source file: mills2.txt Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 18:09:35 -0800 Subject: Re: Harrison Lucy From: Gary Morrison <71670.2576@compuserve.com> Well, I think Dan's point is that Harrison's and Lucy's pi-based definition has nebulous value to many microtonalists, except as a close approximation to Erv Wilson's meta-meantone tuning. It's easy to imagine - perhaps completely falsely - Harrison or Lucy thinking, "1/3 octave is just too sharp for a major third. Hey I know, I'll use 1/pi instead! Pi's a magic number!" I personally am prone to go one step further: to attribute only limited significance to Erv's meta-meantone definition as well, because, 1. Only occasionally do major triads get voiced as 4:5:6 approximations with no octave displacements or doubling, 2. At least in the definition alone, doesn't address how the harmonics of those tones beat against each other, and 3. In most musical contexts, objective tones pretty much drown out difference tones anyway. I certainly do acknowledge a handful of important exceptions, like solo duets on high-pitched instruments, but those are, in the big musical picture, exceptions. Perhaps I'd change that opinion after working out the math of how beat-frequencies are affected by harmonics, octave displacement, and doubling. But as I've said before, I certainly don't want my comments here to discourage anybody from experimenting with LucyTuning. In my limited experimentation with it, it struck me as perfectly reasonable and usable tuning. Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Tue, 17 Dec 1996 07:04 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA06354; Tue, 17 Dec 1996 07:06:29 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA06352 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id WAA07022; Mon, 16 Dec 1996 22:06:26 -0800 Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 22:06:26 -0800 Message-Id: <199612170603.XAA18468@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