math and music on the list

i was first drawn to the tuning list because i thought it might give me
new insights for music-making. so when i found all the 'arcane math',
and saw a lot of discussions that seemed far removed from actual music,
it was kind of.. a letdown? *but*! recently there's been a lot of
talk on stellated lattices and what not -- accompanied with lots of
pictures or pointers to pictures, and i've realized something.

i was never 'good' at algebra -- manipulating numbers just never seemed
very interesting. i've noticed that math becomes interesting for me
when it is sensually expressed. i love math when i can express it as
sound and *hear* it. also, i love it when i can express it as pictures
and *see* it. in high school, algebra was boring but geometry was great.
plus, as an artist i'm both a musician and a visual artist..

so the lattice diagrams and the math that goes into their construction
is fascinating from a purely visual point of view. this is wonderful.
musically, i just don't have the tools right now to be able to explore
alternate tunings very easily, and i haven't been interested in trying
to understand the math here just for its own sake. but now i'm finding
myself eager to understand for visual reasons. this feels great by
itself, but also i think it will help me when i finally *do* have the
sound tools to explore this stuff.

so.. thanks! very inspiring. :)

ps. -- do people draw out their ascii lattices by hand? is there software?
i thought at first these were scala creations, but now i'm not so sure...

--
P a u l F l y
http://www.neuron.net/~pfly