Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning lil re: myself & my Xenophone/Xenoscale

short humourous story: The 1st week I was on AOL
I "raided" the StarWarsVs.StarTrek chatroom.
I immediately dissed their subcultures, i.e.
"Star Wars = New Age space opera
Star Trek = militarized future fascist Pax Americana paying
lip service to liberal democratic ideals"
then I also said that both Star Wars & Star Trek's musics
were not "alien" enough...
I got outta there as soon as I was through bein' a
Trickster... & before I got cyber-lynched.
For weeks afterwards (till fairly recently in fact), I was the
lucky recipient of hate email & nasty barrages of IM's.
One creepazoid SNamed 'DarthSynr' had emailed me
about 125 foul communiques till I was advised to forward
them to TOS. DarthSynr is not to be found on AOL any longer.

I like to think that my music is in part a form of
"applied science fiction" as well as a preser-
vation of Just Intonation scales:
"The difference in sound between the two tuning types [Just Intonation
& Equal Temperament] might seem a subtle one. But the change from
the variegated interval spacings and harmonies of ratio-based tunings
to the uniformity of equal temperament was culturally and philosophical-
ly significant. As western material culture moved into an age of mass pro-
duction, the technology of interchangable parts was applied to the build-
ing blocks of music as well. Something gained, something lost."
--- Bart Hopkin, editor of Experimental Musical Instruments
www.windworld.com/emi
--------------------------------------------------------------------

I recently commissioned Richard Cooke of
FreeNotes to create a metallophone based
on the following scale, the XenoScale:

1: 1 roughly C below middle C @ 131.3 cycles
21:20 " Db
7:6 " Eb the blues minor 3rd, also found in European
Alpine music
32:25 " Fb
21:16 " F
11:8 " F# 11th partial found musics using the scale of
harmonics, the uncompounded overtones of a
single drone, ie in the music of Tuva (Mongolia)
7:5 " Gb harmonic tritone ... musica diabolus (sp?)
3:2 " G 3rd partial
13:8 " Ab 13th partial very rare in music, said to exist
in some Arabic, esp'ly Persian music
12:7 " A
7:4 " Bb 7th partial
16:9 " Bb reciprocal toned Bb
9:5 " Bb overtonal/reciprocal mix toned Bb
2:1 " C octave

Mr. Cooke created a very unusual metallophone...
the resonators are U-shaped tubes running
horizontally underneath the bar-plates...
the Xenophone is about 4 1/2 feet wide
(divided into 2 sections...for ease of portability)
2 1/2 feet deep, about 10" tall, weighs like
a good 80 or so pounds. The tubes are painted
an odd blue colour.

It is LOUD & can shake/rattle windows.
Disturbs my neighbors (I live in a cramped
residential hotel room about 12' X 15').

In the coming months, I will be pursuing
live 'Free Improvisation' gigs & seeking
to record a demo tape.
[I also do work with a "mutant toy piano"
or what I call 'MicroSoniCosm'
= amplified, "prepared" toy piano]

Eventually, I think it will be interesting to also be in-
volved in creating "alien musics" for science fiction
movies and TV, computer multimedia and games, etc..

Enough of my 'monologue' here...
... if ya wish to have dialogue,
email me back

🔗Paul Hahn <Paul-Hahn@xxxxxxx.xxxxx.xxxx>

On Mon, 16 Aug 1999 Zhang2323@aol.com wrote:
> I recently commissioned Richard Cooke of
> FreeNotes to create a metallophone based
> on the following scale, the XenoScale:
>
> 1: 1 roughly C below middle C @ 131.3 cycles
> 21:20 " Db
> 7:6 " Eb the blues minor 3rd, also found in European
> Alpine music
> 32:25 " Fb
> 21:16 " F
> 11:8 " F# 11th partial found musics using the scale of
> harmonics, the uncompounded overtones of a
> single drone, ie in the music of Tuva (Mongolia)
> 7:5 " Gb harmonic tritone ... musica diabolus (sp?)
> 3:2 " G 3rd partial
> 13:8 " Ab 13th partial very rare in music, said to exist
> in some Arabic, esp'ly Persian music
> 12:7 " A
> 7:4 " Bb 7th partial
> 16:9 " Bb reciprocal toned Bb
> 9:5 " Bb overtonal/reciprocal mix toned Bb
> 2:1 " C octave

Interestingly uneven scale--comparing to 12TET, there are three minor
sevenths and two tritones, but nothing resembling a major second or
major seventh.

Also, I don't want to be dictating your own scale to you, but have you
considered construing the Fb as a 9:7 instead of a 32:25? It's only off
by a 225/224, and the 9:7 relates much more closely to the other tones
of the scale, as you can see from the lattice:

7:6 ------- 7:4 -------21:16
\'-. .-'/ \'-. .-'/
16:9 -------(---)-----\- 1:1 -/---\- 3:2 /
\ /| '/. .\' |\'/.
\ | / 12:7 -\-|-/-(9:7)
/ \|/ \|/ \ |
/ 7:5 -------21:20 \ |
/ '-.\|
( / ) 9:5
/
/
/
/
/
32:25

(I've left off the 11:8 and 13:8 to avoid excessively high dimensions.)

The 16:9 only relates to one other pitch (the 1:1) within the 13-limit
too. Do you use it much, considering that you already have two other
minor sevenths?

--pH <manynote@library.wustl.edu> http://library.wustl.edu/~manynote
O
/\ "Hey--do you think I need to lose some weight?"
-\-\-- o

🔗Zhang2323@xxx.xxx

I purposely made strange choices in
overall designing of the XenoScale.
i.e. the 32:25 instead of 9:7 for Fb
& having 3 Bb's...

I wanted some really odd qualities
& hence certain ratios seem to be "unrelated"
in lattice system.

the 3 Bb's make for an intriguing wavering
liquid area of tonality.

Paul-Hahn@library.wustl.edu wrote:

Interestingly uneven scale--comparing to 12TET, there are three minor
sevenths and two tritones, but nothing resembling a major second or
major seventh.

(I've left off the 11:8 and 13:8 to avoid excessively high dimensions.)

The 16:9 only relates to one other pitch (the 1:1) within the 13-limit
too. Do you use it much, considering that you already have two other
minor sevenths?

--pH <manynote@library.wustl.edu> http://library.wustl.edu/~manynote
O
/\ "Hey--do you think I need to lose some weight?"
-\-\-- o

🔗Paul Hahn <Paul-Hahn@xxxxxxx.xxxxx.xxxx>

On Tue, 17 Aug 1999 Zhang2323@aol.com wrote:
> I purposely made strange choices in
> overall designing of the XenoScale.
> i.e. the 32:25 instead of 9:7 for Fb
> & having 3 Bb's...
>
> I wanted some really odd qualities
> & hence certain ratios seem to be "unrelated"
> in lattice system.

I understand, but I suspect that, considering how little 9:7 and 32:25
differ, and how many tones in your scale are closely related to the one
and how few to the other, that pitch is more likely to be _perceived_ as
a 9:7 by the audience, regardless of how you choose to label it.

--pH <manynote@library.wustl.edu> http://library.wustl.edu/~manynote
O
/\ "Hey--do you think I need to lose some weight?"
-\-\-- o