Re: Digest Number 3455 - Reply to Monz - re: granularity of 88edo - combing your hares

I fine such arguments dangerous and resembles the one that put mircotonality back maybe 50 years. being the one that 1.5 cents no one is going to note the difference of which gave us 768. the worst , most unusable piece of ________ one can have. throws all types of beats that override the very tuning one wishes to hear. just throw it in the trash folks, there is no way you can use it and have any idea what it is you are tuning.
It is also dangerous that no one will use more than 31 or 19 tones. Someone like Dan Sterns might use that many at once

hi Charles,

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Charles Lucy <lucy@h...> wrote:

>> My point here was to criticise the inherent granularity
>> of 88edo.
>> >> My use of "any chosen interval" said nothing about the
>> "chosen interval" being from any specific tuning system.
>> I was emphasising the limitation of having a set number
>> of intervals per octave.
>> Maybe I should have used the word "random" or "chance".
>> What I stated was/is entirely correct.
>> >> "The greater the distance between the teeth of your comb
>> (rake?); the fewer the hairs (hares?) you are likely to catch."
> >

i understand what you're saying about the granularity of
88-edo, and also about the philosophical difference between
Harrison's conception (and presumably yours) of LucyTuning.

but i fail to see the point of your "criticism", because
in most cases a musician is not going to use more than
say a 19 or 31 note subset of either 88-edo or LucyTuning,
and if that's the case, there won't be any real audible
difference between the two. as i point out on my webpage, a 31-tone chain of 88-edo exhibits only a little more than a 1/2-cent error from the same chain in LucyTuning. for a 19-tone chain, the
error is little more than 1/3-cent.

philosopical difference, yes. mathematical difference, yes. audible difference, no.

and thanks for the link to Harrison's description of
the tuning. that's exactly what i wanted from you.

--
Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/>
The Wandering Medicine Show
KXLU <http://www.kxlu.com/main.html> 88.9 FM Wed 8-9 pm Los Angeles

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@a...> wrote:

> I fine such arguments dangerous and resembles the one that put
mircotonality back maybe 50 years. being the one that 1.5 cents no one
is going to note the difference of which gave us 768. the worst , most
unusable piece of ________ one can have. throws all types of beats
that override the very tuning one wishes to hear. just throw it in the
trash folks, there is no way you can use it and have any idea what it
is you are tuning.

That depends entirely on what you want to use it for. It has several
meantone tunings, for instance, and as I pointed out a while back,
there are even temperaments for which it is an optimal tuning.

hi Kraig,

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@a...> wrote:

> I fine such arguments dangerous and resembles the one
> that put mircotonality back maybe 50 years. being the
> one that 1.5 cents no one is going to note the difference
> of which gave us 768. the worst , most unusable piece
> of ________ one can have. throws all types of beats that
> override the very tuning one wishes to hear.

yes, that's true ... but the point i was making was that
in most cases the error would be less than 1/2-cent, which
would still create beats, but they would be so slow that
they would only matter in situations where the music
moved slowly enough that they'd be perceivable, which
is only a small minority of cases.

> just throw it in the trash folks, there is no way you
> can use it and have any idea what it is you are tuning.
> It is also dangerous that no one will use more than 31
> or 19 tones. Someone like Dan Sterns might use that many
> at once

but since you are responding to what i wrote, please
take note of what i did and did not write:

> [me, monz:]
> but i fail to see the point of your "criticism", because
> in most cases a musician is not going to use more than
> say a 19 or 31 note subset of either 88-edo or LucyTuning,
> and if that's the case, there won't be any real audible
> difference between the two.

i wrote "in most cases" ... i never said that "no one will
use more than 31 or 19 tones".

-monz