

Why is it so important to you that there be a Wikipedia article about our website?

Personally, I'm not really interested in the website, xenharmonic.wikispaces.com, itself. I'm only interested in the ideas in it. So if you were trying to make a Wikipedia article about some concept, say comma pumps, I could sympathize with you if it got deleted, but if an article about *the website itself* gets deleted I couldn't care less. I might not go so far as to delete it myself, but I certainly agree that there's no good reason for Wikipedia to have an article about this website.

If you still really want there to be a Wikipedia article about the xenharmonic wiki, your task is spelled out for you clearly at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_%28web%29

You have to demonstrate one of three things:
* The website has some independent, "non-trivial published works" written about it. I don't think this is the case.
* The website has won an independent award. Has the xenharmonic wiki won any awards?
* The content is distributed by a "respected and independent" publisher or broadcaster. AFAIK this isn't true either.

If you can't prove it satisfies any of these criteria for being a notable website (one that an *encyclopedia* ought to have an article about), then the only thing you can do is try to get a consensus of all Wikipedia editors to change the notability guidelines and make them more lax. I'm sure many other people have been trying this for a long time, so good luck.

Keenan

🔗Keenan Pepper <keenanpepper@...>

🔗Carl Lumma <carl@...>

🔗genewardsmith <genewardsmith@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Keenan Pepper" <keenanpepper@...> wrote:

> I'm having trouble understanding these attitudes about Wikipedia.

Because you are stuck in the old paper and ink paradigm, and think you need to save space.

> Why is it so important to you that there be a Wikipedia article about our website?

Well, gee. Glad you asked. I needed the article because I added it to the list of online encyclopedias here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_online_encyclopedias#Music

and that listing wants a link.

> Personally, I'm not really interested in the website, xenharmonic.wikispaces.com, itself. I'm only interested in the ideas in it. So if you were trying to make a Wikipedia article about some concept, say comma pumps, I could sympathize with you if it got deleted, but if an article about *the website itself* gets deleted I couldn't care less.

I couldn't care less that you couldn't care less. And your ennui is not an argument.

>I might not go so far as to delete it myself, but I certainly agree that there's no good reason for Wikipedia to have an article about this website.

Right. It must and shall have articles on other online music encyclopedias, including for instance one in Hebrew exclusively about Israeli music, but never one on xenharmonic music. So we must, we absolutely must, remove the Tonalsoft effort and the Xenwiki. Why, if we didn't someone might learn something! We must protect the delicate brains of those with little or no awareness of xenharmonic music from that at all costs.

> If you still really want there to be a Wikipedia article about the xenharmonic wiki, your task is spelled out for you clearly at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_%28web%29
>
> You have to demonstrate one of three things:
> * The website has some independent, "non-trivial published works" written about it. I don't think this is the case.
> * The website has won an independent award. Has the xenharmonic wiki won any awards?
> * The content is distributed by a "respected and independent" publisher or broadcaster. AFAIK this isn't true either.

Uh huh. And of course all those other online encyclopedias have won tons of awards.

🔗Carl Lumma <carl@...>

🔗Keenan Pepper <keenanpepper@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "genewardsmith" <genewardsmith@...> wrote:
> Well, gee. Glad you asked. I needed the article because I added it to the list of online encyclopedias here:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_online_encyclopedias#Music
>
> and that listing wants a link.

This doesn't really answer my question. I guess a more general question that gets more at the heart of what I'm wondering is this: Why do you care that xenharmonic.wikispaces.com is mentioned in Wikipedia at all, and why aren't you trying to get it mentioned in, for example, Brittanica? Or in Scholarpedia?

> >I might not go so far as to delete it myself, but I certainly agree that there's no good reason for Wikipedia to have an article about this website.
>
> Right. It must and shall have articles on other online music encyclopedias, including for instance one in Hebrew exclusively about Israeli music, but never one on xenharmonic music. So we must, we absolutely must, remove the Tonalsoft effort and the Xenwiki. Why, if we didn't someone might learn something! We must protect the delicate brains of those with little or no awareness of xenharmonic music from that at all costs.

You are not being censored. This is not censorship that's happening.

People can infect their delicate brains quite easily by just googling "xenharmonic". The xenharmonic wiki is impossible to miss. Nobody is trying to hide it.

The MOOMA article you're referring to at least says "MOOMA is *the leading* web site dedicated to Israeli music." I note that the text of the tiny article you wrote didn't say that the xenharmonic wiki was "the leading" anything, or even claim it was important at all to anyone. That's why it was speedily deleted instead of going through the regular deletion process, in case you were wondering. I'm sure if you wrote a slightly longer article that actually made a "claim of notability", it would at least be allowed to go through the regular deletion process.

I don't see why there's an encyclopedia article about this MOOMA website either. But the fact that some article currently exists that doesn't satisfy the notability criteria does not imply that the criteria are evil and there to be broken, and that anyone who follows them is a "vandal".

> > If you still really want there to be a Wikipedia article about the xenharmonic wiki, your task is spelled out for you clearly at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_%28web%29
> >
> > You have to demonstrate one of three things:
> > * The website has some independent, "non-trivial published works" written about it. I don't think this is the case.
> > * The website has won an independent award. Has the xenharmonic wiki won any awards?
> > * The content is distributed by a "respected and independent" publisher or broadcaster. AFAIK this isn't true either.
>
> Uh huh. And of course all those other online encyclopedias have won tons of awards.

I specifically said "one of three things", and the notability guideline makes it even more clear that any one of these points by itself is enough to show notability. Come on, you're a mathematician. Avoid making simple logic errors.

Keenan

🔗Keenan Pepper <keenanpepper@...>

🔗Carl Lumma <carl@...>

> > No but ok, seriously. Gene, I've begun the process to make
> > you an admin. I completed a 27b-6 in your name and
> > submitted it to warcraftmage79. And I had the missus send
> > our local grand lodgemaster a pie for good measure. If all
> > goes well, the 1-dan lolcat will be added to your userpage
> > soon. Spend 2 manna to summon the cat for speedy deletion,
> > and 3 manna plus 2 wheat to lock pages or block users. Feel
> > free to consult the cat on the nuances of the notability
> > criterion.
>
> This made me laugh out loud. I think we could all have a
> better sense of humor about this, and avoid being seriously
> obsessed about an encyclopedia website.

Within are some serious criticisms, such as

* most admins are losers
* party to an impenetrable bureaucracy
* who delete more than they contribute
* or contribute mostly fictional-universe nonsense that
wouldn't meet most people's definition of "notable"

Also, references to Brazil and the Shawshank Redemption.

Now if you'll excuse me, it's time for me to slap fact
tags on every symbolic expression on these pages

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Rham_cohomology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautological_one-form
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullback_%28differential_geometry%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie_coalgebra
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koszul_complex

'cause I'm so sure the references given aren't just decoys
that are recycled across entries on the same general topic,
that the page authors totally actually sourced the content
from, so it will totally be no problem for them to cite the
specific pages where the expressions were found. Right?
(Or maybe, what we have here isn't an encyclopedia at all,
but something much better...)

-Carl

🔗Carl Lumma <carl@...>

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 1:24 AM, Keenan Pepper <keenanpepper@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> >
> > Unbelievable.
> >
> > Maybe we should just get our foot in the door by getting it on Gene's page
> > first, then present it like it's Gene's work or something, or an offshoot of
> > his work, or something that Gene oversees. Yes, it sucks because it
> > downplays the rest of our contributions, but we can always expand outward
> > after that.
>
> I'm having trouble understanding these attitudes about Wikipedia.

The point is that the criteria for notability should be changed for
the specific subfield of microtonal music and microtonal music theory.
All of the good research on the subject in the past decade has come
out of a tiny, unsuspecting mailing list on Yahoo groups, and the
renaissance is since continuing on a Facebook group. The most
organized source of knowledge on the subject we have is the xenwiki.
Here's a good article for you to read:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_%28psychology%29

What frame are you viewing the regular mapping paradigm in?
- Is it unverifiable and original research that shouldn't be on Wikipedia?
- Does it in general meet the notability criterion for something that
should be on Wikipedia?
- Do we have our act together enough to be on Wikipedia, in general?

Well, gee, it's rather easy to say "NO" to those questions, isn't it?
All you have to do is take the perspective that a wiki about another
wiki is written by a guy who obviously doesn't know the rules, and
there you go.

The people who've since made our lives miserable have also said "NO,"
and as a result, people are getting incorrect knowledge about
microtonal music, and hence getting dumber. We're spending all of this
time on this list because we want people to get smarter, not dumber.
That's the goal, that's why I'm spending incalculable hours of my life
on this list and on Facebook, when I should be out getting drunk or
getting laid or doing what every other 23 year old is doing. We're all
driven by some sort of obsessive desire to advance the musical
paradigm, and to connect music and science in a way that hasn't
seriously been done since the theorists of the Renaissance era, and so
we continue. And inasmuch as our actions pertain to Wikipedia, we're
trying to improve it by extending the scope of the world's knowledge,
which so far, in this area, has been driven entirely by a grassroots
effort existing on tiny mailing lists on the internet.

Now then. Here's another frame to look at things in:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ignore_all_rules
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:The_rules_are_principles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_%22Ignore_all_rules%22_means
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:When_IAR_is_ignored
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_bureaucracy

Here are some quotes:
"If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it."
"Do not follow an overly strict interpretation of the letter of policy
without consideration for the principles of policies. If the rules
truly prevent you from improving the encyclopedia, ignore them."
"Don't follow written instructions mindlessly, but rather, consider
how the encyclopedia is improved or damaged by each edit."
"The spirit of the rule trumps the letter of the rule. The common
purpose of building a free encyclopedia trumps both. If this common
purpose is better served by ignoring the letter of a particular rule,
then that rule should be ignored."
"Each individual case will have its own context. While the rules are
useful for the most common circumstances, often there is no hard and
fast rule that can be applied."

Here's a really nice quote:
"For example, whether a small press publication can be considered a
reliable source depends on a number of factors. Does the publishing
house have a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy? Is the author
a notable or respected expert in relation to the subject of the work?"

In the case of the xenwiki, the answer is yes. Gene keeps an eye on
this stuff like a hawk. He took off something that Kraig said about
the melodic implications of the tonality diamond that wasn't
explained. Gene himself is an authoritative expert on the subject, and
this has been recognized within Wikipedia itself. So yes.

The point is that this is a clear case in which IAR should apply.
We're not trying to get our stuff on Wikipedia to promote or sell
anything; we're doing it to try and improve the encylopedia. This is
an extremely specialized field, and every one of those is going to
have its quirks where IAR should take precedence. In this case, our
"quirk" is that the notability criteria need to be adjusted to be more
appropriate to the field. It's rather simple and the only reason that
it's NOT happening is that the people that Gene called "deletionists"
don't understand the situation, and on some level, fetishize
Wikipedia's rules in a way that IAR was designed to subvert.

Well, gee, when you look at it through that frame, it looks a lot
different, don't it?

-Mike

🔗genewardsmith <genewardsmith@...>

🔗Keenan Pepper <keenanpepper@...>

I actually agree with this whole post more than I expected to at first, but still want to address some points before abandoning this increasingly off-topic thread.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> The point is that the criteria for notability should be changed for
> the specific subfield of microtonal music and microtonal music theory.
> All of the good research on the subject in the past decade has come
> out of a tiny, unsuspecting mailing list on Yahoo groups, and the
> renaissance is since continuing on a Facebook group. The most
> organized source of knowledge on the subject we have is the xenwiki.

You and I know this claim to be true, but you have to imagine how it appears to an outside observer who hasn't been involved. If the members of some Yahoo group claimed to have made significant advances in, say, string theory, no one would believe them unless their work had been reviewed and accepted by the existing academic community.

Granted, the situation with xenharmonic music is different, because there aren't university departments that specialize in analyzing tuning systems with the goals of creating novel music, or describing very different kinds of traditional music in the same coherent framework. But the claim that this group of amateurs has created an important universal theory is extraordinary, and needs extraordinary evidence to convince an uninvolved person.

> The people who've since made our lives miserable have also said "NO,"

THIS is the attitude about Wikipedia that makes no sense to me. How is not having a Wikipedia article about something "making your life miserable", even figuratively?

> The point is that this is a clear case in which IAR should apply.
> We're not trying to get our stuff on Wikipedia to promote or sell
> anything; we're doing it to try and improve the encylopedia. This is

Nobody thinks we're trying to sell anything. What they do think (and if you consider it a moment you can see they're perfectly justified in doing so) is that we are probably crackpots and we have this pet theory that we want to tell everyone about, even though it's really gibberish. There are a lot of people in the world like this.

As an example, take Mario and his "true octave". (No offence, Mario; I'm not calling you a crackpot or anything, just using the true octave as an example of something everyone here certainly doesn't agree with.) Should Mario be allowed to create a Wikipedia article "True octave" and write there that the true octave is different from 2/1? Or even edit the "Octave" article to say the same thing? Mario believes that information to be the truth and thinks everyone would benefit by reading it. But I disagree, so I am happy that there is a Wikipedia policy preventing that from happening.

Our job is to prove to people that we are the world experts on this stuff and that we have consensus on certain things, which is a tall order because it's an extraordinary claim.

Keenan

🔗Steve Parker <steve@...>

🔗genewardsmith <genewardsmith@...>

🔗Steve Parker <steve@...>

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 1:24 PM, Keenan Pepper <keenanpepper@...> wrote:
>
> I actually agree with this whole post more than I expected to at first, but still want to address some points before abandoning this increasingly off-topic thread.

This is far from off-topic.

> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> > The point is that the criteria for notability should be changed for
> > the specific subfield of microtonal music and microtonal music theory.
> > All of the good research on the subject in the past decade has come
> > out of a tiny, unsuspecting mailing list on Yahoo groups, and the
> > renaissance is since continuing on a Facebook group. The most
> > organized source of knowledge on the subject we have is the xenwiki.
>
> You and I know this claim to be true, but you have to imagine how it appears to an outside observer who hasn't been involved. If the members of some Yahoo group claimed to have made significant advances in, say, string theory, no one would believe them unless their work had been reviewed and accepted by the existing academic community.

I'm building up a reply now...

> Granted, the situation with xenharmonic music is different, because there aren't university departments that specialize in analyzing tuning systems with the goals of creating novel music, or describing very different kinds of traditional music in the same coherent framework.

Oh, but you already said what I was going to say! So there you go.

> But the claim that this group of amateurs has created an important universal theory is extraordinary, and needs extraordinary evidence to convince an uninvolved person.

There's been a few heavyweights on this list. Paul's been on here,
Gene's been on here, Sethares has been on here, Chalmers has been on
here. The tuning list has been quoted as a cited source on Wikipedia
before. Sethares has cited Paul's work on HE and so has one of my
teachers from UM now in his Stanford Ph. D dissertation. I dunno what
other evidence you would need to establish that a mailing list
contains academic value other than that. Obviously we're not going to
get a situation where academia is quoting the tuning list left and
right, because if we were then the debate over whether IAR should
apply would be moot. The point of IAR is that every subfield has its
quirks, and you should ignore the rules when a particular quirk of
some subfield runs counter to the ultimate goal of improving the
encyclopedia. All of this is crystal clear in my view about microtonal
music.

> > The people who've since made our lives miserable have also said "NO,"
>
> THIS is the attitude about Wikipedia that makes no sense to me. How is not having a Wikipedia article about something "making your life miserable", even figuratively?

Why wouldn't it be a bummer? I'm not sure there's anyone else who
wouldn't be exasperated in this situation.

> > The point is that this is a clear case in which IAR should apply.
> > We're not trying to get our stuff on Wikipedia to promote or sell
> > anything; we're doing it to try and improve the encylopedia. This is
>
> Nobody thinks we're trying to sell anything. What they do think (and if you consider it a moment you can see they're perfectly justified in doing so) is that we are probably crackpots and we have this pet theory that we want to tell everyone about, even though it's really gibberish. There are a lot of people in the world like this.

If all of this consisted of music theory academics complaining that
our research shouldn't take precedence over theirs because it's
published, then perhaps there'd be a case, but you know that's not the
situation.

"They" think that because "they" consist of laypeople who are
unfamiliar with the field of microtonal music. If they were familiar
with it, then they'd know to apply IAR in this case. The fact that
people who don't know anything about microtonal music are policing the
microtonal music pages for rule violations is the problem. This means
they won't know when and when not to apply IAR, and furthermore IAR
was designed as a way to stop people from doing this.

The real problem is that laypeople who aren't familiar with the field
of microtonal music are policing the microtonal pages with a one size
fits all rules-driven paradigm that isn't what the Wikipedia founders
intended. They do it, on some level, because of a fetishism about
Wikipedia, and because they believe that simply applying the rules
systematically and algorithmically will yield the best organization of
the sum of the world's knowledge. In the real world, a little bit more
finesse is required when tackling the encyclopedization of a field of
knowledge; IAR indicates that the founders were well aware of this.

> As an example, take Mario and his "true octave". (No offence, Mario; I'm not calling you a crackpot or anything, just using the true octave as an example of something everyone here certainly doesn't agree with.) Should Mario be allowed to create a Wikipedia article "True octave" and write there that the true octave is different from 2/1? Or even edit the "Octave" article to say the same thing? Mario believes that information to be the truth and thinks everyone would benefit by reading it. But I disagree, so I am happy that there is a Wikipedia policy preventing that from happening.

You know this is a strawman :)

> Our job is to prove to people that we are the world experts on this stuff and that we have consensus on certain things, which is a tall order because it's an extraordinary claim.

What people?

-Mike

🔗Graham Breed <gbreed@...>

"Keenan Pepper" <keenanpepper@...> wrote:

> As an example, take Mario and his "true octave". (No
> offence, Mario; I'm not calling you a crackpot or
> anything, just using the true octave as an example of
> something everyone here certainly doesn't agree with.)
> Should Mario be allowed to create a Wikipedia article
> "True octave" and write there that the true octave is
> different from 2/1? Or even edit the "Octave" article to
> say the same thing? Mario believes that information to be
> the truth and thinks everyone would benefit by reading
> it. But I disagree, so I am happy that there is a
> Wikipedia policy preventing that from happening.

Why aren't you calling Mario a crackpot? He looks like a
crackpot to me. Why else wouldn't you want a Wikipedia
article about the toctave? If it were what he claimed it
to be, it would certainly be notable. What stops it being
notable isn't that some people disagree with it, but that
it's wrong.

The point is that when somebody doesn't have academic
credentials, the only way to decide if their work has value
or not is to read and understand it. If Wikipedia admins
are going by weight of publication instead of the quality of
the work, that's too bad. There is valuable work on the
Xenwiki. It's there, instead of directly on Wikipedia,
because Wikipedia doesn't allow original research. We did
the right thing. Now let's link to it.

When you read Mario's work, you find it's playing with
numbers that have no foundation in anything observable.
It's a shame if we're now so frightened of causing offense
that you aren't prepared to say that. It's a kind of
intellectual relativism, where everybody's ideas must be of
equal value. To produce excellent theory we have to be
open to criticism.

Graham

🔗Steve Parker <steve@...>

> Theory may be implicit in a composer's work, but it doesn't
> become theory in fact until somebody writes it down. It's
> like the old argument "I do respect very much the elephant,
> but would you give him the chair of Zoology?"
>
Maybe not... but he knows a thing or two about elephantness that the chair never will... ;-)

> The original statement wasn't quite correct. Still, a
> handful of mailing lists round here have been where the
> best theory has been published and research has been
> discussed relating to musical tuning. If you were late
> joining, too bad, this is where the action was. If it's
> moved somewhere else it isn't into academic journals.
>
I didn't mean to say at all that the list was not relevant, unbelievable in scope, duplicated elsewhere or generally awe-inspiring.
If I ever understand half of it I'm sure it will impact my writing massively..
The best I can hope to contribute is twenty years experience writing differently-tuned music for live musicians.

> Or maybe you have actual references to
> good research that we've been missing?
>
Again maybe my understanding is too limited. Tenney, Sabat, McCLain, Lehman (....), the work done by students of Johnston and Partch and the work extending and cleaning their work.

I never meant to denigrate the list in any way.
I retract if that is how it sounded.. I maybe need to retract in any case - I just made a passing comment based on decades of work, discussion, reading DPhil composition theses,
all involving tuning theory before ever being on the list.

Steve P.

🔗Steve Parker <steve@...>

🔗Graham Breed <gbreed@...>

Steve Parker <steve@...> wrote:

> I didn't mean to say at all that the list was not
> relevant, unbelievable in scope, duplicated elsewhere or
> generally awe-inspiring. If I ever understand half of it
> I'm sure it will impact my writing massively.. The best I
> can hope to contribute is twenty years experience writing
> differently-tuned music for live musicians.

Of course, your experience of writing music will be
valuable. If you're having trouble understanding things,
it's best to ask questions in context. I maintain that the
important things, from a composer's point of view, are easy
to understand. Still, we have difficulty explaining them.

> > Or maybe you have actual references to
> > good research that we've been missing?
> >
> Again maybe my understanding is too limited. Tenney,
> Sabat, McCLain, Lehman (....), the work done by students
> of Johnston and Partch and the work extending and
> cleaning their work.

References to work are what I want. From these names:

James Tenney's research is listed at

http://www.plainsound.org/JTwork.html#texts

The last thing by him is dated 1998.

I know about Marc Sabat, because he's one of the creators
of the Extended Helmholtz-Ellis JI font. That gives a
reasonably good JI notation, but isn't as extensive as
Sagittal, and their paper doesn't mention the slightly
older Sagittal. He also produced a list of intervals. And
he's working on an algorithm for adaptive tuning. All we
have is a preliminary report, that isn't particularly
exciting, and doesn't cite the relevant work by Sethares.

http://music.calarts.edu/~msabat/ms/pdfs/MM.pdf

Do you mean Ernest McClain? He has a website

http://www.ernestmcclain.net/

He says he retired in 1982, so whatever he did since it
wasn't as an academic. Is anything there of value?

Brad Lehman has posted a lot to this list. All about a
single 12 note tuning with dubious historical connections.

Students of Johnston and Partch . . . great . . . who are
they?

There's some other work I know about from the UK Microfest.
This project, software for helping performers with
microtonal scales, in permanent 0.1 beta:

http://cmt.gla.ac.uk/website/projects/rosegarden_codicil.html

Some work on new acoustic instruments, that led to this in
2002, and not much since:

http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/jcamd/research/rae-2008/lewis-jones/portfolio_outcome02.cfm

Graham

🔗Mario Pizarro <piagui@...>

Graham Breed wrote:

<Why aren't you calling Mario a crackpot? He looks like a
<crackpot to me. Why else wouldn't you want a Wikipedia
<article about the toctave? If it were what he claimed it
<to be, it would certainly be notable. What stops it being
<notable isn't that some people disagree with it, but that
<it's wrong.

<The point is that when somebody doesn't have academic
<credentials, the only way to decide if their work has value
<or not is to read and understand it. If Wikipedia admins
<are going by weight of publication instead of the quality of
<the work, that's too bad. There is valuable work on the
<Xenwiki. It's there, instead of directly on Wikipedia,
<because Wikipedia doesn't allow original research. We did
<the right thing. Now let's link to it.

<When you read Mario's work, you find it's playing with
<numbers that have no foundation in anything observable.
<It's a shame if we're now so frightened of causing offense
<that you aren't prepared to say that. It's a kind of
<intellectual relativism, where everybody's ideas must be of
<equal value. To produce excellent theory we have to be
<open to criticism.

Graham
--------------------------------------------------------
We are living surrounded by people that conscientiously or not, practice the juryman role, they feel to have been elected by supreme thinkers to ear their way of thinking, masters on finding in any one of us a trace of not beeing open to criticism. Graham Breedï¿½s judments reveal that he doesnï¿½t know me, instead he obviously reveal that he might be a rare specimen of crackpot. Should he is based on the wrong words I used in a message sent to Gene Ward, that was that, bad minutes in my life; all times I am polite and respect people so this case was really an accident, fortunately now we are friends again.

Playing with numbers is what G. B. discovered on me, I would prefer to play with numbers if it would be the case but in no case I would play with irrresponsible phrases as he does. About my work, the supreme thinker wrote that it has no foundation, this was the worse part of his painful discourse. Wikipedia is not the right place to make scoffs on the toctave, a short that I use now since some members didnï¿½t like the first name of the stretched octave; now I see that by attending that petition he takes it to create the false idea that I claimed the supposed toctave virtues. He might be not only a rare specimen of crackpot but a failed lying.

The remaining ridicule attacks also deserve to be thrown to the rabbish.

Mario

August, 14

----- Original Message ----- From: "Graham Breed" <gbreed@...>
To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, August 14, 2011 7:00 AM
Subject: Re: [tuning] Re: Xenwiki on Wikipedia

> "Keenan Pepper" <keenanpepper@...> wrote:
>
>> As an example, take Mario and his "true octave". (No
>> offence, Mario; I'm not calling you a crackpot or
>> anything, just using the true octave as an example of
>> something everyone here certainly doesn't agree with.)
>> Should Mario be allowed to create a Wikipedia article
>> "True octave" and write there that the true octave is
>> different from 2/1? Or even edit the "Octave" article to
>> say the same thing? Mario believes that information to be
>> the truth and thinks everyone would benefit by reading
>> it. But I disagree, so I am happy that there is a
>> Wikipedia policy preventing that from happening.
>
> Why aren't you calling Mario a crackpot? He looks like a
> crackpot to me. Why else wouldn't you want a Wikipedia
> article about the toctave? If it were what he claimed it
> to be, it would certainly be notable. What stops it being
> notable isn't that some people disagree with it, but that
> it's wrong.
>
> The point is that when somebody doesn't have academic
> credentials, the only way to decide if their work has value
> or not is to read and understand it. If Wikipedia admins
> are going by weight of publication instead of the quality of
> the work, that's too bad. There is valuable work on the
> Xenwiki. It's there, instead of directly on Wikipedia,
> because Wikipedia doesn't allow original research. We did
> the right thing. Now let's link to it.
>
> When you read Mario's work, you find it's playing with
> numbers that have no foundation in anything observable.
> It's a shame if we're now so frightened of causing offense
> that you aren't prepared to say that. It's a kind of
> intellectual relativism, where everybody's ideas must be of
> equal value. To produce excellent theory we have to be
> open to criticism.
>
>
> Graham
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> You can configure your subscription by sending an empty email to one
> of these addresses (from the address at which you receive the list):
> tuning-subscribe@yahoogroups.com - join the tuning group.
> tuning-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com - leave the group.
> tuning-nomail@yahoogroups.com - turn off mail from the group.
> tuning-digest@yahoogroups.com - set group to send daily digests.
> tuning-normal@yahoogroups.com - set group to send individual emails.
> tuning-help@yahoogroups.com - receive general help information.
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

🔗Carl Lumma <carl@...>

Graham Breed <gbreed@...> wrote:

> What stops it being notable isn't that some people
> disagree with it, but that it's wrong. //
> If Wikipedia admins are going by weight of publication
> instead of the quality of the work, that's too bad. //
> It's a shame if we're now so frightened of causing
> offense that you aren't prepared to say that.

Thank you, Graham. I've long said that notability and
related rules are essentially a contrivance to prevent
flame wars. If you examine wikipedia, you find it has
ample resources for truth-divination, and in fact relies
on them. The intersection of content that's true and
content that has a truly effective citation is rather
small, yet overwhelmingly, content on wikipedia is true.
Even the notion that it's an encyclopedia is a
contrivance. It's a truth engine, and by now has a
tremendous responsibility to stop denying it. If it
really wants to outsource consensus-building discussion
to listservs like these, it should at least allow (and
indeed, favor) citations to them.

I came by an interesting case in 2006. There was a bunch
of published material - by doctors, law enforcement, etc -
claiming that the street drug "embalming fluid" *is*
embalming fluid. And no published work stating that it
is PCP. Examination of the sources revealed the truth
beyond a doubt. Truth finally prevailed, but for a long
time the wrong statement persisted, and my edits were
initially rebuffed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Embalming_chemicals#.22wet.22

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Embalming_fluid

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Beefman#PCP_section

-Carl

🔗Keenan Pepper <keenanpepper@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Graham Breed <gbreed@...> wrote:
>
> "Keenan Pepper" <keenanpepper@...> wrote:
>
> > As an example, take Mario and his "true octave". (No
> > offence, Mario; I'm not calling you a crackpot or
> > anything, just using the true octave as an example of
> > something everyone here certainly doesn't agree with.)
> > Should Mario be allowed to create a Wikipedia article
> > "True octave" and write there that the true octave is
> > different from 2/1? Or even edit the "Octave" article to
> > say the same thing? Mario believes that information to be
> > the truth and thinks everyone would benefit by reading
> > it. But I disagree, so I am happy that there is a
> > Wikipedia policy preventing that from happening.
>
> Why aren't you calling Mario a crackpot? He looks like a
> crackpot to me. Why else wouldn't you want a Wikipedia
> article about the toctave? If it were what he claimed it
> to be, it would certainly be notable. What stops it being
> notable isn't that some people disagree with it, but that
> it's wrong.

The reason I didn't call him a crackpot is not that I respect his ideas (I don't), simply that it would be uncivil.

> The point is that when somebody doesn't have academic
> credentials, the only way to decide if their work has value
> or not is to read and understand it. If Wikipedia admins
> are going by weight of publication instead of the quality of
> the work, that's too bad. There is valuable work on the
> Xenwiki. It's there, instead of directly on Wikipedia,
> because Wikipedia doesn't allow original research. We did
> the right thing. Now let's link to it.
>
> When you read Mario's work, you find it's playing with
> numbers that have no foundation in anything observable.
> It's a shame if we're now so frightened of causing offense
> that you aren't prepared to say that. It's a kind of
> intellectual relativism, where everybody's ideas must be of
> equal value. To produce excellent theory we have to be
> open to criticism.

I'm certainly not an intellectual relativist. I think that an octave of 2/1 is correct and Mario's octave is incorrect and has no logical basis in anything.

But this is irrelevant to Wikipedia policy. There are two unrelated criteria for inclusion in Wikipedia that you seem to be confusing with each other. One is notability: does the topic have broad enough interest to belong in a general encyclopedia? Another is verifiability: Are there reliable sources making this same claim that can be referred to if there are disputes of fact?

Note that for Wikipedia, there is no criterion of "truth". See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability,_not_truth . I believe the point of this is that people of course believe different things to be true, and trying to establish truth by a consensus process would never work because people in general hold their beliefs pretty strongly, even if they're false.

But the idea is that, even if different editors cannot possibly agree on what the truth is, they might at least agree on what positions are expressed in any sources in question, what positions have consensus in different communities, and so on. So the criterion is "verifiability" in order for there to be some possibility of an end to constant, unproductive edit wars.

If you want an encyclopedia or some other website that has "truth" as a criterion for something to appear in it, ***that website is not Wikipedia***.

Keenan

🔗Carl Lumma <carl@...>

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

On Aug 14, 2011, at 8:00 AM, Graham Breed <gbreed@...> wrote:

"Keenan Pepper" <keenanpepper@...> wrote:

Why aren't you calling Mario a crackpot? He looks like a
crackpot to me.

Because it's worthwhile to maintain an air of civility when discussing
academic subjects on mailing lists on the internet.

When you read Mario's work, you find it's playing with
numbers that have no foundation in anything observable.

The observation is that people prefer stretched octaves. When I listened to
Mario's tuning, it sounded pleasantly bright, bright in the same way that I
prefer stretched octaves. I haven't read Terhardt's work but if you say that
the addition of harmonics causes a tone to drop in pitch, that would be
perfectly in line with all this.

Do I think it so happens that the perfect chroma match point for all human
beings is octave is 2/1 * 2 schismas and 1/8 of a Pythagorean comma? Of
course not. Do I think this value is the "true octave?" No. But when people
say "the octave is 2/1," and assume an unyielding view that states that this
interval has its ultimate origin in mathematics, and that its perception is
unclouded by auditory system nonlinearities and other intricacies of
psychoacoustics, that's equally silly... Almost.

-Mike

🔗Keenan Pepper <keenanpepper@...>

🔗Mario Pizarro <piagui@...>

Dear friends,

Why you are making so much noise against me, one of your messages sent by Graham Breed, started mentioning the probable article I would write in Wikipedia. Once all of you should understand that it was not written in my brain the idea of writting that article in Wikipedia. I don´t want to know who asserted that possibility. In any case tuning is the site where I lernt many topics I ignored so I would be an erratic minded person to act according to the announcements given by a little group of members.

I also read that I didn´t exhibit a bite of information regarding the origin of the toctave despite there is sufficient information in the files section. Finally, I am not the one that takes a decision on what is the musical range of the t----octave, I only know it is slightly higher than 2/1.

Mario

August, 14

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Battaglia
To: tuning@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, August 14, 2011 8:29 PM
Subject: Re: [tuning] Re: Xenwiki on Wikipedia

On Aug 14, 2011, at 8:00 AM, Graham Breed <gbreed@...> wrote:

"Keenan Pepper" <keenanpepper@...> wrote:

Why aren't you calling Mario a crackpot? He looks like a
crackpot to me.

Because it's worthwhile to maintain an air of civility when discussing academic subjects on mailing lists on the internet.

When you read Mario's work, you find it's playing with
numbers that have no foundation in anything observable.

The observation is that people prefer stretched octaves. When I listened to Mario's tuning, it sounded pleasantly bright, bright in the same way that I prefer stretched octaves. I haven't read Terhardt's work but if you say that the addition of harmonics causes a tone to drop in pitch, that would be perfectly in line with all this.

Do I think it so happens that the perfect chroma match point for all human beings is octave is 2/1 * 2 schismas and 1/8 of a Pythagorean comma? Of course not. Do I think this value is the "true octave?" No. But when people say "the octave is 2/1," and assume an unyielding view that states that this interval has its ultimate origin in mathematics, and that its perception is unclouded by auditory system nonlinearities and other intricacies of psychoacoustics, that's equally silly... Almost.

-Mike

🔗Carl Lumma <carl@...>

🔗Kees van Prooijen <keesvp@...>

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

On Aug 14, 2011, at 7:36 PM, Keenan Pepper <keenanpepper@...> wrote:

But this is irrelevant to Wikipedia policy. There are two unrelated criteria
for inclusion in Wikipedia that you seem to be confusing with each other.
One is notability: does the topic have broad enough interest to belong in a
general encyclopedia? Another is verifiability: Are there reliable sources
making this same claim that can be referred to if there are disputes of
fact?

Note that for Wikipedia, there is no criterion of "truth". See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability,_not_truth

All of the things you keep saying, verifiability and notability and all
that, are all determined by how well a piece of information is backed up by
a "reliable source," in Wikipedian parlance. At the end of the day, if you
go through the Wikipedia rules, most of them all boil down to "reliable
sources" in some form. Wikipedia is, in fact, supposed to be some kind of
amalgamation of all of the reliable sources in the world.

And to this effect I'll say the same thing I did before: the criteria for
"reliability" need to be changed for Wikipedia inclusion on stuff pertaining
to microtonality, because of the following reasons:
- Academia has very little published research about microtonal music.
- As a result, much of the research in this field has been done by
independent researchers working outside of academia.
- Except for a handful of publications (like Xenharmonikon), researchers
have faced a significant uphill battle in getting their work published in
academia, owing to a general academian lack of interest in the subject.
- Much of the research has hence been published in more unconventional
formats, such as mailing lists and wikis.
- Many of the few people who have been deemed "notable" enough to have their
own Wikipedia article are or once regulars on this list and the xenwiki.
- Hence, in conjunction with IAR, the usual criteria for reliability should
be adjusted for this field, because of all the reasons listed above, for the
sake of improving the encyclopedia.

That's about as clear as can be, very reasonable, in Wikipedian language
too. This isn't going to happen, though, because the kind of overambitious
zealots that police Wikipedia are not usually the sapient expert types that
would know when to apply IAR.

-Mike

🔗hstraub64 <straub@...>

🔗Steve Parker <steve@...>

On 15 Aug 2011, at 02:29, Mike Battaglia wrote:

> The observation is that people prefer stretched octaves.

This was not Mario's observation. Had he said that I would have disagreed for myself, but conceded that I couldn't speak for the preference of anyone else.
Although I'm not sure that there has been any study of this that would pass muster wrt race, sex, age, training etc.
If there is, I'd like to see it, because I would be writing for an audience that considered music full of 2/1and 3/2 the most exotically microtuned of all! ;-)

Mario stated that it had been discovered by Carillo that the true octave was greater than 2/1 and that he had worked out (to a lot of significant figures) the only possible option for this.
He then said that (following this extreme accuracy) it wasn't accurate to tune to what he said as you needed to make 'ear adjustments'.

I hear things like this all the time from musicians who've heard it from someone who read it on the internet.
The two doing the rounds in London at the moment are that 442 has more resonance with the human body as the 'A' to tune their (12ET) music to, and the even better notion that 440 is getter higher over the years!

Steve P.

🔗genewardsmith <genewardsmith@...>

🔗Mario Pizarro <piagui@...>

Mike,

You wrote the following:

<The observation is that people prefer stretched octaves. When I listened to Mario's tuning, it sounded pleasantly bright, bright in <the same way that I prefer stretched octaves. I haven't read Terhardt's work but if you say that the addition of harmonics causes <a tone to drop in pitch, that would be perfectly in line with all this.

<Do I think it so happens that the perfect chroma match point for all human beings is octave is 2/1 * 2 schismas and 1/8 of a <Pythagorean comma? Of course not. Do I think this value is the "true octave?" No. But when people say "the octave is 2/1," and <assume an unyielding view that states that this interval has its ultimate origin in mathematics, and that its perception is <unclouded by auditory system nonlinearities and other intricacies of psychoacoustics, that's equally silly... Almost.
---------------------
As respect to your second paragraph all of us can make a simple experiment, as I did it. Before doing the experiment it is absolutely necessary to get an acoustical guitar, standard dimensions with open string lenghts of about 26 inch. The only string to be used is the first string which is approximately tuned to 330 Hz. Measurements in millimeters or equivalent to 0.04 of an inch precision approx.

You should use a precision electronic counter (7 digits display or better) + microphone.

Once the tuned first string is stabilized, the open string frequency should be measured, the average of measurements should be registered. Let us suppose that it is 330 Hz, exactly. Stop the string just at the middle of the open lenght. If the open lenght is 26 inches the stop should be placed exactly at 13 in. To stop the string at the middle, the finger must be replaced by a metallic thin plate.Then, a softly pluck to the string, not less than 5 plucks. The resulting average frequency should be done by our great friend Keenan Peeper whereas instead of measuring the 150 Hz given by the theoretical octave (2/1) he would read a slightly lower frequency since the real toctave rules the experiment.

My computer enters to maintenance

Mario

August, 18

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Battaglia
To: tuning@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, August 14, 2011 8:29 PM
Subject: Re: [tuning] Re: Xenwiki on Wikipedia

On Aug 14, 2011, at 8:00 AM, Graham Breed <gbreed@...> wrote:

"Keenan Pepper" <keenanpepper@...> wrote:

Why aren't you calling Mario a crackpot? He looks like a
crackpot to me.

Because it's worthwhile to maintain an air of civility when discussing academic subjects on mailing lists on the internet.

When you read Mario's work, you find it's playing with
numbers that have no foundation in anything observable.

The observation is that people prefer stretched octaves. When I listened to Mario's tuning, it sounded pleasantly bright, bright in the same way that I prefer stretched octaves. I haven't read Terhardt's work but if you say that the addition of harmonics causes a tone to drop in pitch, that would be perfectly in line with all this.

Do I think it so happens that the perfect chroma match point for all human beings is octave is 2/1 * 2 schismas and 1/8 of a Pythagorean comma? Of course not. Do I think this value is the "true octave?" No. But when people say "the octave is 2/1," and assume an unyielding view that states that this interval has its ultimate origin in mathematics, and that its perception is unclouded by auditory system nonlinearities and other intricacies of psychoacoustics, that's equally silly... Almost.

-Mike

🔗Mario Pizarro <piagui@...>

Keenan,

You wrote:

> I'm not calling you a crackpot or
> anything, just using the true octave as an example of
> something everyone here certainly doesn't agree with.)

I donï¿½t think you ignore that there are many people, hundred of thousands, who prefer stretched octaves. Mike wrote the next paragraphs, so you made two mistakes in your shortlines, the second one concerns to the ease way you put on the table "crackpot".

You also wrote:
--------------------------
> I'm certainly not an intellectual relativist. I think that an octave of > 2/1 is correct and Mario's octave is incorrect and has no logical basis in > anything.
>
-------------------------------------------
You mean that itï¿½s nothing important that thousands of people listen pleasant harmony, it is a curious position.

If somebody presents to tuning either a scale ordained by the 2/1 octave or another one by the toctave, the work done by Mr. Juliï¿½n Carrillo in the past century backs the second proposal no matter if the natural octave value is unknown. About ten days ago, I used the name "true octave" and since I noted the opposition to this name it was changed to "toctave". Since a great number of scales were presented to tuning and not one of them was classified as "incorrect", this is the corresponding case of the toctave so your qualifying of "incorrect" to it has no sense.

Mike wrote:
<The observation is that people prefer stretched octaves. When I listened to Mario's tuning, it sounded pleasantly bright, <bright in the same way that I prefer stretched octaves. I haven't read Terhardt's work but if you say that the addition of <harmonics causes a tone to drop in pitch, that would be perfectly in line with all this.

<Do I think it so happens that the perfect chroma match point for all human beings is octave is 2/1 * 2 schismas and 1/8 of a <Pythagorean comma? Of course not. Do I think this value is the "true octave?" No. But when people say "the octave is <2/1," and assume an unyielding view that states that this interval has its ultimate origin in mathematics, and that its perception <is unclouded by auditory system nonlinearities and other intricacies of psychoacoustics, that's equally silly... Almost.
-------------------
Before, I didnï¿½t contact you, respected your ideas and now you give an space in your message for beeing used by Graham Breed to offend me. ï¿½Academic credentials?. No in music evidently.

Mario

August, 25

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
----- Original Message ----- From: "Keenan Pepper" <keenanpepper@...>
To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, August 14, 2011 6:36 PM
Subject: [tuning] Re: Xenwiki on Wikipedia

> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Graham Breed <gbreed@...> wrote:
>>
>> "Keenan Pepper" <keenanpepper@...> wrote:
>>
>> > As an example, take Mario and his "true octave". (No
>> > offence, Mario; I'm not calling you a crackpot or
>> > anything, just using the true octave as an example of
>> > something everyone here certainly doesn't agree with.)
>> > Should Mario be allowed to create a Wikipedia article
>> > "True octave" and write there that the true octave is
>> > different from 2/1? Or even edit the "Octave" article to
>> > say the same thing? Mario believes that information to be
>> > the truth and thinks everyone would benefit by reading
>> > it. But I disagree, so I am happy that there is a
>> > Wikipedia policy preventing that from happening.
>>
>> Why aren't you calling Mario a crackpot? He looks like a
>> crackpot to me. Why else wouldn't you want a Wikipedia
>> article about the toctave? If it were what he claimed it
>> to be, it would certainly be notable. What stops it being
>> notable isn't that some people disagree with it, but that
>> it's wrong.
>
> The reason I didn't call him a crackpot is not that I respect his ideas (I > don't), simply that it would be uncivil.
>
>> The point is that when somebody doesn't have academic
>> credentials, the only way to decide if their work has value
>> or not is to read and understand it. If Wikipedia admins
>> are going by weight of publication instead of the quality of
>> the work, that's too bad. There is valuable work on the
>> Xenwiki. It's there, instead of directly on Wikipedia,
>> because Wikipedia doesn't allow original research. We did
>> the right thing. Now let's link to it.
>>
>> When you read Mario's work, you find it's playing with
>> numbers that have no foundation in anything observable.
>> It's a shame if we're now so frightened of causing offense
>> that you aren't prepared to say that. It's a kind of
>> intellectual relativism, where everybody's ideas must be of
>> equal value. To produce excellent theory we have to be
>> open to criticism.
>
> I'm certainly not an intellectual relativist. I think that an octave of > 2/1 is correct and Mario's octave is incorrect and has no logical basis in > anything.
>
> But this is irrelevant to Wikipedia policy. There are two unrelated > criteria for inclusion in Wikipedia that you seem to be confusing with > each other. One is notability: does the topic have broad enough interest > to belong in a general encyclopedia? Another is verifiability: Are there > reliable sources making this same claim that can be referred to if there > are disputes of fact?
>
> Note that for Wikipedia, there is no criterion of "truth". See > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability,_not_truth . I > believe the point of this is that people of course believe different > things to be true, and trying to establish truth by a consensus process > would never work because people in general hold their beliefs pretty > strongly, even if they're false.
>
> But the idea is that, even if different editors cannot possibly agree on > what the truth is, they might at least agree on what positions are > expressed in any sources in question, what positions have consensus in > different communities, and so on. So the criterion is "verifiability" in > order for there to be some possibility of an end to constant, unproductive > edit wars.
>
> If you want an encyclopedia or some other website that has "truth" as a > criterion for something to appear in it, ***that website is not > Wikipedia***.
>
> Keenan
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> You can configure your subscription by sending an empty email to one
> of these addresses (from the address at which you receive the list):
> tuning-subscribe@yahoogroups.com - join the tuning group.
> tuning-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com - leave the group.
> tuning-nomail@yahoogroups.com - turn off mail from the group.
> tuning-digest@yahoogroups.com - set group to send daily digests.
> tuning-normal@yahoogroups.com - set group to send individual emails.
> tuning-help@yahoogroups.com - receive general help information.
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 9:34 PM, Mario Pizarro <piagui@...> wrote:
>
> > I'm not calling you a crackpot or
> > anything, just using the true octave as an example of
> > something everyone here certainly doesn't agree with.)
>
> I don´t think you ignore that there are many people, hundred of thousands,
> who prefer stretched octaves. Mike wrote the next paragraphs, so you made
> two mistakes in your shortlines, the second one concerns to the ease way you
> put on the table "crackpot".

He said he's NOT calling you a crackpot - you've misunderstood.

> If somebody presents to tuning either a scale ordained by the 2/1 octave or
> another one by the toctave, the work done by Mr. Julián Carrillo in the past
> century backs the second proposal no matter if the natural octave value is
> unknown.

Mario, the problem is that the "toctave" may vary from person to
person. We don't know what the "optimal pitch equivalence point" is
for two intervals, and it's definitely the sort of thing that may be
subjective.

Carrillo's work talks about string inharmonicity - yours talks about
psychoacoustics. What we could do is to do a study for a lot of
people, with differently tuned octaves using sine waves, and see at
which point most people say that it sounds like a "true octave." Then
we'll get the average of the data set and that'll be a reasonable
guess for a "true octave." I think this study's been done before,
actually, but don't remember who it was done by or else I'd reference
you to it.

> About ten days ago, I used the name "true octave" and since I noted
> the opposition to this name it was changed to "toctave".

I think many don't realize that you changed the name because of this
opposition - I thought that you used the name "toctave" to stand for
"true octave" and to trademark it as yours in a sense. You also said
you were going to start a toctave foundation, so I was a bit confused
:)

> Before, I didn´t contact you, respected your ideas and now you give an space
> in your message for beeing used by Graham Breed to offend me. ¿Academic
> credentials?. No in music evidently.

No need to get into academic credentials, but I do agree that we
should reserve the name "crackpot" around here for those whose pots
are a bit more cracked. You have been a bit sensitive to criticism
though and shouldn't take it personally.

-Mike

🔗Keenan Pepper <keenanpepper@...>

I'm intentionally not responding to this because I'm not interested in this topic. But if you really want to talk to me you can ask me specific questions later.

Keenan

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Mario Pizarro" <piagui@...> wrote:
>
> Keenan,
>
> You wrote:
>
> > I'm not calling you a crackpot or
> > anything, just using the true octave as an example of
> > something everyone here certainly doesn't agree with.)
>
> I don´t think you ignore that there are many people, hundred of thousands,
> who prefer stretched octaves. Mike wrote the next paragraphs, so you made
> two mistakes in your shortlines, the second one concerns to the ease way you
> put on the table "crackpot".
>
> You also wrote:
> --------------------------
> > I'm certainly not an intellectual relativist. I think that an octave of
> > 2/1 is correct and Mario's octave is incorrect and has no logical basis in
> > anything.
> >
> -------------------------------------------
> You mean that it´s nothing important that thousands of people listen
> pleasant harmony, it is a curious position.
>
> If somebody presents to tuning either a scale ordained by the 2/1 octave or
> another one by the toctave, the work done by Mr. Julián Carrillo in the past
> century backs the second proposal no matter if the natural octave value is
> unknown. About ten days ago, I used the name "true octave" and since I noted
> the opposition to this name it was changed to "toctave". Since a great
> number of scales were presented to tuning and not one of them was classified
> as "incorrect", this is the corresponding case of the toctave so your
> qualifying of "incorrect" to it has no sense.
>
> Mike wrote:
> <The observation is that people prefer stretched octaves. When I listened to
> Mario's tuning, it sounded pleasantly bright, <bright in the same way that I
> prefer stretched octaves. I haven't read Terhardt's work but if you say that
> the addition of <harmonics causes a tone to drop in pitch, that would be
> perfectly in line with all this.
>
>
> <Do I think it so happens that the perfect chroma match point for all human
> beings is octave is 2/1 * 2 schismas and 1/8 of a <Pythagorean comma? Of
> course not. Do I think this value is the "true octave?" No. But when people
> say "the octave is <2/1," and assume an unyielding view that states that
> this interval has its ultimate origin in mathematics, and that its
> perception <is unclouded by auditory system nonlinearities and other
> intricacies of psychoacoustics, that's equally silly... Almost.
> -------------------
> Before, I didn´t contact you, respected your ideas and now you give an space
> in your message for beeing used by Graham Breed to offend me. ¿Academic
> credentials?. No in music evidently.
>
> Mario