What do they call the "Harmonic scale"?

Hi tuners,

perhaps someone here could give me a more understandable explanation ... I was reading the "Harmonic scale" article on Wikipedia. While discussing the guqin fretting, one sentence there says that "The unexpected thing about this is, these fret positions are actually the corresponding undertones of the overtones from the harmonic series.". Anyone who could tell me what that statement should mean?

Thanks.

Petr

I'm not an expert on the guqin, but from the looks at it, the thirteen 徽_hui_ (徽 "badges", pronounced "khway" with a high level tone in Mandarin), those little white dots, mark the half, thirds, quarters, fifths, sixths and eights of a string. Placing the finger on the fretboard at one of these dots gives JI ratios of 2/1, 3/1, 3/2, 4/1, 4/3, 5/1, 5/2, 5/3, 5/4, 6/1, 6/5, 8/1 and 8/5. Also, one plays natural harmonics using these _hui_.

I should break out the ruler to make sure, but I think I did read somewhere they leave out the seventh harmonic.

(I'm also referring to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guqin)

~D.

--- On Wed, 8/12/09, Petr Pařízek <p.parizek@...> wrote:

> From: Petr Pařízek <p.parizek@...>
> Subject: [tuning] What do they call the "Harmonic scale"?
> To: "Tuning List" <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
> Date: Wednesday, August 12, 2009, 5:14 PM
> Hi tuners,
>
> perhaps someone here could give me a more understandable
> explanation ... I
> was reading the "Harmonic scale" article on Wikipedia.
> While discussing the
> guqin fretting, one sentence there says that "The
> unexpected thing about
> this is, these fret positions are actually the
> corresponding undertones of
> the overtones from the harmonic series.". Anyone who could
> tell me what that
> statement should mean?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Petr
>
>
>
>
>
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