Corrosive mathematics

Thanks, everyone, for the refresher course in "rusty" math...

Actually, I like 3^(-1,0,1) = 1/3, 1, 3 much better than the other way. Of
course, it's nice that it's right, too...

Thanks to both Joe Monzo and to Paul Erlich for the recent tuning
elaborations. Because of Joe, I'm really starting to understand *CLEARLY*
the "comma drift" in JI (and with EXAMPLES!) and from Paul, the whole
enhamonic situation. This last Digest was one of the most valuable of them
all for me!

By the way, I do have one very brief question for Joe. Joe, how are you
making the MIDI files?? Are you selecting discrete frequencies with your
synth. rather than bending "a la John deLaubenfels??"

The reason I ask is that it seems that my sound card is recognizing the
tuning differences *much* more than it did for the deLaubenfels "bending"
examples, and I was wondering if your underlying method was constructing
"from scratch" rather than bending the 12-tET version. My guess is that it
is...

Also, I'm sure everyone has heard your little tune on the "Tuning Punks"
site, "3+4," but if they haven't they should soon... Great little jazz
tune... so unpretentious and musical.

Joseph Pehrson

> [Joseph Pehrson, TD 536.6]
> By the way, I do have one very brief question for Joe.
> Joe, how are you making the MIDI files?? Are you selecting
> discrete frequencies with your synth. rather than bending
> "a la John deLaubenfels??"

I don't even have a synth. All my musical instruments and
equipment (with the single exception of my 'rational guitar')
(and, thank the gods, also not my computer) were stolen out
of my house by 'family' that I was letting stay there, about
3 years ago.

So any MIDI files I create now are done with Cakewalk, either by:

- clicking the mouse on the Staff Notation screen to enter
notes directly into a score, and then adding another note
with each 'real' note, which I must later change into a
pitch-bend command in the Event List screen, and then editing
the pitch-bend amount to the correct number; OR

- (only useable for JI) using my little 'micro.cal' program
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/micro/micro.htm
to enter ratios directly into my score; the 'octave' of
the note must then be edited. This is much easier and
more user-friendly than doing it the above way because
the user only needs to know the ratio and duration of
the note - the pitch-bend is calculated by the program
and is accurate to within 2 cents; and the duration is
entered in the way that makes sense to musicians: as
fractions of a metrical unit - AND tuplets are supported,
which is *real* nice.

The problem with 'micro.cal' is that my version of Cakewalk
is so old and memory for CAL so limited that I can't add any
more features to the program. Hopefully more recent versions
of Cakewalk allocate much more memory to CAL, so that whenever
I finally get around to upgrading I can make 'micro.cal' much
more powerful.

> The reason I ask is that it seems that my sound card is
> recognizing the tuning differences *much* more than it did
> for the deLaubenfels "bending" examples, and I was wondering
> if your underlying method was constructing "from scratch"
> rather than bending the 12-tET version. My guess is that
> it is...

Well, I was going to say that, yes, it *is* very much a
'building from scratch' method. But I still have to start
with 12-tET and add the pitch-bend to that.

I suspect that the question you're asking me here is 'am I
using tuning tables to program a synth'. The answer, obviously,
is no.

I used to do it that way when I still had my Yamaha TG-77
(a rack-mount version of the SY-77, without the keyboard).
Boy!, do I miss that axe!!

> Also, I'm sure everyone has heard your little tune on the
> "Tuning Punks" site, "3+4," but if they haven't they should
> soon... Great little jazz tune... so unpretentious and musical.

Thanks, Joe - glad you like it.

I've gotten one serious complaint about it from its oldest
and biggest fan: it's way too slow. Well, actually, she also
likes it better in 12-tET than in JI, but I suspect that with
more familiarity with the JI version she'd come around to
preferring that tuning too. But she complained much more
about how slow it is: she says 'it used to sound like
'they' (= me) were *JAMMING*, now it just drags'.

Oh well, what can I say?... I like the slower version much
better, and in fact, I think the faster version she likes
had the tempo increased by mistake. When I lost my Yamaha,
I had to (and still have to) to edit all of my old MIDI-files
to work on my soundcard, and even on the ones that that I've
'finished' editing, here and there some stuff got past me.

-monz

Joseph L. Monzo Philadelphia monz@juno.com
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html
|"...I had broken thru the lattice barrier..."|
| - Erv Wilson |
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