Beats vs cycles vs cents

[Richard Brekne]

Don A. Gilmore wrote:
> Music is based on ratios between frequencies, not differences between
> frequencies (as with beats).  If you think that cents are some sort of
> finite size and are used strictly for academic argument, I am very
> disappointed in you.  Cents express a *ratio* which is what you hear in
> music.
> 
Nonsense. Music is based on the total net effect two or more differing 
tones create when played together. With out a wholistic perspective to 
put tones in, a scale, or any other secquence of notes would quickly 
become meaningless and totally uninteresting... and music would never 
have become a part of our beings.

Cents are a human construct that came into being looooooonnnnnggg after 
mankind began to pound his pickles.


> The musical interval of an ET minor third is 300 cents.  It's always 300
> cents.  It's 300 cents whether you start on middle-C, or on A0, or on Gb7.

Welll ok... you tune your next piano so that absolutely every minor 
third is exactly 300 cents... first off you will have to choose which 
coincident pair you will space thusly... sacfricing all others to being 
something other then 300 cents, and creating a piano that will sound no 
doubt very interesting indeed...

Regardless... a ET minor third ... even in the ideal.. even if you could 
get absolutely all minor thirds at exactly 300 cents is still an 
interval arrived at primarilly by listening to intervals and finding 
arrangements that humans found pleasing. The math modeling and analysis 
came later... much later.


> Your ears hear an interval as an ET minor third when two notes--any two
> notes--are 300 cents apart.  

That is purely coincedental... :).... you hear a minor third because it 
is what it is... it is 300 (roughly) cents apart only because we have 
contrived a scale with which to reference frequencies on such. The 
chicken came first... not the egg..... at least in this case :)

Yes you can hear cents!

Sure you can... along with pennies and quarters.... but not the kind you 
  are refering too. A cent is a concept you can no more hear a cent then 
you can a herz.  You <<hear>> soundwaves... and there interplay with 
each other.


> And yes they describe
> actual, perceived musical pitch regardless of frequency! 

They do describe pitch... thats what cents were contrived to do. The 
percieved musical part is not relvant to that task.

> You can tell a
> minor third can't you?

Why yes.... I can... depending on where it is... which octave.... it is 
exactly  ..... <<so tense>>. You could just as easily describe in a 
ratios just what <<so tense>> is using beats... as in how many per 
second as some function of the the frequency of the lowest note in the 
pair... or you could contrive a thousand ways of describing it.... but a 
description remains only a description .... not the thing itself.
> 
> Don A. Gilmore
> Mechanical Engineer
> Kansas City
> 

Sometimes people get too hung up in numbers to see reality in front of 
their noses.  Cents are a valuable construct, very handy in our work... 
but they do not determine our perception of musical pitch. They are 
simply numbers on a scale and nothing more.

Sorry Don. I'm not buying this at all. But who says we have to be in 
agreement eh ??

Cheers
RicB