ad8e's recent activity

  2. Comment on Just intonation keyboard – play music without knowing music in ~music

  3. Comment on Just intonation keyboard – play music without knowing music in ~music

    ad8e
    Link Parent
    I don't know about the second half, but the first half is perfectly normal. Why musicians and non-musicians test differently in these experiments, I assume, is simply that musicians listen to a...

    I don't know about the second half, but the first half is perfectly normal. Why musicians and non-musicians test differently in these experiments, I assume, is simply that musicians listen to a lot more music. It's likely a correlation rather than causation from playing with an instrument. This hypothesis is just an educated guess from the studies though; it hasn't been tested.

    If by the second half you mean timbres rather than absolute pitch, that could be interesting. I don't know how timbre is learned, and I'm not aware of studies on how training affects timbre encoding and Just Noticeable Differences either, but it is important to theory.

  4. Comment on Just intonation keyboard – play music without knowing music in ~music

    ad8e
    Link Parent
    Yes, using the frequencies and their volumes, harmonic dissonance can be completely quantified. The reason it's cultural is because there are two separate mechanisms - one with roughness+lattice...

    Yes, using the frequencies and their volumes, harmonic dissonance can be completely quantified.

    The reason it's cultural is because there are two separate mechanisms - one with roughness+lattice tones, and one that is trained. The first one seems to be relatively universal and constant between people. The second is trained by some mechanism I have not figured out, and it depends on the person's musical background; musicians hear tonality strongly and non-musicians do not. The curve of the second mechanism mimics the roughness of sounds with harmonic overtones, but there are systematic deviations from this pattern which make guessing its training mechanism hard. Still, it can be measured for any single person.

    In practice, I expect that this should cause a large difference if you play a one-voice composition with an instrument whose timbre is purely one sine wave, no overtones, rapid decay. Someone with no prior exposure with harmonic overtones (who probably doesn't exist in real life) should hear no harmonic relationships at all. Because the first mechanism, roughness, has been disabled by removing all the harmonics and having only one voice, and the second mechanism has not been trained yet. A song like Bach's Cello Suite No.1, Prelude, should do nicely.

    1 vote

  5. Comment on Just intonation keyboard – play music without knowing music in ~music

    ad8e
    Link Parent
    Wow, thanks for the diagnosis. No way I could have figured that out.

    Wow, thanks for the diagnosis. No way I could have figured that out.

    2 votes

  6. Comment on Just intonation keyboard – play music without knowing music in ~music

    ad8e
    Link Parent
    I checked the commas accessible to the purple keys, and it is possible to play these fractions in one chord press: 32/35 162/175 25/27 14/15 15/16 20/21 24/25 27/28 35/36 63/64 224/225 1

    I checked the commas accessible to the purple keys, and it is possible to play these fractions in one chord press: 32/35 162/175 25/27 14/15 15/16 20/21 24/25 27/28 35/36 63/64 224/225 1

    1 vote

  7. Comment on Just intonation keyboard – play music without knowing music in ~music

    ad8e
    Link Parent
    I'm guessing what you're thinking of is that there are 4 axes of harmony, for 2, 3, 5, and 7, so the keyboard should have 4 dimensions. But harmony (specifically, lattice tones) actually flattens...

    I'm guessing what you're thinking of is that there are 4 axes of harmony, for 2, 3, 5, and 7, so the keyboard should have 4 dimensions. But harmony (specifically, lattice tones) actually flattens the 4D space by removing a lot of the interaction between axes, which clears out most of the combinations that the 4 axes would produce.

    The "secret logical pattern" is a spine of 1 2 4 8... going up the middle, and then leftward is 5/4 and rightward is 3/4. Thanks to the combinations being cleared out, these are almost all the necessary notes. So at least the center core of buttons has a very logical layout, and then the outer borders become a mess because my keyboard doesn't have enough space.

    6 votes

  8. Comment on Just intonation keyboard – play music without knowing music in ~music

    ad8e
    Link Parent
    I tested a lot of old phones, and I can reproduce the original problem of the page failing to make sound. I fixed a few issues with old Safari versions (<16), but there are more issues that I can...

    I tested a lot of old phones, and I can reproduce the original problem of the page failing to make sound. I fixed a few issues with old Safari versions (<16), but there are more issues that I can see no solution for, since all the other examples of OscillatorNodes I found also fail. My guess is that it started working on bluetooth because of changes I was making to try to fix the issue you found. Some versions of Safari 15.0-15.6 work, but there is no pattern I found. Safari 16+ seems to always work.

    You can try the page again, or try https://ad8e.pages.dev/keyboarddebug. It may be marginally more likely to work, but it doesn't have the cool player piano. I have no idea what the infinite sustain or distortion are caused by.

    Thanks for your help!

    1 vote

  9. Comment on Just intonation keyboard – play music without knowing music in ~music

    ad8e
    Link Parent
    Sorry about that, and thanks for your help. My current weak guess is that I'm using some HTML feature not supported by your browser. It uses WebAssembly to play sounds, so the minimum iOS version...

    Sorry about that, and thanks for your help. My current weak guess is that I'm using some HTML feature not supported by your browser. It uses WebAssembly to play sounds, so the minimum iOS version is 11, but I haven't been able to get browserstack to launch the older phones to test if there's a higher requirement. If someone else has an idea, I'd be grateful.

    1 vote

  10. Comment on Just intonation keyboard – play music without knowing music in ~music

    ad8e
    Link Parent
    Ah, that is very bad. I have been testing on iOS Safari on a physical device and browserstack, and after the first short tap (which is always silent), it starts working. Long presses appear to not...

    Ah, that is very bad. I have been testing on iOS Safari on a physical device and browserstack, and after the first short tap (which is always silent), it starts working. Long presses appear to not count. Does the green Debussy button below the keyboard work at least? I have little idea what could be causing this, besides muted volume which I assume it's not.

    2 votes