21 Feb
2013
21 Feb
'13
4:10 a.m.
On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 6:51 AM, Neil <djdualcore(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 8:14 AM, Paul Davis
<paul(a)linuxaudiosystems.com>
wrote:
I find 4000 a big put-off. Are there that many scales in use worldwide?? If
it were a few hundred one could at least make some headway. My guess is
that most of them are some kind of mathematical experiments.
The problem as I see it is like this:
Mathematically: The number of scales is worse than uncountably infinite
(powerset of R). So for mathematical tractability one needs to work with
genera, eg
- Equal tempered scales (not necessarily only 12 notes)
- Well tempered scales (all/notes usable, all subtly different aka Bach's
WTC)
- Meantones
- Justs with various cut-off rules
And then criteria for 'badness' http://x31eq.com/badness.pdf for comparing
these
Musician-ly: This is a pain. I just want better sound than ET. And a few
rules of thumb to make sensible choices.
Personally I can say that after I got my keyboards with a handful of
tunings a new world has opened to me. If only I could have done some of
that with timidity/fluidsynth...
Rusi
--
http://www.the-magus.in
http://blog.languager.org
http://www.huygens-fokker.org/scala/
specifically: http://www.huygens-fokker.org/docs/scalesdir.txt
You will find that there are over 4000 diferent scales there.
Very cool!
Another good book on the subject. Don't let the title put you off.
The author isn't actually all that anti-ET.
http://www.amazon.com/Equal-Temperament-Ruined-Harmony-Should/dp/0393334201
Neil