Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning sense of no limitations!

I'm really feeling that the combination of Sonar with the z3ta+
microtonal softsynth gives a since of limitless possibilities! I
don't have to write for particular instrumental sounds anymore: I
just make my own! Sounds are so much more suitable to the structures
of a composition. And, additionally, one doesn't have to deal with
fickle performers who don't want to do contemporary music and
microtonality in the first place! :) This is a great tool.

I still have one complaint about the Blackjack tuning system. I know
the inventors are going to jump all over me for this, but I say this
as somebody who has had some experience (like 30 years) composing
about every day and trying to do creative projects: Blackjack is not
entirely an *aural* scale but is, to a certain degree, a
*theoretical* one.

In other words, because the small steps are only 33 cents apart and
there are frequently two that can be part of a consonant triad (one
is a *wrong* one and the other one the "correct" just one) it's
possible to make "mistakes" that later have to be corrected in a
theoretical appraisal. That is not an entirely aural process. You
can say what you will. It's not entirely aural in the way that some
other scales are aural, including 12-tET. One *knows* when
the "wrong" note is played immediately. They are distinct enough in
terms of distance.

However, Blackjack has so many other attractive qualities, including
the extreme notational ease, that I suppose this is just a quibble...
but here I am quibbling... :)

J. Pehrson

P.S. Hope to be more involved in the lists again soon. Out for
various reasons too mundane to recount.

🔗Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@svpal.org>

🔗Guglielmo <gugliel@guglielmomusic.com>

Gene Ward Smith wrote:
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Joseph Pehrson" <jpehrson@r...> wrote:
> > >>In other words, because the small steps are only 33 cents apart and >>there are frequently two that can be part of a consonant triad (one >>is a *wrong* one and the other one the "correct" just one) it's >>possible to make "mistakes" that later have to be corrected in a >>theoretical appraisal. > > It seems to me that if you are more than a comma off, it's not going
> to sound right on a chord, when you compare it to the "correct" chord.
> If you were, for instance, working with 171-et, where the step size is
> seven cents, this would make more sense, but 33 cents is pretty noticable.
> Defending what Joseph said: in one chord, sure it's easy to hear; but in a composition with moving parts and some length, and human fallibility, it can be very difficult to catch these problems. Particularly when some dissonance is also involved, even something as simple as passing tones.

Don't know how to suggest fixing it (that's what good players do, assuming they understand the tuning and agree with it); but just a voice of sympathy that mistakes are indeed all too possible.

guglielmo

🔗Joseph Pehrson <jpehrson@rcn.com>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <gwsmith@s...> wrote:
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Joseph Pehrson" <jpehrson@r...>
wrote:
>
> > In other words, because the small steps are only 33 cents apart
and
> > there are frequently two that can be part of a consonant triad
(one
> > is a *wrong* one and the other one the "correct" just one) it's
> > possible to make "mistakes" that later have to be corrected in a
> > theoretical appraisal.
>
> Would you say the same about 31-et? What about 46 or 53?
>
> It seems to me that if you are more than a comma off, it's not going
> to sound right on a chord, when you compare it to the "correct"
chord.
> If you were, for instance, working with 171-et, where the step size
is
> seven cents, this would make more sense, but 33 cents is pretty
noticable.

***Hi Gene!

Well, certainly your point is well taken that I should be able to
hear a 33 cent difference!

The "problem" is in the composition process, where one has to
"quickly" put down or play something and then something else.
Otherwise, one might forget it. At least *I* might forget it! :) I
understand that Mozart could imagine the entire work in his head in
one swoop, but I'm not quite in that league! :)

So, it amount to "fixing" things later, something that I don't have
to do in 12-tET where there is less ambiguity. (Not that I'm not
entirely sick of 12 equal for the most part -- I am... :)

It's also the *structure* of Blackjack. 31-tET isn't like that since
all the steps are equal. With Blackjack there are two smaller steps
close together. One is the "right," "just" one that completes a
triad, and the other one sounds just fine, but isn't the just one.
If I prefer just intonation, as I generally do, I have to go back
and "correct" such things. Most of the time, I prefer the just
version, even though I hit the "other" one by mistake and was
temporarily satisfied with it...

This is what I mean when I say that the process is not entirely
"aural" on the first improv...

best,

🔗Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@svpal.org>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Joseph Pehrson" <jpehrson@r...> wrote:

> It's also the *structure* of Blackjack. 31-tET isn't like that since
> all the steps are equal. With Blackjack there are two smaller steps
> close together. One is the "right," "just" one that completes a
> triad, and the other one sounds just fine, but isn't the just one.
> If I prefer just intonation, as I generally do, I have to go back
> and "correct" such things.

I don't know if it would be better or worse, but Canasta is certainly
worthy of more attention that has been paid to it. It is far more
regular than Blackjack (in 72-et, the large step is 50% larger than
the small; in 175-et, 40% larger) and so the structure, at least, is
smoother. You could think of it as a 31-et adjusted to make some of
the chords smoother, but of course that just means there are things
which would have been chords of 31-et, which now have been adjusted to
be less smooth. This is typical of a MOS with a high degree of
regularity in terms of the ratio of the larger step to the small one.
Comparing Canasta to Meantone[12], 72-et would correspond to 31-et
meantone, and 175-et to 74-et meantone. The wolf versions of chords
would be usable, but whether you were in wolf or non-wolf territory
would be depend on where you were in the chain of secors.

🔗Joseph Pehrson <jpehrson@rcn.com>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <gwsmith@s...> wrote:
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Joseph Pehrson" <jpehrson@r...>
wrote:
>
> > It's also the *structure* of Blackjack. 31-tET isn't like that
since
> > all the steps are equal. With Blackjack there are two smaller
steps
> > close together. One is the "right," "just" one that completes a
> > triad, and the other one sounds just fine, but isn't the just
one.
> > If I prefer just intonation, as I generally do, I have to go back
> > and "correct" such things.
>
> I don't know if it would be better or worse, but Canasta is
certainly
> worthy of more attention that has been paid to it. It is far more
> regular than Blackjack (in 72-et, the large step is 50% larger than
> the small; in 175-et, 40% larger) and so the structure, at least, is
> smoother. You could think of it as a 31-et adjusted to make some of
> the chords smoother, but of course that just means there are things
> which would have been chords of 31-et, which now have been adjusted
to
> be less smooth. This is typical of a MOS with a high degree of
> regularity in terms of the ratio of the larger step to the small
one.
> Comparing Canasta to Meantone[12], 72-et would correspond to 31-et
> meantone, and 175-et to 74-et meantone. The wolf versions of chords
> would be usable, but whether you were in wolf or non-wolf territory
> would be depend on where you were in the chain of secors.

***Well, this is an interesting suggestion, Gene! I'll have to think
about trying this. I guess the only "downside" would be the size of
the octave on the physical keyboard. Initially, when "we all" :) (I
did mostly resting) invented Blackjack, I was looking for something
with an octave of around 19 notes...

But, I suppose with purely electronic means, this wouldn't be such a
serious limitation...

🔗Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@svpal.org>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Joseph Pehrson" <jpehrson@r...> wrote:

> ***Well, this is an interesting suggestion, Gene! I'll have to think
> about trying this. I guess the only "downside" would be the size of
> the octave on the physical keyboard. Initially, when "we all" :) (I
> did mostly resting) invented Blackjack, I was looking for something
> with an octave of around 19 notes...

The most obvious ways of exploiting a 19 note MOS if the 5-limit will
not suffice are clearly meantone and magic. Meantone in 50-et and
magic in 41-et both have steps such that the ratio large/small is 1.5,
which is pretty smooth--much more so than Blackjack. If the 5-limit
will do for you, hanson (kleismic) is excellent, and sensi
(semisixths) is still another 7 or more limit possibility.

The best 19 note MOS for your purposes, I think, would have been
magic; the tuning you get from 41-et is not up to the level of 72, but
it isn't bad. Magic also has a 22-note MOS, as does orwell. Of course,
you could simply use Miracle[19] if it doesn't have to be a MOS, but
now that's even more irregular than Blackjack.

🔗Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@svpal.org>

🔗Dave Keenan <d.keenan@bigpond.net.au>

Gene,

Joseph's brief, that resulted in the rediscovery of George Secor's
"Miracle" temperament, was for a subset of 72-ET with about 19 notes
that maximised the 7-limit JI possibilities.

Paul Erlich and I found several good ones. I pointed out that they
were all coming from the 31 note subset we now call Canasta. Paul
pointed out that this was linear with a generator of 7/72-oct and had
a 21-note MOS he dubbed blackjack. At the time its obviously good
harmonic and modulatory properties won out over its less than ideal
melodic ones.

However, my final answer to Joseph's question was in fact not
Blackjack, but a 19-note tetrachordal convex subset of the
miracle/meantone planar temperament, which also happens to be a
72-ET-tempered version of Rami Vitale's Byzantine superset scale, and
was, I believe, later discovered by yourself independently. Namely

Bbt Ft . . .
B\ F#\ C#\ G#\ D#\
C G D A E
Db/ Ab/ Eb/ Bb/ F/
. . . Bf F#f
. . . .

Fifths horizontal, secors vertical, with dots showing missing notes in
a continuous chain of secors wrapping around vertically.

Legend:
A-G, # b as for 12-ET
t -2 steps of 72-ET (7-comma down)
\ -1 step of 72-ET (5-comma down)
/ +1 step of 72-ET (5-comma up)
f +2 steps of 72-ET (7-comma up)

It has 13 notes in common with Blackjack.

Joseph,

At first I thought, if it sounds all right to you, why let theory
dictate. You're the composer.

But now it seems you're really saying that you sometimes have to
correct them after a later _listening_. So it's not really just
theory, it's just that with those 33 cent inflections you can miss it
first time thru, where you never would with larger steps.

One way to improve this situation would be to use a more even 72-ET
subset of around 19 notes that still has lots of 7-limit
possibilities, auch as the "neo-byzantine" superset above. This has
only three of those 33 cent inflections instead of the 11 that
blackjack has.

But of course it is much less regular than blackjack, being planar
rather than linear. There are four edges to fall off rather than just
two ends. And of course you already have an enormous cognitive
investment in blackjack.

Another way would be to deliberately limit yourself to inflection-free
subsets of blackjack at any given point in a composition, but allow
this to modulate. Such as this 7-note tetrachordal Byzantine
liturgical mode.

G Ab/ B\ C D Eb/ F#\

in steps of 72-ET it goes 7 16 7 12 7 16 7 and appears in 7 positions
in blackjack. It contains one 7-limit otonal and one 7-limit utonal
tetrad and some 5-limit triads.

Or this 10 note tetrachordal expansion of it.

G Af Ab/ B\ C Db/ D Ef Eb/ F#\

which appears in 6 positions in blackjack.

-- Dave Keenan

🔗Joseph Pehrson <jpehrson@rcn.com>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Dave Keenan" <d.keenan@b...> wrote:
> Gene,
>
> Joseph's brief, that resulted in the rediscovery of George Secor's
> "Miracle" temperament, was for a subset of 72-ET with about 19 notes
> that maximised the 7-limit JI possibilities.
>
> Paul Erlich and I found several good ones. I pointed out that they
> were all coming from the 31 note subset we now call Canasta. Paul
> pointed out that this was linear with a generator of 7/72-oct and
had
> a 21-note MOS he dubbed blackjack. At the time its obviously good
> harmonic and modulatory properties won out over its less than ideal
> melodic ones.
>
> However, my final answer to Joseph's question was in fact not
> Blackjack, but a 19-note tetrachordal convex subset of the
> miracle/meantone planar temperament, which also happens to be a
> 72-ET-tempered version of Rami Vitale's Byzantine superset scale,
and
> was, I believe, later discovered by yourself independently. Namely
>
> Bbt Ft . . .
> B\ F#\ C#\ G#\ D#\
> C G D A E
> Db/ Ab/ Eb/ Bb/ F/
> . . . Bf F#f
> . . . .
>
> Fifths horizontal, secors vertical, with dots showing missing notes
in
> a continuous chain of secors wrapping around vertically.
>
> Legend:
> A-G, # b as for 12-ET
> t -2 steps of 72-ET (7-comma down)
> \ -1 step of 72-ET (5-comma down)
> / +1 step of 72-ET (5-comma up)
> f +2 steps of 72-ET (7-comma up)
>
> It has 13 notes in common with Blackjack.
>
> Joseph,
>
> At first I thought, if it sounds all right to you, why let theory
> dictate. You're the composer.
>

***Hello Dave!

So nice hearing from you! Yes, I'm rather inclined to go this route,
especially after Margo's recent post...

> But now it seems you're really saying that you sometimes have to
> correct them after a later _listening_. So it's not really just
> theory, it's just that with those 33 cent inflections you can miss
it
> first time thru, where you never would with larger steps.
>

***This is correct. It could be, though, that *either* version works
fine in the context of my piece (in fact, on a "global" view, this
probably *is* the case...)

So, I'm correcting in order to be a "cool low-ratio JI composer..."

Maybe, that's not the kind of rationale I need in my work at this
point... :)

> One way to improve this situation would be to use a more even 72-ET
> subset of around 19 notes that still has lots of 7-limit
> possibilities, auch as the "neo-byzantine" superset above. This has
> only three of those 33 cent inflections instead of the 11 that
> blackjack has.
>

***This is an amazingly well-organized scale idea, even using fifths
as a generator!... and it's still in 72-tET! Could you work me up a
quick Scala file on this one (with the appropriate file name)?? Not
that I couldn't do this myself, but it would take me 30 minutes as
opposed to your 5 minutes... :)

> But of course it is much less regular than blackjack, being planar
> rather than linear. There are four edges to fall off rather than
just
> two ends. And of course you already have an enormous cognitive
> investment in blackjack.
>

***Well, since I was planning to use Blackjack exclusively for,
possibly, the rest of my life, one might say that... :)

On the other hand, I'm working now with the z3ta+ microtonal software
synth which handles Scala files with ease, so I can go from one
tuning land to another with a facility I've never before
experienced... And, of course, anything that is 72-tET based is
still within my "real instrument" requirements.

For the exclusively electonic pieces, the lid is now off... and
everything is possible. It's a very exciting time for me! (Timbres,
too!)

> Another way would be to deliberately limit yourself to inflection-
free
> subsets of blackjack at any given point in a composition, but allow
> this to modulate. Such as this 7-note tetrachordal Byzantine
> liturgical mode.
>
> G Ab/ B\ C D Eb/ F#\
>
> in steps of 72-ET it goes 7 16 7 12 7 16 7 and appears in 7
positions
> in blackjack. It contains one 7-limit otonal and one 7-limit utonal
> tetrad and some 5-limit triads.
>
> Or this 10 note tetrachordal expansion of it.
>
> G Af Ab/ B\ C Db/ D Ef Eb/ F#\
>
> which appears in 6 positions in blackjack.
>

***I might be a little less inclined toward this, since I really *do*
like the smaller intervals audible as more than just a
transpositional device. I just want to be sure I know what I want to
do with them...

Thanks for the great suggestions!

Joseph

🔗Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@svpal.org>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Dave Keenan" <d.keenan@b...> wrote:

> However, my final answer to Joseph's question was in fact not
> Blackjack, but a 19-note tetrachordal convex subset of the
> miracle/meantone planar temperament, which also happens to be a
> 72-ET-tempered version of Rami Vitale's Byzantine superset scale, and
> was, I believe, later discovered by yourself independently.

It should be noted that what you call "miracle-meantone" is what I've
been calling "marvel" In the 7-limit, it's 225/224 planar, and in the
11-limit, {225/224,385/384}-planar; the 11-limit version may as well
be taken in the 72-et tuning but the 7-limit version can be improved
on some. The 11-limit version can only be called "miracle-meantone" if
by "meantone" you mean what I've been calling "meanpop", namely 31&50.
One way to look at that is that miracle is 41&31, and meanpop is
31&50, and putting them together gives 41&31&50, which if you remove
the torsion is a planar temperament in the 11-limit.

As for independently discovering it, I produced a whole raft of 72-et
scales, thinking people interested in 72 might be interested in these.
Now that I've got Tonescape to play with maybe I should look at them
again.

> It has 13 notes in common with Blackjack.

Does this scale have an offical name, such as "neo-Byzantine"? I think
I might make a 5-limit detempering of it and check it out.

🔗Dave Keenan <d.keenan@bigpond.net.au>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Joseph Pehrson" <jpehrson@r...> wrote:
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Dave Keenan" <d.keenan@b...> wrote:
> > Bbt Ft . . .
> > B\ F#\ C#\ G#\ D#\
> > C G D A E
> > Db/ Ab/ Eb/ Bb/ F/
> > . . . Bf F#f
> > . . . .
> >
> > Fifths horizontal, secors vertical, with dots showing missing notes
> in
> > a continuous chain of secors wrapping around vertically.
> >
> > Legend:
> > A-G, # b as for 12-ET
> > t -2 steps of 72-ET (7-comma down)
> > \ -1 step of 72-ET (5-comma down)
> > / +1 step of 72-ET (5-comma up)
> > f +2 steps of 72-ET (7-comma up)
> >
> > It has 13 notes in common with Blackjack.

> So, I'm correcting in order to be a "cool low-ratio JI composer..."
>
> Maybe, that's not the kind of rationale I need in my work at this
> point... :)

Just because you choose to use a few intervals that aren't as
consonant as possible doesn't mean you aren't still a "cool low-ratio
JI composer...". :-)

> > One way to improve this situation would be to use a more even 72-ET
> > subset of around 19 notes that still has lots of 7-limit
> > possibilities, auch as the "neo-byzantine" superset above. This has
> > only three of those 33 cent inflections instead of the 11 that
> > blackjack has.
> >
>
> ***This is an amazingly well-organized scale idea, even using fifths
> as a generator!... and it's still in 72-tET! Could you work me up a
> quick Scala file on this one (with the appropriate file name)?? Not
> that I couldn't do this myself, but it would take me 30 minutes as
> opposed to your 5 minutes... :)

Zero minutes. I already had it as a Scala file.

! byzantine19.scl
!
Rami Vitale's Byzantine superset tempered to 72-tET, Dave Keenan, TL
Sep-2001
19
!
83.33333 ! G#\
116.66667 ! Ab/
200.00000 ! A
266.66667 ! Bbt
316.66667 ! Bb/
383.33333 ! B\
433.33333 ! Bf
500.00000 ! C
583.33333 ! C#\
616.66667 ! Db/
700.00000 ! D
783.33333 ! D#\
816.66667 ! Eb/
900.00000 ! E
966.66667 ! Ft
1016.66667 ! F/
1083.33333 ! F#\
1133.33333 ! F#f
2/1 ! G

-- Dave Keenan

🔗Dave Keenan <d.keenan@bigpond.net.au>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith" <gwsmith@s...> wrote:
> It should be noted that what you call "miracle-meantone" is what I've
> been calling "marvel" In the 7-limit, it's 225/224 planar, and in the
> 11-limit, {225/224,385/384}-planar; the 11-limit version may as well
> be taken in the 72-et tuning but the 7-limit version can be improved
> on some. The 11-limit version can only be called "miracle-meantone" if
> by "meantone" you mean what I've been calling "meanpop", namely 31&50.
> One way to look at that is that miracle is 41&31, and meanpop is
> 31&50, and putting them together gives 41&31&50, which if you remove
> the torsion is a planar temperament in the 11-limit.

I accept that "miracle-meantone" is incorrect for the 11-limit
version. "Marvel" is ok with me for both the 7 and 11-limit.

> As for independently discovering it, I produced a whole raft of 72-et
> scales, thinking people interested in 72 might be interested in these.
> Now that I've got Tonescape to play with maybe I should look at them
> again.

I notice that the one I gave as being the second most compact
tetrachordal scale on a miracle chain, with 10 notes, which is also a
subset of the Marvel-19 byzantine superset, appears in the Scala
archive 3 times.

smithgw72b.scl
smithgwqm3a.scl
smithgwqm3b.scl in key 1

The most miracle-compact tetrachordal, with 7 notes, is in the Scala
archive as xenakis_schrom.scl, and is also very close to
al-farabi_chrom2.scl circa 700 BCE.

> Does this scale have an offical name, such as "neo-Byzantine"?

No. That name is definitely not official (I used it for the first time
in my previous message, and intended it as a description of the planar
temperament, covering the 7, 10 and 19 note blocks I gave).
"Neo-byzantine is probably a bad name for it. Maybe you and Paul
Erlich should sort it out.

If the name of the 19-note scale was going to involve a person's name
(which I don't particularly like the idea of) then it would have to be
Rami Vitale's, except ...
he made it clear that he doesn't particularly like the idea of even
microtemperament and would rather stick with the rational version even
though it needs 23 notes instead of 19.

We could simply call it "Marvel-19". Even though there are other
convex sets of 19 notes in Marvel, I don't think any are as useful as
this one.

-- Dave Keenan

sense of no limitations!

🔗Joseph Pehrson <jpehrson@rcn.com>

🔗Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@svpal.org>

🔗Guglielmo <gugliel@guglielmomusic.com>

🔗Joseph Pehrson <jpehrson@rcn.com>

🔗Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@svpal.org>

🔗Joseph Pehrson <jpehrson@rcn.com>

🔗Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@svpal.org>

🔗Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@svpal.org>

🔗Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@svpal.org>

🔗Dave Keenan <d.keenan@bigpond.net.au>

🔗Joseph Pehrson <jpehrson@rcn.com>

🔗Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@svpal.org>

🔗Dave Keenan <d.keenan@bigpond.net.au>

🔗Dave Keenan <d.keenan@bigpond.net.au>

🔗David Beardsley <db@biink.com>

🔗Joseph Pehrson <jpehrson@rcn.com>

🔗Joseph Pehrson <jpehrson@rcn.com>

🔗Jon Szanto <jszanto@cox.net>

🔗David Beardsley <db@biink.com>

🔗Joseph Pehrson <jpehrson@rcn.com>

🔗Joseph Pehrson <jpehrson@rcn.com>

🔗David Beardsley <db@biink.com>