Great Journal Article

[Michael Wathen 556-9565]

I have been particulary irritated with the cutsy style that has been
the identifying mark of several authors through the last couple of
years.  I also have trouble with the name dropping that frequently occurs.
I feel that these things detract from the professional nature of the
Journal.  There are also a lot of suttle put downs that get printed.
For example, I recently read, in not sure but I believe that it was a
recent Journal, where the author said something to the effect of:
"well, we can leave that to the Mathemagicians".  It's sutle but it is
the kind of thing that discourges academic discussions that are really
worthwhile no matter how small the audience.


In contrast to the above, I agree with Mr. Boone; Kent's article was well worth
reading and exemplfies good writing style.  I have often heard pianist
play this "Chord of Nature" for tuning purposes when preforming
 with trio or quartet.

I also read Mr. Tremper's article.  I have the following suggestions:

      1). We ought to accept a convention in indicating location of
pitches.  Fred says "So, take the Accu-Tuner reading of F45,.... For
sake of clarity and simpleness we should say F4 etc.

Perhaps he uses these key numbers for his function he introduced
earlier in the article to calculate the frequencies for
equal-temp.  Here's another way to calculate frequencies for
equal-temp:

      We can find the frequency of any A simply by  multipying
 by 2^n, where n is the number of octaves; n will have to be negative
if we wish to find the frequency of an octave below our A and n will
be positive if we are looking for an octave above our A.
Next, determine the number of whole steps away from the closest A for
which you have the frequency already, then:

      frequency = A?*2^n.

Here n is the number of half steps above or below, negative or
positive according to the above mentioned convention.

      2). When we employ the same steps over and over again then
that should tells us that maybe we could call a function.  Again for
the sake of clarity and simpleness that's a good idea.  Here's the
function:

      Cents = 1200*ln(ratio)/ln(2).

Here "ratio" is a variable that is the ratio of frequency from the
historical tuning to the frequency of the equal tempered note.  "ln"
just means natural log, without explanation, its a function key you
 will find on your calculator.

Just some suggestions.

Michael Wathen
College-Conservatory of Music
University of Cincinnati