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Miracle-Magic Square

🔗genewardsmith@juno.com

11/5/2001 3:42:32 PM

I've been contemplating the following 9-note scale, which arose on
the math list in connection with a generalization of Golden scale
systems, and concluding it is pretty nifty:

12/7 -- 16/15 -- 4/3
| | |
8/5 -- 1 -- 5/4
| | |
3/2 -- 15/8 -- 7/6

Here the numbers are approximations in a planar temperament, the
horizontal axis being a version of the "magic" slightly flat third
and the vertical a version of the secor, splitting the difference
between 16/15 and 15/14.

The 72-et approximation of this is

56 -- 7 -- 30
| | |
49 -- 0 -- 16
| | |
42 --65 -- 16

In terms of the miracle generator 7/72, this becomes

8 -- 1 -- -6
| | |
7 -- 0 -- -7
| | |
6 -- -1 -- -8

This suggests extending the chain of secors to a 7 by 3 rectangle,
with three lines of secors extending from -10 to -4, -3 to 3, and 4
to 10. This is Blackjack, so we see that the miracle-magic square
scale has four copies inside Blackjack, separated by secors.

Similarly, approximating the miracle-magic square by means of the
magic generator 13/41 gives us

-7 -- -6 -- -5
| | |
-1 -- 0 -- 1
| | |
5 -- 6 -- 7

We can extend this to an 18-note magic rectangle of three lines of
magic generators, from -8 to -3, -2 to 3, and 4 to 9; if we want a
MOS we can tack an extra -9 on the end and get a 19-note MOS.

Approximating the miracle-magic square by means of the orwell
generator of 12/53 gives us

-1 -- -4 -- -7
| | |
3 -- 0 -- -3
| | |
7 -- 4 -- 1

We can locate this within a rectangle of three lines of magic
generators separated by orwells rather than secors, for instance -7
to 7 orwells in a 3 by 5 rectangle, which we may also regard as
consisting of five stacked chains of two orwells each, -7,-6,-5 to
5,6,7.