KISS 2.0: A very simple notation scheme for an arbitrary tuning system

I've been working on a very simple, standardized notation scheme for any
tuning system. It has standard nominals, a standard way to assign
accidentals, generalizes the two-staff bass/treble clef notation, has a
standard way to standardize the range of each staff, and has a standard way
to set the absolute pitch of the staves (and hence the whole tuning system).

My intention is for it to be a very broad and simple blueprint, used for
one to get set up quickly in any arbitrary temperament and start
communicating with other musicians. I previously wrote about this and
called it the KISS notation system; this is hence KISS 2.0. The whole thing
is very simple and works as follows, simplified to just use MOS's for now:

STAVES
1) Pick an MOS that you want to be "diatonic."
2) Ensure that every staff covers at least an octave by giving each staff
round(N/2+1) lines for an N-note scale.
3) Standardize one ledger line below the treble clef to represent the same
pitch as one ledger line above the bass clef; I'll call this pitch the
"Middle Note."

KEY SIGNATURES
4) Pick a "privileged mode" of your scale.
5) Set the key signature up so that your privileged mode, when the Middle
Note is used as the tonic, is represented by the lines and spaces of the
staff with no accidentals.

ABSOLUTE PITCH RANGE
6) Standardize the tessitura of the entire notation system to be what it is
now by setting the absolute pitch of the Middle Note to be 261.6 Hz.

NOMINALS
7) Set the #/b accidentals to refer to the chroma L-s.
8) Set the nominals for your scale up to be ascending numerals so that the
middle note is nominal "1."

And that's it. Some of it is so simple that it may not seem like it's worth
writing about, but it's still probably good to write it explicitly
somewhere.

This is not the end-all-be-all of notation. Depart from this and make your
own tuning-specific tweaks to the notation if it serves you; use different
accidentals for porcupine[7], or different nominals for meantone[7], or a
different amount of lines if you think that 5 for meantone[7] is too many,
or a different absolute pitch if you want your playing to be in tune with
50 Hz electrical hum. I just hope that if you don't have strong feelings
about one or more of those things, and want to just start talking about
orwell[9] MODMOS's and writing music, for instance, this can serve as a
reference for some sensible "default" parameters to pick.

There's probably a nice way to generalize alto, tenor, baritone, etc clefs
as well, but as a pianist I never come in contact with those, so I'm
limiting my focus only to bass and treble clefs for now. I'd be interested
if people have thoughts about that, though.

-Mike

A few afterthoughts about my rationale behind some of this stuff...

On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 3:59 AM, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> I've been working on a very simple, standardized notation scheme for any
> tuning system. It has standard nominals, a standard way to assign
> accidentals, generalizes the two-staff bass/treble clef notation, has a
> standard way to standardize the range of each staff, and has a standard way
> to set the absolute pitch of the staves (and hence the whole tuning system).

In general, I find that notation system design involves a lot of
balancing between competing design constraints. For instance, as far
as individual staves are concerned, we want to keep the whole thing as
compact as possible, but contrarily, we also want to minimize the need
to use ledger lines to avoid visual clutter. For the bass/treble staff
split, our design goals are to cover a considerable amount of range
with the two staves combined, but still also minimize the amount of
ledger lines needed to play notes between the staves. Our existing
notation system is one particular way to balance these competing
constraints.

While there may be an argument to be made for overhauling our notation
system in one way or another, for this particular notation, I sought
when possible to satisfy these design constraints in a manner similar
to how our existing notation system does it, since it's at least
half-decent. The way I proposed setting the staves up thus generalizes
what we have rather straightforwardly; you always end up with a ~3
octave range with the two staves overlapping at the same spot as
before, and even a 10 note diatonic scale requires only 6 lines per
staff. I approached designing the rest of the system in much the same
way.

One thing which was a bit less clear to work out was nominals. Our
existing notation system has a pretty strange brew of nominals, which
don't generalize to other tuning systems in a way that easily obeys
existing convention. For instance, we use nominals A-G, but the note
upon which the entire notation is symmetrically built around is
assigned the name "C". This note C isn't just the midpoint of the
notation's range and the point about which the staves are symmetric,
but it's also the tonic of C major, which for some reason has been
standardized as having no sharps or flats.

If we were going to attempt to use letters as nominals for any
arbitrary MOS, we might decide that the Middle Note is A, and things
proceed from there. This is completely backwards-incompatible with
what we have, though, as the old C becomes the new A, and the old C
major is now the new A-C-E. We might decide to standardize the middle
note as C instead, so that nominal name always start two before the
Middle Note, but that's rather arbitrary, and any sort of cultural
advantage of doing this goes straight out the window as soon as you
start playing around in a decatonic scale or something like that.

I also found that using the letters that we already use in 12-EDO gets
pretty damn confusing as soon as you use scales with more than 7
notes, and especially once you get up to 10-note scales and the like.
I talked to a few of my musician friends about this, and found that
all but one had the same opinion as me on that. Letters require you to
first unlearn, and then memorize a bunch of mathematical relationships
that aren't at all immediately obvious - for instance, how many people
really know what the 14th letter of the alphabet is, modulo the letter
"I", without internally translating into numbers first? Letters bring
a lot of 12-EDO baggage that requires you to spend time unlearning
things and adapting.

Numbers, on the other hand, are things we already know how to quickly
reason with; they're fresh and intuitive. In blackwood[7]'s LsLsLsLsLs
mode, 1-4-7 is a major chord, which makes it immediately obvious
without any need to learn anything else that there are now two passing
tones between the 1/1 and 5/4, and likewise between the 5/4 and 3/2.
Likewise, 4/3 is now 1-5, which makes it obvious that there are now
three passing notes between 1/1 and 4/3. It's very simple.

Another advantage to using numbers is that the resulting system has a
bit of international usefulness to it. For instance, some cultures
don't even use letters to begin with. If we want to use letters we can
always extend past G, but someone who's familiar with fixed-do solfege
has no obvious way of extending anything, so they'd have to switch to
something else anyway. Numbers exist in every language, and are also
mathematically useful.

There's only one real downside to using numbers for note names, and
that's that we sometimes already use numbers to denote relative
chords. So for instance, consider that we're in ordinary meantone[7],
but using nominals 1-7 for the LLsLLLs mode, with the bottom note
being the old C. So if we're in the key of "3 minor," aka E minor, I
might tell you to go to the V chord. This doesn't mean to play a chord
over the absolute pitch "5" in the system, but rather to go to the
relative V chord of 3, which would have its tonic as 7. Then, over
this V chord, I might tell you to play a fourth instead of the major
third, making it a Vsus4 chord. However, when I say to play a fourth,
I don't mean the absolute pitch "4", but a perfect fourth over the V
chord; since the V chord has 7 as its tonic, the fourth would be 3.

When speaking, it's easy to avoid some of that confusion by using
ordinal numbers to refer to chord extensions, e.g. "fourth" or
"ninth", and being explicit when you use cardinal numbers as to what
sense you mean. It shouldn't be too difficult to figure out what "the
note 4" vs "the IV chord" refers to if you speak it. And when writing
stuff out, it's even easier to avoid if you always write relative
chords in Roman numerals, as we already do, and write absolute pitches
in Arabic numerals. However, this is the tradeoff for using numbers;
they now have to mean both relative and absolute pitches.

I still think that, all things considered, numbers are better than
letters. For me, using letters A-G is a total dealbreaker. If the
above downside to numbers is enough for you to not want to use them,
another option would be to use nonstandard letters starting with I, or
to use the Greek alphabet, etc. I think that nonstandard letters are
less easily to reason with mathematically and require more learning,
and that this is worse than having to be a bit more explicit when
talking about numbers, and likewise with the unfamiliarity of the
Greek alphabet to most musicians. Feel free to give your thoughts
though.

Lastly, I want to note that while I tailored this post to MOS, this
same notation system easily also applies to higher-rank Fokker blocks
as well, or really any epimorphic scale if you want. The only thing
that needs to change to use these is to define more accidentals than
just #/b; for Fokker blocks, one should be defined for each chroma in
the block. I'm very interested to see if this can be tied in with
Sagittal notation by using as a base scale an 11-limit 7-note Fokker
block which is a chain of seven 3/2's.

-Mike

This is all now so long that nobody will ever read it, but since I'm
on a roll, I'll post it anyway, at least for future reference. There's
one really longwinded thing that I want to address, and that's the
concept of absolute pitch standardization.

On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 3:59 AM, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> ABSOLUTE PITCH RANGE
> 6) Standardize the tessitura of the entire notation system to be what it is
> now by setting the absolute pitch of the Middle Note to be 261.6 Hz.

Absolute pitch standardization is deceptively relevant to the subject
of notation.

All of the stuff with staves tells you the range of each staff, and
the total combined range of the two staves, which is easily notated.
I've standardized things so that each staff gives you about an octave,
and both staves combined give you about three octave's worth of range.
However, this doesn't say a thing about which actual register this
"easy access" range covers. We ought to assume from the outset that
register is important, and that composers pick the tessitura that they
write things in for actual reasons, which could be compositional
and/or psychoacoustic in nature.

Because of this, we want to ensure our 3-octave "easy access" range
covers the portion of the frequency spectrum which is the most
musically versatile and useful to write in, and which covers things
like. For instance, we might assume that our notation wouldn't be as
useful in capturing the registers that composers want to actually
write in the most if the Middle Note were two octaves above middle C,
or two octaves below. We can again assume that what we have now is
near-optimal.

The easiest way to standardize the register is to pick a canonical
note somewhere within the range of the notation, and assign it a
standard reference pitch. While I tried to yield to existing
convention as much as possible in this notation system, after some
thought it's become clear that the the best option for arbitrary
tunings is to standardize the Middle Note as 261.6 Hz, and to avoid
having to pick a second note in the scale to take the role of "A" at
440 Hz.

The main reason is that if we want to have to pick this second note,
there's no clear way to do it. In 12-EDO, we can easily standardize
the range of the notation system by specifying the pitch of any note
at all, because we know exactly how all of the notes relate to one
another, so we know how to set it up a priori so that the registers
and the whole thing will work out the way that we want. We just pick
some other note, in this case A, and set that to be some pitch, in
this case 440 Hz, so that all of the registers work out the way we
want. However, for an arbitrary tuning, we don't know what other notes
will be in the scale, so some sort of generalized approach is
necessary.

Once we start trying to figure out how to standardize this procedure,
we quickly realize that doing so requires us to implicitly standardize
the Middle Note at 261.6 Hz anyway. If we accept that we want the
Middle Note as the tonic for our privileged mode of choice, and we
want the whole range of the notation system to be as close to to what
it is now as possible, then the only possible way to meet these
constraints while standardizing *some other* pitch to 440 Hz is to
find the note in the scale such that tuning it to 440 Hz sets the
Middle Note as close to 261.6 Hz as possible. This already requires us
to specify the ideal tuning for the Middle Note is "as close to 261.6
Hz as possible," explicitly using that numeric value in the standard
anyway, but then add in an additional extraneous step where we
identify another note first in a tuning-specific way, and then tune
that note to 440 Hz.

Another important reason is that many of the advantages of going with
a standardized C261.6 for notation, but a standardized A440 for
tuning, are specific to 12-EDO and meantone, and may not apply to
arbitrary tunings at all. For instance, one of the reasons for tuning
things to "A" is that "A "is an open string for the entire string
section. However, for an arbitrary tuning, we have no idea how the
strings will tune at all, and we certainly don't want to attempt to
decide that this point. Thus, even if we attempt to standardize some
other reference note in the tuning we have no guarantee that our other
reference note will actually be any easier to tune to than the Middle
Note itself.

This suggests that to finding the optimal "tuning note" for an
orchestra is a task with quite different considerations from what
we're discussing here, and that it will likely need to be done on a
temperament-by-temperament basis. The criteria that go into picking a
nice pitch to coordinate between tunings, for ease of notation and
pitch standardization, are not the same criteria that go into
determining the pitch out of that same tuning system that's optimal
for the orchestra to tune to. Standardizing the Middle Note is useful
for notational purposes and simultaneously provides a pitch standard
for tunings in general. Assuming we do want to set the overall tuning
up so that the Middle Note is 261.6 Hz, the question of which note in
the scale to pick to best tune the orchestra will have to be worked
out based on things like what the open strings of the violins are
tuned to.

Finally, I note that having "middle C" be the same for all tunings is
something which may have significance for those with AP. I certainly
have a clear intuitive preference for this pitch being common to all
tunings rather than A440, because our key signatures and my entire way
of thinking about music builds out from C as the center. An informal
survey of APers from Facebook's "Got Perfect Pitch" group yielded many
similar preferences, though I note this is all a purely anecdotal
account.

-Mike

What you have here is a "diatonic notation", according to my classification here

http://lumma.org/music/theory/notation/

I don't insist on the nominals being MOS, though maybe I should have.

-Carl

Mike Battaglia wrote:
>
> I've been working on a very simple, standardized notation
> scheme for any tuning system.

[snip]

In my examples, I use letters for nominals, but I can see
the value of using numbers.

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia wrote:
>
> A few afterthoughts about my rationale behind some of this stuff...
>

Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> This is all now so long that nobody will ever read it,
> but since I'm on a roll, I'll post it anyway, at least
> for future reference. There's one really longwinded thing
> that I want to address, and that's the concept of
> absolute pitch standardization.

I skimmed it and I didn't notice you mention that 261.6 is
only a tad above 256, so C naturally starts the octave
measured as log2(f) where f is in Hz.

Graham

Mike Battaglia wrote:
> This is all now so long that nobody will ever read it,

I read it all, and I don't mean to minimize the importance
of the details you're thinking about by classifying it as a
"diatonic notation".

-Carl

Is there a KISS 1.0 by the way? -C.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia wrote:
>
> I've been working on a very simple, standardized notation scheme for

On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 3:40 PM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
>
> I don't insist on the nominals being MOS, though maybe I should have.

I left the possibility open here that it might not have to be MOS. I wrote:
> Lastly, I want to note that while I tailored this post to MOS, this
> same notation system easily also applies to higher-rank Fokker blocks
> as well, or really any epimorphic scale if you want. The only thing
> that needs to change to use these is to define more accidentals than
> just #/b; for Fokker blocks, one should be defined for each chroma in
> the block. I'm very interested to see if this can be tied in with
> Sagittal notation by using as a base scale an 11-limit 7-note Fokker
> block which is a chain of seven 3/2's.

I'm serious about looking at Sagittal in that way too. I think that
there's a "Sagittal 2.0" lurking around the corner, for people who
like JI, which is completely backwards compatible with the original,
but replaces this system of absolute accidental ranges that we have
now with a simpler regular-temperament based version.

For instance, there's the "Athenian", "Olympian," etc. levels of
resolution in Sagittal, which differ in the ranges covered by each
accidental. I think it might work out very nicely such that these
things actually correspond to microtemperaments of varying degrees of
accuracy which regularly temper accidentals together, and for which
the composer is expected to use adaptive JI in performance.

That would require a bit of reworking so that nominals and accidentals
now refer to abstract ratio mappings rather than steps in an MOS, but
that's easy enough to do. Maybe that'll be KISS 3.0.

You can use things that aren't Fokker blocks too, like hexagons or
MODblocks if you want. I guess this standard could be easily extended
to someone who wants to use a nonepimorphic scale, but... blech. Work
out the accidentals for that at your own risk.

Carl wrote:
> I read it all, and I don't mean to minimize the importance
> of the details you're thinking about by classifying it as a
> "diatonic notation".

Thanks for giving it a read. I don't mind you calling it a "diatonic
notation," and that seems like a pretty good fit to what I was
deliberately going for. I don't understand this though:

> If a scale step pattern yields a consonant chord in different modes of the scale (e.g. 1-3-5 in the usual diatonic scale) then those chords look alike on the staff (e.g. major and minor triads).

How do you determine what's consonant? The way I'm doing it, any scale
step pattern, like 1-3-5 or anything else, always has chords which
look alike on the staff regardless of how consonant they are, just
like the diatonic scale. So for instance if we're building the thing
around 5-limit tetracot[7], and say our definition of consonance is
"5-odd-limit," then 1-3-5 doesn't have any consonant chords, but 1-3-5
always looks the same on the staff.

I also note that if you use a rank-3 Fokker block to build the
notation around instead of an MOS, you'll end up with one of your
"planar notations." Do you intend these categories to not be mutually
exclusive? It seems like planar and linear notations could also be
diatonic notations and vice versa.

-Mike

On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 9:11 PM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
>
> Is there a KISS 1.0 by the way? -C.

Yes; it's mostly the same. I included the whole thing again as a
reference anyway. The original is here:
/tuning/topicId_99382.html#99382

It's more or less exactly what I have now, except I hadn't
standardized the number of lines in the staff or the names of the
nominals. I didn't think I'd standardized the spacing between staves
in the grand staff or the absolute pitch of the middle note, but I
guess I did. I've since come up with some more justification for those
decisions though, so it's worth posting that. At the time I just
wanted something really simple, even if it meant leaving less stuff
open, for people to use besides Sagittal, since Sagittal can be kind
of ugly when dealing with something like porcupine[7] or porcupine[8].

-Mike

On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 4:41 PM, Graham Breed <gbreed@...> wrote:
>
> I skimmed it and I didn't notice you mention that 261.6 is
> only a tad above 256, so C naturally starts the octave
> measured as log2(f) where f is in Hz.

This has been called, for some reason, the "scientific tuning"
standard. It's a bit less than a quarter tone flat of where we are
now. I didn't mention it for the following reasons:

1) That note C is already standardized to 261.6 Hz, and I wanted to
pick something backwards-compatible with what we have now.
2) Tuning standards, if anything, tend to go sharp as time goes on, if
we were to pick something not backwards-compatible with what we have
now, it should probably be sharper rather than flatter.
3) Since the only group of people for which this distinction makes any
significant perceptual difference at all are those with AP, their
input should be a part of the discussion as well, at the very least
just to break ties when a truly arbitrary decision of this sort
arises.
4) As a corollary to #1-3, if within my lifetime, everyone somehow
manages to standardize the pitch of 12-EDO so that existing songs must
now always be played a quarter step flat of what they are now, you're
going to see me go into the insane asylum real fast, along with quite
a lot of us who have AP.

-Mike

Hi Mike,

> I left the possibility open here that it might not have to be MOS.

That was in a later post.

> You can use things that aren't Fokker blocks too, like hexagons
> or MODblocks if you want. I guess this standard could be easily
> extended to someone who wants to use a nonepimorphic scale,
> but... blech. Work out the accidentals for that at your own risk.

I apply it to hanson[8] on my website, and somewhere I did
a post showing how the three accidental pairs required combine
in different modes and key signatures (it's not pretty).

> I don't understand this though:
>
> > If a scale step pattern yields a consonant chord in different
> > modes of the scale (e.g. 1-3-5 in the usual diatonic scale)
> > then those chords look alike on the staff (e.g. major and
> > minor triads).
>
> How do you determine what's consonant? The way I'm doing it,
> any scale step pattern, like 1-3-5 or anything else, always
> has chords which look alike on the staff

Sure, that too. I phrased it that way because it ties into
the "diatonic property" of multiple consonances falling on
one pattern of scale steps. But it can be viewed more
generally... as being isomorphic in generic intervals instead
of in absolute intervals. That's really the key point.

> I also note that if you use a rank-3 Fokker block to build the
> notation around instead of an MOS, you'll end up with one of
> your "planar notations." Do you intend these categories to not
> be mutually exclusive? It seems like planar and linear notations
> could also be diatonic notations and vice versa.

No, I didn't intend the categories to be mutually exclusive
or at all rigorous. But of all the notation systems mentioned
only the diatonic notations maintain generic interval
invariance (the diatonic property) across tuning systems.
Well, I can't speak for Graham's intentions for Tripod, but
systems like Sagittal and HEWM force everything to 7 nominals,
for example. They're only diatonic if you happen to be using
the scale they're based on. OK, Dave K. has said the Sagittal
accidentals could be used with other nominal systems if desired.
But I don't much like the Sagittal glyphs either. They're
complex in order to enumerate a huge list of intervals. But I
see little value in being able to name commas that aren't used
in a piece... any MOS can use standard sharp and flat symbols
as far as I'm concerned.

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia wrote:

> > Is there a KISS 1.0 by the way? -C.
>
> Yes; it's mostly the same. I included the whole thing again as a
> reference anyway. The original is here:
> /tuning/topicId_99382.html#99382

Thanks! I ask because I'm thinking of linking to it on my page.

-Carl

On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 2:30 AM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
>
> > How do you determine what's consonant? The way I'm doing it,
> > any scale step pattern, like 1-3-5 or anything else, always
> > has chords which look alike on the staff
>
> Sure, that too. I phrased it that way because it ties into
> the "diatonic property" of multiple consonances falling on
> one pattern of scale steps. But it can be viewed more
> generally... as being isomorphic in generic intervals instead
> of in absolute intervals. That's really the key point.

So in modern terms, is the thing that you're driving at here that the
scale has to be epimorphic? It seems like that's what you're saying,
so long as you were saying your experiment with hanson[8] would not be
an instance of diatonic notation.

-Mike

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia wrote:

> > Sure, that too. I phrased it that way because it ties into
> > the "diatonic property" of multiple consonances falling on
> > one pattern of scale steps. But it can be viewed more
> > generally... as being isomorphic in generic intervals instead
> > of in absolute intervals. That's really the key point.
>
> So in modern terms, is the thing that you're driving at here that
> the scale has to be epimorphic? It seems like that's what you're
> saying, so long as you were saying your experiment with hanson[8]
> would not be an instance of diatonic notation.

No, it's meant to be *any* scale (I also did harmonics 8-16).
I wrote it poorly. Any pattern of generic intervals will look
the same in every mode. The idea is you're not supposed to care
as much if it's not a concord. I'll update the page to clarify...

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia wrote:

> This has been called, for some reason, the "scientific tuning"
> standard. It's a bit less than a quarter tone flat of where we are
> now. I didn't mention it for the following reasons:

Tuning forks used for teaching in science classes very often are, or at least were back in my youth, tuned to this standard.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "genewardsmith" wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia wrote:
>
> > This has been called, for some reason, the "scientific tuning"
> > standard. It's a bit less than a quarter tone flat of where we are
> > now. I didn't mention it for the following reasons:
>
> Tuning forks used for teaching in science classes very often are, or at least were back in my youth, tuned to this standard.

I just went googling, and it seems this is still true. Not only that, doctors use 256 Hz forks for the Weber test, and 512 Hz forks for the Rinne test. The history of this standard in music is an old one, it seems: starting with Sauveur, then Chadini. Some people are apparently fanatical about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schiller_Institute#Verdi_tuning

It's a good standard for early classical (Mozart, Haydn, etc) orchestras.

On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 10:22 AM, genewardsmith
<genewardsmith@...> wrote:
>
> I just went googling, and it seems this is still true. Not only that,
> doctors use 256 Hz forks for the Weber test, and 512 Hz forks for the Rinne
> test. The history of this standard in music is an old one, it seems:
> starting with Sauveur, then Chadini. Some people are apparently fanatical
> about it:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schiller_Institute#Verdi_tuning
>
> It's a good standard for early classical (Mozart, Haydn, etc) orchestras.

Meh. Sounds like puke to me.

-Mike

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia wrote:

> > It's a good standard for early classical (Mozart, Haydn, etc) orchestras.
>
> Meh. Sounds like puke to me.

No one actually knows the correct pitch to use, because old tuning forks are so variable. But C=256 Hz seems as good as any for this period.

On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 10:37 AM, genewardsmith
<genewardsmith@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia wrote:
>
> > > It's a good standard for early classical (Mozart, Haydn, etc)
> > > orchestras.
> >
> > Meh. Sounds like puke to me.
>
> No one actually knows the correct pitch to use, because old tuning forks
> are so variable. But C=256 Hz seems as good as any for this period.

I'm just saying that because I have AP. You telling me the new pitch
standard is C256 is like me telling you "from now on, you're going to
wear special glasses that swap the colors 'red' and 'blue' for the
rest of your life."

I'm a relatively normal guy right now, or at least people outside of
this forum seem to think I am. But if, someday, I'm no longer allowed
to 'standardly' play the Beatles song "Let it Be" in exactly the key
of C major with C tuned to 261.6 Hz and nothing else, the downward
spiral will be swift and total.

-Mike

Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:

> This has been called, for some reason, the "scientific
> tuning" standard. It's a bit less than a quarter tone
> flat of where we are now. I didn't mention it for the
> following reasons:

> 3) Since the
> only group of people for which this distinction makes any
> significant perceptual difference at all are those with …

I wasn't arguing for a distinction. I was arguing for C
being the right pitch to start a register with.

Graham

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia wrote:

> I'm just saying that because I have AP. You telling me the new pitch
> standard is C256 is like me telling you "from now on, you're going to
> wear special glasses that swap the colors 'red' and 'blue' for the
> rest of your life."
>
> I'm a relatively normal guy right now, or at least people outside of
> this forum seem to think I am. But if, someday, I'm no longer allowed
> to 'standardly' play the Beatles song "Let it Be" in exactly the key
> of C major with C tuned to 261.6 Hz and nothing else, the downward
> spiral will be swift and total.

How do you feel about this:

"Absolute pitch possessors sometimes indicate a frustration with
their pitch perception as they get older. They sometimes tell us that
it goes "off".

The study data corroborate these anecdotal experiences. None of our
subjects past the age of 51 identified all of the tones perfectly,
unlike their younger counterparts. We discovered that pitch
perception tends to go sharp as subjects age. Some subjects name
notes consistently a semi-tone sharp by middle-age, while others name
tones a full tone sharp as they enter their 60's. We suspect that
there is some property in the ear that changes as people age to cause
this perceptual shift. Age-related changes are common, such as the
need for reading glasses and hearing loss. It is interesting that
this change can be observed and quantified only in people who have
absolute pitch!"

Quoted from http://perfectpitch.ucsf.edu/study/

On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 4:31 PM, Kalle Aho <kalleaho@...>
wrote:
>
> How do you feel about this:
>
> "Absolute pitch possessors sometimes indicate a frustration with
> their pitch perception as they get older. They sometimes tell us that
> it goes "off".

I've read this before, and I don't like it one bit. I'm pretty sure
that every time I get another gray hair, the pitch of the universe
rises by one cent. I'm screwed.

-Mike

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Kalle Aho" wrote:

> How do you feel about this:
>
> "Absolute pitch possessors sometimes indicate a frustration with
> their pitch perception as they get older. They sometimes tell us
> that it goes "off".

Interesting. I saw an interview with Sviatoslav Richter, in his
old age, where he complained of something similar. He seemed to
say it was a constant source of annoyance and upset for him.

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Kalle Aho" wrote:
>
> > How do you feel about this:
> >
> > "Absolute pitch possessors sometimes indicate a frustration with
> > their pitch perception as they get older. They sometimes tell us
> > that it goes "off".
>
> Interesting. I saw an interview with Sviatoslav Richter, in his
> old age, where he complained of something similar. He seemed to
> say it was a constant source of annoyance and upset for him.
>
> -Carl

I'm now 69, and I've been experiencing this for the past several years. It's something like trying to identify colors when the ambient light is gradually shifting to a significantly different Kelvin (color) temperature, i.e., what's perceived as "cooler" vs. "warmer" lighting: is it a true yellow or yellow-orange? With the passage of time, I have had make a deliberate effort to increase the size of the pitch "buckets" (i.e., ranges of perceived pitches) corresponding to the pitch classes of 12-equal, and it really gets troublesome when the buckets get so large that they start to overlap. 8>{

It literally puts me in limbo when I hear a classical recording and am not immediately sure of the key (is it in Eb or D?). I have to play a game of "how low can I go?" (everybody sing, "Limbo! Limbo!") in order to get the right key (if both Eb and D are believable and Db is clearly out of range, then it's D). This is particularly annoying with so-called "authentic" performances of old music played at (what I suspect to be) significantly lower (historical) pitch, but (which may or may not be) somewhat less than 100 cents lower than A=440; I'm especially peeved if the musicians didn't bother to use a historical tuning (such as 1/4-comma meantone) instead of 12-equal.

It's the reverse if I want to sing something _a cappella_ in a particular key. If I choose the highest possible pitch that will land in my mental "bucket" for that key, I can come very close to whatever is consistent with A=440. I have to make a deliberate ongoing effort to keep the upper limit of each bucket consistent with the A=440 pitches, and I've found that it helps a lot to play a keyboard (or other fixed-pitch instrument) on a regular basis to reinforce my AP reprogramming.

So there's hope, if you're willing to cope.

--George

George- thanks for sharing your experience! -C.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "gdsecor" wrote:

>
> I'm now 69, and I've been experiencing this for the past several years. It's something like trying to identify colors when the ambient light is gradually shifting to a significantly different Kelvin (color) temperature, i.e., what's perceived as "cooler" vs. "warmer" lighting: is it a true yellow or yellow-orange? With the passage of time, I have had make a deliberate effort to increase the size of the pitch "buckets" (i.e., ranges of perceived pitches) corresponding to the pitch classes of 12-equal, and it really gets troublesome when the buckets get so large that they start to overlap. 8>{
>
> It literally puts me in limbo when I hear a classical recording and am not immediately sure of the key (is it in Eb or D?). I have to play a game of "how low can I go?" (everybody sing, "Limbo! Limbo!") in order to get the right key (if both Eb and D are believable and Db is clearly out of range, then it's D). This is particularly annoying with so-called "authentic" performances of old music played at (what I suspect to be) significantly lower (historical) pitch, but (which may or may not be) somewhat less than 100 cents lower than A=440; I'm especially peeved if the musicians didn't bother to use a historical tuning (such as 1/4-comma meantone) instead of 12-equal.
>
> It's the reverse if I want to sing something _a cappella_ in a particular key. If I choose the highest possible pitch that will land in my mental "bucket" for that key, I can come very close to whatever is consistent with A=440. I have to make a deliberate ongoing effort to keep the upper limit of each bucket consistent with the A=440 pitches, and I've found that it helps a lot to play a keyboard (or other fixed-pitch instrument) on a regular basis to reinforce my AP reprogramming.
>
> So there's hope, if you're willing to cope.
>
> --George
>

On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 1:11 PM, gdsecor <gdsecor@...> wrote:
>
> I'm now 69, and I've been experiencing this for the past several years.
> It's something like trying to identify colors when the ambient light is
> gradually shifting to a significantly different Kelvin (color) temperature,
> i.e., what's perceived as "cooler" vs. "warmer" lighting: is it a true
> yellow or yellow-orange? With the passage of time, I have had make a
> deliberate effort to increase the size of the pitch "buckets" (i.e., ranges
> of perceived pitches) corresponding to the pitch classes of 12-equal, and it
> really gets troublesome when the buckets get so large that they start to
> overlap. 8>{

I definitely know what you mean by this. A few years ago, I started
experimenting deliberately with trying to expand my range of "C" so
that C# would be in it, for instance. I thought it was a good exercise
at the time, but it definitely messed with my head a bit.

One thing that I've found extremely interesting, recently, is that
I've been playing a lot in 16-EDO, specifically mavila. When I play in
a new tuning system, I notice that after a few days of constant
immersion, it starts to really get into my head and mess me up when
trying to think of 12-EDO. I'll start imagining weird, inconsistent
hybrids of 12-EDO and whatever I'm playing in, and it'll become
difficult to visualize 12-EDO melodies. After like, day 4 of playing
for 5 hours a day in 16-EDO, I woke up in the morning and realized I
just couldn't think in 12-EDO; my head was just screwed up.

And I'd start making mistakes identifying 12-EDO things too. I'd do
things, like, hear a major sixth and think it was a minor sixth, or
hear a minor sixth and think it was a fifth, because I'd hear the
minor sixth and identify it with the 750 cent 16-EDO interval, and
then put that in the context of machine[6] or something where it
sounds like a stretched perfect fifth. Or I'd hear a minor sixth and
decide it was a major sixth, or something like that. I'm talking about
mistakes that people in freshman ear training make.

At first it freaked me out, and I started to feel like microtonality
was destroying my ears, since it involved my AP categories overlapping
and so on. I've since become addicted to it. These days, I know that a
tuning isn't really "working" for me until I start to screw up 12-EDO
with it. (Immersing myself in 12-EDO again un-screws up my ears and
brings it back to normal.)

> I have to make a deliberate ongoing effort to keep the upper limit of
> each bucket consistent with the A=440 pitches, and I've found that it helps
> a lot to play a keyboard (or other fixed-pitch instrument) on a regular
> basis to reinforce my AP reprogramming.

When you listen to a lot of music constantly for a day, does the whole
thing stay on A440? Sometimes I get screwed up very early in the
morning; I'll imagine pitches in my head that I think are right, but
they're actually flat. As soon as I turn some music on, I instantly
readjust and I'm good for the rest of the day. I've never been sure
why that is.

> So there's hope, if you're willing to cope.

I'm glad that I'm getting into microtonality now, that's for sure.
Sounds like I'm going to be forced into it whether I want to be or
not.

-Mike

On 1/23/2013 11:13 AM, Mike Battaglia wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 10:37 AM, genewardsmith
> <genewardsmith@...> wrote:
>>
>> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia wrote:
>>
>>>> It's a good standard for early classical (Mozart, Haydn, etc)
>>>> orchestras.
>>>
>>> Meh. Sounds like puke to me.
>>
>> No one actually knows the correct pitch to use, because old tuning forks
>> are so variable. But C=256 Hz seems as good as any for this period.
>
> I'm just saying that because I have AP. You telling me the new pitch
> standard is C256 is like me telling you "from now on, you're going to
> wear special glasses that swap the colors 'red' and 'blue' for the
> rest of your life."
>
> I'm a relatively normal guy right now, or at least people outside of
> this forum seem to think I am. But if, someday, I'm no longer allowed
> to 'standardly' play the Beatles song "Let it Be" in exactly the key
> of C major with C tuned to 261.6 Hz and nothing else, the downward
> spiral will be swift and total.
>
> -Mike

At least you'll finally be able to play "Strawberry Fields Forever" in the original key!

I think my sense of pitch was set when I learned to play the piano ... on an old instrument that happened to be around a quarter tone flat. I've always thought that standard pitch is a bit sharp...

I actually considered using C=256 at one point until I settled on D=290 for a while. Then when I started using z3ta+ and it became inconvenient to use anything other than C=261.6, I switched to that.