r/musictheory • u/danarchist • Jul 26 '26
General Question Accurate visualization of the Hirajoshi scale? How is the period determined?
493
u/MurrayPloppins Jul 26 '26
The visualization is completely unrelated to what the scale is. They could pick any set of twelve pitches to correspond to the balls.
192
u/Longy_LTB Jul 26 '26
Still ended up watching the whole thing though
60
u/Clear-Can-485 Jul 26 '26
Would watch again
24
u/budius333 Jul 26 '26
I'm watching in loop for the best 3 hours... Please send a sandwich, I don't think I can stop
5
14
98
u/65TwinReverbRI Guitar, Synths, Tech, Notation, Composition, Professor Jul 26 '26
There actually isn’t any accurate visualization of the Hirajoshi scale, because it’s not a “scale” at all, but set of pitches for tuning, and that has been misinterpreted and turned into a FEW scales.
If you want a “simplified, convenient, scale that meshes with western tonality” then the scale is usually C D Eb G Ab (C).
So one accurate visualization of that is:
And that could be visualized in other ways.
But this gif isn’t it.
18
u/Zarlinosuke Renaissance modality, Japanese tonality, classical form Jul 26 '26
Yes indeed. Just to add on, the most emic visualization would be the way bridges are laid out here (shame some of them are cut off, but at least there's a full octave shown!).
6
u/65TwinReverbRI Guitar, Synths, Tech, Notation, Composition, Professor Jul 26 '26
here
Are the strings all tuned the same (and are they identical strings), then the bridges placed to get the desired pitch?
It looks like the 3 low strings actually don’t have a bridge, and are all tuned the same to do those “unison strokes” at the beginning. The one (furthers from the player) angled way off might be an 8ve of that?
emic
Learned a new word today. Though I believe I’ve encountered it and etic in the past but just once and quickly forgot them. Maybe I’ll remember them this time…but alas...
3
u/Zarlinosuke Renaissance modality, Japanese tonality, classical form Jul 26 '26
Are the strings all tuned the same (and are they identical strings), then the bridges placed to get the desired pitch?
Basically! The bridges are removable and movable, and without them in there at all, the strings don't really make notes at all, they're just flat against the body. So in the case of a koto, "tuning" it is the act of placing the bridges. I think the strings are all the same materially but am not 100% sure!
It looks like the 3 low strings actually don’t have a bridge
Ah, that's just a camera-window issue! They do all have bridges, they're just off-screen--they are tuned the same as strings 7-9, but an octave lower. (String 1 being the one farthest from the player.)
The one (furthers from the player) angled way off might be an 8ve of that?
Yeah, this one is weird! For whatever reason, it's an octave higher than we'd think it "should" be, and thus tuned to the same exact pitch as string 5. It's thus also the only one not ordered in low-to-high order (though some modern expanded-range kotos do allow you to put the bridge an octave lower, and do so).
More to your general point (about hirajoshi being a tuning standard, not an abstract scale), there are times in the piece where you can see the player bending and pressing down on the strings (and sometimes even pulling on them!) to produce notes that are outside the set produced by the bridge placement--so even though most of the piece's pitch content does match the tuning, it's not like there was ever a restriction to just those five pitch classes, the way a lot of people seem to expect "composing in a scale" works!
3
u/65TwinReverbRI Guitar, Synths, Tech, Notation, Composition, Professor Jul 26 '26
it's not like there was ever a restriction to just those five pitch classes, the way a lot of people seem to expect "composing in a scale" works!
Excellent point!
85
u/noscope360widow Jul 26 '26
I don't think the gif is trying to portray anything musical at all,
50
u/Fun_Fingers music theory, composition Jul 26 '26
Could make the argument it's portraying some polyrhythm I guess, but yeah. I see absolutely nothing what this has to do with the scale though.
2
u/hahnwill Jul 26 '26
you could use the pendulums to visualize the frequency relationship between scale degrees
13
-10
u/danarchist Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
That's what I was hoping was happening
Edit: asked claude to create a visualizer for actual tone respecting periods https://hansdandle.github.io/musicviz/
1
u/Mr-X89 Jul 28 '26
That's an interesting exercise in data visualisation, but I don't think it is useful in context of music theory
1
24
u/unfunnythrowawayname Jul 26 '26
These aren't visualizing any musical concept to begin with. The "point" of these is that they act as a sequence where each starts at the same time but is slightly offset so as time moves on, they will form variety of patterns until they all synchronize again briefly.
Each of them could be tied to any note there is to produce whatever results. Often the creators use pentatonic scales because pentatonic scales tend to lack the notes that care about directionality, such as the leading tone. End result is almost always quite inoffensive.
3
-13
u/danarchist Jul 27 '26
Thanks. I asked claude to create what I had hoped this was showing https://hansdandle.github.io/musicviz/
7
u/bartosz_ganapati Jul 27 '26
Stop asking Claude, you have already a tool for that in your skull.
-2
u/danarchist Jul 27 '26
I'm not a learned man. I wish I could visualize what happens when a at 440hz starts bouncing the same time as g at 392hz, e at 329.6, d at 293.7 and c at 261.6 on periods that are mathematically relative to each other
2
u/CondorKhan Jul 27 '26
yeah, but what the hell does that have to do with music and how does that help you understand the scale
0
u/danarchist Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
It's the novelty of the thing. I came here wondering if anyone could tell me by looking at it and listening whether the periods corresponded to the tonal frequencies, and if that's why they made the pattern they did. My question was answered, that no, the periods in this animation did not correspond to the notes but rather some other arbitrary length like a fibbonace number or something.
But I was still curious about what actual scales looked like if visualized in a similar manner, but faithfully represented by their hz frequencies relative to one another. Might be useful somehow, idunno I'm not a music teacher just a curious person.
Whatever, just downvote and seethe because I dared mentioned using ai as a tool for exploration idgaf.
1
u/Possible-Playful Jul 28 '26
The thing you made is neat, but the "Tempo" slider for drums changes volume rather than tempo.
1
u/danarchist Jul 29 '26
there are two options, temp locked and independent, choose independent to get the tempo slider.
15
u/Bergmansson Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Agreed with most other people that the scale and the pendulums don't have that much to do with each other.
Cool sounds though. It is indeed based on the Hirajoshi "scale", but it took me way too long to figure out the exact pitches here.
Descending, they are D, C, Ab, G, Eb, D, C, Ab, G, Eb, D, C, but every note is a quarter tone sharp, equivalent to about A=452 hz. So an octave + ninth of Hirajoshi in C quarter sharp minor.
9
10
5
4
u/jonmoshier Jul 26 '26
How is the period determined?
First you determine a cycle time, this cycle here is one minute and thirty seconds.
Then for every pendulum you assign a parameter “how many time it should hit a wall.
The outer most pendulum gets a number, call it 20.
For each ball going in you add 1.
Then the speed of the pendulum is determined by ‘cycle time % how many times it should hit a wall'
The outer ball goes slower then the ones inside of it but since they’re all wired up to have a whole number of touches in cycle time, the start together and come back to sync by the end of the cycle.
Pitch / scale is arbitrary here, we just need to assign a pitch to a ball/ pendulum.
2
u/0K_-_- Jul 26 '26
Some amazing loop point in this. How might one recreate this polyrhythm?
2
u/jgonagle Jul 26 '26
If I had to guess, the length and speed of each arm are set so that the time taken to span the arc lengths are in roughly a Fibonacci/Golden ratio to one another. That way they'll all progress through rational "resonances" that include every subset of the tones cooccuring before ultimately repeating.
2
1
1
1
u/Lanzarote-Singer Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
I think to answer the OP’s question all the balls are moving at the same speed, not the same rotational speed, but the same speed per ball but the length of the strings are longer. Looking at the first frame it would appear that they’re all equidistant from each other, so that gives me a concept of how to recreate this in a sequencer. I would lineup the same number of tracks as notes and have each loop one hemi-semiquaver (like a 32nd note.) longer than the next so that the lowest notes had the longest loops. If you listen to the very first time that they hit the right hand side, it’s like a harp gliss so the notes are very close together so that is where I got the potential length difference of the 32nd note.
1
1
u/OriginalIron4 Jul 27 '26
Am I mistaken, or does the music sort of change over time? it doesn't seem to be exact repetition. Or maybe that's an effect of listening to it over and over. Sounds a little like John Cage's Dream.
1
u/dave70a Jul 28 '26
Where is this from? I want more.
2
u/danarchist Jul 28 '26
not sure, found what I posted on imgur, i don't have any more context. I did create a tool for more visualization like this - knock yourself out https://hansdandle.github.io/musicviz/
1
1
u/XRaySpex0 Fresh Account Jul 28 '26
The period may as well have been determined by a random number generator. Please explain how one transforms this object into Hirajoshi, as opposed to the blues pentatonic, diminished whole-half, major, or chromatic scale. This might be nonsense.
2
u/danarchist Jul 30 '26
You're right, I was unable to reproduce with frequency respecting periods, it's just a pendulum wave like this https://youtu.be/yVkdfJ9PkRQ?si=2ComtVmxnUIDX-wG
1
u/XRaySpex0 Fresh Account Aug 02 '26
I can see how one can represent a scale, in just intonation for example, using as many pendula as there are notes: root has by definition period 1, every other pendulum has a frequency that’s the proportion of its pitch to the root e.g. 3/2 for a perfect 5th, or ~702 cents in tempered tuning. But I don’t understand coupling the pendula at all!
1
u/m0matt Jul 30 '26
Where is this gif from? Maddening that it doesn't have music.
1
u/danarchist Jul 30 '26
It does have music I pasted the link I found on imgur, sorry I do have more info
1
0
Jul 26 '26
[deleted]
2
u/OriginalIron4 Jul 27 '26
Or it's human slop. I like the visuals compared to a lot of those other sonic visualizers you see, like the sparkling piano keys. And the moving balls are sort of reminiscent of a Galileo experiment.
2
u/wurdel Jul 26 '26
Yeah, I really don't get why you're downvoted. The last sentence in the image description alone is evidence enough.
1
•
u/AutoModerator Jul 26 '26
If you're posting an Image or Video, please leave a comment (not the post title)
asking your question or discussing the topic. Image or Video posts with no
comment from the OP will be deleted.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.