source file: mills2.txt Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 18:24:23 -0700 Subject: Syntonic Comma vs. P5 From: mr88cet@texas.net (Gary Morrison) >If only the 81:80 is a syntonic comma, then only the 3:2 is a (perfect) >fifth. We don't restrict the latter that way; there's no reason I can see >to restrict the former either. Well... Perhaps, but I think that that's not a very meaningful comparison, for two reasons: 1. A syntonic comma is a description of a pitch discrepancy between two different formulations of what are conceptually (12-tone framework) the same pitch, whereas a perfect fifth is a basic consonance. Those are two very different concepts, with very different purposes behind them. 2. 22TET's analogy to a syntonic comma is more than two and a half times the size of an 81:80, whereas the most extreme intervals likely to be charac- terized as perfect fifth are unlikely to deviate from 3:2 by more than 20c, a difference of barely over 1%. Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Tue, 29 Apr 1997 12:37 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA00310; Tue, 29 Apr 1997 12:37:00 +0200 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA00306 Received: from by ella.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) id DAA05276; Tue, 29 Apr 1997 03:35:04 -0700 Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 03:35:04 -0700 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@ella.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@ella.mills.edu