letters vs. numbers

Oh, and regarding what must be the only issue on the notation
thread I *haven't* expressed an opinion on :), I prefer letters
to numbers for nominals. I'm not generally in favor of using
more than 10 nominals, but the first 12 English letters are
monosyllabic, and should work just fine.

Graham and Paul used numbers for their decimal notations, but
Paul, did you say you changed your mind in favor of letters (or
was that regarding the use of zero)? Erv extended A-G with the
Greek alphabet in his XH3 article, but I consider this tacky
and impractical.

-Carl

hi Carl,

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Carl Lumma <ekin@l...> wrote:

> Oh, and regarding what must be the only issue on the notation
> thread I *haven't* expressed an opinion on :), I prefer letters
> to numbers for nominals. I'm not generally in favor of using
> more than 10 nominals, but the first 12 English letters are
> monosyllabic, and should work just fine.
>
> Graham and Paul used numbers for their decimal notations, but
> Paul, did you say you changed your mind in favor of letters (or
> was that regarding the use of zero)? Erv extended A-G with the
> Greek alphabet in his XH3 article, but I consider this tacky
> and impractical.

i've always regarded this as somewhat of a thorny issue.

i don't like to use letters because they already have such
a well-established meaning in standard notation.

that's too bad, because the English alphabet offers
26 single-digit characters that could be used, which
would cover a lot of useful tunings.

think of how nicely 78edo could work, using the 26 nominals
and "^" and "v" as accidentals:

78edo
degree

0 A
1 A^
2 Bv
3 B
4 B^
5 Cv
6 C
.
.
.
74 Zv
75 Z
76 Z^
77 Av
78=0 A

in fact, by simply leaving off "Y" and "Z", this is an
excellent notation for 72edo. the upper end would be:

72edo
degree

.
.
.
68 Xv
69 X
70 X^
71 Av
72=0 A

but alas, as Joe keeps pointing out, musicians are hard
animals to re-train.

i personally thought that Erv's invokation of Greek letters
was a good idea. but i'd prefer to use all-Greek rather than
a mixture of Roman and Greek.

perhaps Greek for one tuning, runes for another, Chinese symbols
for another, etc.?

... the big problem there is that we want to be able to
write about tunings in emails, which limits us pretty much
to the ASCII character set.

-monz

-monz

>i don't like to use letters because they already have such
>a well-established meaning in standard notation.

So does everything else we're changing.

>think of how nicely 78edo could work, using the 26 nominals
>and "^" and "v" as accidentals:

As I say, I don't approve of more than 10 nominals, as a rule.

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Carl Lumma <ekin@l...> wrote:

> As I say, I don't approve of more than 10 nominals, as a rule.

Twelve nominals is a very logical system, especially when used with
five ledger lines.

>> As I say, I don't approve of more than 10 nominals, as a rule.
>
>Twelve nominals is a very logical system, especially when used with
>five ledger lines.

The serialists used a 12-tone scale melodically, I suppose. Of
course the nominals don't *have* to correspond to a melodic scale.
In my first post on this topic, I say 12, here I say 10 "as a
rule". As a rule I think we should be looking for scales with < 12
tones for a notation basis, and most systems have a < 12-tone MOS.
But whatever works for y'all.

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Carl Lumma <ekin@l...> wrote:

> Oh, and regarding what must be the only issue on the notation
> thread I *haven't* expressed an opinion on :), I prefer letters
> to numbers for nominals. I'm not generally in favor of using
> more than 10 nominals, but the first 12 English letters are
> monosyllabic, and should work just fine.
>
> Graham and Paul used numbers for their decimal notations, but
> Paul, did you say you changed your mind in favor of letters

yes. in working with other musicians, it turned out that numbers
already had *way* too many musical meanings, and using them for the
nominals too dissolved communication into, at best, a riotous fit of
laughter . . .

on 10/6/03 11:18 AM, Carl Lumma <ekin@lumma.org> wrote:

>> i don't like to use letters because they already have such
>> a well-established meaning in standard notation.
>
> So does everything else we're changing.
>
>> think of how nicely 78edo could work, using the 26 nominals
>> and "^" and "v" as accidentals:
>
> As I say, I don't approve of more than 10 nominals, as a rule.

I agree, but wonder what assumptions are made about relation of nominals to
staff positions. I was thinking that 26 staff positions is *less*
unreasonable than 26 nominals, tho I'd want to introduce some convention
like making every Nth line thicker to allow getting ones bearings.

To read from a staff, one does not not need to name the nominal out loud.
So the staff line/space "nominal" itself could be named using a reduced
nominal system combined with a "nominative accidental". So an implicit
stacking of accidentals is involved, creating a hierarchy.

I suppose this would interfere with making harmonic function transparent.
But it might be useful when there is a high density of utilized tones in a
given piece, avoiding the octatonic-with-7-nominal kind of problem. And an
expanded concept of key signature might allow functional meaning to be
retained. (Maybe this last point is a little cryptic, but I don't want to
get carried away with details yet.)

-Kurt

>
> -Carl
>
>
>
> You do not need web access to participate. You may subscribe through
> email. Send an empty email to one of these addresses:
> tuning-subscribe@yahoogroups.com - join the tuning group.
> tuning-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com - unsubscribe from the tuning group.
> tuning-nomail@yahoogroups.com - put your email message delivery on hold for
> the tuning group.
> tuning-digest@yahoogroups.com - change your subscription to daily digest mode.
> tuning-normal@yahoogroups.com - change your subscription to individual emails.
> tuning-help@yahoogroups.com - receive general help information.
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>

I'm expanding on the standard terms like M2 and m3 because it's lingua franca and it doesn't make whole lot of difference what you call them. I posted my stab at this at:

http://www.72note.com/nomkeyboards/46.html

It's just nice to call them something. Since I'm using 6 keyboards the names may eventually settle into terms each associated with one of the keyboards.

Rick

Kurt Bigler wrote:

>on 10/6/03 11:18 AM, Carl Lumma <ekin@lumma.org> wrote:
>
>>>i don't like to use letters because they already have such
>>>a well-established meaning in standard notation.
>>>
>>So does everything else we're changing.
>>
>>>think of how nicely 78edo could work, using the 26 nominals
>>>and "^" and "v" as accidentals:
>>>
>>As I say, I don't approve of more than 10 nominals, as a rule.
>>
>
>I agree, but wonder what assumptions are made about relation of nominals to
>staff positions. I was thinking that 26 staff positions is *less*
>unreasonable than 26 nominals, tho I'd want to introduce some convention
>like making every Nth line thicker to allow getting ones bearings.
>
>To read from a staff, one does not not need to name the nominal out loud.
>So the staff line/space "nominal" itself could be named using a reduced
>nominal system combined with a "nominative accidental". So an implicit
>stacking of accidentals is involved, creating a hierarchy.
>
>I suppose this would interfere with making harmonic function transparent.
>But it might be useful when there is a high density of utilized tones in a
>given piece, avoiding the octatonic-with-7-nominal kind of problem. And an
>expanded concept of key signature might allow functional meaning to be
>retained. (Maybe this last point is a little cryptic, but I don't want to
>get carried away with details yet.)
>
>-Kurt
>
>
>>-Carl
>>
>>
>>
>>You do not need web access to participate. You may subscribe through
>>email. Send an empty email to one of these addresses:
>>tuning-subscribe@yahoogroups.com - join the tuning group.
>>tuning-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com - unsubscribe from the tuning group.
>>tuning-nomail@yahoogroups.com - put your email message delivery on hold for
>>the tuning group.
>>tuning-digest@yahoogroups.com - change your subscription to daily digest mode.
>>tuning-normal@yahoogroups.com - change your subscription to individual emails.
>>tuning-help@yahoogroups.com - receive general help information.
>>
>>
>>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>You do not need web access to participate. You may subscribe through
>email. Send an empty email to one of these addresses:
> tuning-subscribe@yahoogroups.com - join the tuning group.
> tuning-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com - unsubscribe from the tuning group.
> tuning-nomail@yahoogroups.com - put your email message delivery on hold for the tuning group.
> tuning-digest@yahoogroups.com - change your subscription to daily digest mode.
> tuning-normal@yahoogroups.com - change your subscription to individual emails.
> tuning-help@yahoogroups.com - receive general help information.
> >
>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ >
>
>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Rick Tagawa <ricktagawa@e...> wrote:
> I'm expanding on the standard terms like M2 and m3 because it's
lingua
> franca and it doesn't make whole lot of difference what you call
them.
> I posted my stab at this at:
>
> http://www.72note.com/nomkeyboards/46.html

well, there are a lot of objections one could have to this
system . . . for example, 3/2 is a perfect 5 -- familiar enough,
since it's exactly what musicians call a perfect fifth. but

17 11/6 (1049.4¢) 1050¢ (#0.6¢) 63 quarter-tone 15 Q15

is just baffling. musicians know a 15th as a double octave, or a 2:1
ratio. so a "quarter-tone 15" is not 2400 cents, but 1050?

i could offer lots of other criticisms, but on your own page you link
to a graphic of mine which offers a very clear system of 72-equal
interval naming, similar to what's used in the boston microtonal
society:

http://www.72note.com/1/blackjackintervalmatrix.html

on the bottom and right sides of that graphic, you'll see names for
41 of the possible 72 intervals in an octave, in abbreviated form
with the guide on the lower left. hopefully the way this works is
obvious from looking at it.

as for your 46-note scale, the set of just ratios you list comprise
what is known as the "17-limit Tonality Diamond". there are more than
46 ratios in it, but 72-equal conflates some of them. if there's a
single note that doesn't turn off (the 1/1), maybe because it's a
drone or something, this is an interesting scale to explore because
it contains all the 17-limit otonalities (and utonalities) that
contain this note. blackjack, canasta, and studloco seem better
suited for melody, and for an unusually large number of consonant
harmonies, not tied to a single dronal center.