2 intriguing "items"

1) This looks pretty intriguing as a possible electronic music
non-keyboard interface: http://web.media.mit.edu/~jpatten/audiopad/
It looks quite user-friendly and intuitive.

2) Interesting scale-tuning correlation [values in rounded cents]:

- "primitive Pelog" (IIRC cited by Colin McPhee):
102 , 258, 522, 678, 780, 936, 1200

- Pythagorean-like scale with 5th averaged from Chinese bamboo tubes (as
documented in SCALA):
48,
=> *102*,
156, 204,
=> *258*,
312, 366, 414, 468,
=> *522*,
570, 624,
=> *678*,
726,
=> *780*,
834, 882,
=> *936*,
990, 1044, 1092, 1146, 1200

Co-incidence or possible proof that there is a definite early Chinese
musical substrate to Indonesian music?

---
Hanuman Zhang,
musical mad scientist (no, I don't wanna take over the world, just the sound
spectrum...)

"What strange risk of hearing can bring sound to music - a hearing whose
obligation awakens a sensibility so new that it is forever a unique, new-born,
anti-death surprise, created now and now and now. .. a hearing whose moment
in time is always daybreak." - Lucia Dlugoszewski

"The wonderousness of the human mind is too great to be transferred into
music only by 7 or 12 elements of tone steps in one octave." - shakuhachi master
Masayuki Koga

"Music is the art of thinking with sounds." - Combarieu

"There's a rabbinical tradition that the music in heaven will be microtonal"
-annotative interpretation of Schottenstein Tehillim, 92:4, the verse being:
"Upon a ten-stringed * instrument and upon lyre, with singing accompanied by
harp." [* utilizing new tones]

NADA BRAHMA - Sanskrit, "sound [is the] Godhead"

"God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of himself." -Thomas
Merton

LILA - Sanskrit, "divine play/sport/whimsy" - "the universe is what happens
when God wants to play" - "joyous exercise of spontaneity involved in the art
of creation"

...improvisation is about change, about flux rather than stasis. ... you have
to be aware of the fact that improvisation is about a constant change. -
Steve Beresford

improvisation: "a process of liberation, a working around the assumptions
that define our civilization, and the results are open-ended." - John Berndt

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, czhang23@a... wrote:
> 2) Interesting scale-tuning correlation [values in rounded cents]:
>
> - "primitive Pelog" (IIRC cited by Colin McPhee):
> 102 , 258, 522, 678, 780, 936, 1200
>
> - Pythagorean-like scale with 5th averaged from Chinese bamboo
tubes (as
> documented in SCALA):
> 48,
> => *102*,
> 156, 204,
> => *258*,
> 312, 366, 414, 468,
> => *522*,
> 570, 624,
> => *678*,
> 726,
> => *780*,
> 834, 882,
> => *936*,
> 990, 1044, 1092, 1146, 1200
>
> Co-incidence or possible proof that there is a definite early
Chinese
> musical substrate to Indonesian music?
>
> ---
> Hanuman Zhang,

This is intriguing. But of course there are many other possibilities
besides the two you suggest.

I'd like to know more about the first tuning above. The second is a
purely theoretical construction based on iterating a 768 cent "fifth".
It is only that fifth that is claimed to be derived from Chinese
bamboo pipes (of what place and time?).

Pelog tunings do also contain a chain (or chains) of "fifths" of about
that size, but the one given looks too perfectly so, and so I suspect
it to be partly theoretical too.

It might be that there was no influence from one to the other and the
768 cent generator just happens to be the best solution to a
particular musical problem (like the evolution of the eye as a
solution to a biological problem, ocurring at least three times
independently).

But what exactly is the problem that it solves? Paul Erlich has
suggested that, in the case of Pelog, it is the problem of
approximating 4:5 and 5:6 frequency ratios with a short chain of
approximate 2:3's, even shorter than that of meantone. Paul's argument
relies on inharmonic timbres to eliminate the objectionable nature of
the 24 cent errors involved. Unfortunately, this doesn't work for
bamboo pipes. I think there may be some other explanation of the 768
cent generator.

-- Dave Keenan

It seems like I'm going senile, at 42. :-)

Everywhere in my previous post that I wrote 768 cent "fifth" or 768
cent generator, I meant to write 678 cent "fifth" or 678 cent generator.

I also wrote:
> Paul Erlich has
> suggested that, in the case of Pelog, it is the problem of
> approximating 4:5 and 5:6 frequency ratios with a short chain of
> approximate 2:3's, even shorter than that of meantone.

In fact the complexity is the same. In meantone the approximate 4:5 is
four generators, while the 5:6 is -3, in Paul's "pelogic" temperament
it's the other way 'round. However the errors in pelogic are about
four times larger.

Many thanks to Paul Erlich for pointing out the above errors.

-- Dave Keenan

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Dave Keenan" <D.KEENAN@U...> wrote:
> It seems like I'm going senile, at 42. :-)
>
> Everywhere in my previous post that I wrote 768 cent "fifth" or 768
> cent generator, I meant to write 678 cent "fifth" or 678 cent
generator.

That's a relief. It sounded like raving lunacy.