The Scala archive "convexity" search strikes again

Paul posted this on XA: http://dare.uva.nl/document/30845

I'm a bit dumbfounded here, because the whole thing reads like a
report on tuning-math with this person's name on it. It looks like it
was written in 2006 and cites Paul's Middle Path paper a few times.

I'm really confused by this. If she wrote the paper in 2006, why the
re-release of the Scala convexity stuff we saw on ScienceDaily earlier
this year?

Also, I've only skimmed it, but it looks like she talks about viewing
temperaments as group homomorphisms from JI to Z^n and such, and I
don't see the words "Smith" or "Breed" anywhere.

-Mike

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> Paul posted this on XA: http://dare.uva.nl/document/30845
>
> I'm a bit dumbfounded here, because the whole thing reads like a
> report on tuning-math with this person's name on it. It looks like it
> was written in 2006 and cites Paul's Middle Path paper a few times.
>
> I'm really confused by this. If she wrote the paper in 2006, why the
> re-release of the Scala convexity stuff we saw on ScienceDaily earlier
> this year?
>
> Also, I've only skimmed it, but it looks like she talks about viewing
> temperaments as group homomorphisms from JI to Z^n and such, and I
> don't see the words "Smith" or "Breed" anywhere.

Quick note: If you search for "meantone" in this paper, you won't find anything, but that's because she spells it "Mean-tone". She does mention it at least, and even mentions keyboards with >12 keys per octave.

She mentions "regular" temperaments, but the only definition given is this:

"A regular system is a tuning or a temperament in which all the fifths but one are of the same size (Barbour 1951)."

It appears she never considers regular temperaments with generators other than fifths.

Keenan

--- Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:

> I'm really confused by this. If she wrote the paper in 2006,
> why the re-release of the Scala convexity stuff we saw on
> ScienceDaily earlier this year?

Often, you take bits from your thesis and try to get them
published as individual papers.

> Also, I've only skimmed it, but it looks like she talks about viewing
> temperaments as group homomorphisms from JI to Z^n and such, and I
> don't see the words "Smith" or "Breed" anywhere.

Adobe Acrobat can't see them either. Though the thesis
doesn't actually go too far into tuning-math territory
where such cites would be mandatory.

AFAIK, this person never once posted to any of the lists
using her real name.

-Carl

"Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:

> AFAIK, this person never once posted to any of the lists
> using her real name.

Assuming Aline Honingh is her real name, yes she did. May
2005.

Graham

"Keenan Pepper" <keenanpepper@...> wrote:
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia
> <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> >
> > Paul posted this on XA:
> > http://dare.uva.nl/document/30845

I've read through the whole thing. (Not in so much detail
that I could be tested on it, but I went through it all.)
It's reasonably good. There's an introduction to the ideas
of tuning and quantitative dissonance that would be useful
for somebody who for some reason didn't have a book with
the same material. There's also a good summary of the
relevant group theory. Then there are overviews of fields
I'm interested in but not familiar with, like pitch
spelling (isomorphic to meantone adaptive tuning) and
scientifically studied intonation. There are citations to
follow up and if she missed a few (like Wilson's MOS)
that's understandable.

The original material on convexity is interesting. The
Scala archive search isn't a big part of it. There's also
a "compactness" that coincides with something I was
thinking about and mentioned on tuning-math recently.

> Quick note: If you search for "meantone" in this paper,
> you won't find anything, but that's because she spells it
> "Mean-tone". She does mention it at least, and even
> mentions keyboards with >12 keys per octave.

She also talks about "note names" a lot, such that they
imply the meantone mapping. (She seems to be inconsistent
about whether schismatic ETs are valid or not. See note 7
on p.62 and its context.) Check out p.146 where the
"projections" MIDI => note names => preferred intonation
ignore meantone as an intonation target. Also, the pieces
used to test the pitch spelling are from the Baroque or
later. There's nothing about how preferred spellings might
have changed over time, how editors may have overruled the
composers' spellings, or how spelling may have correlated
with meantone tuning.

> She mentions "regular" temperaments, but the only
> definition given is this:
>
> "A regular system is a tuning or a temperament in which
> all the fifths but one are of the same size (Barbour
> 1951)."
>
> It appears she never considers regular temperaments with
> generators other than fifths.

There's also "A temperament system that is generated by the
fifth, such that all their notes can be arranged in a
continuous series of equal fifths is defined by Bosanquet
(1874a, 1874b) to be a regular system."

On p.59, "Another way to attach note-names to an equal
tempered division is to use another interval (than the
fifth) as ‘generator of note-names’."

Generally, she's only interested in the existing note
names, so alternative mappings are outside her remit. She
must know about them if she's been following tuning-math.

Graham