A Fun Quote for the New Year

Hi Folks,

As someone who has taken up the violin in order to gain more freedom of
intonation who often envies all you folks with the latest and/or
greatest in electronic instrumentation, I found this quote in Sir James
Jeans' book "Science & Music" (apparently originally published in 1937)
about various temperaments priceless:

"We have already seen that the present 12-note scale has its roots
embedded very deeply in the unalterable properties of numbers; we now
find that music will have to go very far before finding a better scale.
But a 53-note scale would give far purer harmonics than the present
scale, and we can imagine future ages finding it worthy of adoption, in
spite of all its added complexities -- especially if mechanical devices
replace human fingers in the performance of music. For, in the last
resort, our limited scales have their origins in the limitation of our
hands.

Yet, if ever music becomes independent of the human hand, may not the
race then elect to use a continuous scale in which every interval can
be made perfect -- as with the unaccompanied violin of today?"

Happy New Year everyone!
:-)

Cheers,
Christopher

If you are interested in precise intonation, you may wish to avoid using vibrato entirely. (Vibrato might take you some time to master, in any case.)
H. Lowery, in "A Guide to Musical Acoustics" (Dobson Books, Ltd. , London, 1956) writes on page 82:
"In this instrument the vibrato may contribute most artistically to performance for its extent and frequency of oscillation are entirely under the control of the player. Beats up to about seven per second yield satisfactory results with a pitch range of not more than a semitone on either side."
At the head of Chapter I the author quotes Clerk Maxwell:
"The special educational value of this combined study of music and acoustics is that more than almost any other study it involves a continued appeal to what we must observe ourselves. The facts are things which must be felt: they cannot be learned from any description of them."

>>> "Christopher J. Chapman" <christopher.chapman@conexant.com> 01/03 3:25 PM >>>
Hi Folks,

As someone who has taken up the violin in order to gain more freedom of
intonation who often envies all you folks with the latest and/or
greatest in electronic instrumentation, I found this quote in Sir James
Jeans' book "Science & Music" (apparently originally published in 1937)
about various temperaments priceless:

"We have already seen that the present 12-note scale has its roots
embedded very deeply in the unalterable properties of numbers; we now
find that music will have to go very far before finding a better scale.
But a 53-note scale would give far purer harmonics than the present
scale, and we can imagine future ages finding it worthy of adoption, in
spite of all its added complexities -- especially if mechanical devices
replace human fingers in the performance of music. For, in the last
resort, our limited scales have their origins in the limitation of our
hands.

Yet, if ever music becomes independent of the human hand, may not the
race then elect to use a continuous scale in which every interval can
be made perfect -- as with the unaccompanied violin of today?"

Happy New Year everyone!
:-)

Cheers,
Christopher