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Some visitors to my Atlas have asked me what Debussy has to do with the 7 limit.
So I think I will put it up with the FAQs. In the Atlas of Tonespace the 7 limit
is not mentioned as such. Instead I refer to the 7/5 plane - one face of the
tetrahedral pyramid which makes up the basic cell of tonespace. When you look at
the notenames on this plane you see they make up a wholetone scale which was
Debussy's trademark. I think it is important therefore to observe a lower as
well as an upper harmonic limit in analysing what a composer is aiming at
achieving - if one has to talk about limits at all! There are many pieces by
Debussy and those who came after him in which a sudden major triad would sound
barbaric and out of place. I would gloss such an incongruity as a clash of
planes (no puns intended)

This has been brought home to me forcibly while listening to JdL's adapted
tuning MIDIfiles onwww.adaptune.com [http://www.adaptune.com/]. I think most
would agree that the 7limit versions of say the Romantic Sixths contains some
pretty sickly sounds. One of the aims of my weighting table based program (or
rather algorithms - as they haven't been coded yet) is context based interval
allocation. The allocation tables make sure that the cent adjustment
corresponding to the 7th harmonic is never called up unless all the notes in the
chord/context happen to belong within one of the two wholetone scales. So what I
would like to know is: has anybody done retuning programs which would allow me
to hear if this hunch is correct?

And thanks JdL for the encouragement!

Paul Hirsh

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