Re: Shepard tone

[tEd ® KiLLiAn <tedkillian@charter.net>]

Hi all,

I've also heard it referred to as a "barber poll" tone.

I suppose it applies whether it is ascending or descending.

James Tenney created an electronic composition at Bell Labs in the 
early 1960s that was essentially just this sort of thing.

I have a recording of it somewhere.

Cheers,

Ted

On Nov 6, 2007, at 1:47 PM, Per Boysen wrote:

> On 6 nov 2007, at 21.36, Daryl Shawn wrote:
>
>> "Shepard tone"
>
>
> Very interesting! At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone I found
>> consider a brass trio consisting of a trumpet, a horn, and a tuba. 
>> They all start to play a repeating C scale (C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C) in their 
>> respective ranges, i.e. they all start playing C's, but their notes 
>> are all in different octaves. When they reach the G of the scale, the 
>> trumpet drops down an octave, but the horn and tuba continue 
>> climbing. They're all still playing the same pitch class, but at 
>> different octaves. When they reach the B, the horn similarly drops 
>> down an octave, but the trumpet and tuba continue to climb, and when 
>> they get to what would be the second D of the scale, the tuba drops 
>> down to repeat the last seven notes of the scale. So no instrument 
>> ever exceeds an octave range, and essentially keeps playing the exact 
>> same seven notes over and over again. But because two of the 
>> instruments are always "covering" the one that drops down an octave, 
>> it seems that the scale never stops rising.
>>
>
> Greetings from Sweden
>
> Per Boysen
> www.boysen.se (Swedish)
> www.looproom.com (international)
>
>
>
>