Re: Digest Number 465

Paul Erlich said:

> You misunderstood. All I meant was that you were discussing a voicing with
> the third in the soprano. I simply took the triad with 9:7 major third and
> transposed the third so that the chord would be in, or "closer to" "your
> voicing". OK?

OK.

Keep in mind that the "high third" phenomenon appears to occur when the
third is in the middle and bottom position as well. At a recent
"microtuning" concert at the college, a piano was tuned in JI to the key of
Eb. After the show, a few of us couldn't resist going on stage and playing
the root, fifth and seventh (upward from a midrange Eb in the nearest
voicing) and singing the third in the "empty" position. Three or four of us
"barbershoppers" agreed when the "high third" locked well above the JI
third. However, John Schneider (my talented colleague who organized the
concert) thought our tuning was simply "sharp." (But then, he is constantly
playing JI thirds on his microtuned instrument. What would he know? LOL Just
kidding, John.)

Jerry

From me:

> Just for the record, I have no mechanism
> (yet) by which to know which numbers fit "my" major triad. >>

From DWolf:
>
> You might find it useful to try to do some frequency analysis with your own
> computer. It's become quite easy with programs like _Spectrogram_ or _Praat_.

Thanks. Are these Mac compatible? Downloadable? I'll run my Sherlock and see
if I can find them. I appreciated the lead.

Jerry

Gerald Eskelin wrote,

>At a recent
>"microtuning" concert at the college, a piano was tuned in JI to the key of
>Eb. After the show, a few of us couldn't resist going on stage and playing
>the root, fifth and seventh (upward from a midrange Eb in the nearest
>voicing) and singing the third in the "empty" position. Three or four of us
>"barbershoppers" agreed when the "high third" locked well above the JI
>third.

Do you know any more specifics on the piano tuning? Normally, the seventh in
a diatonic JI tuning is not 7:4 but 9:5 or 16:9. In which case a high third
would be appropriate anyway to partially compensate for the high seventh
(i.e., to get the 7:5 better in tune).

When I'm playing the guitar with a little distorion, and I use a tritone as
a sparse dominant seventh voicing, I try to bend the major third _up_ a
little so that the tritone approaches 7:5 and the combination tones imply
the correct root. I'd of course prefer to bend the seventh down, but you
can't bend down on the guitar.