User talk:Sintel

Welcome

Hi Sintel,
welcome to the xenharmonic wiki! I'd like to add your native language to the categories. But I'm not sure if this should be nl? BTW, I heard a lot of your music and sounds, which I found very interesting.
Best regards --Xenwolf (talk) 10:31, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Thank you! nl is correct, yes. Sintel (talk) 12:53, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Some deletion requests

Hi Sintel, I tried to fix (some of) the problems you addressed, so also your original request has been moved (see User talk:Moremajorthanmajor/Ed7/3). If I did something wrong, please let me know. Best regards --Xenwolf (talk) 14:27, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

This seems like a good solution to me! Sintel (talk) 14:46, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Pathological scales

I saw that you deleted some "Pathological" scales from several EDO pages, so I figured maybe you could tell me what that means in the first place, since attempting to search for pages on the subject just directed me to pages where this term appears. (Naively, I would have thought "Pathological" would imply a negative step size or something like that — does this have a different term?) And why delete them anyway?

Well, nobody knows what it means, since they were added by User:Moremajorthanmajor, who never explained his terms, and has since been banned.

– Sintel🎏 (talk) 08:18, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

So could the term be repurposed for something more useful (like scales with negative or blown-out steps)? Lucius Chiaraviglio (talk) 10:04, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Common examples like collapsed and equalized scales are more accurately described as degenerate than pathological. If you look at examples of pathological objects in mathematics from the Wikipedia article, you'll notice that they're not just "exaggerated" versions of common stuff, they really behave strangely and unintuitively. --Fredg999 (talk) 15:10, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

I thought about collapsed and equalized, but decided those don't really belong to "pathological" — but I am still willing to propose that something like a diatonic scale with a negative value for s is pathological, since you end up with with D sharper than E in the same octave, and B of one octave sharper than C of the next octave. An example on the other end of the Meantone spectrum would be 5L 2s with a fifth flatter than 7edo, but continuing down the Meantone spectrum instead of switching to Mavila   here the sharp of one note is flatter than the flat of the same note, and thirds which sound major are actually minor and vice versa, and you have to redefine how the circle of fifths works or redefine major and minor. Lucius Chiaraviglio (talk) 22:17, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Plucker rewrite

Please try to use musical terminology first, and describe how you're modelling it mathematically second. Remember that you are not Battaglia. Context: Plücker coordinates

-- VectorGraphics (talk) 21:31, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

There's barely any musical application, I can't magically make it more relevant than it is. Do you think the current wedgies and multivals page does a better job? If so in what way? – Sintel🎏 (talk) 21:53, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

Well, why are we not retiring wedgies entirely, then, if they have no musical relevance? -- VectorGraphics (talk) 02:53, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

Could someone explain to me what a wedgie even is? I went to the page for that and never could figure it out. It says "This page or section may be difficult to understand to those unfamiliar with the mathematical concepts involved." No kidding. Lucius Chiaraviglio (talk) 05:29, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

It appears to be some kind of matrix thing called a "multival" that represents a temperament. Most people on the Discord agree that they are effectively useless, hence I have been working on largely removing them from the wiki as part of Operation Loosen Underpants. Check Plucker coordinates for Sintel's explanation. -- VectorGraphics (talk) 05:54, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

As you might know I've been the one to remove most references to exterior algebra on the wiki. I want to document the techniques properly though, since they're actually useful for people who want some deeper understanding. If by "retiring wedgies entirely" you mean removing them from the temperament sections, I agree. Also why is this on my user talk? If you have any comments specifically on Plücker coordinates, please state them there for future reference.

@Lucius Chiaraviglio 'wedgies' are called 'Plücker coordinates' in the real world, they're a way to assign natural coordinates to matrices, which have some interesting geometrical properties that makes them useful. Too much to explain here, but I'll refer you to Plücker coordinates and Hodge dual, which has some example computations. Let me know if there's any way I can make the content more accessible. – Sintel🎏 (talk) 11:44, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

I followed those links — still looks like an awful lot of stuff that requires some mathematics that I don't have. I guess I'll have to follow the lead of what seems to be the current direction on the Xenharmonic Wiki and just make do without. On the bright side, if I understand correctly, if I ever need to describe a temperament that isn't described on here, this removal will make the work a bit easier. Lucius Chiaraviglio (talk) 23:03, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

It's not really worth your time right now unless you already have some math prerequisites. And yeah, just now they were removed from all temperament data, so you don't have to worry about it. – Sintel🎏 (talk) 10:16, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

Since there's so much buzz about multimaps these days and I don't see anyone referencing the excellent resource Dave and I assembled a few years back, here it is, specifically the section where we attempt to give any reason to use them (this part was difficult, haha): https://en.xen.wiki/w/Dave_Keenan_%26_Douglas_Blumeyer%27s_guide_to_EA_for_RTT#Advantages_of_EA We basically just did this in an attempt to prove to the people who used them that we understood them well enough to show that nobody needed them. --Cmloegcmluin (talk) 14:30, 16 June 2025 (UTC)