Srutis

Interesting...I finally read the paper on the 22 srutis by S. Vidyasankar on the Carnatic site, and he says something that seems so simple, but is actually quite profound in reality...when talking about the overtones, he says that the 7th harmonic is "clearly unpleasant," and that's that. Whoa, pardner...that's a mighty blatant dismissal of a supremely important pitch ratio, and the musical implications for being so dismissive are quite important. And, I should say that I find the 7th harmonic quite beautiful and useful; I've tuned both of my fretless guitars (for the time being) with 7 limit tuning on the open strings, and like the results quite a lot.
Jeez, what's the problem with the 7th harmonic? I know we've discussed this before, but just what is so scary to people about this interval? I myself don't like putting arbitrary limits on ANY interval, and as we get into the 11th and 13th harmonics as well (and beyond), I feel music just gets deeper, richer, and more profound. If we limit ourselves to just 5 limit sounds, then we are, in effect, saying that we are only going to explore music to a certain point, and beyond that...well, again, why? The 7th harmonic is NOT "clearly unpleasant," in any fashion, and it is very disappointing to see folks saying such things...best...HHH microstick.net

Agreably so Neil!

Oz.
----- Original Message -----
From: microstick@msn.com
To: tuning@yahoogroups.com
Sent: 26 Mart 2006 Pazar 21:29
Subject: [tuning] Srutis

Interesting...I finally read the paper on the 22 srutis by S. Vidyasankar on the Carnatic site, and he says something that seems so simple, but is actually quite profound in reality...when talking about the overtones, he says that the 7th harmonic is "clearly unpleasant," and that's that. Whoa, pardner...that's a mighty blatant dismissal of a supremely important pitch ratio, and the musical implications for being so dismissive are quite important. And, I should say that I find the 7th harmonic quite beautiful and useful; I've tuned both of my fretless guitars (for the time being) with 7 limit tuning on the open strings, and like the results quite a lot.
Jeez, what's the problem with the 7th harmonic? I know we've discussed this before, but just what is so scary to people about this interval? I myself don't like putting arbitrary limits on ANY interval, and as we get into the 11th and 13th harmonics as well (and beyond), I feel music just gets deeper, richer, and more profound. If we limit ourselves to just 5 limit sounds, then we are, in effect, saying that we are only going to explore music to a certain point, and beyond that...well, again, why? The 7th harmonic is NOT "clearly unpleasant," in any fashion, and it is very disappointing to see folks saying such things...best...HHH microstick.net

microstick@msn.com wrote:
> Interesting...I finally read the paper on the 22 srutis by S. > Vidyasankar on the Carnatic site, and he says something that seems so > simple, but is actually quite profound in reality...when talking about > the overtones, he says that the 7th harmonic is "clearly unpleasant," > and that's that. Why shouldn't other cultures have the same license to reject the upper parts of the harmonic series as soon as it gets in the way of their theory? There have been other other explanations of the sruti, as eg by a violin player in the 1930s (exact documentation securely stowed away on the hard disk of a defunct computer) who had his playing measured and argued very strongly for a 6/7, 7/5 and 7/4. (The same writer also explained that the sruti count for scales is not about the intervals between, but the number of sruti to arrive at a tone, so that it's not Sa (4) Ri (3) Ga (2) Ma, but [Ni] 4-> Sa 3-> Ri 2-> Ga. Clearly the consensus here neglects some traditions.)

klaus