Talk:Monzo

Pronunciation

I don’t seem to find anywhere how is Joe Monzo’s last name, and monzo the term, are pronounced: with the usual z or with z like in pizza, or in other manner?.. It would certainly aid in translating the term to another language. :) --Arseniiv (talk) 19:11, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I found Now&Xen Podcast: 038 - Joe Monzo - YouTube - just listening - at some point the correct pronunciation of the name must appear in the video 😉 --Xenwolf (talk) 19:43, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Oh, thanks! BTW I was planning to listen to the whole series some time but I guess starting with one concrete episode would be a concrete motivation to do that. --Arseniiv (talk) 20:59, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

So it seems my worries were for nothing: z is a usual fricative [z] here! At 3:22 is “Joe Monzo” and at 1:12:13 is “so he called it a monzo”. --Arseniiv (talk) 15:49, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

@Arseniiv: The term "monzo" was named after me by Gene Ward Smith. My ancestry is Italian, in which language letters are always pronounced the same. The "z" in my name is pronounced like the"z" in "zebra". A "zz" in Italian is pronounced like "ts" in English. However, in Italian the "o"s in my name should be pronounced like all of those in "Yoko Ono", but often in America (where I live), only the final "o" is pronounced that way, the first one often pronounced like the "o" in "optic", which is basically how I pronounce it myself.

Coping with large amounts of zeros

There are cases where monzo notation translates simple-to-read ratios into hard-to-read expressions, see for example 19/16. Eliora now introduced a notation that I was thinking about for years: [-4 0⁶ 1⟩ instead of [-4 0 0 0 0 0 0 1⟩. What do others think about it? --Xenwolf (talk) 21:50, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

There are also cases like 29/23 where lots of low-order primes have to be skipped at the beginning. In terms of readability, I would prefer [0⁹ -1 1⟩ to [0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 -1 1⟩. --Xenwolf (talk) 21:59, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

It still involves counting, which ideally should be avoided. I suggest writing out the subgroup explicitly and omit the zeroes. For example, 19/16 is 2.19 [-4 1⟩. FloraC (talk) 13:35, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I'd like to avoid monzos whose meaning depends on a subgroup prefix. I'm instead thinking of making a Lua module to find prime factors in a given rational number (counting zeros will be automated here). --Xenwolf (talk) 19:11, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

It's a thing, called subgroup monzo (→ Smonzos and svals). FloraC (talk) 00:39, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

I think that the practical applicability differs between monzos and smonzos. Monzo notation is quite easy to understand, even for non-mathematicians. But back to the core problem: shouldn't we create a tool to calculate monzos from fractions or expressions like (5/4)^3/2 ? --Xenwolf (talk) 08:11, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

It doesn't address my concern, that is, readability. FloraC (talk) 09:08, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

(See Val #Vals in JI subgroups on how to write subgroup monzos.) I want to write more compactly, unless we want to consider about subgroup actively. How is [₂-4 ₁₉1⟩ ? (Of course as a temporary way of writing) --Dummy index (talk) 13:05, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

It is too much as it is prime factorization. I feel it is better to include first 4 items without subscript 2, 3, 5 and 7. [-4 0 0 0 ₁₉1⟩, [0 0 0 0 ₂₃-1 ₂₉1⟩.--Dummy index (talk) 14:06, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Full p-limit monzo is a long one in the first place. If you don't want to use zero, you only need to write in prime factorization. If it's hard to handle because it's long, all you need is a digit grouping. For example, [0 0 0 0 ₁₁0 0 0 0 ₂₃0 -1 1⟩, oh no, too many zeroes. --Dummy index (talk) 13:50, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

There is already an established standard for abbreviating monzos with lots of zeros: http://www.tonalsoft.com/enc/m/monzo.aspx It was invented by George Secor and approved by Joe Monzo himself as you can see by its presence on his Tonalsoft encyclopedia, which is essentially an older (and still maintained) xenharmonic wiki. So [-4 0 0 0 0 0 0 1⟩ would look like [-4 0, , 0 0 1⟩. I don't think this standard was widely adopted, but I think it's good. It's used in Sagittal materials and I use it myself. --Cmloegcmluin (talk) 15:47, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Feel good for abbreviating by set of 3. But is this a standard? Following the link and link further, hmm, http://www.tonalsoft.com/enc/p/pythagorean-comma.aspx I think "If there are large gaps in the set of prime-factors, (snip)" means for example "2,3,37,73-monzo is 1, 0, 1, -1 > ." If we recommend such sentence, Infobox Interval should be able to display "2,19-monzo [-4 1⟩." Otherwise if we recommend smonzo, Infobox Interval should be able to display "Monzo 2.19 [-4 1⟩." --Dummy index (talk) 17:06, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Ideally, our monzo template should provide more options for arguments. The current usage could be defaulted to literal, future parameters should include the alternative fraction with an optional subgroup parameter. If a fraction is given, it should automatically calculate the exponents. If soubgroup is present, it should display as smonzo. In my opinion, the implementation can be done in a Lua-Module, hopefully this will be possible. --Xenwolf (talk) 21:59, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

I personally generally like the subgroup prefix. So 29:23 would look like [23, 29]|[-1, 1>. I've used this in my webpages about Hammond Organ Tuning and Stockhausen's Studie II. -monz (talk) 01:12, 21 October 2024 (UTC)