source file: m1424.txt
Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 16:11:51 -0500

Subject: scales for brass

From: sethares@eceserv0.ece.wisc.edu (William Sethares)

Bill Flavell asks:

>if there is anybody in the 
alternative tuning scene who is composing for acoustic or synth brass 
timbres (which are my favorites), and what your opinions are regarding 
which alternative tuning scale is best suited for composing with brass 
timbres. 

In terms of TTSS, if you draw the dissonance curve for 
brass-like timbres, you get minima at many of the simple
integer ratios, because (as we've seen in the recent thread about
deviations from harmonicity) brass timbres have (primarily) 
harmonic partials. Hence, from this point of view, the various 
JI scales would be most appropriate.

There is another issue...  early brass instruments 
(more generally, any air column resonator that
is overblown) produces pitches with fundamentals
that very closely match the harmonic series
(one thinks of bugles, for instance). Hence "overtone scales"
might be another good choice, since they would mimic
the way the instrument works.

These two answers are not the same, but if you pick
your overtones carefully, then they are quite
close.

Bill Sethares