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Errors in Wendy Carlos Article: Tuning: At the Crossroads

Wendy Carlos

Computer Music Journal, Vol. 11, No. 4. (Winter, 1987), pp. 10-11.

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Wed Feb 13 11:22:41 2008
onymous with it. The inadequacy of orchestra and the pianoforte as the On page 45, column 1, the ex-

small numbers can be demonstrated primary idioms for musical compo- pression (hcf,,) should read

by comparing ratios with similar fac- sition. A combination of social and 5(hcfp,Q).

tors. For example, the ratios 3 :4 (per- musical forces dictated that music On page 48, column 2, eight lines
fect fourth) and 3 :5 (major sixth) be louder and be performed in larger from the top, the damping factor
differ only because 3 :4 has a factor halls. The result was the augmenting should be 1/20.
of 4 and 3 :5 has a factor of 5. The of the number of music-producing On page 58, column 2, nine lines
greater consonance of the perfect elements: players in the case of the from the top, it should read
fourth over the major sixth would in- orchestra, and strings per pitch in "scaling is."
dicate that 4 is much more harmonic the case of the piano. The resulting On page 59, Table 8, instances of
than 5. The ratios 8 : 9 (major tone) chorus effect so raised the level of the letter Z should be replaced
and 9 : 10 (minor tone) also differ only beating within the consonances that by the numeral 2.
by factors of 4 and 5. These are both the harsh discrepancy of conso- On page 60, Table 9, third column,
different tunings of the major second nanceldissonance sonorities was the 20th row, should read
and differ only slightly in frequency. I mollified. This is what made equal 0.057471, not 9.057471.
suspect their harmonicity also differs temperament work and made it ac-
only slightly. Again, please use your ceptable. In order for the pipe organ
facilities to confirm (or disconfirm) to achieve a similar level of chorus- Errors in Wendy Carlos Article
my suspicions. ing in the consonance, multiple pipes
sounding unisons were required, A few small errors crept into the
John Appenheimer hence the rise of the Romantic organ. printing of my article, "Tuning: At
874 Riverside Dr. The richness of the chorus effect in the Crossroads" in the Spring 1987
Dixon, Illinois 61021 USA the tone of the piano is only further issue (11[1]).The first is in the first
extended by the well-known inhar- paragraph, on p. 29, where my "vigi-
monicity of the partials produced lance" got transmogrified into
Bored by Pure Tones by each string and the resulting "viligance."
stretched tuning employed in the Less capricious is the caption to
Volume 11, No. 1 of Computer Music piano. Fig. 17, on p. 40, where the original
Journal was certainly very appropri- To conclude, I wish to point out wording was " 'Multiphonic' gener-
ate and turned out to be an attractive that acoustically pure tunings are es- alized keyboard. One octave, C to c.
summary of work in microtonality. sentially meaningless in the context 3 1 q 2 note names." became: ". . .
The computer will, no doubt, take of the chorus effect, also that a pub- One octave, C to circa 31<2 note
the lead in virtually all work in mi- lic that has grown accustomed to the names," as my small case "c," for the
crotonality in the coming years. richness of current music will be note an octave above great "C," was
There is an interesting assumption bored by pure tones, no matter how unluckily the same as Computer
running through all of the articles on fine the intervals they form. Music Journal's usual abbreviation
the topic in the issue in question as for "circa," not the "ca." I am used to.
well as most other writing on the sub- Robert C. Ehle The third error may have been ob-
ject: that the brain can be the arbiter School of Music vious from context. In the last para-
about such matters. It is my observa- University of Northern Colorado graph on p. 42, the symbol "<" was
tion that musicians usually learn to Greeley, Colorado 80639 USA used in place of my ">" for the de-
make music with the resources at scription of multiple divisions with
hand, and they respond to those re- greater than 24 notes.
sources by finding aurally appropri- Corrections for Clarence And for those who have com-
ate ways to employ them to make Barlow's Article plained to me about the size of the
music. illustrations, I, too, was surprised
A specific case is that era in the The following corrections to the ar- that my 11" by 17" originals, particu-
eighteenth century marked by the ticle "Two Essays on Theory," pub- larly Fig. 18-20, were reduced to
acceptance of equal temperament, lished in Computer Music Journal about 2" by 3", no doubt out of space
the decline of the organ and harpsi- 1l ( 1 )1987, were submitted by Clar- considerations. But the Journal's re-
chord, and the rise of the modern ence Barlow-Ed. production is amazingly sharp, so

10 Computer Music lournal


that the details are still quite legible Maryland Omission computer science for the Institute for
as a magnifying glass will prove. Computer Research in Humanities at
Otherwise, it was a terrific job on a I neglected to note, in the announce- New York University, the inkling that
complex piece (even the sound sheet ment I sent on the "Computer Music musicians obfuscate simple issues
came out very well), and all my Festival at Maryland" in issue 1l(1) with lots of big words and concepts.
thanks to those involved, and to 1987, that Professor Wesley Fuller of 1 ought to know-look at the length
those who have graciously written Clark University was the featured of my late title, which meant I was
me since. composer. Two of his works were a programmer (not the chief) and
performed on this festival: Time into bottlewasher.
Wendy Carlos Pieces for piano and tape and Con- I have in mind Mr. Jaffe's "Spec-
New York, New York 10276 USA certpiece for Violin and Computer. trum Analysis Tutorial, Part 1 [Etc.]."
In addition, The University of Mary- I'm not convinced that all the ma-
land received a grant from Meet-the- chinery he develops is worth the ef-
Editor's Reply Composer to bring Professor Fuller fort, simply to prove what most math-
to the College Park campus where he ematical writers would leave as an
There were an unusual number of lectured on computer music. exercise for the reader. I suppose I
errors in issue 1l ( 1 ) .The source of should wait until the next article,
the errors was distributed among the Tom DeLio but 1 wonder whether he makes use
authors, the editor, and the produc- University of Maryland of complex numbers and normed vec-
tion department at the MIT Press. College Park, Maryland 20742 USA tor spaces, beyond the simple obser-
The deadlines for the issue were vations that a sample is a vector in
tough on all of us. For example, we a humongous-dimensioned vector
received all five manuscripts for the
Computer-blasting Error
space and a DFT is a projection of
issue within a one-week period just Discovered that vector in an equally dimen-
prior to the date we had to turn the sioned space of oscillating functions.
papers over to production. We apolo- I discovered a potentially computer- His "Conclusion and Preview [Etc.]"
gize to the authors and readers for blasting error in my article "New Ap- seems to say, "No. Forget it . . ." but
errors caused by the rush to put this proaches to Digital Sound Synthesis does contain the meat of the first
exceptional issue into production. and Transformation" in Computer movement.
Music Iournal lO(4).On p. 66, the Personally, I think it's quite inter-
equation introduced by the clause esting that the inner ear is apparently
Omissions in Interval "Given R," should be replaced by the a discrete frequency analyzer with-
Bibliography following expression: out too much sensitivity for phase
S = exp[(ln(HZUIHZL)I(NU- NL) shift. Of course that makes the abso-
Readers of Computer Music Iournal - l n ( R ) ) l ( N U+ NLj]. lute value of the complex coefficients
may need to know that the final nine more meaningful than either of the
items of my bibliography, "A Selec- A left parenthesis mark was mis- coefficients of the sine and cosine in
tive List of Source Materials on Al- placed in my manuscript. noncomplex representations. I won-
ternative Tuning Systems in Ameri- der whether there aren't some facts
can Music," which you cite in your James Dashow hidden in the complex phase shifts?
Spring 1987 issue, were mistakenly Rome, Italy I would think that any reader of
omitted when the bibliography was Computer Music Iournal with math
published in Interval 4(4).(This was background wouldn't need an elabo-
a serious omission; among the names Comments on "Spectrum rate and dense introduction to the
which failed to appear were Ervin Analysis Tutorial" math, and that a reader without math
Wilson and Joseph Yasser.) The miss- would be bewildered. Also, I'm a
ing items were printed in the follow- This letter is something of a playful little worried about Jaffe's fundamen-
ing issue of Interval, 5(1),p. 34. poke in the ribs, although I am se- tal approach. I think the Fourier theo-
rious. It speaks of a suspicion I first rem states that a periodic sample
Douglas Leedy formed a long time ago (in the mid- p ( t )of period P can be expressed as
Portland, Oregon 97202 USA 1960s)while I was coordinator for a sum:

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