ebs@mcnc.UUCP (07/15/83)
The suggestion that a particular tempered scale (not 12 notes) would sound
"horrible" just because it doesn't match the LIMITED system which westerners
have used for a few centuries is, at best, narrow-minded. Another scale may
sound different or weird, but there is no absolute standard of horrible.
I would wager that a number (besides 12) could be found which would
produce as interesting music as the 12 note scale. I'll agree that it's
probably not 16, but that's as far as I'll go.
For an idea of what alternate scale music may sound like, listen to
some Persian music. On the American side, listen to Marion Brown's
"Geechee Recollections" (not punk, but jazz).
ebs (uncc)cbostrum@watdaisy.UUCP (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) (07/21/83)
Someone submitted something about other scales, meaning scales differenr
from our evenly tempered 12 tone scale, suggesting maybe 16 or something
like that. I got slightly interested in this about 8 years ago and played
around with different possibilities.
The fact that we suggest N tones at all indicates that we want them to be
cyclic. This is a presupposition that need not be made. Presumably, the
N+1st tone is just double the second tones frequency, thus basing the whole
thing on octaves because of their "obvious" plesant sounding nature. (Let's
hear from someone who knows whether there is a strong physiological basis for
this; I may be dense but I dont think it is obvious at *all*).
One we grant this whole pythagorean schtick, we will want our scale to have
good approximations to the other (w)holy intervals such as 3/2, 4/3, 5/4.
If we also desire that the ratio between notes is a constant, allowing us to
get tonality from any starting point, we require an N such that 2**(i/N) gives
us good approximations to these values for various i. My vague recollection
(too tired to figure it out now) is that 12 gave excellent approximations to
these values whereas suprisingly, larger values of N did not.
Of course, we can drop the golden thigh stuff. I am quite skeptical of it
myself, which is why I would appreciate some expert input from any experts
out there. In that case, there would be all sorts of possibilties for discrete
(but perhaps not discreet) scales.
Calvin Bruce Ostrum, Computer Science, University of Waterloo
...{decvax,allegra,utzoo}!watmath!watdaisy!cbostrum