source file: mills2.txt Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 19:42:16 -0800 Subject: Re: Reply to Matt and Harmonics & YAMS From: Matt Nathan Charles Lucy wrote: > > >So far you have only followed this up with questions. I'm > >waiting to see your better model. I hold that real strings > >have partials which are nearly but not exactly harmonic. > >It's up to you to show that this is not so, and that the > >proper model is built on the value pi, and that this > >justifies your tuning system for plucked and hammered > >string instruments, and that this justifies your tuning > >system for other instruments. > > >Matt Nathan > > Thank you for your thoughts. From a practical standpoint, whatever I > should produce as proof, in terms of instruments, experiments, data etc. > I have too strong a vested interest in "proving" that Harrison was > correct. Hence whatever further experiments, I should set up, few would > believe me. You say people wouldn't believe you (you assume) because you have a vested interest in having your model be accepted, so you are excused from posting your model. It's interesting that this logic doesn't also prevent you from posting claims that you have a model. > We come down to the problem of all "scientific" hypothesis logic, > that a > "Law" is only valid, until someone comes up with a better "Law". Actually it is theories, not laws, which compete. > In this case the prevailing "Law" is a mapping of harmonics based on > exact integer frequency ratios, I keep seeing posts and cross posts which explain that the partials of real plucked or hammered strings are not exactly harmonic. I don't see anyone arguing what you call "prevailing law". I think this is what's called a "strawman"--when you state an opposing argument noone actually holds, hoping that by then destroying that argument you can indirectly prove your own argument. Unfortunately it doesn't prove anything. > and the proposed hypothesis is a mapping > based on pi, as very clearly described by Harrison and at our > websites. None of the web sites which links you've posted have any description of the mapping of partials. All your web sites describe (and not very clearly) is that one can build an extensible tuning system on 2 irrational intervals, neither of which is pi. I suspect that there are an indefinite number of such tuning systems using pairs of irrational intervals, all of which would produce beating sonorities. > As I have yet to afford a full equipped acoustic lab, (neither in UK > or here in Hawaii), the comparisons are difficult to make except on > an experiential level. If you want to speak musically, and say you like the sound of your scale, I have no objection at all, and I encourage you. I too like the sound of the beating in the lullaby examples. It's one thing to work with materials artistically to get a pleasing result, it's another to investigate the physics of acoustic bodies, the theoretical structures of tuning systems, and the psychoacoustics of human perception. I have no vested interest in any particular model; I'm curious about all of them--that's why I read this list. If you do indeed have a model, I suggest that this particular forum is the _ideal_ place to discuss it--if you would only begin to do so. Matt Nathan Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Mon, 17 Feb 1997 05:27 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA08222; Mon, 17 Feb 1997 05:27:32 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA08214 Received: from by ella.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) id UAA26714; Sun, 16 Feb 1997 20:25:51 -0800 Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 20:25:51 -0800 Message-Id: <199702170348.TAA26462@sunatg1> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@ella.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@ella.mills.edu