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Mea culpa?: MET-24 and Graham's 46-17-41

🔗Margo Schulter <mschulter@...>

10/30/2012 5:44:03 PM

Hello, Graham and all.

Graham, please let me begin by asking you to correct me
if indeed I did download a 17-note 46-17-41 tuning from
your site different from the 496.144-cent version now
recognized as POTE parapyth, but identical to my first
"canonical" version of MET-24 (2/1, 703.723, 57.423).
As you explained, the 46-17-41 tuning was computed
by algorithm, making the situation yet more intriguing.

</tuning/topicId_105023.html#105168>

The reason I am writing is to express my suspicion that
I may have simply goofed in thinking that the tuning
"identical to canonical MET-24" that I was viewing in
Scala was in fact a 46-17-41 tuning that I had downloaded
from your site. References to this "identical temperament"
occur in these messages I wrote, for example.

</tuning/topicId_105023.html#105143>
</tuning/topicId_105023.html#105156>

This suspicion first dawned on me when I linked in a
list of parapyth and related tunings to a tuning on
your site with unison vectors of 896:891, 352:351,
364:363, and 10648:10647 based on 46-17-41, and
assumed that it was (2/1, 703.723, 57.423) -- but
checking the link quickly showed me that it wasn't!
Rather, it was POTE parapyth (2/1, 703.856, 58.339).

</tuning/topicId_105023.html#105172>

So I asked myself, "Where can I find that file from
Graham's site that was identical to the first canonical
version of MET-24?" I searched your site, and also the
set of files I had downloaded, both the descriptive
information and the Scala files.

I simply couldn't find it! And I looked through some
of my command history to see what files I had moved
or renamed -- no trace of the original from your site
which had served as the basis of my Scala rotation
for what I had thought was a Scala file from your
site with a generator of 703.723 cents (or 496.277
cents), as opposed to POTE Pele at 496.144 cents!

My tentative conclusion, subject to your correction,
is that I may have done something in Scala like
use SHOW SCALE for your original file, and gone on
from there as if I had made it the current scale
with LOAD. So if I had my 17-note subset of that
"canonical" MET-24 loaded, I would have gone on
using that, thinking it was an "identical" tuning
which you or a computer using your algorithms had
found!

A couple of analogies in the physical sciences
occur to me. One would be reporting an exobiological
breakthrough: bacteria found in a meteorite from
some part of our Solar System; and soon having
these "extraterrestrial microbes" turn out to be
a bit of contamination from the lab.

A real-world analogy also occurred in Zambia, if I
recall correctly, in 1976, where a paleobiologist
found "worm burrows" in rocks about a billion years
old. This report briefly became part of the scenario
for studies of that geological era -- until another
geologist, Preston Cloud, made a persuasive case
that these "burrows" were actually signs of modern
termites.

Graham, if I did simply confuse my tuning file with
one of yours, my deepest apologies -- together with
an acknowledgment that it was both moving and bracing
in a very creative way to think that with our
somewhat different methods and paradigms, we might
both arrive at what I call MET-24.

To sum, my inability to locate any original file
from your site with a generator of 703.723 or 496.277
cents makes me ask whether or not you do have such
a 46-17-41 tuning, or maybe I have goofed.

Either way, I thank you most warmly both for the
vast resources of your site, and for your generosity
in sharing them along with your advocacy of a paradigm
which you have, along with others, done so much over
the years to develop and refine.

Most appreciatively,

Margo