Talk:Delta scale

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what is the "delta scale" anyway?

Wendy Carlos suggested scales based on novel intervals called "alpha", "beta", and "gamma". Those scales are described by Wikipedia in perfectly reasonable sister pages. This page seems to suggest that there is some similar scale, suggested by someone, based on an interval called "delta", which might be about 14 cents in size. But who suggested this purported "delta scale", and why?

The sources listed on this page don't provide much enlightenment. The first source is a long book by Taruskin about the music of Stravinsky. That book does indeed include, on page 1394 (out of 1760 pages), a sentence stating that "delta is as far down the (0 3 6 9) circle from alpha as beta is up". But the words "alpha" and "beta" in that sentence have nothing whatsoever to do with the novel intervals suggested by Wendy Carlos. They are, instead, particular sequences of notes drawn from the standard notes of the 12-tone equal-tempered scale; and "gamma" and "delta", in the Taruskin book, are two more such sequence of standard notes.

The second source cited on this page and the paper in German cited as "further reading" are both about the Bohlen-Pierce scale. Th e BP scale does indeed include novel, non-standard intervals. But I'm not aware that anybody refers to any of those non-standard intervals as "delta". The second source cited on this page, in the process of discussing how to compose pieces using the BP scale, refers to a particular subset of nine of the 13 BP pitch classes as constituting a "delta mode". But that use of the word "delta" also seems irrelevant to the topic of this page.

I suggest that this page be either significantly clarified or deleted. LyleRamshaw (talk) 01:09, 1 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I believe delta is referring to a mode of a Bohlen-Pierce-based scale, like saying "D" to refer to dorian of the diatonic scale; though this was from a rather cursory look. Nevertheless, I'm extremely confused where this article came from, seeing as it is an amalgation of unrelated ideas. It should probably be deleted.--Awelotta (talk)

hmm …

So this is a scale in which a major third (4:5) and a minor third (5:6) do not add up to a fifth (2:3)? Why?? —Tamfang (talk) 02:41, 8 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]