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<p>Hi all,</p>
<p>Wow, just a few weeks till HacktionLab again! Am so happy to be
returning to the Sumac and to see your familiar faces and
hopefully meet some new.</p>
<p>I've updated my workshop/talk with a refocus on it being about
understand how music works, rather than something heavy about Go
code, which I think will go over most of our heads (including
mine, and I wrote it!). Yes, it's music again, but I thought it
would be fun and interesting, and I aim to keep it really
accessible and as practical as I can. </p>
<p>See you there :)</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Mike.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<h3 id="Modelling_music_in_Go" data-mw-section-id="7">The Harmonic
Series and the development of musical scales</h3>
<dl id="mwJg">
<dt id="mwJw">Format</dt>
<dd id="mwKA">talk, demonstration</dd>
<dt id="mwKQ">Proposed by</dt>
<dd id="mwKg">Mike Harris</dd>
<dt id="mwKw">Length</dt>
<dd id="mwLA">60 minutes</dd>
<dt id="mwLQ">Equipment</dt>
<dd id="mwLg">projector, speakers, amplifier for trichord</dd>
<dt id="mwLw">Description</dt>
<dd id="mwMA">Following on from last year's talk about <a
href="https://hacktionlab.org/Why_is_it_so_hard_to_tune_me_guitar%3F"
rel="mw:WikiLink"
data-ve-attributes="{"rel":"mw:WikiLink"}">the
difficulties of tuning in twelve-tone equal temperament</a>,
this workshop goes back to the basics and looks at a resonating
string (or pipe) and the harmonic series. It goes on to
introduce 5-limit just intonation, how it works mathematically
to build a scale, overtones and undertones, reciprocals, and
what the issues are with building a polyphonic instrument in
just intonation. If there's time it'll have a brief review of
tempered tunings and some of the different historical European
approaches, such as meantone, Bach's well-temperament, 12-tone
Equal Temperament (the most common these days), and Harry
Partch's 43-tone scale. </dd>
<dd id="mwMA"><br>
</dd>
<dd id="mwMA">To aid our understanding, we can play with a
trichord that I built for the purpose. I hope it's therefore as
hands on as possible. We'll also see <a
href="https://mbharris.co.uk/music/theory/fretboard.html"
rel="mw:ExtLink"
data-ve-attributes="{"rel":"mw:ExtLink"}">this
fret-placement calculator tool</a> in action. It uses a <a
href="https://github.com/mikebharris/music"
rel="mw:ExtLink nofollow" class="external text" id="mwMQ"
data-ve-attributes="{"rel":"mw:ExtLink nofollow"}">Go
library that models musical scales</a>, which I'm happy to
nerd about with anyone who's interested, but this won't be part
of the core talk.</dd>
<dt id="mwMg">Nerd gag</dt>
<dd id="mwMw">Musically, I'm going to try to make it accessible
for those who no nothing about it. In fact, it may help to not
have a load of concepts in your head. To understand the harmonic
series, it helps to understand ratios and reciprocals in maths.
An understanding that frequency is inversely proportional to
wavelength is essential. I'll cover all of these concepts in the
talk/workshop.</dd>
</dl>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Mike Harris
+44 07811 671 893
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://mbharris.co.uk">https://mbharris.co.uk</a> - <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://hacktionlab.org">https://hacktionlab.org</a> - <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://xtreamlab.net">https://xtreamlab.net</a></pre>
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