new temperament on the cyberblock

Jay Williams here,
I just subscribed, so thought I'd introduce myself.
I have a Master's degree from Indiana University in trombone and music
theory. I compose music, mostly electronic, and have made most of my livings
as a piano technician, electronics technician and performer, in that order.
Naturally, I'm fascinated by the sounds of different tunings and have had
the fun of doing some of them. (If anyone needs advice on how to get two
pianos to be a reliable quarter-tone apart and don't already know a
reference for same, I can tell you how.)
Possibly, the most extravagant temperament accomplishment I witnessed was
when Pietro Grossi, who taught at Indiana in 1966, proudly demonstrated to
us his 118-tone-per-octave equal temperament. I also had the fun of playing
on a sort of square piano with normally spaced keys, 96 of them covering an
octave. This was designed for Julian Carillo's music.
I discovered this list via the PTG site.
Cheers

Hello Jay,

I'm not sure you will recall, but I had a class with you at the North
Carolina School of the Arts where I studied bassoon with Mark Popkin. You
told the class - you were a guest lecturer - that music needed to be about
50% predictable to be good. It was an important insight for me.

I had heard that you composed electronic music. Have you used microtonal
construction in you compositions?

Johnny Reinhard
Afmmjr@aol.com

Jay Williams wrote,

>Possibly, the most extravagant temperament accomplishment I witnessed was
>when Pietro Grossi, who taught at Indiana in 1966, proudly demonstrated to
>us his 118-tone-per-octave equal temperament.

A few days ago I posted:

>> the maximum error of the 72-tET approximations of the
>> 11-limit ratios is 4 cents. The lowest ET that improves on that is
118-tET
>> where the largest error is 3 cents.

118-tET really shines in the good old 5-limit, where the maximum error in
the consonant intervals is 0.39 cents (while the best smaller ET, 53, it's
1.41 cents). So if you want an ET, but 53 isn't Just Intonation enough for
you, 118 is your best bet.