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From: maverick@fir.Berkeley.EDU (Vance Maverick)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: Musical Frequencies
Message-ID: <9914@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 21 Dec 90 18:19:00 GMT
References: <35111@netnews.upenn.edu> <505@anaxagoras.ils.nwu.edu>
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Reply-To: maverick@fir.Berkeley.EDU (Vance Maverick)
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In article <505@anaxagoras.ils.nwu.edu>, sandell@ils.nwu.edu (Greg
Sandell) writes:
> If the sounds involved were
> merely sine tones, or an impoverished harmonic sound (like a square
> wave), I would think that the formulaic tuning would sound appropriate.

My experience with purely harmonic sounds (say a wavetable instrument in
the NeXT MusicKit) suggests that those are the signals for which we are
most sensitive to "just" intonation.  That is, equal temperament sounds
roughest when the harmonics in single tones are clean enough that the
proverbial beating between them is obtrusive; for me, then, harmonic
sounds lead away from a fixed tuning altogether.