Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning Re: Scala permission granted -- Keenan Pepper's Phi triumph

Hello, there, and I am very delighted to grant permission to anyone to use
and circulate any Scala files I post here, happily reassuring Joseph
Pehrson and others than the only implicit request would be that made by
such "copyleft" conventions as the GNU Public License. Basically, I would
request that if modifications are made, the original source be credited
and the modifications indicated.

In some cases, of course, it might turn out that I was not the original
"source" of the tuning in the first place, given the range of historical
tunings, but that's another question. The neo-Gothic area seems rather new
to me, but I'm prepared to learn otherwise.

Also, Keenan Pepper, congratulations on a wonderful neo-Gothic tuning! I'm
tempted myself to call this the "acorn fifth" as an immigrant to the
traditional territory of the Nisenan Nation, where acorns represent a
staple of life. In an immigrant's very imperfect speech, I might call it
seomthing like _?u:tim ma:wykpajim solim bo:no_, or "Acorn Fifth Song
Design" -- the metaphor of a basket design pattern possibly describing a
musical tuning. How a native speaker would say it is another question.
(If anyone is curious, I could try to explain some of the spelling here,
like "y" for a high central vowel like the IPA "barred-i," "j" for a glide
like English "y" in "young," and a ":" for a prolonged vowel.)

Since it's your tuning, however, Keenan, the naming choice is
yours. "Acorn Fifth" is just my personal name for it.

Anyway, this is a really beautiful tuning, one near the lower end of a
rather small region which might be described (in my opinion) as the most
characteristic range of neo-Gothic _temperament_. In another sense,
Pythagorean itself is the "center," but this is a range where the
tempering process produces some striking "different" results while the
tuning as a whole retains a Pythagorean flavor.

Your Phi tuning (fifth = ~704.095607 cents) beautifully complements
"Golden Meantone," and has near neighbors like the following:

Regular tuning with major third at pure 14:11 -- ~704.376991 cents
E-based regular tuning (Blackwood's R = ~2.71828) -- ~704.606908 cents

How fascinating that Fibonacci's noble Golden Mean, and Euler's famous e,
can lead to such similar musical results, at the same time each having its
own fine shading and color.

The special quality of this region, which I first noted in a paper on
"Neo-Gothic tunings and temperaments" around early this July, is that not
only the regular but the "alternative" thirds (augmented seconds,
diminished fourths) have a complex and active quality. We have regular
major and minor third at or near 14:11 and 13:11, and diminished fourths
and augmented seconds at or near 21:17 and 17:14.

In a medieval style, I term this latter intervals "subditones" (small
major thirds) and "supersemiditones" (large minor thirds). They have a
certain polarity, in contrast to the identical neutral thirds of 17-tet,
and at the same time are quite different from the usual 3-limit and
5-limit thirds alike. As I noted in my paper, they have a complexity and a
certain tension nicely underscoring cadential resolutions -- like the
usual medieval ones, but with a wide chromatic semitone rather than the
usual narrow diatonic one. In this region, the difference is around 50
cents or a bit more.

Thus the ratio between the chromatic and diatonic semitones, your focus
here, Keenan, has a very direct relevance indeed to the sonorities and
progressions which in my view are among the leading features of thie
particular neck of the neo-Gothic woods.

Your brilliant Phi counterpoint to Kornerup's tuning is closer to the
13:11 than the precise-14:11 and e-based tunings, and it yields almost
exactly a 17:14 within something like 0.73 cents. In contrast to the
tunings with slightly larger fifths, it makes the near-17:14 and
near-21:17 a bit more "polarized," or further from "neutral." How people
might hear these differences could be an interesting question, and I look
forward to tuning it and trying it out.

Anyway, the neo-Gothic counterpart of Kornerup's tuning is something with
a beauty and inventiveness which really amazes me -- something waiting to
be discovered, and how fitting that you were the one to do it.

It is a great privilege to witness such a sensitive and perceptive
achievement of high mathematics and great art.

Most appreciatively, with deepest congratulations,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@value.net

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "M. Schulter" <MSCHULTER@V...> wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/12631

> Hello, there, and I am very delighted to grant permission to anyone
to use and circulate any Scala files I post here, happily reassuring
Joseph Pehrson and others than the only implicit request would be
that made by such "copyleft" conventions as the GNU Public License.
Basically, I would request that if modifications are made, the
original source be credited and the modifications indicated.
>

Many thanks to Margo Schulter for the permission to post her Scala
tunings in the "files" section of egroups. The intention is to make
it possible for listers to actually _hear_ some of her fascinating
tuning experiments. Of course, this material is only intended to be
used "in house" and, in fact, is only accessible by members of
THIS egroup... Should there be any "tampering" of the tempering...
surely notification would be included. However, there is no
intention of this... and the file folder is clearly market "Schulter
sound files."

However, something is amiss. The Scala file the Christopher Chapman
created in his "special" text editor works great for me in Scala:
neogw17a.scl.

BUT, when I try to retrieve the SAME Scala file that I UPLOADED to
the "Schulter sound files" directory by choosing "save link as" and
copying it to my Scala directory, it DOESN'T WORK again!!!

Anyone have any idea why that might be?? Anyway, I've set up this
directory so that ANYONE can add to it... so if anyone can figure
this out and post the Schulter 17-tone scale Scala file properly,
that would be just great.

Margo Schulter's last post, of course, gives plenty of direction
as to what to listen to in this scale. I, unfortunately, do not
have a "double keyboard" so I will have to utilize the tuning in a
more cumbersome way.

Thanks so much again!
___________ _____ __ __ _
Joseph Pehrson

Re: Scala permission granted -- Keenan Pepper's Phi triumph

🔗M. Schulter <MSCHULTER@VALUE.NET>

🔗Joseph Pehrson <pehrson@pubmedia.com>

🔗Graham Breed <graham@microtonal.co.uk>