William Sethares Re: pelog and slendro timbres

Forwarding a message from William Sethares that was sent to the old Mills
server:

>Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 09:45:23 -0600 (CST)
>From: William Sethares <sethares@eceserv0.ece.wisc.edu>
>Subject: pelog and slendro timbres
>Message-ID: <199901201545.JAA05907@eceserv0.ece.wisc.edu>
>
>
>Daniel Wolf wrote:
>
>> It was very interesting to read William Sethares' attempts to derive
>Javanese scales from instrumental spectra. I remain skeptical about the
>results, however...
>
>As you should. It is impossible to "prove" anything
>about the origins of scales. The correspondences between
>spectra (timbre) and tuning (scale) for both pelog and slendro
>are intruiging and very suggestive, in the same kind of way
>that sounds with harmonic spectra correspond very nicely with
>the various JI scales.
>
>> This said, I find that his results are extremely suggestive for the design
>of electronic timbres to play with gamelan instruments or to mediate
>between gamelan instruments and instruments with integer-valued harmonic
>spectra. It seems reasonable, for example that slendro-like scales, with
>wide fifths, will sound well with timbres including, as Sethares has it, a
>partial tone at 1.52 (724.89 cents) times the fundamental. Similarly, one
>might design pelog-able timbres with a partial tone of less than 1.5 or
>with a smallish minor-third interval somewhere in the spectrum.
>
>Indeed, I have been working quite a bit on this recently.
>I have created an "orchestra" of sounds with spectra designed to
>be coincident with the relevant 5 and 7 note scales. These start with
>a sample (say of a guitar) and then map the partials of the spectrum
>to the nearest location for the 5-tet or 7-tone, creating
>a "slendro guitar" sample. I have done this for about 25 different
>instruments, and would be willing to share the samples with people.
>The format of the sounds is for the Ensoniq EPS/ASR, so email me if
>you have use of one of these and would like to check out the sounds.
>Perhaps the neatest part of these sounds is that, as Daniel suggests,
>they work well in the specified scale, but also are compatible with
>harmonic sounds.
>
>> Indeed, timbres based on 9tet will sound reasonably well
>with most any pelog.
>
>Can you explain this more? What is the relationship between
>pelog and 9-tet? (Or did you mean 7-tet?)

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