| This afternoon, I sat down and wrote a treatise on my understanding
of why certain ratios of pitches sound good and others don't. This
is all to do with physics of the sound and its harmonics - and
*nothing* to to with arbitrary human constructs such as scales.
Quite a few of these ratios fit nicely into the 12 tone even tempered
system - its a marvel of providence really. None of them fit
perfectly, and some don't fit at all.
Theres quite a bit of stuff which I think will be of interest to
Csounders, including some material on the sharpening of high
harmonics in instruments with stiff strings, and the always positive
FM of all harmonics caused the the tension of the string increasing
as the sum of all harmonic oscillations causes it to assume a shape
which is other than straight.
I wrote this all at once and no doubt it can be improved.
http://www.firstpr.com.au/csound/physics/harmon1.txt
It is a simple text file - 5000 words or so.
Jim, if you want me to email it to you, I can. There are some
crucial parts which are effectively tables of text, which could drive
you bananas with a speech synthesiser - but I can't think of how
better to present it. I have marked the beginnings and ends of
tables in a way which I hope will assist you in navigation.
This is an update and extension of things I originally figured out in
1976. I haven't read most of this anywhere - but I haven't looked
very hard either.
- Robin
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Robin Whittle rw@firstpr.com.au http://www.firstpr.com.au
Heidelberg Heights, Melbourne, Australia
First Principles Research and expression: music, Internet
music marketing, telecommunications, human
factors in technology adoption. Consumer
advocacy in telecommunications, especially
privacy. Consulting and technical writing.
Real World Electronics and software for music: eg.
Interfaces the Devil Fish mods for the TB-303.
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