source file: m1416.txt Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 18:41:47 -0400 Subject: Reply to Joe Monzo From: "Paul H. Erlich" >Here, 6/5 doesn't figure as an interval that needs to be >connected directly because it's not a prime axis. But I need it to be connected directly because it's a consonant interval. >I was merely pointing out to Paul that prime factorization >figures in his own visual representations of pitch resources. >If one is prepared to argue that we don't hear prime qualities >in intervals, how can one find a diagram useful which is >nothing other than the _visual representation of those qualities_? The reason I like these lattice digrams is that they allow you to see all the consonant combinations at a glance. According to John Chalmers, Erv Wilson also uses higher-dimensional triangular lattices like these. >I agree with you totally here: to my >ears, it's difficult if not _impossible_ to isolate _exact_ >prime qualities in a _dyad_. But add some more notes, and it >becomes fairly easy to compare the qualities heard in comparing >various intervals. I would agree that stacking 5 notes in consecutive perfect fifths, one hears a chord with a great deal of perfect-fifthness to it. The 81/64 itself is rather irrelavant. Maybe I picked too tautological an example. Got a better one? >(I'd really like to see more feedback about microtonality in >the blues.) I think this is a great topic, but I don't think ratios of large numbers have much to do with it. I do think that many blues performers do distinguish between 6/5 and 7/6, however, as well as approaching a pentatonic scale in 7tET.