Talk:Maximal dissonance tuning

Original work policy/alternative names

I'm not clear on this wiki's policy on original tuning ideas. If this isn't allowed or isn't sufficiently interesting for an article then feel free to delete. Also taking suggestions for alternate names for this concept. A (talk) 15:35, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

The wiki's policy on original work isn't clear yet, and it is one of the things I want to work on whenever I'll have enough spare time. In general, one should avoid presenting a new idea in a way that makes it seem, for the average reader, like it is universal or widely recognized by the community. New, unconventional or incomplete ideas can be added safely in the user namespace (e.g. User:Moremajorthanmajor/15edX) and can be moved to the main namespace later if the page or the context changes. Therefore, moving original work to the user namespace is more likely than deleting it completely. As for this page, I'd say... it depends where you're going with this.

At first sight, I can think of "maximally dissonant tuning" as an alternative name, which would follow the same structure as maximally even scales. If however you consider that dissonance can be maximized on single dyads as well as whole tuning systems, and eventually everything in between (triads, tetrads, etc.), then you could also go rename the page to "Maximal dissonance" and explore each aspect of the topic in separate sections. This however brings up the following question: does the tuning system you propose, which is built on maximal dissonance on each pair of consecutive pitches, truly achieve maximal dissonance as a whole? And how do you define maximal dissonance on a set of more than two pitches? (You might want to look into harmonic entropy, I'm almost certain that some work has been done in this area before and even more certain that more work remains to be done.)

Therefore, unless this can be demonstrated clearly, I would avoid referring to your tuning system proposal as a maximal dissonance tuning (or a maximally dissonant tuning). Actually, since you are using a specific formula for maximal dissonance and building it off of that, I would be tempted to name the scale after the names of the researchers (after all, most things named after people are not named by the people themselves). The "Kameoka-Kuriyagawa scale" is a bit of a mouthful, but I've seen worse, and I think it's more accurate. If you later find out that it is actually maximally dissonant, then make sure to come back and spread the good news! --Fredg999 (talk) 19:33, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback. It's definitely not interesting as a "maximally dissonant tuning," but more "one possible tuning based on a formula for maximal sensory dissonance." I think we're in agreement that there are many possible conceptions of maximal dissonance. With this article I hope to demonstrate a simple example of this concept, and leave open possibilities for further exploration of scales that are derived from psychoacoustic formulas for critical bandwidth and therefore violate common assumptions of transposability, periodicity, and JI interval approximation.

What would you think of generalizing the page to non-transposable tunings derived from psychoacoustics? I could definitely expand these efforts into optimizing more than two tones at a time, expanding the timbre vocabulary beyond sine waves, etc. A (talk) 20:45, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

That would be interesting, yes. I am still unsure about the name, but that could be mentioned clearly in the lead section. In that case, instead of starting the article straight with the concept name, start with a description and introduce the "working title" along the way. So, even though the theory in itself is already coherent with existing concepts of xenharmonic music, it makes it clear that the name of this kind of scale is still being discussed. The page title could stay as it is until/if another name is decided. --Fredg999 (talk) 21:02, 4 March 2023 (UTC)