source file: mills2.txt Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 21:45:19 +0200 Subject: Tuning ET vs. JI From: DFinnamore@aol.com Graham Breed writes: > If you're tuning a digital synth to an ET scale, all you need to > do is one division, and from then on it's just addition. This > is easier than all that multiplying of fractions you need to work > with JI -- unless you use ratio space axes. My point is that > there's no reason why you can't do all your work in a logarithmic > scale, and then an ET is the simplest scale to define. Most of > the work in microtonality now is done with electronic synthesis > rather than dividiing up strings. I see now that we're on slightly different tracks - the classic situation of two sides that are both right if you consider that they're facing different directions! I believe that you're talking about the application of a tuning to an instrument, which is decidedly easier with ET, and, some would say, the primary reason that ET was chosen for Western music in the first place. I'm still stuck on the abstract, theoretical questions. Like, which ideal tuning goal, if even it could be applied, is most likely to yield melodies and harmonies to which the human body and soul should most readily resonate. It's a sticky question, I know, and maybe founded partly on misconceptions hidden in the depths of my cosmology. I'm open to that, and open to criticisms on that basis. So far, it seems to me to be a worthy pursuit. More on this in the next posting. >JI comes from the harmonic series, which is a >quantization of linear frequency space. Lost ya there. Doesn't "quantization" denote equal divisions? E.g., in what sense are the two spaces in 1:1, 9:8, 5:4 equal, or based on equal divisions of linear frequeny space, whatever that means? Strange as it might seem, after years of picturing frequency space logarithmically, I can't get myself to visualize it linearally - it doesn't seem to make any sense that way. David J. Finnamore Just tune it! Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Thu, 15 May 1997 21:46 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA03178; Thu, 15 May 1997 21:46:44 +0200 Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 21:46:44 +0200 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA03176 Received: (qmail 28992 invoked from network); 15 May 1997 19:46:39 -0000 Received: from localhost (HELO ella.mills.edu) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 15 May 1997 19:46:39 -0000 Message-Id: <970515154201_114511325@emout11.mail.aol.com> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu