Decimalised music (humour)

This one's for Graham Breed.

I just come across the episode of the Sci Fi comedy Red Dwarf in which Holly (the ship's computer) says,

"I've devised a system to totally revolutionise music. Yeah, I've decimalised it. Instead of the octave, it's the decadive. And I've invented two new notes, H and J. Now it goes: doh, ray, me, fah, soh, lah, woh, boh, tee, doh...".

And he goes on to explain the likely consequences for musical instruments.

It starts at 5 min 30 s into http://www.reddwarf-x.com/portfolio/red-dwarf-s02e01-kryten/

Great find Dave!!

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "dkeenanuqnetau" <d.keenan@...> wrote:
>
> This one's for Graham Breed.
>
> I just come across the episode of the Sci Fi comedy Red Dwarf in
> which Holly (the ship's computer) says,
>
> "I've devised a system to totally revolutionise music. Yeah, I've
> decimalised it. Instead of the octave, it's the decadive. And I've
> invented two new notes, H and J. Now it goes: doh, ray, me, fah,
> soh, lah, woh, boh, tee, doh...".
>
> And he goes on to explain the likely consequences for musical
> instruments.
>
> It starts at 5 min 30 s into
> http://www.reddwarf-x.com/portfolio/red-dwarf-s02e01-kryten/
>

I have fond memories of seeing this (countless times) as a young adult. I
hadn't considered it, but maybe that's what first led me into
microtonalism... ;-)

/jc

On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 10:15 AM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:

> **
>
>
> Great find Dave!!
>
> -Carl
>
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "dkeenanuqnetau" <d.keenan@...> wrote:
> >
> > This one's for Graham Breed.
> >
> > I just come across the episode of the Sci Fi comedy Red Dwarf in
> > which Holly (the ship's computer) says,
> >
> > "I've devised a system to totally revolutionise music. Yeah, I've
> > decimalised it. Instead of the octave, it's the decadive. And I've
> > invented two new notes, H and J. Now it goes: doh, ray, me, fah,
> > soh, lah, woh, boh, tee, doh...".
> >
> > And he goes on to explain the likely consequences for musical
> > instruments.
> >
> > It starts at 5 min 30 s into
> > http://www.reddwarf-x.com/portfolio/red-dwarf-s02e01-kryten/
> >
>
>
>

On Tuesday 02 April 2013 13:04:21 you wrote:
> This one's for Graham Breed.
>
> I just come across the episode of the Sci Fi comedy Red
> Dwarf in which Holly (the ship's computer) says,
>
> "I've devised a system to totally revolutionise music.
> Yeah, I've decimalised it. Instead of the octave, it's
> the decadive. And I've invented two new notes, H and J.
> Now it goes: doh, ray, me, fah, soh, lah, woh, boh, tee,
> doh...".

Well, I'm disappointed you didn't know about it from the
quote in "Tripod Notation" (page 11).

> And he goes on to explain the likely consequences for
> musical instruments.
>
> It starts at 5 min 30 s into
> http://www.reddwarf-x.com/portfolio/red-dwarf-s02e01-kry
> ten/

Fact: the same writers worked with Peter Brewis on Son of
Cliché.

Fact: Peter Brewis is a microtonalist. He might have posted
here way back.

Speculation: this is a microtonal in-joke.

Graham

Thanks, nice find! :)

I've had a similar idea for a "decimalised" notation system, but for arbitrary numbers of notes:

- use letters 'A' - 'I' for digits '1' - '9' (optionally, swap 'I' for 'J')
- use 'Z' for the digit '0'
- build any decimal number from these "digits"
(i.e. 5 -> E, 10 -> AZ, 42 -> DB, etc.)

A 7-note notation would be A B C D E F G (as usual), for a 9-note notation, H and I (or J) are added. For a 12-note notation, also add AZ, AA and AB.

So it's very similar to what Mike proposed with his K.I.S.S. 2.0 notation, except that letters are used for digits:
/tuning/topicId_105842.html#105842

I didn't try it out yet, so I can't say if this would turn out to be practible, though. ;)

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "dkeenanuqnetau" <d.keenan@...> wrote:
>
> This one's for Graham Breed.
>
> I just come across the episode of the Sci Fi comedy Red Dwarf in which Holly (the ship's computer) says,
>
> "I've devised a system to totally revolutionise music. Yeah, I've decimalised it. Instead of the octave, it's the decadive. And I've invented two new notes, H and J. Now it goes: doh, ray, me, fah, soh, lah, woh, boh, tee, doh...".
>
> And he goes on to explain the likely consequences for musical instruments.
>
> It starts at 5 min 30 s into http://www.reddwarf-x.com/portfolio/red-dwarf-s02e01-kryten/