User:Inthar/Generator variety
If a scale has a generator sequence, then the generator variety is the number of generators in that sequence, not including the closing generator.
Relationship between step variety and generator variety
MOS scales have step variety 2 and generator variety 1, and MOS substitution scales (including all regular SV3 scales) have step variety 3 and generator variety 2. However, not all scales with generator variety n have step variety at most n + 1: Consider a 13-note scale with a well-formed generator sequence GS(x, y, y, x, y) and suppose one scale step is reached via 4 generators: Then the word of stacked generators is xyyxyxyyxyxyz including the final closing generator z, and there are 4 step sizes:
- 2x + 2y,
- x + 3y,
- 2x + y + z,
- x + 2y + z.
More trivially, a MOS generator when not stacked so that the resulting scale is a MOS size (denominator of semiconvergent to the generator) will not have variety 2.