Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning more on character families for Carl...

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@...> wrote:
>
> > > Do you have a list of all the character families you've
discovered?
> >
> > Nope.
>
> Do you have anything at all that would enable another person to
> actually know what a character family is?
>
> -Carl

Obviously, and some people knew what I meant from the expression
alone. But words are tricky, you never know what denotations are
obscuring communication, etc.

Okay, here's a tuning. If you play in it melodically, it is very
cohesive as far as character, to my ears. Just noodle around over a
couple of octaves, don't need to pay attention to key centers or
whatever, the point is whether or not the colors "go together".

I chose a pretty lumpy tuning to avoid being mislead by a strong
regularity in interval size, and which probably scores disasterously
in Scala's "show data" pageant- not proper, 73-limit...

Lumma stability : 0.121083
Lumma impropriety factor : 0.458482

:-)

0: 1/1 0.000
1: 73/70 72.650
2: 35/32 155.140
3: 81/70 252.680
4: 729/560 456.590
5: 146/105 570.695
6: 219/140 774.605
7: 105/64 857.095
8: 243/140 954.635
9: 2/1 1200.000

It's better when tuned dead accurate, you really should get
ZynAddSubFx and load the .scl and .kbm directly in, but the midi
keyboard/microsoft synth thingy in Scala should be good enough in
this case.

You may not agree that there's one general color at all, in which
case, that's that.

I started with one interval and had a synaesthesic
experience, "Gingko!", so that's what I call this
character family. Then I went about by ear, using my working
theories as to what all makes a tuning cohesive as far as character-
the whole thing took about twenty minutes.

If you do agree that it's cohesive in color, tell me why you think
it is- you may have a better explanation than mine. I don't have a
simple explanation, only a working approach. It works nicely, to my
ears, but I could be completely wrong as to why.

-Cameron Bobro

🔗monz <monz@tonalsoft.com>

🔗Cameron Bobro <misterbobro@yahoo.com>

🔗monz <monz@tonalsoft.com>

Hi Cameron,

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Cameron Bobro" <misterbobro@...> wrote:

> Wow, thanks Joe Monzo! I finally figured out how "Monzo-space"
> is structured, I think it's directly (physically) applicable to
> triggering layouts, arrays and such, as well as theoretical,
> which is cool.

By "Monzo-space", do you mean this?:

http://tonalsoft.com/enc/m/monzo.aspx

If that's what you're talking about, the part that
looks like my name should not begin with a capital letter.

But also note that in Tonescape, the dimensions don't
have to be defined by prime-factors -- they are the
generators of the tuning, and they can be anything
you want them to be.

For example, you could set up 12-edo as a one-dimensional
circle of semitones, if you want the Lattice to look
like that.

> It would be nice to find the red threads of
> what I'm calling character families.

I haven't read any of the discussion of your
character families, but am interested in the idea.
Does it have anything to do with the way we've been
classifying temperaments into families?, as here:

http://tonalsoft.com/enc/f/family.aspx

> I'm having a hell of a time running Tonescape, you should
> have some error reports by now per email. Won't even open
> on the XP laptop now. :-( My studio is in a big multimedia
> center with... 50? computers, I've tried three so far (XP,
> 2000 and 98SE). What OS are you running? Do you have a list
> of .dlls that are required? I'll find a computer with that
> OS or get the tech guy to install it somewhere.

I'm running Tonescape on Windows XP with Service Pack 2.
This is the recommended OS.

The computer you use should have all the latest Windows
updates, which you can get from the Microsoft website:

http://update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate

(your best bet is to use Internet Explorer as your browser
when you do this)

On my main computer i run Windows 2000, but the Den Haag
version of Tonescape seems to have a problem with that.

I believe Tonescape should run OK with Windows Vista,
but we haven't tried that yet. Forget about older OS's.
We may or may not fix the problem with Win2000, but
definitely won't be dealing with anything older.

-monz
http://tonalsoft.com
Tonescape microtonal music software

🔗Cameron Bobro <misterbobro@yahoo.com>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "monz" <monz@...> wrote:

> By "Monzo-space", do you mean this?:
>
> http://tonalsoft.com/enc/m/monzo.aspx

Yip.

> If that's what you're talking about, the part that
> looks like my name should not begin with a capital letter.

Okay.

> But also note that in Tonescape, the dimensions don't
> have to be defined by prime-factors -- they are the
> generators of the tuning, and they can be anything
> you want them to be.

That's good, because primes are a thing, not the thing.

> I haven't read any of the discussion of your
> character families, but am interested in the idea.
> Does it have anything to do with the way we've been
> classifying temperaments into families?, as here:
>
> http://tonalsoft.com/enc/f/family.aspx

Hehe, that's a colorful way to catalog, cool. I'm
talking about something different- cohesive affects
might be one way of describing it.

Or put it this way:
a tuning is a kind of filtering of infinite
possibilites, and a mode is a kind of very complex timbre.
We can hear what belongs, or somehow relates, or stands in stark
contrast, to that timbre- we can hear character families.

> I'm running Tonescape on Windows XP with Service Pack 2.
> This is the recommended OS.

Hm, that's exactly what I'm running on this computer- just sent
you another error message today. I'll see if the tech guy
has some time in the next couple of days to check out my
computer (he installed the OS but I installed the service pack and
all the updates).

-Cameron Bobro

🔗Carl Lumma <clumma@yahoo.com>

> > > Do you have a list of all the character families you've
> > > discovered?
> > >
> > > Nope.
> >
> > Do you have anything at all that would enable another person to
> > actually know what a character family is?
> >
> > -Carl
>
> Obviously, and some people knew what I meant from the expression
> alone. But words are tricky, you never know what denotations are
> obscuring communication, etc.

In a recent thread, everybody seemed to hit on the word
"phoneme", but nobody actually put forward anything precise
enuogh to be able to tell if any two of them understood
eachother. What they seemed to understand is that "phoneme"
is a cool word, and perhaps that maqam melodies are built
from atomic phrases in a way very roughly like the way
sentences are built from phonemes (or from morphemes, or
words, or parts of speech, or idioms...).

> Okay, here's a tuning. If you play in it melodically,

I thought we were talking about consonance!!

> it is very
> cohesive as far as character, to my ears. Just noodle around over a
> couple of octaves, don't need to pay attention to key centers or
> whatever, the point is whether or not the colors "go together".
//
>
> 0: 1/1 0.000
> 1: 73/70 72.650
> 2: 35/32 155.140
> 3: 81/70 252.680
> 4: 729/560 456.590
> 5: 146/105 570.695
> 6: 219/140 774.605
> 7: 105/64 857.095
> 8: 243/140 954.635
> 9: 2/1 1200.000

Cool scale. I like the sound of it melodically. What does
that have to do with consonance judgements (which I thought
your character families were all about).

> It's better when tuned dead accurate, you really should get
> ZynAddSubFx and load the .scl and .kbm directly in, but the midi
> keyboard/microsoft synth thingy in Scala should be good enough in
> this case.
>
> You may not agree that there's one general color at all, in which
> case, that's that.

Did you come up with this strictly by listening, or did
you use numbers in some way?
How many other character families are there? A comparison
might be helpful.

-Carl

🔗Cameron Bobro <misterbobro@yahoo.com>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@...> wrote:

> I thought we were talking about consonance!!

I've been refering to cohesion more than consonance, and character
families more than individual characters, mostly we'd want a
gradation in consonance, or?

>
> > it is very
> > cohesive as far as character, to my ears. Just noodle around
over a
> > couple of octaves, don't need to pay attention to key centers or
> > whatever, the point is whether or not the colors "go together".
> //
> >
> > 0: 1/1 0.000
> > 1: 73/70 72.650
> > 2: 35/32 155.140
> > 3: 81/70 252.680
> > 4: 729/560 456.590
> > 5: 146/105 570.695
> > 6: 219/140 774.605
> > 7: 105/64 857.095
> > 8: 243/140 954.635
> > 9: 2/1 1200.000
>
> Cool scale. I like the sound of it melodically. What does
> that have to do with consonance judgements (which I thought
> your character families were all about).

Character families are just what they say they are- intervals of
related character, colors, affects, hue, etc. They relate to
consonance and dissonance by virtue of being more or less pleasing,
soft, etc. This implies that there is a subjective element to
consonance and dissonance, but that's hardly a radical statement.

So, I believe that this feeling of character in an interval can
overpower things like proximity to a simple interval. Even two tones
of identical pitch can sound radically different, of course, one
harsh and one sweet, so it seems perfectly reasonable to me that,
for example, if we've got two pitches very close to each other in
the immediate neighborhood of simpler interval, and they're set
against another tone, making a diad, it's possible that one is going
to be reinforcing some partials in the accompanying tone and making
the uebertimbre :-) more sweet than the other, almost identical (in
cps), tone does. And thus it is possible, for example, that a M3 of
395 cents could be sweeter than one of 392 cents.

> Did you come up with this strictly by listening, or did
> you use numbers in some way?
> How many other character families are there? A comparison
> might be helpful.

Both. I stumbled across 81/70, which Scala lists as a historical
interval, and wanted to make a tuning with that general character.
I had 28/27 in the beginning because I had arrived at 81/70 by
monkeying with Arcytas' enharmonic. 28/27 sounded like the wrong
color, and too small to boot. 24/23 was the right size, but wrong
color.

So I simply did an x/70 the same size as 24/23, and there it was.
I say "same size" because a cent or two here and there isn't what's
important. I would never claim to be able to hear a 1.4 cent
difference, though you and I clearly did in Aaron's test, because
putting it that way implies a perception of size, and my perception
of size is simply not consistently so keen as to percieve 1.4 cents.
I heard a change in character, which clued me to the change in size.

Anyway, I imagined an appropriate... ? second? Whatever, something
somewhere in the region of 150 cents. With "70" describing at least
one part of the family, and all "numbers" being references to
partials, I felt confident that 35/32 would fly, and it did.

I do try to keep intervals simple because I believe that that is
PART of consonance, for the simple reason that this is all about
references to partials, and once you get so high...hmmm, at some
point, it seems to me, you're going to be approximating a simpler
interval. Where this happens, I don't know, but it's pretty high.

Lessee... I just tested 81/70 against 8/7. The difference in
character is a lot more than the 81/80 size difference would
suggest- 8/7 is definitely a broad second, while 81/70 is
a "consonant interval" in the style of 196/169.

So, EDL and equal-harmonics? whatever it's called, x/70 in this
example, are very conducive to cohesiveness BUT they don't do it
automatically, it's some kind of interaction between N + D. You can
get some real stems and seeds in your grass doing EDL mechanically,
for example. This is another thing I can only determine by listening.

And throughout the process I check all the difference tones. The
tuning produced by the difference tones is what I call the
shadow tuning and is the basis of my contrapuntal "shadow harmony".
This tuning, "gingko", isn't so hot this way, I did another tuning
of a similar cast, around 196/169, and its shadow tuning is
extremely cohesive. In general, cohesive tuning, cohesive shadow
tuning, not surprisingly.

The first piece on my zebox site, "Acacia", is done this way, I'll
get some more pieces soon. The tuning of the melody is very 23-heavy
so to speak, lots of x/23, and the accompaniment is
entirely "shadows", ie, in an irregular tuning made of difference
tones.

Now, my own response to all this a couple of years ago would have
been- makes sense but doesn't this heavily rely on things going on
in really high partials? To which I would reply, come on over and
test for yourself with additive synthesis and filters just how much
you actually take in higher partials, I'm amazed by it daily.

I find that there are brute realities related to absolute cps. I
believe and can "prove" to my own sastifaction that partials above,
say 4kHz? work in very, very broad brushstrokes, and the vast
majority of what all makes character families is either happening
literally in the first few dozen partials, or referencing those
first ones by octave.

The typical number of 64 partials available in
an additive synth isn't just a practical matter or dictated by
technology- it's about right, everything above that is gravy. It's
also amazing what you can do with just 32 partials- my experience
with additive synthesis leads me to believe that above here we're
already in broader brushtroke, "tinting", and reinforcing of lower
partials, not making deep character determinations.

One more thing: all this is far less dependant on the timbres of the
individual instruments than I thought it would be. The uebertimbre
is quite resilient. You can help or hurt by using sounds heavy on
appropriate timbres, but it's not the main thing. For example, in my
x/169 timbre, I turn up the 13th partial in the additive synth, and
it's makes for a little more consonance, it seems, but the overall
character is the same when using a 1/n sawtooth. This leads me to
believe that we do have a built in sense of "ideal" proportions,
much in the same way that we percieve of a pizza as round, although
if petrified and used as a unicycle wheel, it would obviously make
for a bumpy ride.

-Cameron Bobro

🔗Carl Lumma <clumma@yahoo.com>

> > I thought we were talking about consonance!!
>
> I've been refering to cohesion more than consonance,

What does this mean?

> and character
> families more than individual characters, mostly we'd want a
> gradation in consonance, or?

What does *this* mean?

> > > 0: 1/1 0.000
> > > 1: 73/70 72.650
> > > 2: 35/32 155.140
> > > 3: 81/70 252.680
> > > 4: 729/560 456.590
> > > 5: 146/105 570.695
> > > 6: 219/140 774.605
> > > 7: 105/64 857.095
> > > 8: 243/140 954.635
> > > 9: 2/1 1200.000
> >
> > Cool scale. I like the sound of it melodically. What does
> > that have to do with consonance judgements (which I thought
> > your character families were all about).
>
> Character families are just what they say they are- intervals of
> related character, colors, affects, hue, etc. They relate to
> consonance and dissonance by virtue of being more or less pleasing,
> soft, etc. This implies that there is a subjective element to
> consonance and dissonance, but that's hardly a radical statement.

When you look at consonance (or whatever you want to call it),
you immediately find something shocking: people of all ages and
from a number of different cultures tend to agree that the same
basic consonances are consonant (or that they sound different
from any old intervals). This is a phenomenon worth trying to
explain, don't you think?

> So, I believe that this feeling of character in an interval can
> overpower things like proximity to a simple interval.

On what do you base this belief?

> And thus it is possible, for example, that a M3 of
> 395 cents could be sweeter than one of 392 cents.

In all my time experimenting with these things, tuning
pianos and so forth, I have never found this to be the
case. I don't believe it's true for any natural timbre
in the ordinary musical register where the third is
voiced as a tenth when the fundamental is below F3 or so.

> > Did you come up with this strictly by listening, or did
> > you use numbers in some way?
> > How many other character families are there? A comparison
> > might be helpful.
>
> Both. I stumbled across 81/70, which Scala lists as a historical
> interval, and wanted to make a tuning with that general character.
> I had 28/27 in the beginning because I had arrived at 81/70 by
> monkeying with Arcytas' enharmonic. 28/27 sounded like the wrong
> color, and too small to boot. 24/23 was the right size, but wrong
> color.
>
> So I simply did an x/70 the same size as 24/23, and there it was.

How'd you come up with 70?

> I say "same size" because a cent or two here and there isn't
> what's important. I would never claim to be able to hear a 1.4
> cent difference, though you and I clearly did in Aaron's test,
> because putting it that way implies a perception of size, and
> my perception of size is simply not consistently so keen as to
> percieve 1.4 cents. I heard a change in character, which
> clued me to the change in size.

Right. There's nothing controversial in any of this bit since
you mentioned 81/70.

> Anyway, I imagined an appropriate... ? second? Whatever, something
> somewhere in the region of 150 cents. With "70" describing at
> least one part of the family, and all "numbers" being references
> to partials, I felt confident that 35/32 would fly, and it did.
>
> I do try to keep intervals simple because I believe that that is
> PART of consonance, for the simple reason that this is all about
> references to partials, and once you get so high...hmmm, at some
> point, it seems to me, you're going to be approximating a simpler
> interval. Where this happens, I don't know, but it's pretty high.

I think it may be instructive if you tried to pin that down.

> Lessee... I just tested 81/70 against 8/7. The difference in
> character is a lot more than the 81/80 size difference would
> suggest- 8/7 is definitely a broad second, while 81/70 is a
> "consonant interval" in the style of 196/169.

Have you ever tried irrational intervals?

> So, EDL and equal-harmonics? whatever it's called, x/70 in
> this example,

EDL gives constant/x ratios, I believe. I don't know the
Mohajeri acronym for harmonics.

> And throughout the process I check all the difference tones.
> The tuning produced by the difference tones is what I call
> the shadow tuning and is the basis of my contrapuntal "shadow
> harmony".

Kraig Grady has done a ton of work with this. It's an
interesting concept, which requires high-amplitude listening
and seems especially suited to metalophone timbres.

> The first piece on my zebox site, "Acacia", is done this way,

Hey I went to download this (again), and noticed:

http://www.zebox.com/top40artists_weekly.html

Jon L. Smith is their no. 13 artist this week!
And you were no. 39 last week!

I happen to think Acacia sounds awesome, for what it's worth
(though I don't I hear any difference tones when I listen).
I like the lyrics too. :)
At any rate, I encourage you to keep painting with sounds.

> and the accompaniment is entirely "shadows", ie, in an
> irregular tuning made of difference tones.

Which accompaniment exactly? I hear the song in two basic
sections. First the verse, with some basic brass
accompaniment, along with flourishes by what sound like one
of Partch's harmonic canons in his "ancient Greek scales".
Then the canon takes a brief solo before the brass come in
more strongly for the 2nd half. Here the canon plays
something more akin to a koto part. I don't hear any
difference tones. I'm listening with headphones at a
moderate volume.

> I find that there are brute realities related to absolute cps. I
> believe and can "prove" to my own sastifaction that partials above,
> say 4kHz? work in very, very broad brushstrokes, and the vast
> majority of what all makes character families is either happening
> literally in the first few dozen partials, or referencing those
> first ones by octave.

No surprise there. The ear can't count periodicities higher
than about 4K. Above that the pitch processor has only the
place mechanism to go on. It really isn't pitch in the same
sense as < 4K. When I tune unisons on the piano, I often try
to zero-beat pairs of really high partials. When listening
to these, I get the very annoying sensation that they have a
pitch and I know what it is, but I can't actually sing it
(because it's too high) and if I try to sing it some octaves
down, the perception of the pitch starts getting fuzzy.

> The typical number of 64 partials available in
> an additive synth isn't just a practical matter or dictated by
> technology- it's about right, everything above that is gravy.

On my hardware additive synth, it was definitely dictated
by technology (aliasing). But after 6 octaves up, it's true
there isn't much.

> It's
> also amazing what you can do with just 32 partials- my experience
> with additive synthesis leads me to believe that above here we're
> already in broader brushtroke, "tinting", and reinforcing of lower
> partials, not making deep character determinations.

It's amazing what you can do with 8.

> One more thing: all this is far less dependant on the timbres
> of the individual instruments than I thought it would be. //
> For example, in my x/169 timbre, I turn up the 13th partial
> in the additive synth, and it's makes for a little more
> consonance, it seems, but the overall character is the same
> when using a 1/n sawtooth. This leads me to believe that we
> do have a built in sense of "ideal" proportions, much in the
> same way that we percieve of a pizza as round, although if
> petrified and used as a unicycle wheel, it would obviously
> make for a bumpy ride.

Here you seem to be contradicting what you said above in the
consonance discussion. Anyway, I agree.

-Carl

🔗Cameron Bobro <misterbobro@yahoo.com>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@...> wrote:

> What does this mean?

I realize now that we must have gotten on different tracks in this
discussion.

> When you look at consonance (or whatever you want to call it),
> you immediately find something shocking: people of all ages and
> from a number of different cultures tend to agree that the same
> basic consonances are consonant (or that they sound different
> from any old intervals). This is a phenomenon worth trying to
> explain, don't you think?

Yes, we're off on different tracks, because this is not only "no
kidding", it's been assumed in the discussion we were having.
>
> > So, I believe that this feeling of character in an interval can
> > overpower things like proximity to a simple interval.
>
> On what do you base this belief?

Direct experience and the experience of others, what else?

> > And thus it is possible, for example, that a M3 of
> > 395 cents could be sweeter than one of 392 cents.
>
> In all my time experimenting with these things, tuning
> pianos and so forth, I have never found this to be the
> case. I don't believe it's true for any natural timbre
> in the ordinary musical register where the third is
> voiced as a tenth when the fundamental is below F3 or so.

Yet it happens to me all the time.

> How'd you come up with 70?

From 81/70.
>
> > I say "same size" because a cent or two here and there isn't
> > what's important. I would never claim to be able to hear a 1.4
> > cent difference, though you and I clearly did in Aaron's test,
> > because putting it that way implies a perception of size, and
> > my perception of size is simply not consistently so keen as to
> > percieve 1.4 cents. I heard a change in character, which
> > clued me to the change in size.
>
> Right. There's nothing controversial in any of this bit since
> you mentioned 81/70.

Nope. I don't think there's anything controversial in anything I'm
saying.

> > I do try to keep intervals simple because I believe that that is
> > PART of consonance, for the simple reason that this is all about
> > references to partials, and once you get so high...hmmm, at some
> > point, it seems to me, you're going to be approximating a
simpler
> > interval. Where this happens, I don't know, but it's pretty high.
>

> I think it may be instructive if you tried to pin that down.

Yes, I think so.

>
> > Lessee... I just tested 81/70 against 8/7. The difference in
> > character is a lot more than the 81/80 size difference would
> > suggest- 8/7 is definitely a broad second, while 81/70 is a
> > "consonant interval" in the style of 196/169.
>
> Have you ever tried irrational intervals?

Not really. Why bother?

>
> EDL gives constant/x ratios, I believe.

Yes, I believe so. I just use the acronym because it sounds so
military, I don't actually think of it as EDL.

>I don't know the
> Mohajeri acronym for harmonics.

I don't either, I just call them "Frank".

> > And throughout the process I check all the difference tones.
> > The tuning produced by the difference tones is what I call
> > the shadow tuning and is the basis of my contrapuntal "shadow
> > harmony".
>
> Kraig Grady has done a ton of work with this. It's an
> interesting concept, which requires high-amplitude listening
> and seems especially suited to metalophone timbres.

Guess who the first person on the WWW I showed the idea too? :-)
His music is excellent and has that cohesion I keep going on about.
I'm doing something a bit different with difference tones- the
difference tones are made manifest, ie., calculated, octave-reduced,
and turned into a tuning.

> > The first piece on my zebox site, "Acacia", is done this way,
>
> Hey I went to download this (again), and noticed:
>
> http://www.zebox.com/top40artists_weekly.html
>
> Jon L. Smith is their no. 13 artist this week!
> And you were no. 39 last week!

Haha! I didn't even notice this feature. Hey Dante Rosati is #28,
cool.
>
> I happen to think Acacia sounds awesome, for what it's worth
> (though I don't I hear any difference tones when I listen).
> I like the lyrics too. :)

Thanks, Carl.

> Which accompaniment exactly? I hear the song in two basic
> sections. First the verse, with some basic brass
> accompaniment, along with flourishes by what sound like one
> of Partch's harmonic canons in his "ancient Greek scales".
> Then the canon takes a brief solo before the brass come in
> more strongly for the 2nd half. Here the canon plays
> something more akin to a koto part. I don't hear any
> difference tones. I'm listening with headphones at a
> moderate volume.

The canon/koto sound is tuned to the
set of difference tones inherent in the tuning/mode of the
solo melody, that's the basic idea of shadow harmonies. This is
the most simple form- one mode, one shadow. You see the
possibilities right away I'm sure- the shadow can mutate with
the mode, either in sync or offset in time for a
suspension/resolution kind of thing, tunings and shadow tunings
can be split up between instruments, intersect, swap parts, etc.

When there are certain characteristics, a flavor, a pallete,
whatever, running through the entire tuning, it works a charm, and
you can just jam blithely away. Otherwise, it sounds like a science
experiment. According to Kraig (and he's correct of course, I
listened and checked) the tunings he uses also work in the realm of
difference tones, that's part of their design.

> At any rate, I encourage you to keep painting with sounds.

Thanks, but it's not like I have a choice- it's my job. :-)
In two weeks I'll get to test what kind of flavors the lower
partials create in a loud and hopefully pleasant way, very slowly
filtering white noise into a harmonic series, a kind of creation-
from-chaos performance with video.

>
> > I find that there are brute realities related to absolute cps. I
> > believe and can "prove" to my own sastifaction that partials
above,
> > say 4kHz? work in very, very broad brushstrokes, and the vast
> > majority of what all makes character families is either
happening
> > literally in the first few dozen partials, or referencing those
> > first ones by octave.
>
> No surprise there. The ear can't count periodicities higher
> than about 4K. Above that the pitch processor has only the
> place mechanism to go on. It really isn't pitch in the same
> sense as < 4K. When I tune unisons on the piano, I often try
> to zero-beat pairs of really high partials. When listening
> to these, I get the very annoying sensation that they have a
> pitch and I know what it is, but I can't actually sing it
> (because it's too high) and if I try to sing it some octaves
> down, the perception of the pitch starts getting fuzzy.

Yes, exactly. I don't feel the need to gild the lily of life's
mystery by attributing some magic power to numbers which are
describing things I hear as more or less vague colors and shapes.

> > One more thing: all this is far less dependant on the timbres
> > of the individual instruments than I thought it would be. //
> > For example, in my x/169 timbre, I turn up the 13th partial
> > in the additive synth, and it's makes for a little more
> > consonance, it seems, but the overall character is the same
> > when using a 1/n sawtooth. This leads me to believe that we
> > do have a built in sense of "ideal" proportions, much in the
> > same way that we percieve of a pizza as round, although if
> > petrified and used as a unicycle wheel, it would obviously
> > make for a bumpy ride.
>
> Here you seem to be contradicting what you said above in the
> consonance discussion. Anyway, I agree.

Not contradicting, I don't think, just trying to keep it all in
reality and away from numerology. And I believe that our personal
conceptions of consonance and beauty and what not are interacting
with these ideals, so to speak- the ideals are reference points, not
a mold into which everything must fit.

-Cameron Bobro

🔗Carl Lumma <clumma@yahoo.com>

> > When you look at consonance (or whatever you want to call it),
> > you immediately find something shocking: people of all ages and
> > from a number of different cultures tend to agree that the same
> > basic consonances are consonant (or that they sound different
> > from any old intervals). This is a phenomenon worth trying to
> > explain, don't you think?
>
> Yes, we're off on different tracks, because this is not only "no
> kidding", it's been assumed in the discussion we were having.

What do you think, at any rate?

> > > So, I believe that this feeling of character in an interval
> > > can overpower things like proximity to a simple interval.
> >
> > On what do you base this belief?
>
> Direct experience and the experience of others, what else?

Direct experience is unfortunately quite fallable unless
you are very very careful.

> > > Lessee... I just tested 81/70 against 8/7. The difference in
> > > character is a lot more than the 81/80 size difference would
> > > suggest- 8/7 is definitely a broad second, while 81/70 is a
> > > "consonant interval" in the style of 196/169.
> >
> > Have you ever tried irrational intervals?
>
> Not really. Why bother?

You might learn something.

> > > The first piece on my zebox site, "Acacia", is done this way,
> >
> > Hey I went to download this (again), and noticed:
> >
> > http://www.zebox.com/top40artists_weekly.html
> >
> > Jon L. Smith is their no. 13 artist this week!
> > And you were no. 39 last week!
>
> Haha! I didn't even notice this feature. Hey Dante Rosati
> is #28, cool.

Whoa, missed that!

> > Which accompaniment exactly? I hear the song in two basic
> > sections. First the verse, with some basic brass
> > accompaniment, along with flourishes by what sound like one
> > of Partch's harmonic canons in his "ancient Greek scales".
> > Then the canon takes a brief solo before the brass come in
> > more strongly for the 2nd half. Here the canon plays
> > something more akin to a koto part. I don't hear any
> > difference tones. I'm listening with headphones at a
> > moderate volume.

Did I say koto. I meant kora!

> The canon/koto sound is tuned to the
> set of difference tones inherent in the tuning/mode of the
> solo melody, that's the basic idea of shadow harmonies.

Ah, I see. Cool idea. Incidentally, Kraig uses a lot of
scales, inspired by Erv Wilson, where the difference tones
of the scale give you back the scale.

> > At any rate, I encourage you to keep painting with sounds.
>
> Thanks, but it's not like I have a choice- it's my job. :-)
> In two weeks I'll get to test what kind of flavors the lower
> partials create in a loud and hopefully pleasant way, very slowly
> filtering white noise into a harmonic series, a kind of creation-
> from-chaos performance with video.

May I ask with whom you are employed?

-Carl

🔗Cameron Bobro <misterbobro@yahoo.com>

---The following conversation has been modified to meet Monzo
--- standards. Any resemblance to real persons or events is
--- coincidental.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Carl wrote snidely:

> > > When you look at consonance (or whatever you want to call it),
> > > you immediately find something shocking: people of all ages and
> > > from a number of different cultures tend to agree that the same
> > > basic consonances are consonant (or that they sound different
> > > from any old intervals). This is a phenomenon worth trying to
> > > explain, don't you think?
> >
--- Cameron replied testily
> > Yes, we're off on different tracks, because this is not only "no
> > kidding", it's been assumed in the discussion we were having.
>
--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Carl asked unecessarily:

> What do you think, at any rate?

I've been saying, and more importantly, doing, what I think this
whole time. Of course in this unseemly tangle of threads you may
miss half of it.

> > > > So, I believe that this feeling of character in an interval
> > > > can overpower things like proximity to a simple interval.
--- Cameron opined cheerfully

> > > On what do you base this belief?
--- Carl queried belligerently

--- to which Cameron replied, puzzled
> > Direct experience and the experience of others, what else?

> Direct experience is unfortunately quite fallable unless
> you are very very careful.
--- intoned Carl pompously

Our senses are very keen, it's the interpretation of experience that
is quite fallible. If you simply chalk up certain experiences over a
period of years, without any idea what causes them, without any plan
and remembering them for no reason other than "oh that sounds nice",
neither knowing or caring if they confirm or condradict some theory,
it's probably a pretty sound body of experiences. That's the nature
of my experience in this matter- for example, the game where two
people sing a unison or a fifth then you take turns going up and
down in as tiny steps as you can and trip out on the different
effects. Within less than a semitone's range you get satanic sounds,
angelic sounds, sci-fi sounds. And detuning one analog oscillator
against another- within 20 cents you get the fluttering sounds, the
creamy ones, the hard ones, the ones that sound like they're made of
wood (my favorite).

--- Cameron noted thoughtfully:
> > > > Lessee... I just tested 81/70 against 8/7. The difference in
> > > > character is a lot more than the 81/80 size difference would
> > > > suggest- 8/7 is definitely a broad second, while 81/70 is a
> > > > "consonant interval" in the style of 196/169.

--- Carl said annoyingly, hastily changing the subject:
> > > Have you ever tried irrational intervals?
> >
--- Cameron retorted tiredly:
> > Not really. Why bother?

> You might learn something.
--- Carl said condescendingly

Sorry, I thought you meant, have I tried irrational intervals in my
shadow tunings. Of course I've tried irrational intervals in
general, I even have a pretty entertaining tuning method based on a
colorful concept which kind of pokes fun at the whole idea of
rational/irrational.

---- Okay, okay! Just kidding around. Anyway, it's easy to see who
----wrote what, the words of gentle wisdom clad in Nabokovian
----negligee are mine of course

> Did I say koto. I meant kora!

A friend called the sound in the second part a koto.
I imagine some kind of vague cimbalom because I listened to that
instrument so much as a child. That is, I was a child and she was a
child, but the cimbalom was not. Not a child.
>
> > The canon/koto sound is tuned to the
> > set of difference tones inherent in the tuning/mode of the
> > solo melody, that's the basic idea of shadow harmonies.
>
> Ah, I see. Cool idea.

Thanks.

>Incidentally, Kraig uses a lot of
> scales, inspired by Erv Wilson, where the difference tones
> of the scale give you back the scale.

Yes, that is very elegant indeed.

> May I ask with whom you are employed?

I work with (for, through,) a large multimedia arts center which
organizes and produces exhibitions, concerts, installations,
workshops. Just music- I'd love to take a shot at animation but I'm
either working or taking care of my child and that's that. Shooting
the shit here with you guys helps me think aloud about tuning.

take care,

-Cameron Bobro

🔗monz <monz@tonalsoft.com>

🔗Carl Lumma <clumma@yahoo.com>

🔗Cameron Bobro <misterbobro@yahoo.com>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@...> wrote:
>
> > > > > When you look at consonance (or whatever you want to
> > > > > call it), you immediately find something shocking: people
> > > > > of all ages and from a number of different cultures tend
> > > > > to agree that the same basic consonances are consonant
> > > > > (or that they sound different from any old intervals).
> > > > > This is a phenomenon worth trying to explain, don't
> > > > > you think?
> > > >
> > --- Cameron replied testily
> > > > Yes, we're off on different tracks, because this is not
> > > > only "no kidding", it's been assumed in the discussion we
> > > > were having.
> > >
> > --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Carl asked unecessarily:
> >
> > > What do you think, at any rate?
> >
> > I've been saying, and more importantly, doing, what I think this
> > whole time. Of course in this unseemly tangle of threads you may
> > miss half of it.
>
> I'm asking you a direct question. I'm claiming you haven't
> answered it. Feel free to quote yourself to prove me wrong.

What do I think about your question above? "Water is wet!" I
completely fail to see what's shocking about saying "wow...the
harmonic series is so...harmonious!" If you wanted to get into a
chicken-and-egg discussion...

The nearly universal, according to everything and anything I've ever
heard, read, and experienced, consonances are staring us right in
the ear in the harmonic series. As I said, my son at 8 months sang
in perfect octaves with me. Have I mentioned that when he would
strum the open strings of my guitar, which is tuned to pure fourths
all the way up, he would sing melodies which wandered through the
first partials of the open strings?

I lost the only recording I had, about 15 seconds long, when moving
the studio. Let me tune it up in Scala... yes, that's it, I'm
completely transported, whoo-hoo! And there's the description of the
microtonal inflection he would consistently do, which had me
puzzled: a lilting syntonic comma downward (he never did it upward
as far as I know, for whatever reason).

I'll post the .scl when I get the music laptop upstairs, there's no
wireless in the studio. It's just ascending 4/3s with 3/2's and
5/4's on top of each one.

Anyway, shall I cut and paste every thing I've ever written here?

It's plain as day that I believe that perception of cononsance and
character is directly related the harmonic series.

Now, can you explain to me why four of eight people found a ~710
cent fifth to be more "fifth" sound and consonant than a ~708 cent
fifth, why you found a triad with 19/15 as a third more consonant
than one with 81/64, why 81/70 is audibly in an interval class
different from either 8/7 and 7/6, and why 196/169 is such a
consonant interval?

My explanation is Occam-stylee bonehead simple: our perception of
consonance, character, and cohesion comes straight out of the
harmonic series, and what's "simple" for us, simply, extends beyond
something like N*D<40.

Simple ratios are nothing new to me, I first learned about them
years ago (from Lou Harrison, in Capitola, California, that's
probably some entertaining "six degrees of seperation" stuff for
some here). Extending the borders of what is commonly referred to
as "simple" because doing so provides a better explanation of
experience is neither crazy nor new.

> > > May I ask with whom you are employed?
> >
> > I work with (for, through,) a large multimedia arts center which
> > organizes and produces exhibitions, concerts, installations,
> > workshops. Just music- I'd love to take a shot at animation but
I'm
> > either working or taking care of my child and that's that.
>>Shooting
> > the shit here with you guys helps me think aloud about tuning.
>
> That's wonderful. In Slovenia? Wish I were there!

Glad to see that the subjunctive isn't completely extinct. It's a
great place, but you might want to reconsider in light of the fact
that not a single musician or scientist here who has listened to my
ideas has found them anything but an elegant and poetic description
of the glaringly obvious. :-)

-Cameron Bobro

more on character families for Carl...

🔗Cameron Bobro <misterbobro@yahoo.com>

🔗monz <monz@tonalsoft.com>

🔗Cameron Bobro <misterbobro@yahoo.com>

🔗monz <monz@tonalsoft.com>

🔗Cameron Bobro <misterbobro@yahoo.com>

🔗Carl Lumma <clumma@yahoo.com>

🔗Cameron Bobro <misterbobro@yahoo.com>

🔗Carl Lumma <clumma@yahoo.com>

🔗Cameron Bobro <misterbobro@yahoo.com>

🔗Carl Lumma <clumma@yahoo.com>

🔗Cameron Bobro <misterbobro@yahoo.com>

🔗monz <monz@tonalsoft.com>

🔗Carl Lumma <clumma@yahoo.com>

🔗Cameron Bobro <misterbobro@yahoo.com>

🔗Cameron Bobro <misterbobro@yahoo.com>

🔗Aaron Krister Johnson <aaron@dividebypi.com>

🔗Cameron Bobro <misterbobro@yahoo.com>