source file: mills2.txt
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 21:54:01 -0700

Subject: Re: Non-octave scales; monkeys banging o

From: Gary Morrison <71670.2576@compuserve.com>

> 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. 

   Based upon my 88CET experience at least, I have found that they sound like
different pitch classes in the usual octave scheme as well.  I haven't tried 33
Pierce-Bohlen steps for comparison.  

   I personally find that, despite classical theoretical premises,
octave-equivalence weakens with the more octaves you stack up.  The feeling, to
my ears at least, that two Cs three or four octaves apart are of the same pitch
class, is less compelling than two Cs a single octave apart.  

   That of course depends heavily on how the two notes are used.  Especially,
whether they're played together or in sequence, and how many notes appear
between them.  And of course it depends upon timbre.  

   Based upon that, I suspect that the (roughly) eighth-tone error of a
33-Pierce-Bohlen-step interval would be less ... uhmmm ... "damaging" for lack
of a better word ... to the four-octave sensation than that (roughly) same error
from 88CET's closest approximation to a single octave, because the four-octave
sensation is comparatively weak to start with.  


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