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authorjulian laplace <julescarbon@gmail.com>2025-07-08 13:28:31 +0200
committerjulian laplace <julescarbon@gmail.com>2025-07-08 13:28:31 +0200
commite46ca2bff72fed5c309ef7c5d04e97ae2eb7f2b6 (patch)
treed33dcdb0da3272aeee6e11a634db6e984211d93e /index.html
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@@ -220,8 +220,9 @@
they arise from simple ratios.
</p>
<p>
- <b>Brightness</b> indicates octave. <b>Color</b> indicates position in
- the octave, with red being the root or unison interval 1/1.
+ <b>Color</b> indicates position in the octave, with red being the root
+ or unison interval 1/1. <b>Brightness</b> indicates octave, with white
+ and black tending toward the extremes of human hearing.
</p>
<p></p>
<ul>
@@ -342,6 +343,7 @@
</tableContainer>
<h2>about this page</h2>
+
<p>
This webpage was inspired by
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pdSYkI86go"
@@ -354,36 +356,57 @@
shows it next to a grid of whole-number ratios, and demonstrates how
one can use these intervals to find specific ratios. I had never seen
just intonation demonstrated so elegantly, so I made this page to
- understand the concept more deeply.
+ explore the concept interactively.
</p>
+
<p>
- I later learned that I had recreated the
- <a href="https://www.lambdoma.com/">Lambdoma</a> as described by
- <a href="https://www.lambdoma.com/">Barbara Hero</a>. Hero made an
- electronic lambdoma instrument for sound healing purposes. She traces
- the Lambdoma back to the <i>Introduction to Arithmetic</i> by
+ I later learned that I had rediscovered the
+ <a href="https://www.lambdoma.com/">Lambdoma</a>, so called by the
+ ancient Greeks for its resemblance to the letter Lambda. The synergy
+ of color and sound in the Lambdoma, linking the octave to the color
+ wheel, had been studied in depth by artist and sound practitioner
+ <a href="https://www.lambdoma.com/barbara-hero.html">Barbara Hero</a>.
+ Hero made the Lambdoma her life's work, and built an 8x8 electronic
+ Lambdoma instrument for sound healing purposes. Hero herself learned
+ of the Lambdoma from <i>Tone: A Study in Musical Acoustics</i> (1968)
+ by
+ <a
+ href="https://archive.org/details/tonestudyinmusic0000leva/page/n5/mode/2up"
+ >Levarie and Levy</a
+ >, which traces the Lambdoma back to Pythagoras (ca. 500 BCE) via the
+ <i>Introduction to Arithmetic</i> by
<a
href="https://archive.org/details/nicomachus-introduction-to-arithmetic/page/191/mode/1up"
>Nichomachus of Gerasa</a
>
- (ca. 100 CE), and suggests it was rediscovered by Albert von Thimus
- who
+ (ca. 100 BCE). They suggest it has been rediscovered several times,
+ including in the 19th century by Albert von Thimus, who
<a
href="https://archive.org/details/bsb10527783/page/137/mode/1up"
target="_blank"
>depicts it</a
>
- in <i>Die harmonikale Symbolik des Alterthums</i> (1876). More can be
- read in Hero's
+ in
+ <i>Die harmonikale Symbolik des Alterthums</i> (1876). More can be
+ gleaned from Hero's
<a
href="https://lambdoma.com/pdfs/the-lambdoma-matrix-and-harmonic-intervals.pdf"
target="_blank"
>article</a
- >, <i>The Lambdoma Matrix and Harmonic Intervals</i> (1999). In the
- Lambdoma, Hero also sees the image of Georg Cantor's transfinite set
- of rational numbers ℚ, which Cantor showed to be countably infinite
- through use of a Cartesian plot (versus the uncountable continuity of
- real numbers ℝ).
+ >, <i>The Lambdoma Matrix and Harmonic Intervals</i> (1999).
+ </p>
+
+ <p>
+ In the Lambdoma, Hero also sees the image of Georg Cantor's
+ transfinite set of rational numbers ℚ, which Cantor proved countably
+ infinite by arranging fractions in the form of a matrix. One may
+ easily grasp this countable infinity of rationals by considering that,
+ while there are infinitely many fractions, in between any two there
+ lies an uncountable continuity of real numbers in ℝ. For example, the
+ common tuning system of 12-tone equal temparament is based on an
+ irrational interval of the 12th root of 2 (<super>12</super>√2).
+ Equal-tempered intervals like this do not exist in the Lambdoma - they
+ can only be approximated by rational numbers.
</p>
<p>