September 4th, 2024

Generalized Carlos Scales

The paper "Generalized Carlos Scales" by Andrew V. Sills generalizes Wendy Carlos's musical scales, emphasizing major and minor thirds, and corrects typographical errors from its first version.

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Generalized Carlos Scales

The paper titled "Generalized Carlos Scales" by Andrew V. Sills discusses the musical scales introduced by composer Wendy Carlos in 1986, specifically the alpha, beta, and gamma scales. These scales are inspired by equal temperament but prioritize major and minor thirds and the perfect fifth over the octave. The author presents a generalization of these scales, originally derived by David Benson, which allows for the creation of various Carlos-type scales. The paper is concise, spanning five pages, and the second version corrects several typographical errors found in the first version submitted on August 26, 2024.

- The paper generalizes musical scales introduced by Wendy Carlos.

- It focuses on scales that emphasize major and minor thirds and the perfect fifth.

- The work builds on a derivation by David Benson.

- The second version of the paper corrects typographical errors from the first version.

- The paper is part of the mathematics history and overview category.

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By @abetusk - 6 months
For those that don't know, Wendy Carlos (the "Carlos" in the above title) did the musical score for "A Clockwork Orange", "The Shining" and "Tron" [0].

My bet is many people, especially of a certain generation, will be familiar with the opening title sequence music for "A Clockwork Orange" [1], the Tron "Scherzo" [2], or the opening musical sequence to "The Shining" [3].

She was an early pioneer in the late 1960s and early 1970s or synthesizers and synthesizer music.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Carlos#Discography

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPCScFIPlUg

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWEU5apbY0E

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjLip2FZLuA

By @PaulHoule - 6 months
Carlos made the first big hit in electronic music

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched-On_Bach

which of course led to Disco, YMO, Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode, Insoc and the rest is history.

By @denizener - 6 months
I love Beauty in the Beast but whenever I have tried playing Wendy's scales to make my own stuff it just sounds terrible.

That is the main problem with all non-12 TET IMO. Making music that doesn't suck is hard enough in 12 TET. Starting from scratch with a scale by Carlos or Harry Partch takes a real musical genius and that is certainly not me. Worst though is there is no road map to follow in order to get better for us mere mortals.

BTW FM7/FM8 VST is the easiest way to play a few Carlos scales.

By @waffletower - 6 months
John Chowning's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Chowning) work Stria (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=988jPjs1gao) unifies timbre and scale structure about the Golden Mean as a musical interval. It's completion predates this work by Carlos by nearly a decade (1977) and the composition process apparently began as early as 1972 (https://brahms.ircam.fr/en/works/work/7459/). There are many academic papers available which analyze this work: https://laurazattra.com/2016/09/23/stria-by-john-chowning-th...
By @HPsquared - 6 months
Wendy Carlos' album "Beauty in the Beast" is an exploration of these types of alternative tuning schemes.

https://www.wendycarlos.com/+bitb.html

By @belter - 6 months
"The Broken Scales Of Wendy Carlos" - https://youtu.be/RuT6Y53LYH4
By @drivebyhooting - 6 months
Without a sound sample and music I can’t appreciate it. Is there a link to an actual melody using it?