Kite Giedraitis: Difference between revisions

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There's such a thing as an over-educated ear. Anyone that studies microtonal music for a decade or so can hear consonance in anything. You learn to appreciate ever larger odd limits and prime limits until the octave is packed with hundreds of ratios. And every possible cents interval becomes a tempered version of some ratio or other. I personally would never use, say, 15/13. I just don't want to make music that requires that level of ear training. It just makes microtonal music unlistenable and inaccessible to the general public. It's like avant-garde jazz or atonal classical music. It's honestly hard for me to tell the difference between either of those and a toddler plunking away on the piano at random. I guess if I went to music school, I could learn to tell the difference, but why bother? Music is supposed to be fun, and you shouldn't have to read a textbook to get it.

=== Rant about the xenwiki ===

Yet another one of Kite's horribly opinionated rants.

A mathematician, a physicist and an engineer are each tasked with finding out the volume of a ball. The mathematician gets a piece of string, measures the circumference, solves for the radius and calculates the volume. The physicist fills a large container with water, puts the ball in it and measures the change in volume when it sinks. The engineer finds the ball's serial number and looks up the volume on the internet.

Three different professions, three different ways of thinking. In the microtonal world, the mathematician is roughly analogous to the theorist, notation creator, xen software author and/or instrument builder/designer. The physicist = composer/arranger, and the engineer = performing musician. Or maybe the instrument builder is more of an engineer. Whatever, the point is there are very different levels of abstraction going on.

IMO the xenwiki caters far too much to the mathematician and not nearly enough to the physicist/engineer. It creates a feedback loop wherein the mathiness repels non-mathy types and attracts mathy types, who then make the xenwiki even more mathy. two examples:

'''Excessive precision''', especially in cents. No one can hear a tenth of a cent except under certain carefully controlled conditions. Ask yourself, have you ever walked across the room while listening to music? Have you ever noticed the doppler effect causing the tonic to drift off, then drift back when you stop walking? If not, you have no business insisting on tenth of a cent accuracy, let alone the thousandths or even millionths of a cent found here.

The exception to this is generators that get stacked repeatedly to generate a scale. Here tenths of a cent are warranted. But hundredths are only warranted if the generator is stacked a hundred times, which never happens.

There is a xenwiki page on 762148edo, and it isn't marked as a novelty page. One edostep is 0.0015745¢! I could wave a magic wand and quantize all the world's music to 762148edo, and the next day quantize it all to 762149edo, and the next day undo all quantization, and no one would hear any of these changes.

<u>''In music, if you can't hear it, it doesn't exist!''</u>

'''Harmonic division vs. arithmetic division'''. What a musician calls the harmonic series, a mathematician calls the arithmetic series. What a musician calls the subharmonic series, a mathematician calls the harmonic series. Since the whole point of the xenwiki is to promote microtonal music, it should be a no-brainer which one to use here. But what should be called the harmonic division of an octave is called the arithmetic frequency division of an octave.

It takes special talents (like a good ear) and years of study to become a good composer/arranger/musician. To ask one to additionally learn mathy lingo is very off-putting. Let's not drive them away, let's meet them where they're coming from.

Things a composer/arranger/musician should never have to think about:

* anything to tenths of a cent

* the phrase "arithmetic division"

* any comma that can't be pumped in 16 bars or less

* acoustic pi, acoustic phi, etc.

* any edo in the thousands or higher, arguably those in the hundreds as well

* sentences like "A maximal evenness scale deriving from the 118 & 665 temperament, known as [[vavoom]], can also theoretically serve as a calendar leap week cycle corresponding to a year length of 365d 5h 48m 37+17/19s, about 7 seconds shorter than the average length of the tropical year today."

=== Groaner puns ===

@@ Line 38: / Line 38: @@
 There's such a thing as an over-educated ear. Anyone that studies microtonal music for a decade or so can hear consonance in anything. You learn to appreciate ever larger odd limits and prime limits until the octave is packed with hundreds of ratios. And every possible cents interval becomes a tempered version of some ratio or other. I personally would never use, say, 15/13. I just don't want to make music that requires that level of ear training. It just makes microtonal music unlistenable and inaccessible to the general public. It's like avant-garde jazz or atonal classical music. It's honestly hard for me to tell the difference between either of those and a toddler plunking away on the piano at random. I guess if I went to music school, I could learn to tell the difference, but why bother? Music is supposed to be fun, and you shouldn't have to read a textbook to get it.
+=== Rant about the xenwiki ===
+Yet another one of Kite's horribly opinionated rants.
+A mathematician, a physicist and an engineer are each tasked with finding out the volume of a ball. The mathematician gets a piece of string, measures the circumference, solves for the radius and calculates the volume. The physicist fills a large container with water, puts the ball in it and measures the change in volume when it sinks. The engineer finds the ball's serial number and looks up the volume on the internet.
+Three different professions, three different ways of thinking. In the microtonal world, the mathematician is roughly analogous to the theorist, notation creator, xen software author and/or instrument builder/designer. The physicist = composer/arranger, and the engineer = performing musician. Or maybe the instrument builder is more of an engineer. Whatever, the point is there are very different levels of abstraction going on.
+IMO the xenwiki caters far too much to the mathematician and not nearly enough to the physicist/engineer. It creates a feedback loop wherein the mathiness repels non-mathy types and attracts mathy types, who then make the xenwiki even more mathy. two examples:
+'''Excessive precision''', especially in cents. No one can hear a tenth of a cent except under certain carefully controlled conditions. Ask yourself, have you ever walked across the room while listening to music? Have you ever noticed the doppler effect causing the tonic to drift off, then drift back when you stop walking? If not, you have no business insisting on tenth of a cent accuracy, let alone the thousandths or even millionths of a cent found here.
+The exception to this is generators that get stacked repeatedly to generate a scale. Here tenths of a cent are warranted. But hundredths are only warranted if the generator is stacked a hundred times, which never happens.
+There is a xenwiki page on 762148edo, and it isn't marked as a novelty page. One edostep is 0.0015745¢! I could wave a magic wand and quantize all the world's music to 762148edo, and the next day quantize it all to 762149edo, and the next day undo all quantization, and no one would hear any of these changes.
+<u>''In music, if you can't hear it, it doesn't exist!''</u>
+'''Harmonic division vs. arithmetic division'''. What a musician calls the harmonic series, a mathematician calls the arithmetic series. What a musician calls the subharmonic series, a mathematician calls the harmonic series. Since the whole point of the xenwiki is to promote microtonal music, it should be a no-brainer which one to use here. But what should be called the harmonic division of an octave is called the arithmetic frequency division of an octave.
+It takes special talents (like a good ear) and years of study to become a good composer/arranger/musician. To ask one to additionally learn mathy lingo is very off-putting. Let's not drive them away, let's meet them where they're coming from.
+Things a composer/arranger/musician should never have to think about:
+* anything to tenths of a cent
+* the phrase "arithmetic division"
+* any comma that can't be pumped in 16 bars or less
+* acoustic pi, acoustic phi, etc.
+* any edo in the thousands or higher, arguably those in the hundreds as well
+* sentences like "A maximal evenness scale deriving from the 118 & 665 temperament, known as [[vavoom]], can also theoretically serve as a calendar leap week cycle corresponding to a year length of 365d 5h 48m 37+17/19s, about 7 seconds shorter than the average length of the tropical year today."
 === Groaner puns ===