Pentatonic (was Octave and Fifth Quantizer)

[WeAreAs1 at aol.com]

Conrad Scott <Conrad.Scott at dial.pipex.com> wrote:

<< I don't much know about idiot proof but I've got an archive with over a
thousand different tunings lying around here that I downloaded from
somewhere.  I've never used them (yet) but there are some pretty wacky
ones in there according to the documentation. >>

Just to be clear, I was talking about scales and modes within the context of 
traditional, western, equal-tempered tuning.  Microtonal, non-western tunings 
(a la Wendy Carlos), although lots of fun, are a very different thing.  If 
your analog quantizer had sufficient resolution, some non-western tunings 
would be possible, though.  For instance, a quantizer with a 64-half-step 
range (six bits) could also provide a 64-quarter-steps, if you just scaled 
the output by 0.5.  Of course, your total available pitch range would be cut 
in half (to about 2.5 octaves).  Scaling the output by 0.3 would yeild 
one-third step output, and likewise cut the total available range to one 
third.  Many (if not most) non-western tunings utilize pitches that do not 
fall on regular, equally-spaced quarter-step or third-step intervals, though, 
so a scaled equal-step quantizer could only approximate these, at best.  
One-eighth-step pitch quantizing would be pretty flexible for this use (but 
not perfect).  However, 64 quantizer steps would have a total range of only 
just over one octave.

Michael Bacich

P.S. - Larry Hendry, certainly you're not suggesting that it's only guitar 
players who play repetitive, boring blues scale nonsense?  I would contend 
that instrumentalists of all types are equally guilty of this offense.  It's 
the first (and sometimes, unfortunately, the last) refuge of beginning 
improvisers, regardless of their chosen axe.