source file: mills2.txt Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1996 12:14:18 -0700 Subject: Re: Non-octave scales; monkeys banging o From: PAULE >> but near-octaves will take on the character of equivalence >I can't vouch for having experienced this effect, except through the >benefit >of Bill Sethares' 88CET-optimized timbres. Other people experimenting with >88CET have found its off-octaves to be more usable musically than I have. I >pretty much just plain avoid them, but I can imagine how somebody can find use >for them in a few cases. But, except through Bill's mapped timbres, I haven't >heard of the octave-duplicating effect having survived the extremity of >detuning >that 88CET imposes. Any perspective from you 88CET experimenters (with >near-harmonic timbres)? Warren, John P., Paul F.? I was not referring to 88CET, as I have never worked with this tuning. Nor was I saying that the nearest available approximation to an octave would automatically work like one. The point is that if a note comes close enough to an octave or a multiple octave, it will sound equivalent, especially in the case of harmonic partials. For example, an interval of 33 Pierce steps exhibits equivalence, even though it is a very different pitch class in the tritave scheme. Even when the even partials are removed, I believe the virtual pitch sensation is not very octave-specific. In the case of inharmonic partials, octave equivalence may play less of a role, but still exists, and is less demanding as to intonation. Gamelan music is a case in point: a recent post indicated that Javanese musicians are well aware of the pure octave, probably through second-order beating, but they prefer to detune it and find quite a wide range of acceptable octave sizes. Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Wed, 31 Jul 1996 22:37 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id NAA01503; Wed, 31 Jul 1996 13:37:44 -0700 Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1996 13:37:44 -0700 Message-Id: <14960731202141/0005695065PK1EM@MCIMAIL.COM> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu