Sunday, December 04, 2005

Scale of the Day: E Flat Lydian mapped to the Cube-root-of-2

The E Flat Lydian mapped to the Cube-root-of-2 Scale. This marks the first "scale of the day" entry featuring an intervallic sequence that repeats every 400.00 cents (the Cube-root-of-2, a.k.a. the equal tempered "major third"). In this instance all the intervals of a typical E Flat Lydian Scale are reduced to just one third their normal cents-size as the entire scale is compressed into this cozy intervallic basis. This is the first "scale of the day" to make use of 1/6-tones (33.33 cents - or one third of a semitone) - which are the "semitone" of choice in 36-tone equal temperament.

It should also be noted that any composition that makes "true" use of any of these "mapped to the" scales must treat the interval being mapped to as a harmonic equivalency in the same manner that "octaves" are regarded as duplicate pitch-classes in music that use scales that replicate at the 2/1 octave. In this case, any pair of pitches separated by exactly 400 cents should be regarded as harmonically redundant.

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