source file: m1394.txt
Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 09:01:39 -0500 (CDT)

Subject: Bill Sethares' "Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale"

From: mr88cet@texas.net (Gary Morrison)

I think Bill briefly mentioned his book having hit the bookshelves, but
just in case any of you missed it, I really strongly recommend you folks
read it.  I think this is an earth-shaker!

   The short summary is that it's a very thorough and detailed
investigation of the interrelationships between tuning and timbre.  Both at
a theoretical and practical level.  And I say theoretical and practical
both in the musical and psychoacoustic senses of the words.  It comes with
a CD of auditory illustrations of the phenomena he describes.  You
essentially hold the CD on pause as you read the book, and when you get the
cue from the text, you hit the play button for that particular band.

   The book opens with a really killer illustration, I think:  After
quoting several "authoritative" comments about how fundamental the octave
is to our ears, he shows how easy it is to construct an only slightly
contrived-sounding timbre that makes an exact 2:1-frequency-ratio octave
sound utterly horrendous, and 2.1:1 ratio sound as though it were an
octave!

   I haven't read it cover-to-cover yet, but two things are apparent to me
from what I have read about it:
1.  This book is one of a very few I've read that very clearly breaks basic
    new ground in the field of unusual tunings.
2.  This book brings together the all-too-often separated fields of just
    intonation and temperament into a realm where they can be related to one
    another on equal terms.

   Here's the info:

Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale
by William A. Sethares
Springer, 1997
ISBN #3-540-76173-X