Talk:Porcupine Album Project/WikispacesArchive
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Notation
Somehow I don't like the proposal for porcupine notation - it looks so non-standard to me. What's wrong with Sagittal?
- hstraub July 16, 2012, 12:03:08 PM UTC-0700
Hi Hans,
If I understand correctly, although you can notate all the Porcupine EDOs in Sagittal with no problem, Sagittal does not provide a way to notate a generalized Porcupine. But maybe I am wrong about this.
I like the Porcupine notation proposal because everything is derived from the structure of Porcupine. It has a correspondence to the alphabet which is superior to that of meantone; the discontinuity in the alphabet (either G-A in Porcupine[7] or H-A in Porcupine[8]) corresponds to a discontinuity in the generator chain. Thus I know that D-A, which crosses over the discontinuity (goes backwards in the alphabet) will be a different interval than A-E, which doesn't. In meantone, the fact that D-E is a different size than E-F is not clear at all from the notation or the letter names, and needs to be learned.
Perhaps this notation will not stick, but I'm interested in giving it a try. For this project it is only a suggestion. Indeed, notation may not even come up.
- Andrew_Heathwaite July 19, 2012, 11:27:35 AM UTC-0700
Well, alright. I see the logic in the notation, from the porcupine point of view.
- hstraub July 21, 2012, 03:41:38 AM UTC-0700
Reference pitch C
I am aware that using the same base frequency tuning is useful when playing in ensembles or collaborating...
But I'm thinking that it's not useful to have the whole album use the same note for C. Why? Because some folks will use 15-edo, some 22-edo, some TOP etc... and I doubt many of us will write in the key of C, so we could potentially have tracks which are each in a key with only a few cents difference between them. Given that this could easily be the case, what's the need for keeping the same reference C?
Other than that I don't particularly object to it. Certainly maintaining a reference pitch is useful, though only on a per-track basis imo.
- Sean_Archibald July 11, 2012, 08:52:36 AM UTC-0700
IIRC, Dustin on XA originally proposed the C reference frequency. I didn't/don't have any strong feelings about it, myself. I would guess the rationale is that it could give a more cohesive sound to the album. In my experience, it can be a little disorienting in 12edo when songs in the same mix have different reference pitches. But we're already inviting that issue by allowing different flavors of Porcupine, 15, 22, TOP etc.
If that seems problematic, we could divide the album into sections based on the version of Porcupine in use. We could even go so far as to order the sections by size of the Porcupine generator, from 15 to 29 or something like that. And then each section would maintain the same reference frequency, and there would be some kind of discontinuity between the sections.
This might be overthinking it, though.
- Andrew_Heathwaite July 16, 2012, 11:13:48 AM UTC-0700
Yes it may be overthinking it. Shouldn't track lists be devised by the feeling rather than reference frequency?
I see no way around it. As long as we have different flavours of porcupine the reference frequency isn't going to matter.
For what it's worth I tend to use the proposed C reference frequency anyway because it is the default in Scala! :)
- Sean_Archibald July 23, 2012, 12:58:18 PM UTC-0700
Where is the main discussion
Apparently the main discussion about this project is going on somewhere else. Where is that, Facebook?
- hstraub July 04, 2012, 02:44:35 AM UTC-0700
Hi Hans,
Yes, Facebook is where the seeds for this project were sown. Not very much has been decided yet, and the "what we think we knows" on this page may still be up for discussion. There also hasn't been any music posted yet. I think the plan is to use this page as much as we can, since it's permanent and public.
I'm glad you're joining us!
Regards,
Andrew Heathwaite
- Andrew_Heathwaite July 04, 2012, 10:59:10 AM UTC-0700
Glad to be a part of this. I think it is a good idea to keep this off of facebook to reduce distractions.
- vaisvil July 04, 2012, 12:46:17 PM UTC-0700
OK. It might have been a reason for me to join facebook - but I'll stay here so far, then.
- hstraub July 05, 2012, 04:27:16 AM UTC-0700