Talk:Cent (music)

I pulled this from the article, where it is not appropriate. It seems to be part of a copy and paste - but is it a copyvio? Ian Cairns 17:37, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

• QUESTION:

Hello, I once saw a formula for converting from a ratio or a frequency to cents that did not involve the use of the logarithmic function [log] on the web, but the site it was on has since vanished, after doing an extensive search on the web and in an encyclopedia and several "physics of music" books, I've come up empty handed. If some one can help out I would be very appreciative and it would be a welcome addition to this short page for such a contrived topic as this. Thanks in advance.

I'm sorry, but you're talking about mapping from a geometric scale (frequency) to an arithmetic scale (cents) and there's no other way to do that except with logarithms. Contrived topic?

Ian, why would you think this is a copyvio? It's just a question. —Wahoofive (talk) 22:02, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, Wahoo, it makes sense a lot of the time to take pitch as the independent, and frequency as the dependent variable, making the mapping exponential. No need for logarithms there (but of course, they are implied as the inverse function.) __Just plain Bill (talk) 14:12, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

The measure was developed by A. J. Ellis around the 1870s

Hi, I am reading in this little book by M. le Baron de Prony, Instruction Elémentaire sur les moyens de calculer les intervalles musicaux ("en prenant, pour unités ou termes de comparaison, soit l'octave, soit le douzième d'octave,..." Firmin Didot, Paris. 1834) where he introduces a notation for intervals using logarithmic tables and writes about "centièmes de demiton" comparing just intonation to equal temperament. Bosanquet also proposes that semitones are convenient expressing intervals but cedes De Morgan's precedent for the method of calculation used in On the Theory of the Division of the Octave. Mireut 20:55, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

I found a relevant passage from Ellis: "The first person to propose the measuring of musical intervals by equal Semitones was, I believe, de Prony, but I have not been able to see his pamphlet ; the next was the late Professor de Morgan ("Cam. Phil. Trans.," x, 129), from whom I learned it, and I employed it in the Appendix of my translation of Helmholtz, by the advice of Mr. Bosanquet. Having found that two places of decimals sufficed for most purposes, I was led to take the second place, or hundredth of an equal Semitone as the unit, and I have extensively employed this practice, here for the first time published, with the greatest advantage. In fact, I do not know how I could have expressed the results of the present investigation in any other brief and precise, and at the same time suggestive, method." (Ellis, A. (1884) Tonometrical Observations on some existing Non harmonic Musical Scales.) Mireut 15:53, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Decimal in a fraction

A recent edit of mine was reverted with the edit summary "why would you use a decimal in a fraction?". That's such a bizarre justification, I'm not even sure how to respond. Really, it's not even an objection; it's a question, and I have an answer: I did it because because 1/17.3 is much more accurate than 1/17. Please don't revert my edit again unless you can provide a reason that the article is better without it. --P3d0 (talk) 14:25, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I recently made an edit removing the fraction, before I saw this discussion. As a reader, I found the fraction more confusing than anything, because 1.0058 is clearly not "equal" to some fraction of one percent. After I removed the fraction I realized the intention was to represent this as 1 cent = $2^{\frac {1}{1200}}$ = 1 + $({\frac {1}{17.3}})\%$ . But I don't have a good suggestion on a clear way of phrasing that so that it would clarify rather than distracting. Maybe just putting it back in as-is is good enough, with the phrasing of "one percent" (or even "one per cent", though that risks confusion with the logarithmic unit "cent") instead of using a '%' sign, since that seems to convey the fraction 1/100. VineetKumar (talk) 20:14, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Awkward definition in Sound Files section

The last paragraph might be better explained if it included a link to Beat (acoustics), though I'm not entirely sure if that's what the author was driving at. --scruss (talk) 11:17, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Paragraph rewritten. __Just plain Bill (talk) 14:03, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Small interval audio files

The three uploaded small interval audio files for 1 cent, 6 cents, and 10 cents, sound to me constant pitch, that is, zero interval. I have listened to Ten_Cents_Interval.ogg repeatedly using both Cortado (Java) and QuickTime. I always hear just one tone. I strongly believe I would be able to detect an interval of 10 cents. I suspect that these files were not constructed correctly. Does anyone hear actual pitch intervals? Anomalocaris (talk) 03:05, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Playing them with XMMS I hear the ten-cents sharp tone as just a fraction of a fine hair brighter than the reference tone. I can convince myself that I hear a similar but smaller difference with the six cents example. The one-cent difference sounds the same to me. In all three files, the third tone shows beats that demonstrate two different frequencies played together. __Just plain Bill (talk) 12:25, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I think it would be better if the samples were pure tones rather than that foghorn-like thing. Also, they should last longer, maybe 2x as long. I can hear a slight difference in the 10-cent sample but not the other two. I can hear beats in the mixed samples at 6 and 10 cents but not the 1 cent. Beats in the 1 cent mixed sample would probably be audible if it were played longer. The other thing is that the unmixed samples seem to have beats of their own, making the whole thing slightly uncertain. It might be better to use FLAC rather than ogg for these samples, to avoid introducing coding artifacts 67.122.211.205 (talk) 04:31, 6 September 2009 (UTC)