Preinfarction
Concept analysis from a reasonable man on the Bondi tram.
Musical Wavelength Space
Gamelan scales: Pelog and Slendro
In Indonesia there are musical ensembles, called gamelans, with weird tunings. It's wonderful. They don't have exact octaves. They have precise tuning within an ensemble but they vary widely between ensembles. They use inharmonic hammered metallophones with bell like timbres. Their scales are inharmonic. Everything about it is weird and wonderful and awesome.
I want to deeply understand Gamelan music. I'm going to approach this from many angles until something sticks.
One of the Gamelan scales is called Pelog. Some people will tell you it sounds like a subset of 9-EDO. It does sound like 9-EDO, but it's not 9-EDO. It has a wider octave, for example. Is it based on 9 equal divisions of a stretched octave? I'm not sure. I doubt it, because the intervals would still be equal, just equal at a different size, and they're not. But we'll look into it.
Do Gamelan scales minimize sensory dissonance of inharmonic resonators against each other or against a harmonic instrument? This might be part of it, but the metallophones sound pretty similar from region to region while the scales are noticeably different? But we'll look into it.
Before we look into those things, I just wanted to assume for a moment that the Pelog scale was harmonic, even though it's clearly not. I looked at a bunch of measured tunings for pelog scales from different gamelans, took averages in logarithmic frequency space, and tried to make sense of the scale that showed up that way as if the intervals were harmonic.
Here's my first stab at it:
Pelog scale, relative intervals:
[ReSbAcM2, Prm2, ReSpAcA2, Prm2, m2, Asm2, AsM2] # [14/13, 13/12, 108/91, 13/12, 16/15, 11/10, 55/48] _ [128c, 139c, 297c, 139c, 112c, 165c, 236c]
Pelog scale, absolute intervals:
[P1, ReSbAcM2, Sbm3, ReAcA4, P5, m6, AsGrd7, AsAsGrd8] # [1/1, 14/13, 7/6, 18/13, 3/2, 8/5, 44/25, 121/60] _ [0c, 128c, 267c, 563c, 702c, 814c, 979c, 1214c]
This has fairly simple frequency ratios and interval names in both the relative and absolute representations. The "ReSbAcM2" relative interval might not look very simple to you, but it's a Zalzalian neutral seconds from Persian/Ottoman/Arabic music theory, and I like it fine.
If you look at the relative scale degrees, you can see how they're fairly close to one or two steps of 9-EDO at 133 cents and 267 cents respectively. In so far as we could use 9-EDO the relative steps are:
[1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1]
And the absolute steps are:
[0, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9]
i.e. we skip steps 3 and 7.
If we gave the scale tones traditional names, they would be
[low bem, gulu, dada, pelog, lima, nem, barang, high bem].
The other foundational scale in Gamelan is called Slendro. Some people will tell you that it sounds like 5-EDO. You might wonder, if Pelog sounds like 9-EDO and slendro sounds like 5-EDO, could we play Gamelan music in 9 * 5 = 45-EDO? I'm not sure. You could play something similar. In addition to their pseudo-octave being a stretched wide, I've heard that they don't have a notion of octave equivalence, but they at least have, like, low bem versus high bem. And some of their instruments have like 12 notes, so if the scales only have 5 and 9 notes respectively, there's got to be something like repetition of tones higher up or lower down, right?
Let's look at the tuning of slendro. Here are the measured tunings of 8 slendro scales from different regions, measurements by Jaap Kunst, as presented in "Interval Sizes in Javanese Slendro" by Larry Polansky.
Manisrenga: [219.5, 266.5, 227, 233.5, 258.5]
Kanjutmesem: [224, 253.5, 237.5, 232.5, 264]
Udanriris: [255.5, 256.5, 223.5, 235.5, 234]
Pengawesari: [251.5, 233.5, 233.5, 236, 250]
Rarasrum: [229.5, 227.5, 253, 232, 261.5]
Hardjanagara: [216, 249.5, 216, 262, 261.5]
Madukentir: [268.5, 242, 243, 230, 221]
Surak: [206, 231.5, 238.5, 265, 264.5]
These are all in cents, and they're all somewhat close to the 240 cent step of 5-EDO, but they range from 206 to 268, and I think we can provide a finer-grained analysis than "equal-ish?".
These eight scales are all reach a total of 1204 or 1205 cents, except for Kanjutmesem which reaches 1211.5. I think that's pretty tight agreement.
The first five scales have intervals that, to my eye, seem easily split between a small ~230c and a large ~260c.
Manisrenga: [S, L, S, S, L]
Kanjutmesem: [S, L, S, S, L]
Udanriris: [L, L, S, S, S]
Pengawesari: [L, S, S, S, L]
Rarasrum: [S, S, L, S, L]
And indeed they all have 2 large intervals and 3 small intervals, but not in the same places. The Manisrenga and Kanjutmesem modes are the same in this representation, but the others are all distinct. The other scales have very small intervals of 206c and 216c, and/or medium sized interval around 242c, which sure stand in the way of a nice clean binary classification into 2 interval sizes. I guess I would describe them as
Hardjanagara: [vS, L, vS, L, L]
Madukentir: [L, M, M, S, S]
Surak: [vS, S, M, L, L]
In so much as there is some kind of intervallic structure here, which you could argue against, and in so far as all these scales can be represented as deviations from the previous (2 large, 3 small) structure, I'd guess that we have these identities
[S, S, S] = [vS, L, vS]
[L, S] = [M, M]
[vS, M] = [S, S]
These identifies let us define all the intervals in terms of e.g. the small interval and a comma interval, {c},
vS = S - c
M = S + c
L = S + 2c
Some 17-limit Intervals
Alphabetical scales are made of 2nd intervals, like m2 and M2. I look up the sizes of second intervals often enough that I want a post for them. Here:
Prd2 # 26/25 _ 68c
SbAcm2 # 21/20 _ 84c
PrDem2 # 104/99 _ 85c
DeSbAcM2 # 35/33 _ 102c
m2 # 16/15 _ 112c
AsSbm2 # 77/72 _ 116c
ReSbAcM2 # 14/13 _ 128c
Acm2 # 27/25 _ 133c
Prm2 # 13/12 _ 139c
AsGrm2 # 88/81 _ 143c
DeAcM2 # 12/11 _ 151c
SbAcM2 # 35/32 _ 155c
Asm2 # 11/10 _ 165c
ReAcM2 # 72/65 _ 177c
M2 # 10/9 _ 182c
PrSpm2 # 39/35 _ 187c
AcM2 # 9/8 _ 204c
ReAsM2 # 44/39 _ 209c
DeAcA2 # 25/22 _ 221c
SpM2 # 8/7 _ 231c
AsM2 # 55/48 _ 236c
ReAcA2 # 15/13 _ 248c
SpAcM2 # 81/70 _ 253c
PrSpM2 # 65/56 _ 258c
DeSpAcA2 # 90/77 _ 270c
AcA2 # 75/64 _ 275c
AsSpM2 # 33/28 _ 284c