Talk:Tonality diamond

Diamond marimba's popularity

...the diamond marimba, which is laid out as a tonality diamond and which has proven rather popular.

Really? Where can I get one for cheap? =P ——Keenan Pepper 22:07, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Term's origin

from para. 1 "The tonality diamond is often regarded as comprising the set of consonances of the n-limit. The term is due to Harry Partch."

But the Harry Partch page states "Partch's tuning had its origin in an extended version of Max Meyer's tonality diamond..."

I don't have my copy of Genesis of A Music handy, and don't remember who Max Meyer is/was.

Genesis has this to say about Max Meyer:

Max F. Meyer (b. 1873), psychologist, takes the trouble, in The Musician's Arithmetic, to state the case for ratios as a nomenclature for musical materials, these being the only terms "safe from ambiguity." Meyer uses what Monophony would call identities through 9 (including 7), disavows both overtones and undertones as constituting the source of tonality, and, somewhat disappointingly, applies his ideas to a "quartertone" harmonium (see Chapter 17).

See also Meyer's Diamond and Partch's Diamond. —Keenan Pepper 21:44, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. According to Cris Forster's page, Meyer's diamond looks just like Partch's, only rotated and (not to quote Spinal Tap, but) Partch's "goes to 11." I think this line should be credited to Meyer, not Partch. Namrevlis 22:41, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Meyer is the authentic creator of the tonality diamond for one reason only: he studied the works of Rameau. If you don't understand the problems faced by Rameau, you won't understand the solutions offered by Meyer. -Cris Forster

Illustration of 7-limit Tonality Diamond

The tonality diamond illustrated does not match the description, in that the 3 and 5 columns (and their associated inverses) replace each other. It does match Harry Partch's Diamond Marimba, but I think it would be better if the tonality diamond were in canonical form. Does anyone have a problem with me changing it? --Eraticus 06:02, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

And Music?

Would somebody state what this has to do with music in the main definition, pretty please? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.201.194.156 (talk) 18:50, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

7-limit tonality diamond with audio

			7/4ⓘ
		3/2ⓘ		7/5ⓘ
	5/4ⓘ		6/5ⓘ		7/6ⓘ
1/1ⓘ		1/1ⓘ		1/1ⓘ		1/1ⓘ
	8/5ⓘ		5/3ⓘ		12/7ⓘ
		4/3ⓘ		10/7ⓘ
			8/7ⓘ

Hyacinth (talk) 07:09, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Dimensions of the Tonality Diamond

I'm altering this lead sentence to remove a misuse of two of Partch's coined and well-defined terms.

In music theory and tuning, a tonality diamond is a two-dimensional diagram of ratios in which one dimension is called the otonality and the other is called the utonality.[1]

I'll change it to, "In music theory and tuning, a tonality diamond is a diamond-shaped diagram of ratios comprising overlapping tonalities in which the major otonalities orient along one diagonal and the minor utonalities along the other."

Here are my reasons. First, the ending doesn't echo the sentence in the cited essay, which is, "One dimension is the Odentity, the other one the Udentity." Second, the author of the cited essay, Rudolf Rasch, misused those terms. Rasch correctly relayed Harry Partch's definitions of Odentity and Udentity in earlier paragraphs of his essay. However, Rasch contradicted himself and stretched those terms beyond Partch's meanings when he later used Odentity and Udentity to name the dimensions of the tonality diamond.

Partch always and only used Odentity or Udentity when designating a given ratio as having particular membership in an Otonality, a Utonality, or both (because "every ratio has at least a dual nature"), which usage anyone can verify for themselves using a word search of all instances in Genesis of a Music on archive.org, as I did before committing to make the change.

I defy anyone to find a sentence where Partch used Odentity or Udentity to name a dimension. In fact, he doesn't even write "dimension", calling them diagonals instead. ~2026-38734-14 (talk) 19:37, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

Here is the removed citation. ~2026-38734-14 (talk) 19:58, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

I have removed your edit. Do not use technical jargon like "odentity" and "udentity" in lead sentences of articles without some lay explanation that people other than Partch or you can understand. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:36, 19 July 2026 (UTC)

I'll dejargonize it. ~2026-38734-14 (talk) 02:29, 20 July 2026 (UTC)