source file: mills3.txt Date: Thu, 18 Dec 1997 16:32:13 +0100 Subject: My melodic lemon From: Steven Rezsutek [Bill Sethares -- I don't mean to cop your pun, I came up with it quite independently on the way to work this morning. Honest. ;-) Steve] The recent discussion re melodic limits of preception have caused me to look a bit more in depth at an experience I had a month or so ago. At the time, I simply accepted it as the "fruit of my labor" in working with micro-tunings starting to pay off, but I'm wondering if theres more. As provocative as it may seem, my question here isn't merely rhetorical, and I'd like to have some opinions from the field. I had gone to see a guitarist that I admired, and hadn't seen for a good many years (Ellen McIlwaine), and was rather suprised when she introduced a piece dedicated to Usted Ali Akbar Khan. During this piece, a particular interval continually sounded wrong to me, and I concluded that it might have had something to do with the fact that I had spent that entire afternoon listening to Arabian and Moroccan music. So far as I could tell, she was hitting a 12TET major third, but it sounded far too "bright" for the piece. A minor wouldn't have done right either -- it would have been flat. This wasn't a subtle "something's not quite right", either. It stuck out like a sore thumb throughout the piece. To get to the meat of the matter, I looked in what references I have last night, to try and find an explanation. What I came up with as likely intervals were: 1) 408 cents 2) 384 cents 3) 355 cents I think I can discount #1 right off -- even if I could have noticed the 8 cent difference, it would have been even "brighter". So that leaves #2 & #3. I seriously doubt that I was hearing a comma, as I have to work at it to hear it in some of the JI recordings I have where it is being demonstrated. #3 then seems likely. I'm not too familiar with this music yet, but there does seem to sometimes be a "neutral" sounding third, neither major nor minor, that crops up in some of the melodies. I cross-checked with 19, 22 and 24 tet as well. Neither 19 nor 22 offer an interval that has that sort of sound, and the closest approximations involve differences on the order of 20 or 30 cents, and they display majorness or minorness, and while I don't have anything set up to give 24, it does have a 350 cent "quartertone" derived neutral third. So, was I clearly hearing an out of tune rendition of a neutral third, and hence a melodic difference of 45 cents, and that under "real" conditions? Inquiring minds want to know... Steve SMTPOriginator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu From: Gregg Gibson Subject: 19-tone Equal Octave Stretch PostedDate: 18-12-97 16:47:36 SendTo: CN=coul1358/OU=AT/O=EZH ReplyTo: tuning@eartha.mills.edu $MessageStorage: 0 $UpdatedBy: CN=notesrv2/OU=Server/O=EZH,CN=coul1358/OU=AT/O=EZH,CN=Manuel op de Coul/OU=AT/O=EZH RouteServers: CN=notesrv2/OU=Server/O=EZH,CN=notesrv1/OU=Server/O=EZH RouteTimes: 18-12-97 16:45:27-18-12-97 16:45:28,18-12-97 16:45:04-18-12-97 16:45:05 DeliveredDate: 18-12-97 16:45:05 Categories: $Revisions: Received: from ns.ezh.nl ([137.174.112.59]) by notesrv2.ezh.nl (Lotus SMTP MTA SMTP v4.6 (462.2 9-3-1997)) with SMTP id C1256571.00568E28; Thu, 18 Dec 1997 16:47:21 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA29406; Thu, 18 Dec 1997 16:47:36 +0100 Date: Thu, 18 Dec 1997 16:47:36 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA29401 Received: (qmail 22822 invoked from network); 18 Dec 1997 07:47:33 -0800 Received: from localhost (HELO ella.mills.edu) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 18 Dec 1997 07:47:33 -0800 Message-Id: <3499A7ED.7BFE@ww-interlink.net> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu