Re: How to improve your music tuning examples.

Hi Dave,

At 01:06 PM 1/10/00 -0800, you wrote:
>This friday I'm going to use your examples to raise the
>consciousness of my colleagues to just intonation.

Cool! Occasionally I get an email from school teachers (usually music
teachers) who play my examples to their classrooms to get opinions.

>However, I think the mussorgsky piece could be improved
>because the buzzy timbre of the trumpet interferes with
>perceiving the differences (the JI version sounds buzzy
>like a chain saw to the uninitiated)

Yeah, it sounds a little buzzy on my sound card too. I think I was
sticking to the original instruments. (Actually the original instrument
was a piano, until Ravel orchestrated it.)

>Can you change your file so you use a more pure-toned
>general MIDI instrument? Flute perhaps, or the pure
>sine wave patch? I think this would demonstrate it
>better.

Okay, I don't think General MIDI includes a sine wave patch - if it does, I
don't know where or how to do it. But I created versions that use the
Flute patch, and the Recorder patch (which seems to be closer to a sine
wave). I put 'em up at:

http://www.pacificnet.net/~nowitzky/justint/timbre

My sound card gave the flute a lot of vibrato, which makes it hard to hear
the subtle tuning differences. The recorder patch seemed to have no vibrato.

Both flute and recorder mainly consisted of the first and second harmonic
only, whereas the trumpet patch had components from harmonics 1 thru 9.

HOWEVER (all caps make this a "big" however), it is theorized that
harmonics play a big role in whether chords are consonant or dissonant.
Taking away the harmonics, by using sine waves, flutes, or recorders may
actually make the ET version just as consonant as the JI version.

Here's my understanding of the theory: take, for example, a C and an E,
played at the same time, on harmonically-rich instruments (i.e., lots of
harmonics, like a trumpet). They'll be in tune if the 5th harmonic of the
first note equals the 4th harmonic of the second note:

harmonics of C harmonics of E
-------------- --------------
5th harm = E = 4th harm = E
4th harm = C
3rd harm = B
3rd harm = G
2nd harm = E
2nd harm = C
1st harm = E
1st harm = C

But if you use tones like sine waves that don't have harmonics, there will
be no conflict in the upper partials, so the above dissonance will not be
perceived. (That's the theory anyway.)

So lemme know what you and your friends think. Thanks!

--Mark (nowitzky@alum.mit.edu, AKA tuning-owner@onelist.com)

+------------------------------------------------------+
| Mark Nowitzky |
| email: nowitzky@alum.mit.edu AIM: Nowitzky |
| www: http://www.pacificnet.net/~nowitzky |
| "If you haven't visited Mark Nowitzky's home |
| page recently, you haven't missed much..." |
+------------------------------------------------------+
__________________________________________
NetZero - Defenders of the Free World
Get your FREE Internet Access and Email at
http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html

On Wed, 12 Jan 2000 20:36:39 -0800, Mark Nowitzky <nowitzky@alum.mit.edu>
wrote:

>Okay, I don't think General MIDI includes a sine wave patch - if it does, I
>don't know where or how to do it.

Ocarina ought to be pretty close to a sine wave. But it might also have
vibrato.

>My sound card gave the flute a lot of vibrato, which makes it hard to hear
>the subtle tuning differences. The recorder patch seemed to have no vibrato.

--
see my music page ---> +--<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/music/music.html>--
Thryomanes /"If all Printers were determin'd not to print any
(Herman Miller) / thing till they were sure it would offend no body,
moc.oi @ rellimh <-/ there would be very little printed." -Ben Franklin