source file: mills2.txt Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 21:44:17 -0700 Subject: Re: Newbie From: Gary Morrison <71670.2576@compuserve.com> Here are my answers to Scott Perman's questions. Your XP-50 appears to retune by what would generally be described as setting a number of "cents" between adjacent keys. A cent is 1/100 of the traditional half step, so indeed 200 cents/step would give you a wholetone scale, 50 would give you a quartone scale, and so forth. The formula for how to set your XP-50 for a "N"TET ("N" Tone-per-octave Equal-Temperament) scale is 1200/N. That comes from the fact that, since there are 100 cents per half step, and 12 half-steps per octave, you get 1200 cents per octave. So if you want to split that octave up into 17 equal parts instead of 12, you'll get 1200/17 = 70.6 (approx). That much you appear to have figured out. What you appear to be looking for - how far off the resultant octaves will be - is pretty easy to figure out by reversing that formula. If you do 17TET for example as 70-cent steps, your octave will have a size of 70 cents/step times 17 steps per near-octave, which works out to 1190 cents per near-octave. That then puts your near-octave 10 cents flat of the precise 1200-cent octave. That's not great. As for microtonal equal-temperaments to try, you correctly identified several: 17TET, 24TET, and 31TET. Most microtonal equal-temperament folks agree though that the easiest equal-temperament to break into from our common 12TET heritage is 19TET. As luck would have it, tuning 19TET as 63 cents per step will give you a 1197-cent near-octave, which you'll probably close enough. You can play a fairly traditional-sounding major scale in 19TET by making each whole step span 3 19TET steps, and a half-step span 2 19TET steps. Others you can try that are known to sound interesting 9TET (133 cents per step), 7TET (171c), 22TET (54c, which unfortunately will give you a dreadfully false octave), 34TET (35c), and 41 (29c, also a mediocre off octave). (Curiously, 9TET and 7TET will give you that exact same 1197-cent near-octave you'll get with a 63-cent approximation of 19TET.) Or if you want to try out the really strange stuff, you can try some of Wendy Carlos' nonoctave tunings, notably "Alpha" at 78 cents per step, and "Beta" at 64 cents per step. My current fascination is a nonoctave tuning of 88 cents per step, which is the "88CET" tuning I keep droning on and on endlessly about. I don't recommend 88CET for beginners though; I suspect you'll find it a very difficult tuning to make sense of. As for recordings to get a hold of, I definitely recommend three among many others: * Easley Blackwood's CD of 19 Etudes in equal-temperaments 13-24. * If you're into popular genres, Neil Haverstick's album (cassette only left) of roughly 2/3 19TET, mostly R&B guitar. * If you're into ambientish music, Ivor Darreg's CD has a good survey of various equal-temperaments. And finally, as for microtonal guitar work, it turns out that the guitar is an excellent instrument for exploring unusual tunings. Not only is it a versatile instrument as a whole, with a (frequently anyway) easy-going aura, but your basic playing technique alters FAR less than keyboards when you switch from one tuning to the next. Although Neil Haverstick is one of the most virtuosic - possibly THE most - microtonal guitarists out there (Jon Catler is certain exceptionally good as well), many others use guitars as well. Ivor Darreg had guitars fretted to ever equal-temperament from 10 to 24 if I recall correctly. I've used them as well, and Tom Stone even ran a (barely) for-profit company that produced interchangeable-fingerboard guitars for many hears. Unfortunately they are defunct now, but ... aaargh I can't remember his name ... kinda-sorta took it over. Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Thu, 8 Aug 1996 08:03 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA17240; Thu, 8 Aug 1996 08:02:26 +0200 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA17407 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id XAA28078; Wed, 7 Aug 1996 23:03:13 -0700 Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 23:03:13 -0700 Message-Id: <199608080600.AAA03838@freenet.uchsc.EDU> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu