Catch-up

Thanks to everyone who has responded on- and off-list to my latest
tuning experiments!

I had hoped to have some preliminary results floating every note but
one (one pitch12, such as C, or C#, or...), but various things have
intervened, including trying to replace a dead car with a live one,
seeing "Peter Pan" (Cathy Rigby looks great and sings well enough, but
the actual score is boring beond belief!), etc...

[Christopher J. Chapman, TD 499.7:]
>This may sound silly,

The sillier the better; fire away!

>but would it help to have the equivalent of a set of "open strings"?
>For example: on my violin the open strings are (usually): G D A E. I
>don't have to play the strings open at all, but I can play them
>occasionally to make sure that my fingerings haven't drifted too far.
>Maybe you can chose a small set of grounded pitches that are the
>equivalent, rather than grounding all of them or only one of them.

An interesting idea! Might be a good compromise between grounding all
notes and grounding one note. Observe that the four notes, separated by
fifths, already form a tuning conflict; one can play "comma pump in G"
with the sequence G,E,A,D,G. But of course, in grounding all 12 notes,
I have inevitably introduced even more conflict between tuning and
grounding, though I'm still not sure that won't wind up being the best
method, at least for some pieces.

Thanks, Christopher, for your suggestions!

[Joe Monzo, TD 499.3:]
>Hey John, can you make a version of this arrangement using 36-EDO?
>Now *that* would be really interesting.

Joe is referring to the Bach/Busoni Chaconne. Joe, I'm afraid my
software is not able to make any kind of EDO output at present. And of
the universe of EDO's, 36 certainly seems an odd choice for Busoni to
have made: you get the usual horrible 4:5 of 400 cents that we've all
heard since birth, or you can squeeze back to 366.7 cents, 20 cents too
FLAT! Poo!!

[Joe Monzo, TD 499.4:]
>Interesting how our definitions of 'pump' and 'flat' mix metaphors
>here: Carl's JI technique causes 'pump' to have exactly the opposite
>meaning originally intended by John when he coined it.

Yes and no: the air-mattress pump Jude & I use for camping DOES allow
pumping in either direction. And, as Carl points out, one can play the
pump backward and drive tuning sharp rather than flat.

[Carl Lumma, TD 500.4:]
>Let me turn you on to Erv Wilson's pitch-space diagrams (if you're not
>already hip). Go to...
>http://www.anaphoria.com/dal12.html

Thanks, Carl, I will!

If I have failed to respond to anyone's questions or comments, please
remind me on or off list. Thanks again to everyone!!

JdL