pitch drop :was Virgil's natural beats

Ron Nossaman RNossaman@KSCABLE.com
Wed, 14 Feb 2001 10:20:02 -0600


>We kindof touched on this last year, and were guessing? about sound 
>board/killer octave stuff.  The drop does NOT happen evenly throughout the 
>scale, and is measurable. 

Hi graph man, not entirely guessing. I ran a few experiments that indicated
to me it's related to the open back scale. I posted some fairly extensive
descriptions of what I tried, and what I found. No one has said it happened
evenly throughout the scale, but on the basis of my samplings I'd expect to
get the effect wherever the back scale is open and long enough. How much
each note is affected changes from note to note, presumably because the
speaking length/back scale length/frequencies mix is different for each
string. That makes it unlikely that the tuner could anticipate the effect
and pre-compensate on the fly. I don't yet know the proportion or frequency
limits, but I haven't abandoned it just yet.    

So far, no one else has reported trying the quick and simple experiments I
posted to verify or refute what I found. I'm still building tools to pursue
it further.

BTW, that was Kent Swafford, not Keith.


Ron N


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