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Kalle's discovery: Balzano's irrational scale's symmetrical basis

🔗djtrancendance <djtrancendance@...>

3/29/2009 6:06:19 PM

Kalle wrote:
--Hello everyone,
--I think the following fits very well the recent topic of tunings --that are not based on JI or small integer ratios.
--I know next to nothing about the reasoning behind Balzano's scale --but I noticed a strange thing:
--this scale is a 9-tone MOS of 2^(9/20)-generator.
--Now 2^(9/20) is extremely close to (sqrt(3)+1)/ 2 which
--has an interesting property related to difference tones:
--if g = (sqrt(3)+1)/ 2
--g^2 - g = 1/2.

Like I said before, that's a very cool irrational number ratio symmetry Kalle found. Easily up there with the symmetry of PHI.

So I figured I should used it create a scale...not sure if or if not my scale matches Balzano's or not (it is about 9 tones per 2/1 octave).
Regardless, one thing is for sure: (sqrt(3) + 1) / 2 is a VERY useful musical ratio.
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Using the same formula I used for my PHI tuning but substituting (sqrt(3) + 1)/2 for PHI I got the following scale (in cents)

179.854
299.883
419.911
539.939 = ((sqrt(3) + 1) / 2) = the "pseudo" octave, NOT 2/1

This scale turns out sounding quite good, as you can hear in the example below:
http://www.geocities.com/djtrancendance/KALLE.wav

Between this example and the one with my PHI scale...it think it should hopefully become more obvious just how much untouched potential lies in using irrational generators (that and octaves other than 2/1).
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Now...how many more examples am I going to have to post before some of you JI junkies decide to try your hands (and minds) at making irrational number generated scales?

Come on...us very few or so people who believe in irrationals so far can't do this alone... :-)