Re: interesting melodic structure

> From: jacky_ligon@...
> Subject: Melodic Scale Design & Golden Flutes
>
> --- In crazy_music@y..., "Graham Breed" <graham@m...> wrote:
> > How do you know if a scale will have an "interesting melodic
> > structure"? Is it more than trial and error?
> > Graham
>
> Graham,
>
> Hello!
>
> You've ask a very good question, and since I personally feel that
> there are few "universals" in microtonal scale design, I will attempt
> to answer this from my own subjective experience.

Well, since I've been scale searching from a melodic standpoint,
I was pretty interested in this reply (yes, the information that
is most missing in lattices is 'can I hum it').

I had been searching using "scale tree" approaches and having
some success. This scale certainly doesn't match that, but
seems to resemble something more "cell" based.

Assuming it really does repeat at the 1272c then I looked at it
as taking the 318 kernal and stacking it infinitely while
subdividing it in the followinng way.

318
121 197
75 121
75 46
46 75

The last step not taken in the original scale, but its just
sitting there so I took it. This makes the whole structure
diatonic and brings an occasional octave in for those who
want it.

For ETers, it would render well in 79 as

21
8 13
5 8
5 3
3 5

especially if you can compress the 'octave' to 1197c.

None of which says why it sounds good (I'll hear the examples
tonight or over the weekend) although it does have a bunch of
JI-intervals-tuned-better-than-12 (which doesn't say anything
either)...

None of it maps well to my equipment
which is "12 notes repeating at the octave from the set

0+-64c
100+-64c
etc."

Thanks for posting this Jacky, I'll spin the examples
and try playing with it as best as I can. (While waiting
for the sky to fall).

Bob Valentine

> None of it maps well to my equipment
> which is "12 notes repeating at the octave from the set
>
> 0+-64c
> 100+-64c
> etc."

Hi Bob

Robert walker's FTS is a marvelous tool for quickly trying out any
of the tunings posted, and you can use your computer as the keys.
>
But Jacky I am curious how you map the tuning to your keyboard. Or
are you using a midi wind controller? I personally have been unable
to get Scala to work with my Kurzweills, and usually either spin out
a midi file in LISP using Symbolic Composer, which I then sculpt in
Logic (don't get me started), or "adapt" it to 12 by picking and
choosing from FTS.

Graham could use also talk more about how you use Kyma with the
tunings. I enjoyed your mouth harp piece, especially the resonant
filter. Was that done in Kyma?

Mary

Mary wrote:> Graham could use also talk more about how you use Kyma with the> tunings.Why certainly! It's all done with Smalltalk expressions, so you havea lot of flexibility, but no compatibility with existing tools. I'veincluded an example below. I'm sure it'll be possible to get aprototype to work everything out from the list of cents values, but Idon't know when I'll put in the time to work it out.> I enjoyed your mouth harp piece, especially the resonant> filter. Was that done in Kyma?That should be "mouth organ" or "blues harp" or even "harmonica". Idon't know what mouth harps are, but apparently they do exist and aredifferent.Yes, the "foot" part of the foot and mouth organ was supplied usingKyma's much maligned filter, with a formant element to simulatetraditional resonance. I learnt that trick on the online forum.The "mouth" part is a real mouth organ I recorded through mysoundcard. It sounded quite harsh, so I ended up sending it throughmy regular guitar effects to round off the edges.The audio file is at <http://x31eq.com/fmorgan.mp3> foranybody interested. Consider it a spur to record something better ;)Graham"Jack Ligon's flute tuning"!Pitch is: (`MIDIKeyNumber -60 //12 * 1272.849/1200+ (((`MIDIKeyNumber - 60 mod: 12)of: { #(075.120121.546196.666318.212393.332439.758514.878636.424711.544757.971833.090954.6371029.7561076.1831151.3021272.849) })/1200) * 12) nn + 4c nn + (!PitchBend*2) nn.