just or temperament

i guess that comparing intervals in temperaments to their just cousins has been going on since the beginning of temperament... do we have to endlessly repeat the errors of centuries gone by....

isn't comparing just and non-12 temperament a bit like
comparing the apple to the orange?

does the complaint that the fifths in 19 tet are 5 cents flat, have any bearing on the overall effect or usefulness of 19 equal?

no dissonance in just intonation? try playing a 7/4 for a newbie, and listen to them howl!

best, buzz^

---
music for the new millenium,

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buzzy^ wrote:

> From: "buzzy^" <novosonic@321media.com>
>
> i guess that comparing intervals in temperaments to their just cousins has been going on since the beginning of temperament...

And endlessly since the begining of this list.

> isn't comparing just and non-12 temperament a bit like
> comparing the apple to the orange?

Apples and oranges are both fruits, but you don'tfind people disscussing the orange in relation to
the apple. One could always start a list at Onelist.com
to discuss it though.

And there's always gonna be some wing-nut on the list
who posts things like "my special web page on eggs
is up" or "my picture is on a web page: look at me!
look at me! look at me! look at me!" without sticking
to more serious issues like are apples and oranges
more alike or more different?

> does the complaint that the fifths in 19 tet are 5 cents flat, have any bearing on the overall effect or usefulness of 19 equal?

Only if you can't free yourself from 12tet.

> no dissonance in just intonation? try playing a 7/4 for a newbie, and listen to them howl!

My first experiences in JI involved 7/4 (Shri Camel, the Well Tuned
Piano). The beauty of the 7/4 sucked my right in.

--
* D a v i d B e a r d s l e y
* xouoxno@virtulink.com
*
* J u x t a p o s i t i o n E z i n e
* M E L A v i r t u a l d r e a m house monitor
*
* http://www.virtulink.com/immp/lookhere.htm

buzzy^ and D. Beardsley wrote:
----------
> From: David Beardsley <xouoxno@home.com>
>
> buzzy^ wrote:
>
> > From: "buzzy^" <novosonic@321media.com>
> >
> > i guess that comparing intervals in temperaments to their just cousins has
> been going on since the beginning of temperament...
>
> And endlessly since the begining of this list.
>
> > isn't comparing just and non-12 temperament a bit like
> > comparing the apple to the orange?
>
> Apples and oranges are both fruits, but you don'tfind people disscussing the
> orange in relation to
> the apple. One could always start a list at Onelist.com
> to discuss it though.

Last year some scientists did an experiment: they made a chemical analysis of
an apple and an orange, and found that the two are practically identical. ; )

Seriously, guys, this sort of positivist viewpoint amounts to a kind of acoustical
behaviourism. It seems clear to me that since the harmonic series is an ubiquitous
part of our sonic experience, we humans, consciously or unconsciously, will _attempt_
to interpret all pitch intervals we hear in terms of it--and thus in terms of the just intervals
that derive from it. The series forms a normative basis for our acoustical lifeworld.

Of course, I realize that matters of ontology and epistemology are *ahem* "off topic"
for a list dealing with tuning and temperament.....

If you really want a temperament that resists any kind of comparison with just intervals,
19-tone ET is a bad choice, since many of its intervals (especially the minor thirds) are too
close. Choose another ET, such as 10 or 14, where the intervals really do fall far between
the cracks. Of course, even those intervals are ostensibly interpretable as just if you go
higher up in the series.

Dale Scott

Dale Scott wrote,

>It seems clear to me that since the harmonic series is an ubiquitous
>part of our sonic experience, we humans, consciously or unconsciously, will
_attempt_
>to interpret all pitch intervals we hear in terms of it--and thus in terms
of the just intervals
>that derive from it. The series forms a normative basis for our acoustical
lifeworld.

That amounts to an appeal to the pattern-recognition model of virtual pitch
perception, only one of three phenomena responsible for our preference for
just intervals. In addition to Dale's point, there is the fact that
nonlinearities in the ear-brain system produce a potentially endless set of
combination tones, which tend to make a noisy mess of frequencies unless the
stimulus is a simple subset of a harmonic series, in which case all the
combination tones are members of that same harmonic series. That's Kraig's
favorite phenomenon. Both of those phenomena favor otonal chords and work
well even for sine waves or timbres with inharmonic content. For timbres
with harmonic partials, there is a third phenomenon at work: the beating and
roughness created when partials from different tones don't quite coincide.
This is the favorite phenomenon of
Helmholtz/Plomp/Kameoka&Kuriyagawa/Sethares, and favors both otonal and
utonal chords.

>If you really want a temperament that resists any kind of comparison with
just intervals,
>19-tone ET is a bad choice, since many of its intervals (especially the
minor thirds) are too
>close. Choose another ET, such as 10 or 14, where the intervals really do
fall far between
>the cracks.

11 is the best ET for random dissonance, according to Blackwood and to my
own calculations.

Paul Erlich wrote:

> For timbres
> with harmonic partials, there is a third phenomenon at work: the beating and
> roughness created when partials from different tones don't quite coincide.
> This is the favorite phenomenon of
> Helmholtz/Plomp/Kameoka&Kuriyagawa/Sethares, and favors both otonal and
> utonal chords.

Hrm, I thought Helmholtz used the difference tones of upper partials to bolster his
belief that the minor chord and key were subsidiary to the major (therefore utonal
not-so-favored to him??).

> 11 is the best ET for random dissonance, according to Blackwood and to my
> own calculations.

Cool. Although in 11 (or 13) the dissonance is concentrated in the middle, on the
4ths and 5ths, whereas in 10 or 14 the brunt of it falls on the 3rds and 6ths, with the
only "in-tune" interval being the already dissonant equal-tempered tritone.

I'm curious about another phenomenon, although I'm not sure how it relates to the
three Paul mentioned. In my younger and more foolish days (***WARNING:
OFF-TOPIC***), I would occasionally come home from very loud rock music festivals
with the amplifiers still ringing in my head. As I lay down in the quiet to go to sleep,
I would hear the harmonic series quite distinctly circulating over and over in my
"mind's ear" (the effect was enhanced by physical exhaustion, and, possibly, by
cheap beer or other intoxicants). What phenomenon was I experiencing then?

D.S.

> I would occasionally come home from very loud rock music festivals
>with the amplifiers still ringing in my head. As I lay down in the quiet
>to go to sleep, I would hear the harmonic series quite distinctly
circulating over and
>over in my "mind's ear" (the effect was enhanced by physical exhaustion,
and, possibly, cheap beer or other intoxicants). What phenomenon was I
experiencing then?

Greetings,
This phenomenon is technically known as "being high".
REgards,
Ed Foote

Dale Scott wrote,

>Hrm, I thought Helmholtz used the difference tones of upper partials to
bolster his
>belief that the minor chord and key were subsidiary to the major (therefore
utonal
>not-so-favored to him??).

That's true (I think difference tones of fundamentals was enough), but that
comes later in his book. The first part of his book looks solely at beating
partials, and established the line of thought that continues through
Sethares.

>Cool. Although in 11 (or 13) the dissonance is concentrated in the middle,
on the
>4ths and 5ths, whereas in 10 or 14 the brunt of it falls on the 3rds and
6ths, with the
>only "in-tune" interval being the already dissonant equal-tempered tritone.

10 and 14 contain fifths similar in size to those used (as structurally
important intervals) in some cultures.