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xenharmonic-devs / scale-workshop

Design and visualize microtonal scales and play them in your web browser. Export your scales for use with VST instruments. Convert Scala files to various tuning formats.
MIT License
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Add more context to Hirajoshi preset and offer a JI alternative #374

Closed frostburn closed 7 months ago

frostburn commented 1 year ago

Weltfried · in Reddit

Apparently, the source is "Observed Japanese pentatonic koto scale. Helmholtz/Ellis p.519, nr.112". It appears to be from "On the Sensations of Tone, as a physiological basis for the Theory of Music", which should be a good source. There, it's stated that this was a tuning observed "at the 'Japanese Village' Knightsbridge" and it shows how "practice sometimes overrides theory" (p. 522).

Knightsbridge is a district in central London, south of Hyde Park. I'd say that's a good indicator it's probably not the standard version of Hirajoshi, especially, since nr.111, the version found in hirajoshi3.scl, was also observed at Knightsbridge and is quite different.

1 9/8 6/5 3/2 8/5, nr.110, listed in hirajoshi2.scl, seems much more reasonable as a standardized version.

There is this video, where what appears to be a master tunes a Koto by ear, and it's not quite tuned to those ratios, but it's pretty close. In any case, there should be two close to perfect fifth intervals somewhere in the scale and the half steps should be roughly half of 9/8, the Chinese pentatonic "whole step".

frostburn commented 7 months ago

Added a JI alternative in SW3 alpha.