Re: Digest Number 332

In-Reply-To: <938424995.15682@onelist.com>
"weekswyl" (digest 332.9) wrote:

> I read with great interest the excerpts passed on by Greenwich on
> the
> 9000-year-old Chinese flute --- with passing reference to the Neaderthal
> one. The tunign resulting from the hole spacings are reported to
> approximate our diatonic scale. It is said to be intuitive --- that the
> octave is based on 8 rather than 5 or 10.

They say "the interval relationships of the sounds from hole 3 to hole 7
fitted reasonably well to the note sequence E6, D6, C6, B5, A5, with the
tone of hole 1 = A6 and hole 2 = F#6". Table 1 gives these numbers:

holes 1-2 284 cents minor third
holes 2-3 244 cents Slightly larger than a major second
(whole tone)
hole-7 to tube sound 260 cents Slightly smaller than a minor third,
slightly larger than a whole tone

Anyone who thinks 260 cents is only "slightly larger than a whole tone"
isn't really to be trusted. Looks more like 5-equal (240 cent steps) than
anything else, although they do say it's a 7-note near-octave.

They also say "tests revealed that the tiny hole next to hole 7 (Fig. 1)
was probably drilled to correct the off-pitch tone of the original hole
7; thus a tone of G#5 + 16 Hz was corrected to A5 - 11 Hz, which is much
closer to the octave of A6 - 36 Hz." As someone said before, this is a
weird way of measuring pitches. However, I reckon A5-11Hz and A6-36Hz
give an octave of 1164 cents. Same discrepancy as the others, but not so
bad for such a large interval. G#+16 to A-11 I make 45 cents. So maybe
they wanted a quartertone?

There is an MP3 file on the website, and it doesn't sound diatonic to me.
But I can't be sure as it's a Chinese tune, so I'd expect it to be in a
Chinese scale. Maybe someone would like to analyse it.

The URLs are horrible. Find your way from http://www.nature.com . Get
the sound file from the Supplementary Information page. Save it in case
the online copy is doctored to sound more diatonic!