[Sugar-devel] Outreachy - Going Beyond Equal Temperament in Music Blocks

[Devin Ulibarri]

On Sun, 2017-03-26 at 16:46 +0530, Sachithra Dangalla wrote:
> After mapping the frequencies, the next focus has to be on
> transformations such as adding half-steps, intervals and mode - as
> Walter said on a previous mail. But I still have a lot to figure out
> about them. Or will they be understood while actually implementing the
> project?
> 
Walter and I are still talking it over, but my idea is to basically use
pitch number as a layer of abstraction to facilitate half-steps,
intervals, and modes.

For example, the distance between 0 and 1 can represent the distance of
any two pitches (first is lower and second is higher).

For equal temperament *that* distance is called a "half step" that is
defined by certain frequencies. A "half step" is also the name a type of
interval.

0 and 1 can could also represent a larger or smaller interval than equal
temperament as long as -1<0<1<2<3<4<etc...

And modes are different geometries of various intervals.

So we could have:

0 2 4 5 7 9 11 12

...which could represent an equal temperament (Major) scale--Dorian
mode. Or it could represent another collection of frequencies entirely.

---------Above pitch number layer of abstraction-------------

Above pitch number layer of abstraction, we can map names to those
pitches...
0 = Do, C
1 = Do#, C#, Reb, Db
2 = Re, D
etc.

Does that make sense? What are your thoughts...
> 
> I would really appreciate it if you can comment your ideas in the
> following sheet.
> 
> 
> [1] - Google Sheet
> - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Jkp1rpCVn6fIIg6xIYnDhHebzFAcxogqtpMaJezBI0c/edit?usp=sharing

Looks good so far.