19 Limit Non-Octave Scale, with Symmetry at the Tritone

Well, since that clever Jeff Scott (microtonal telepath
extraordinaire) anticipated my Tritone Chain Non-Octave Scales, with
his wonderful 13 Root of 7/5 offering, I have no alternative but to
warm the microtonal fires on this wintry morning with some treasures
of the 19 Limit.

So let's make a pot of coffee, get on our slippers and house coats,
and gather around the synthesizer with our digests to have a little
fun (this is a family gathering):

19 Limit Non-Octave Scale, with Symmetry at the Tritone

Ratio Cents Consecutive
0 0 0
19/18 93.603 93.603
19/17 192.558 98.955
19/16 297.513 104.955
19/15 409.244 111.731
19/14 528.687 119.443
19/13 656.985 128.298
266/169 785.284 128.298
285/169 904.726 119.443
304/169 1016.458 111.731
323/169 1121.413 104.955
342/169 1220.368 98.955
361/169 1313.971 93.603

Have a blessed day,

Jacky Ligon

Hi Jacky!

Jacky's 19 utonal Mirror:

19/19 0.000
93.603
19/18 93.603
98.955
19/17 192.558
104.955
19/16 297.513
111.731
19/15 409.244
119.443
19/14 528.687
128.298
* 19/13 656.985
128.298
266/169 785.284
119.443
285/169 904.726
111.731
304/169 1016.458
104.955
323/169 1121.413
98.955
342/169 1220.368
93.603
361/169 1313.971

When I looked at this scale graphically, I was prepared to
be disappointed. Not wacky, not wild, completely ordinary
in appearance with a gentle bulge.

But appearences can be deceiving.

It is definately extremely harmonic sounding.
So I learned something because I didn't think I would hear
much of that at such a high limit. I also was surprised
that the 'just' feel of the scale was strongly felt even
across wide expanses of notes (surprising to me since the
harmonic series switches directions and the repeat is at
the oddball interval of 261/169).

Melodies are obviously very easy with this scale with
all semitones, but I didn't expect how extremely
resonant they would sound as the decays of the notes
overlap. The sound it made reminded me of the sound of
a floor harp/zither I have, where the strings are
sympathetically resonanting with one another. That type of
sound is really present in this scale.

At first I got a kind of middle-eastern feel melodically
but then it seemed kind of Irish but then it seemed both
and neither.

There are a lot of very consonant chords in here and
ones that work well with whatever melody are easy to
find. I found that strumming like a harp on a plucky
patch with enough decay worked well.

It's a very string instrument oriented tuning it seems:
harp, piano...

My brain got kind of a feeling on the top of it.
The same weird feeling when looking at a 3D random dot
stereogram -- your brain is perceiving something,
but can tell that something is not right, it is being
fooled.

I think it is because the harmonic series points in
different directions in different areas. The brain
recognizes something going on there and is able to
partially assemble it -- but at a certain point it can't
fit it all together. It's perceptually confounded. So it
registers the 'very harmonic' awareness but there is
cognitive dissonance because the fundamental is
inconsistent. With something like 12tET, the sound is so
inharmonic that the brain doesn't even try to coalesce the
sounds of any chord. But with this 19-limit harmonic
mirror, it has so much 'harmony' that the brain says "I
know what this is!" and tries to coalesce the sounds but
can't do it completely and can't figure out what is wrong
so you get this feeling of dissonance but it is happening
not in the audio dissonance area but in some sort of
perceptual dissonance area and that is the weird feeling I
am having.

So there you go. Very interesting and a quite
useful scale. Thanks! Once again I find myself
challenged, confounded, respectful, and
intrigued by your scales.

- Jeff