interactions between tuning and timbre

Kraig and Ozan's recent discussion about
about music based on the spectrum of a tombak
reminds me that I ought to make an announcement...
the second edition of Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale
is finally available (after having sold out the
first edition a year or so ago).

The basic idea is the same as the first edition:
specifying the relationship between the spectrum of a sound
and the intervals (and hence the tunings) in which the sound
can be played most consonantly. In case you haven't seen it before,
the basic ideas are described at:

http://eceserv0.ece.wisc.edu/~sethares/consemi.html

The new edition has quite a few things that might interest
alternate tuning people, including:

An extensive discussion of Paul Erlich's harmonic entropy model,
placing it in perspective, and including an appendix on how it is
computed.

A new chapter on adaptive tunings, as well as discussion of
Werner Mohrlok's hermode tuning, and of John deLaubenfel's
spring tuning.

A "time domain model" in which the sensory dissonance can be
calculated without the artifice of Fourier transforms.

A new chapter on Thai traditional tunings, and how the
Thai 7-tet scale fits the tuning-timbre model.

Perhaps the greatest change is to the CD --
which now includes over 3.5 hours of sound examples,
compositions, and comparisons.

The table of contents is at:

http://eceserv0.ece.wisc.edu/~sethares/contents.html

links are at:

http://eceserv0.ece.wisc.edu/~sethares/TTSS2.html

and the first chapter is online at:

http://eceserv0.ece.wisc.edu/~sethares/paperspdf/ttss_intro.pdf

I welcome comments and thoughts, and if you happen to notice
any typos or bloopers in the web pages, please let me know.

--Bill Sethares

Hello, congratulations to Bill for the second edition of TTSS.

Is the book, in its new edition, available elsewhere than at Springer's ?

In avid expectation ;-)

Dominique Larré
----- Original Message -----
From: Bill Sethares
To: tuning@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2005 3:45 PM
Subject: [tuning] interactions between tuning and timbre

Kraig and Ozan's recent discussion about
about music based on the spectrum of a tombak
reminds me that I ought to make an announcement...
the second edition of Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale
is finally available (after having sold out the
first edition a year or so ago).

<. . . . . .>

Dear Bill, I am fascinated with the depth of your recent book where I hear you have also reserved a chapter on the research of my senior colleague Can Akkoc. Is there a feasible way I can obtain a copy?

Cordially,
Ozan
----- Original Message -----
From: Bill Sethares
To: tuning@yahoogroups.com
Sent: 12 Ocak 2005 Çarşamba 16:45
Subject: [tuning] interactions between tuning and timbre

Kraig and Ozan's recent discussion about
about music based on the spectrum of a tombak
reminds me that I ought to make an announcement...
the second edition of Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale
is finally available (after having sold out the
first edition a year or so ago).

The basic idea is the same as the first edition:
specifying the relationship between the spectrum of a sound
and the intervals (and hence the tunings) in which the sound
can be played most consonantly. In case you haven't seen it before,
the basic ideas are described at:

http://eceserv0.ece.wisc.edu/~sethares/consemi.html

The new edition has quite a few things that might interest
alternate tuning people, including:

An extensive discussion of Paul Erlich's harmonic entropy model,
placing it in perspective, and including an appendix on how it is
computed.

A new chapter on adaptive tunings, as well as discussion of
Werner Mohrlok's hermode tuning, and of John deLaubenfel's
spring tuning.

A "time domain model" in which the sensory dissonance can be
calculated without the artifice of Fourier transforms.

A new chapter on Thai traditional tunings, and how the
Thai 7-tet scale fits the tuning-timbre model.

Perhaps the greatest change is to the CD --
which now includes over 3.5 hours of sound examples,
compositions, and comparisons.

The table of contents is at:

http://eceserv0.ece.wisc.edu/~sethares/contents.html

links are at:

http://eceserv0.ece.wisc.edu/~sethares/TTSS2.html

and the first chapter is online at:

http://eceserv0.ece.wisc.edu/~sethares/paperspdf/ttss_intro.pdf

I welcome comments and thoughts, and if you happen to notice
any typos or bloopers in the web pages, please let me know.

--Bill Sethares

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I've read the first chapter of this excellent book just now. My only criticism is the lack of any references (as far as I can see) to the sesquitonal character of maqam music, which would have been a major contribution to this science if included. Why is the Middle-Eastern accumulations skipped in favor of far-flung musics of Asia?

Cordially,
Ozan Yarman
----- Original Message -----
From: Bill Sethares
To: tuning@yahoogroups.com
Sent: 12 Ocak 2005 Çarşamba 16:45
Subject: [tuning] interactions between tuning and timbre

Kraig and Ozan's recent discussion about
about music based on the spectrum of a tombak
reminds me that I ought to make an announcement...
the second edition of Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale
is finally available (after having sold out the
first edition a year or so ago).

Dominique Larré asked:

> Is the book, in its new edition,
> available elsewhere than at Springer's ?
> In avid expectation ;-)

Hi Dominique -- Apparently TTSS is on line at www.amazon.fr at

http://www.amazon.fr/exec/obidos/ASIN/1852337974/qid=1105715308/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/402-7874490-6147325

but it appears very expensive compared to www.amazon.com (the US one)

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1852337974/qid=1105715432/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl14/102-0463171-9031364?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

which seems to have a discount (they claim 27%).

Ozan wrote:

> Dear Bill, I am fascinated with the depth of your recent book where
> I hear you have also reserved a chapter on the research of my senior
> colleague Can Akkoc. Is there a feasible way I can obtain a copy?

Well, yes and no.

One important aspect of Can Akkoc's work is the
idea of "stochastic scales" where the pitches/frequencies
of the scale members are not defined by an exact value,
but rather are defined by a distribution about some value.
It is in this context that I draw from Akkoc's work -- though in
the process I do talk about the maqam idea and some of the relevant
scales.

As for availability, I know that many libraries are purchasing
TTSS. Using your local library, or perhaps asking through
inter-library loan would be an inexpensive (albeit slow) way to
read it.

Ozan continues:

> I've read the first chapter of this excellent book just now.
> My only criticism is the lack of any references (as far as I can
> see) to the sesquitonal character of maqam music, which would
> have been a major contribution to this science if included.
> Why is the Middle-Eastern accumulations skipped in favor of
> far-flung musics of Asia?

I'm afraid that, when I wrote TTSS, I was unaware of
this aspect of maqam music, though I am of course eager to
find out more.

As you are probably know, the major premise in TTSS is to
correlate the spectrum of instruments used in various musics to
the scales that the instruments play in. The three examples
that I have studied are:

(1) "Western" instruments - primarily harmonic, which correlate
with scales much like the various JIs.

(2) Indonesian instruments - the spectra of various gamelan
instruments correlates well both the slendro and pelog scales.

(3) Thai classical instruments - the spectrum of the renat
family of tuned percussion correlates well with the (approximately)
7-tet traditional scale.

I would be thrilled to learn of a fourth example --
perhaps the spectrum of the tombak is similarly related to
the traditional scales?

--Bill

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Bill Sethares" <sethares@e...> wrote:
>
> the second edition of Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale
> is finally available (after having sold out the
> first edition a year or so ago).

I am very happy to hear this, after being unable to buy the
first edition in 2002. In my opinion, it is a must have book
for any good music theory collection!

> The new edition has quite a few things that might interest
> alternate tuning people, including:
>
> An extensive discussion of Paul Erlich's harmonic entropy model,
> placing it in perspective, and including an appendix on how it is
> computed.

Great! I always wanted a simple, clean explanation...

> A new chapter on adaptive tunings, as well as discussion of
> Werner Mohrlok's hermode tuning, and of John deLaubenfel's
> spring tuning.
>
> A "time domain model" in which the sensory dissonance can be
> calculated without the artifice of Fourier transforms.
>
> A new chapter on Thai traditional tunings, and how the
> Thai 7-tet scale fits the tuning-timbre model.
>
> Perhaps the greatest change is to the CD --
> which now includes over 3.5 hours of sound examples,
> compositions, and comparisons.
>
> The table of contents is at:
>
> http://eceserv0.ece.wisc.edu/~sethares/contents.html
>
> links are at:
>
> http://eceserv0.ece.wisc.edu/~sethares/TTSS2.html

This link doesn't work

> I welcome comments and thoughts, and if you happen to notice
> any typos or bloopers in the web pages, please let me know.

If I recall correctly, in the first edition you don't discuss
Ernst Terhardt's theories of a spectra of partials fusing into
a virtual pitch (actually, I remember you mentioning something
about his early version of a neural network, but I think that
you don't persue this line of thought much when you talk about
eliminating or moving partials that conflict with each other)
Am I right? What do you think of these ideas?

Also Richard Parncutt has some code on the web that calculates
dissonance by a different algorithm, I think. (I have it here
somewhere, and have been meaning to compare it to yours, but
I'm in the middle of another project at the moment).

--Jeff

Jeff wrote:

> http://eceserv0.ece.wisc.edu/~sethares/TTSS2.html
> This link doesn't work

Strange... I never knew that .htm and .html were different.
Apparently the link is

http://eceserv0.ece.wisc.edu/~sethares/TTSS2.htm

(an overview of the contents of the CD-ROM that accompanies
TTSS).

> If I recall correctly, in the first edition you don't discuss
> Ernst Terhardt's theories of a spectra of partials fusing into
> a virtual pitch (actually, I remember you mentioning something
> about his early version of a neural network, but I think that
> you don't persue this line of thought much when you talk about
> eliminating or moving partials that conflict with each other)
> Am I right? What do you think of these ideas?

In the first edition I did mention the virtual pitch
ideas (in the sense of briefly discussing and
referencing them), but the new edition is more thorough --
there are a couple of pages devoted to
virtual pitch along with several sound examples.

Of course, as you move the partials around, you
may (or may not) change the pitch of the sound.
There are formulas that approximate the pitch shift
to be expected (they involve the frequency change
of a subset of the most prominant partials).
My experience is that when you shift the partials
only a little (as in the various n-tet optimized timbres
or the bulk of the adaptively tuned examples)
then the pitch shift is essentially undetectable.
On the other hand, when you shift them a lot
(for example, stretching by a factor like 2.1)
then the effect becomes significant.
There is an excellent study of the perception of
pitch shift due to timbral change by Cohen
("Effects of inharmonic partials on interval perception"
in Music Perception - spring 1984.)

> Also Richard Parncutt has some code on the web that calculates
> dissonance by a different algorithm, I think. (I have it here
> somewhere, and have been meaning to compare it to yours, but
> I'm in the middle of another project at the moment).

I haven't seen Parncutt's code, but of course I know his book.
The book tends to take into account more aspects of perception than in
my calculations. For example, he tends to include the effects of
masking in the roughness calculation (whereas I do not do so
explicitely). I also do not explicitly account for the Fletcher-Munson
loudness curves (though I have incoprporated this as a common
preprocessing step). In any modelling endeavor there is always a
trade-off between simplicity/clarity and ultimate accuracy. I suspect
that in the normal range of usage our algorithms would give much the
same results, though in extreme situations they might differ.

--Bill Sethares

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Bill Sethares" <sethares@e...> wrote:
>
>
> Jeff wrote:
>
> > http://eceserv0.ece.wisc.edu/~sethares/TTSS2.html
> > This link doesn't work
>
> Strange... I never knew that .htm and .html were different.
> Apparently the link is
>
> http://eceserv0.ece.wisc.edu/~sethares/TTSS2.htm

Of course, t.htm and t.html are different files to the
operating system! (and .htm is just an ancient artifact of
Windows not being able to handle dot extensions of more than
3 characters). But what I suspect is really going on here
is that the web server can be configured to fetch the .htm
if it can't find the .html version of the named file, and
maybe that was the problem -- it wasn't configured to do that,
or atleast not do that in the directory where you have
the file.

> There is an excellent study of the perception of
> pitch shift due to timbral change by Cohen
> ("Effects of inharmonic partials on interval perception"
> in Music Perception - spring 1984.)

thanks!

--Jeff

Due to the predominance of the (much inconsistent) Arel-Ezgi theory, I cannot in good faith recommend a reliable source to analyze maqams other than the original records of masters such as Tanburi Cemil, Ihsan Ozgen, Necdet Yasar and the like. For the moment, Timeplot-Histogram analysis suggested by Can Akkoc seems to be the only sure way of having a glimpse of the inherent structure of maqams bound to the timbres of traditional instruments.

Respectfully,
Ozan

>Due to the predominance of the (much inconsistent) Arel-Ezgi theory, I
>cannot in good faith recommend a reliable source to analyze maqams other
>than the original records of masters such as Tanburi Cemil, Ihsan Ozgen,
>Necdet Yasar and the like. For the moment, Timeplot-Histogram analysis
>suggested by Can Akkoc seems to be the only sure way of having a glimpse
>of the inherent structure of maqams bound to the timbres of traditional
>instruments.

Thanks for the note, Ozan. I find Can Akkoc's work fascinating, and I
hope to see more of it in the future!

-Carl

I have the feeling you will be delighted to know that I decided to write my doctorate thesis in English with the pretentious title:

The Microtonal Theory Of Turkish Maqam Music Consistent With Measurements Derived From Actual Practice: A Comparative Assessment And Reformulation Of Historical Treatises Based On Performance Analyses

----- Original Message -----
From: Carl Lumma
To: tuning@yahoogroups.com
Sent: 18 Ocak 2005 Salı 4:15
Subject: Re: [tuning] Re: interactions between tuning and timbre

Thanks for the note, Ozan. I find Can Akkoc's work fascinating, and I
hope to see more of it in the future!

-Carl

>I have the feeling you will be delighted to know that I decided to
>write my doctorate thesis in English with the pretentious title:
>
>The Microtonal Theory Of Turkish Maqam Music Consistent With
>Measurements Derived From Actual Practice: A Comparative Assessment
>And Reformulation Of Historical Treatises Based On Performance
>Analyses

Wonderful!

-Carl

I could send you a working-plan of my thesis if you would be so kind to review it for me dear Carl. Would that be ok?

Cordially,
Ozan
----- Original Message -----
From: Carl Lumma
To: tuning@yahoogroups.com
Sent: 18 Ocak 2005 Salı 11:27
Subject: Re: [tuning] Re: interactions between tuning and timbre

>I have the feeling you will be delighted to know that I decided to
>write my doctorate thesis in English with the pretentious title:
>
>The Microtonal Theory Of Turkish Maqam Music Consistent With
>Measurements Derived From Actual Practice: A Comparative Assessment
>And Reformulation Of Historical Treatises Based On Performance
>Analyses

Wonderful!

-Carl

Carl,

Don't just stop there. Keep going.

Can Akkoc

Carl Lumma <ekin@lumma.org> wrote:

>Due to the predominance of the (much inconsistent) Arel-Ezgi theory, I cannot in good faith recommend a reliable source to analyze maqams other than the original records of masters such as Tanburi Cemil, Ihsan Ozgen, Necdet Yasar and the like. For the moment, Timeplot-Histogram analysis suggested by Can Akkoc seems to be the only sure way of having a glimpse of the inherent structure of maqams bound to the timbres of traditional instruments.

Thanks for the note, Ozan. I find Can Akkoc's work fascinating, and I hope to see more of it in the future!

-Carl