How We Hear

[Jenneetah]

At 11:25 AM -0400 10/23/04, Don wrote:
>I'd be interested in knowing if you have "set" a unison to the "7th
>partial" with an EDT and then listened to the result. I have, and find the
>result less than satisfactory.

You're talking about getting the ETD to memorize the offset of the 
7th partial on one string, then moving over to the next string in the 
unison and setting that strings 7th partial to that offset, and then 
measuring the two 1st partials to see whether they match? Or maybe 
even, listening to them?

No I haven't. I bought RCT v3 seven years ago, and although I still 
have it on an old laptop, never made the jump from acoustic to ETD. 
(I seem to remember being to impatient, waiting for the spinner to 
stabilize.)

Your disappointing results would seem to come from the distance from 
1st to 7th partial being different from one string to another in a 
unison. Could be, on occasion. I listen to not just the 7th but the 
others on down to the 1st, and it does happen that with a zero-beaten 
7th there will be other partials (usually one if at all) which are 
still moving. The same way there can be a false beat in the 3d 
partial on one string, ruling out the possibility of a clean unison 
at that partial level. Once again I shut out all but the 7th, 
zero-beat that, and use the resultant unison as a starting place from 
which to "smudge" the unison, should that be required so as to 
disguise the false beat in that one 3d partials.

Under ordinary circumstances, the generation of the partial series 
among strings in a unison is consistent enough to insure that with 
one of the higher partials zero-beaten, the others below will also be.

The 7th partial is my favorite. The even numbers tend to lose their 
identity, all being the tonic of the same key signature. Among the 
primes (3d, 5th, and 7th) the 3d is too quickly doubled by the 6th. 
Both the 5th and the 7th avoid this, but the 7th is a better choice 
for me. 1.) It's higher than the 5th and thus is a finer "vernier 
knob", and 2.) it reminds me of the Blues's natural place in the 
Harmony of the Spheres.