Dynamic Tonality

[Komsip]

WOW I used scala for fiddling with this type of thing before! So much fun!

This stuff is fantastic.

[JLMoriart]

@Komsip Yea no kidding :) you've downloaded the synth yourself yet?

[easeup666]

a diminished fourth is the enharmonic equivelent to a major third!!

Not sold on this if- you want to incorporate exotic scales etc...then learn them.!

[JLMoriart]

They're only equivalent in 12 tone equal temperament. If one were to play in any other tuning then your enharmonic equivalents become Separate Pitches.

You say to learn the scales, but on what interphase?

One can retune every half step on a piano but then for each equally tempered scale, one would have to learn a new set of fingerings.

On a two dimensional keyboard layout with dynamic tonality, the relationships between tunings are not dumbed down, they are Exposed and made available to anyone.

[Muzikman127]

it's equivalent- if you're using the same temperament.  But turkish music doesn't use 12 TET- so you can't "learn" the exotic scales unless a) you can dynamically change the tuning system (like here) b) you have an instrument without any pitch contraints, like a violin, or c) you have 100s of note per octave, which is just impractical.

[ursathemagnificent]

So, if you're playing in 31TET on the Thummer, you still only have 12 notes to the octave, right? What if someone wanted to have all 31 (or whatever) notes available at the same time? Is this possible with the Thummer?

[JimPlamondon]

In 31TET (or any other tuning in the syntonic tuning continuum) you can use electronic transposition to place the notes of the current key's diatonic scale on the Thummer's central white buttons. Then, all of the tonally-useful intervals of that key will fall on the Thummer keyboard. Those that fall off the Thummer's keyboard are only tonally useful in other keys. When modulating to those keys, just transpose the keyboard to place that key's diatonic scale on the white buttons, and you're set.

[JimPlamondon]

GirlyVoice, what we're doing is described here: thummer dott com/papers/Matrix.pdf

[GirlyVoice]

thats interesting, I was planning on implementing something like this in max but I was planning on keeping the partials at static ratios to the fundamental (e.g. integer ratios).

I presume your changing the pitch of each partial to the nearest note in the current tuning?

[indoordinosaur]

this is not new

[JimPlamondon]

Bending one or more notes all in the same direction, at the same speed, has indeed been done before -- but that's not what DT does. It bends the sharps in one direction, and the flats in the other, with notes close to the tonic moving slowly and those far from the tonic moving rapidly. As far as my collaborators and peer-reviewers know, it's novel. If youu can cite any valid prior art, I'd love to see it.

[miblodelcarpio]

@JimPlamondon Wonderful, if baffling, work, Jim and team. And regarding the comment to which you gave this reply, it is apparently easier to say something (which one may not fully understand) has been done before, than to back it up with evidence.

[indoordinosaur]

ooh wow

chords with pitch bends!!! I've never seen anything like that before!!

oh wait... whammy bars, trombones, synthesizers

[TheWayfaerer]

DT is quite fun on a QWERTY keyboard too, even though the mapping I use is similar to a piano mapping. Actually, the fact that my mapping messes everything up means that its easy to come up with something to go along with Andy's weird taste in music. I can just finger regular melodies, and they come out crazily atonal!

[bickettryan]

a major chord with a diminished fourth instead of a major third sounds awful to anyone with a trained ear for Western music. I'm not sold until I hear some of these "new chord progressions."

[JimPlamondon]

In the Turkish schismatic temperament, the d4 is eight tempered perfect fifths down and five pure octaves up. If the tempered P5 is 701.7 cents wide, that's (-8 * 701.7) + (5 * 1200) = 386.3 cents. A major triad played with these intervals (and a harmonic timbre) will sound good to all Western and non-Western ears, trained or untrained.

The Thummer makes music easy to learn by expoising its underlying structure -- a structure that is common to the music of many cultures, throughout time.

[ExpressStaveNotation]

Eight perfect 5ths down from C gives: F, Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb, Cb, Fb. If the 5ths were just (Pythagorean), 3/2 ratios, which is 702 cents, you would be 16 cents lower by the Fb. ie - 384 cents as opposed to 400 for equal temperament E. What is a just major 3rd in cents? I know trombonists lower their major 3rds to make them pure, but by how much?

[JimPlamondon]

A just major third is 386.31 cents; a just perfect fifth is 701.96. Hence, tempering the perfect fifth from 701.96 cents to 701.70 cents -- a completely unnoticeable difference of only .26 cents -- brings the diminished fourth to exactly 386.3 cents, which is its perfectly just value.

My point is not that the schismatic temperament is preferable to the syntonic -- the syntonic has many benefits -- but that the Thummer's note-layout offers consistent fingering in a wide range of tunings.