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What comma pump is this?

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

5/5/2011 4:34:14 AM

Check this out, from the Mega Man soundtrack

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l88-qEhws8I&feature=related

The chord progression is
Bbmaj7 | Fmaj7 | Gmaj7 | Amaj7
Cmaj7 | Gmaj7 | Amaj7 | Bmaj7
Bmaj7 | F#maj7 | G#maj7 | A#maj7
C#maj7 | G#maj7 | A#maj7 | B#maj7 (now same as C)

OK, so we're at Cmaj7 now. Rather than me laying the whole thing out,
I'll just leave it at that the C goes to F for a little while, and
then eventually goes back to the Bb. So the Cmaj at the end is
supposed to land you the equivalent of 9/8 up where you started.

If each of those whole step motions is 9/8, and each of the minor
third motions is 6/5, am I correct in stating that this would be a
3486784401/3355443200 comma pump?

Of course, if you make the whole steps so that one of them is 9/8 and
the other is 10/9, so that two adjacent whole step motions spans 5/4
total, and also make the minor third motions 6/5, then the whole thing
works out to be a 2025/2048 pump instead, which makes more sense. But
I like the sound of them both moving by 9/8, because the melody makes
each of those maj7 chords effectively into maj9 chords, so it's
smoother. The above ridiculous comma is, I think, 2025/2048 *
(81/80)^4 or something like that.

Lastly, in this video, after going to F, instead of going back to the
Bb, they go back to the Bmaj7 instead, over which they play Lydian. So
the F turns into the E# from B lydian. This is also a diaschismatic
comma pump, I think. Maybe the takehome point is that the whole thing
works best if both 2025/2048 and 81/80 vanish, so you end up with a
comma pump that's based in a rank 1 temperament, not a rank 2
temperament.

-Mike