User:Ganaram inukshuk

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I generally go by "Ganaram" or some variant of that (ganaram_inukshuk, gdinuk). (Discord: ganaraminukshuk0; he/they; generally more active on the Xen Discord unless work bogs me down.)

I've heard about microtonality on and off over the years, but what drew me into the topic was two things: HEHEHE I AM A SUPAHSTAR SAGA's video series on 19edo and Patricia Taxxon's song Spiral Staircase.

From a compositional perspective, my goal is to incorporate xenharmonic elements into an otherwise normal-sounding song, though my more ambitious goal is to not use the diatonic (LLLsLLs) scale structure at all.

From a theory perspective, my goal is to better understand xenharmony from a temperament-agnostic perspective. This primarily means edos and MOSses, but extends to MV3 scales and higher.

From a wikian perspective, my goal is to better the wiki itself, at least as it pertains to how mos-related info is displayed. The most immediate way to achieve this is to create and deploy templates for the most commonly displayed mos-related info, as well as wikifying any text present (so it looks like an actual wiki page!) and trying to verify the source or attribution to things taken for granted (because misattribution happens concerningly). I've written a style guide to be applied to all mos pages (see subpages below), but I'm also open to better ideas.

Main mindset

I summarize my main mindset using the following trinity: temperaments, mosses, and edos are not each other.

Temperaments produce mosses, but two different temperaments may produce the same mos. Edos support more than one family of mos, so it's fruitless to shoehorn the notation meant for one mos for a different mos within the same edo. Two temperaments may produce the same JI ratio, but have different qualities in different mosses.

This level of decoupling makes it so I don't let any one temperament, mos, or edo influence how I look at either. Just because a nondiatonic mos has a perfect 5th doesn't mean I should think of it as such, especially if that isn't the generator to begin with.

That said, I focus more on mosses and, secondarily, edos when it comes to this trinity. I prefer to look at scales based in a temperament-agnostic sense, as mosses that are supported by an edo, or different edos. Doing so relieves me of the expectation that a certain interval must necessarily fall within a few cents of a JI ratio and lets me be more explorative with musical scales. This is also less names to memorize, since there are a lot of temperament names, and looking at mosses directly means fewer names to remember.

Other running assumptions and techniques may be found under the methodologies page below.

TO-DO list, major contributions, and wish list

Contributions

To-do list

  • Rewrite page(s)
  • Rewrite all octave-equivalent mos pages. This is primarily replacing every scale tree for the corresponding template and rewriting the lead sections to make sense and does not present redundant information already given by one of the templates. To a lesser extent, this also involves trying to confirm temperaments said to be attributed to these mosses, but this step will require additional help.
    • This is done concurrently with writing a style guide for these pages; see User:Ganaram inukshuk/MOS page standardization guide for a proposed guide.
    • Mosses whose pages have been rewritten to meet the style guide to satisfactory levels (that doesn't mean the pages can't be polished further!):
      • 5L 1s
      • 5L 2s
      • 4L 3s
      • 3L 4s
      • 2L 5s
      • 1L 5s
      • 7L 1s
      • 3L 7s
  • Update templates I've made to current coding style/structure:
    • The template calls a wrapper function, meant to be used with template params as input. Its name should be suggestive of the module's primary use, and is usually the same name as the template.
    • The wrapper function calls the "main function", which has the code that produces the output. Its name is the same as name as with the wrapper function, except it's prefixed by an underscore.
  • Proposed modules and templates
    • Module:TAMEX - a proposed module, much like Module:MOS, that calculates descriptions for descendant mosses. (No longer necessary, since child/grandchild terminology is already sufficient and the proposed functionality of finding ancestral mosses is already part of Module:MOS)
    • Module:MOS step sizes and Template:MOS step sizes - a proposed template that is an abridged version of the mos degeres template, showing only the sizes for the large step, small step, and generators. (May no longer be necessary, since Module:MOS intervals already displays size ranges for all mossteps)
    • Module:MOS genchain and Template:MOS genchain - a proposed template that shows the scale degrees reached by continually stacking a mos's generators up and down from the root.
    • Module:Xenpaper - a proposed module for generating links to Xenpaper, meant to provide audio examples of scales, such as mosses.
    • Module:Text to value - A proposed module that takes in certain text and produces a value; for example, entering a JI ratio of 3/2 produces an output that is the ratio and its cent value in parentheses (702¢).
  • Clean up mos recursion page (because I feel bad leaving the algorithms untouched and untested for so long).
    • Replace pseudocode for is-this-scale-a-mos? program with python code; clarify with more examples.
    • Relate mos recursion with the mos family tree.
    • All the recursive algorithms described on that page have time complexities of O(n log n), but the algorithm that generates a Christoffel word (combinatorics-on-words term for the brightest mode of a mos) has a time complexity of O(n). Resolve...?
  • Standardize mosinedo pages. Examples include:

Wish list

  • Composing music with these abstract ideas.

Subpages

These pages contain content that currently don't have an exact place elsewhere on the Wiki, or contains personal notes that otherwise don't have an exact place on the Wiki. I do my best to explain these things as though I magically forgot everything I know about xenharmony, so I consider it a bonus if someone else found this easy to understand.

These pages are descriptions on how I approach various things, such as compositional techniques and how I approach a scale I've never used before.

Sandbox page (for testing things)

Test pages (for proposed rewrites):

Test templates:

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