Talk:Kite's color notation
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Octaves have no color?
I saw that the factor 3 is considered white, so I'd guess that the octaves are completely ignored? --Xenwolf (talk) 20:37, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Suggestions past lavender
13a is neutral, and so purplish (much like 11a's lavender and the purple coming from equating rry1 and zzg3). Now there aren't many colours with a "th" in them, so I had to cheat a bit here. 13o is heather (I know it doesn't begin "th", but it'll have to do), 13u is thistle.
17a is close to ya, but slightly wider than yo and narrower than gu. Therefore, it needs colours that are slightly orange-yellow and slightly blue-green. 17o is sea, 17u is saffron.
19a is similar to 17a, and so needs similar colours. 19o is new leaf (probably should change to avoid clashing with nu, but I can't think of anything else), while 19u is nectarine. -- Jerdle (talk) 17:33, 20 October 2019 (UTC)
These colors would work, except new leaf does clash with nu. And sea sounds too much like the note C. Nectarine-sea is 19u17o, and nectarine C is 19uC. --TallKite (talk) 20:16, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
Haven't found a better 19o, but spring green might work for 17o. --Jerdle (talk) 16:11, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
Subgroups that use non-primes?
How does color notation name subgroups that use non-primes like 2.9.21 if you don't have names like ya, za etc for non-primes? Would saying "wa 2nd plus zo 4th" be okay? IlL (talk) 05:29, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
Good question. I've struggled with this. Your approach seems promising! For 2.9.21 I would say "nowa plus wa 2nd plus zo 4th", to make it explicit that 2 is present and 3 is not. In other words, nowa by itself means 2-limit, and noca by itself means no-twos 3-limit. Then we use your method to add on the non-primes. 3.4 would be noca plus wa 4th. I'm not sure about 4.6, would it be nowaca plus wa 5th plus double wa 8ve? Or maybe nowaca plus wa 5th plus wa 11th?
With 2.9.21, the wa 7th is also a generator, and could replace wa 2nd. The zo 4th could be replaced by the zo 3rd, because 21/(2*9) = 7/6. Or even by the zo 2nd 28/27. There should be a canonical form, so that one subgroup doesn't get two names. Perhaps we could have a convention that the odd limit be as small as possible? And as a tie-breaker, e.g. for w2 vs w7, minimize the degree? Thus 2.9.21 would be nowa plus wa 2nd plus zo 3rd.
2.7.9 would be "za nowa plus wa 2nd". 2.3.7/5 would be "wa plus zogu". No need to say zogu 5th, since any zogu interval could be a generator, as could any ruyo interval. Or perhaps because 2.3.5 is ya not yawa, we can simply call this zogu? --TallKite (talk) 11:55, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
Sev- for 70?
Could sevwo be used for 71, say? I don't think there's any clashes with other names there.
- But is it also pronounceable? --Xenwolf (talk) 23:30, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
PS: please sign you comments on talk pages with four tildes (for example like~~~~) --Xenwolf (talk) 23:30, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
- Interesting idea. If seventy-wo is pronounceable, sevwo certainly is. Sevthu, sevna, etc. The only objection I can think of is that we already have sep- for 7-exponent and se- for 17-exponent. For example, the sensei comma [2 9 -7] is the sepgu comma. Sev- is spelled and pronounced distinctly, so in a way there's no problem. But people aren't robots or computers, and you have to account for human fallibility. It already takes a certain mental effort to avoid mixing up sep- and se-. Adding sev- means even more mental effort. Septho = (13^7)-over, setho = (13^17)-over, and sevtho = 73-over. And there's no good mnemonic for which is which. This potential confusion is basically inevitable. Seven, seventeen and seventy-one are all primes that have "seven" prominently in their names.
- Another thing is that IMO microtonalists tend to overdesign their notations. As one gets into the details, one tends to add term after term. The expert makes the notation more and more powerful, and loses the perspective of the beginner who just wants something simple and easy to learn. That's why I don't like Sagittal, there's just too many symbols. I'm guilty of this too, colorspeak used to have jade/amber for 11-over and 11-under, and emerald/ochre for 13-over/under. Then I went really overboard and had tan/khaki and fawn/umber for 17 and 19. Which is a ridiculous number of things to have to learn and memorize. I can't even remember now if it was tan/khaki and fawn/umber or if it was tan/umber and fawn/khaki! If even the creator can't remember, how could someone else? Fortunately I came to my senses and simplified everything.
- More about the perspective of the beginner vs. that of the expert: there's two experts at the office, but the staff has learned not to ask them both for help at the same time. You have to catch one of them alone to ask your question. Because otherwise the two experts start arguing the finer points between themselves, and you don't get an answer. Sound familiar?
- So one option is to say, less power/conciseness, more simplicity/obviousness, and stick with seventy-wo for 71-over. Another option is to go ahead and make sev- an official syllable, since it certainly works. A third option is to have a separate xenwiki page called "possible extensions to color notation" and put sev- in there. Put it out there, but not as something a beginner has to know or even think about. And then see if anyone actually uses it.
- Now I'm the creator of colorspeak, but I don't want to be a dictator. So this is just one person's opinion. I like option #1. Because adding sev- only gets us a little ways further down the list of primes. The question then becomes, how do you say 83-over? And 97-over? And what about 101, 103, 107 and 109? Just to cover harmonics 64-128 we would need probably 6 new words. And then there's people using harmonics 128-256, and the temptation is to invent even more words. And then you just *know* someone's going to coma along and start talking about how great prime 257 is! So to recap, we have to deal with primes 7 and 17, then the next dozen are pretty easy, then we hit a roadblock, because 71, 73 and 79 are too similar-sounding to 7 and 17. IMO this is a good place for our inevitable surrender to the vast quantity of prime numbers. At least we get harmonics 32-64 all named. --TallKite (talk) 10:25, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
Incorrect formula for converting a color name?
I wrote some code implementing this page's formula for converting from a color name to a ratio and found that it's apparently wrong in some cases. For example, for "y1" we have S = 0, M = 0, monzo = [a b 1>, X = 16, and so the formula on this page says: b = (2*0 - 2*(16) + 3) mod 7 + 7*0 - 3 = (-29) mod 7 - 3 = 6 - 3 = 3 and a = (0 - 16 - 11*3) / 7 + 0 = -7, but it should be b = -4, a = 4 since "y1" corresponds to 80/81 = [4 -4 1>. The same problem happens with "g1": the formula gives b = 35 mod 7 - 3 = -3 and a = 7, but it should be b = 4, a = -4 since "g1" corresponds to 81/80 = [-4 4 -1>. The only other code implementation of this conversion I could find is in misotanni's jipci, and I confirmed that it does indeed convert "y1" and "g1" incorrectly.
I wasn't able to understand this formula well enough to fix it, but I was able to come up with a new formula that does work in every case. Let Y = the sum of all the known monzo exponents plus 2*(S-X), divided by 7, and rounded off (i.e. the magnitude of [0 2(S-X) c d e ...>). Then, a = -3(S-X) - 11(M-Y) and b = 2(S-X) + 7(M-Y). I found these formulas by directly solving the equations for degree and magnitude for a and b – I wrote up my derivation here. M-yac (talk) 00:24, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
- Great to see someone working on that. I have dreamed of a way to get this information. Hopefully, the inventor(s) and your approach find together in a constructive way. --Xenwolf (talk) 13:22, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
- I agree, I think it would be great if we could manage to fix that original nice formula. By the way, if you're just looking to automatically convert to/from color notation, the code I mentioned is now a part of xen-calc – e.g. "81/80" on xen-calc or "gu1" on xen-calc. --M-yac (talk) 22:02, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
- Just now seeing this. (Feel free to message me on my user talk page about stuff like this.) Thank you Matt for finding this error and fixing it! I will update the page with the correct formulas.
- I looked at your xen-calc, very nice! (Xenwolf, can we add this to the "Useful Tools" page?) I REALLY like your use of e.g. vM3\22. I will add that to the page on ups and downs notation.
- But I don't consider y1 a valid name. I would call 80/81 a descending g1, not a y1. Same for z1, zg1 and sgg1. Considering all the possible 7-note segments of all the possible colors, half of them have no unisons, because the 8ves are less than 1200¢. Some don't even have 2nds, e.g. the central bizogu segment. An 8ve minus the 50/49 comma is a zzgg9 of 1165¢, and a zzgg2 would be a descending rryy-2. My reasoning is that intervals can be either ascending or descending, and also either positive or negative.
- Ascending positive intervals (includes most ratios with N > D) go up in pitch, and either up the scale (e.g. 9/8 = w2) or stay the same (e.g. g1 or ry1 = 15/14)
- Ascending negative intervals go up in pitch but down the scale, e.g. 50/49 = rryy-2
- Descending positive intervals go down in pitch and either down the scale (e.g. 8/9 = desc. w2) or stay the same (e.g. 14/15 = desc. ry1)
- Descending negative intervals go down in pitch but up the scale, e.g. 49/50 goes from ry4 "up" to the flatter zg5
- Your broader use of the term negative to include descending is mathematically sound. 49/50 is a (positive) zzgg2. It also reduces (eliminates?) invalid color names, which is nice. But negative intervals are different than descending ones, and IMO it's nice to distinguish between them. They feel different. Descending intervals are commonplace and straightforward, but negative intervals only apply to certain JI commas. My narrower usage of negative functions as a warning that interval arithmetic works counter-intuitively. And the concept of descending intervals is well understood and doesn't require a new term like negative. So I think the narrower use of negative is better for pedagogical purposes.
- Another objection: I see that xen-calc calls 4/5 a gu negative 3rd. Playing a note and adding a note 5/4 below it makes a yo harmony with a distinctly 5-over sound. If we call that interval a gu negative 3rd, that implies a 5-under sound. Sure, you can deduce from the term negative that the color is inverted, but that's extra mental work. I'd rather say the added note is a yo 3rd below the 1st note than a negative gu 3rd above it.