It's remarkable how pliable to conditioning our ears are

[Paul Erlich:]
>When I tuned my piano (by ear) to meantone, the thing that sounded
worst at first were the dominant seventh chords, the minor triads (no
longer approximating 16:19:24) also being quite bothersome. After a
while, I got used to both, and then hearing 12-tET music really
bothered me. It's remarkable how pliable to conditioning our ears are,
and must be experienced to be believed.

Boy. I'm really with you 100% on this... Also, I've had many a night
where I've been feverishly working away on parts and gotten my ear and
brain firmly around a particular thicket, only to have my ear (and
brain) wake up in the morning and it's no longer there - I can't "hear
it." But it's always the same; after about an hour of fiddling around
with it my ears right back on it, and usually it's there to stay after
that.

>You'll find that this augmented second is one of the most important
melodic intervals in Eastern European and much Middle Eastern music --
try Klezmer for a start.

I've used a variety of 7 note scales in 13e to exploit the 3/13
augmented second scale step (even a double augmented 4/13):

3 1 2 1 2 2 2
3 1 3 1 2 1 2
2 1 4 1 2 1 2

I really find these scales to be *extremely* beautiful, and to impart
a real melancholy ache, or longing, through what is often said to be a
nearly "unusable" EDO; 13e (I also find that they often have a sound
very akin to the Eastern European scales of which Paul is broadly
referring to as well).

Dan