[AH] Re: [sdiy] Where to get special white keys?

[cheater cheater]

What I meant was that 'octave' comes from the latin word for 'eight'.
A 12-tone octave means 'a bunch of 8 that is made up of 12 parts'. 12 = 8? :))

Anyone see the lack of consistency here?
Or the fact that there are two fifths? I mean, come on, when I'm
counting things only one of them is fifth. ;)

OK, enough of joking around.

Has anyone here ever tried making a Steinway style hammer action? I
wonder how easy it is to get it wrong.

Cheers
D.

On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 1:30 PM, Rich Holmes <doctroid at doctroid.net> wrote:
> On Feb 27, 2009, at 5:54 AM, cheater cheater wrote:
>
>> I know this sounds dumb, but an octave that is 12 notes long doesn't
>> make sense either, and that's what we have right now.
>
> Sure it does, if you understand how western music evolved.
>
> One simple way to look at it is to understand that the octave (frequency
> ratio 2/1) and the perfect fifth (3/2) are the two most fundamental
> intervals in western music. So start at a note and start going up by fifths;
> whenever it gets too high, drop down again by octaves.  You get (e.g.) F C G
> D A E B F# C# G# D# A# and then the next note is E# -- which if you're using
> exactly just fifths and octaves is about a quarter of a semitone above F.
> That's inconvenient so shave a little off each fifth and after twelve fifths
> you come back exactly to F. There you are: twelve notes, equally tempered.
>
>> Neither does it make sense to use the word semitone if one semitone
>> can be as long as one tone, or as long as a half of it, in some random
>> order that i could never really understand. ;-)
>
> No, a semitone is always -- in equal temperament -- half the size of a whole
> tone. But a major scale uses five whole tones and two semitones... in some
> non-random order. The reason for that choice is grounded in ancient Greek
> music theory, but notice in the exercise above, if you start on F and you
> stop at seven notes you get a C major scale. You don't want to stop at six
> notes because that gives you too big a gap between A and C... whereas if you
> stop at eight notes you get an awkward run of three semitones in a row
> (E-F-F#-G), and in just intonation they aren't even the same size semitone
> (F to F# is different -- a little smaller if I remember right) -- so seven
> notes it is.
>
> It all makes sense for music based on fifths and octaves, and it gives you
> acceptable major and minor thirds and sixths (frequency ratios involving 5,
> e.g. 6/5, 5/4 ...) . Now if you want to make music using ratios involving 7,
> or if you want better thirds than you get in 12-note equal temperament, or
> if you frankly just want to sound weird, then you start looking at other
> schemes, and inventing other schemes... and all sorts of (fun) hell breaks
> loose...
>
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