Re: need help with microtone

On 10 Oct 2003 at 15:49, Carsten Becker wrote:

> I
> wanted to make a well-tempered scale, yes, so thanks for that formula. We
> haven't dealt enough with logarithms in school yet, just some first
> principles. My last year's Maths teacher said we'll need it this year.
Like so much of math, it's only useful if you intend to go on and
study higher levels of math. Unless, as has happened here, you find a
genuine real-world application for it, which happens more often than
it ought to.

> c is
> half the value of c' and a half the value of a' as I understood it (I looked
> the frequences up myself before). Is that right? Should be, because
> otherwise, it wouldn't be an octave, right?
There's certainly something peculiar in the human auditory system
that makes us percieve a doubling or halving frequency to be "the
same note but different". I have no idea what the evolutionary basis
for that might be, but it's there nonetheless.

As an aside, if the conculture this scale is for is non-human, you
might even be able to manipulate the value of "2" in the formula I
gave, although it'd probably make it near impossible to tune any
existing instrument in to that scale in a meaningful way. Maybe a
violin, or some other fretless stringed instrument would work nicely
enough.

> Is 440 Hz a must-have? Or might
> I chose another frequence as value to start with, too?
The formula I gave works for any base frequency you care to imagine,
440, 415, 450, 567, 220, 16384, anything.

> Because I had a little too less time from wednesday to friday (today), I
> couldn't write back yet or do those equations, sorry.
Don't appologise for having a Real Life. Once that starts, you'll
start the Gollum-like process of becoming a True Geek. Real Life is
what keeps the ring off your finger, so to speak.




Paul

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