The Balance Calculator
In the spring of 2013 I was about as deep as one can get in the early days of learning to tune. In an effort to wrap my head around how the harmonics are distributed throughout a specific scale I created a spreadsheet that would list them all. In doing so it really put some patterns on display. It then lead me down the path of comparing one scale to another and watching how these changes and patterns propagated throughout the entirety of the proposed scale.
At the time we spoke of scales with high harmonic continuity as ‘balanced.’ By taking the total number repeating harmonics (showing up more than once) and dividing that number by the total number of present harmonics you get a percentage. It doesn’t really mean anything on its won but suddenly has value when comparing it to a similar scale. By just crunching the numbers you could then inform which note should or shouldn’t be picked in order to increase that percentage. Of course there are a variety of other factors that impact the overall health and playability of a handpan but this provided an interesting lens to both use for design and comparison.
I originally posted about the ‘Sound Model Balance Calculator’ on handpan.org in June of 2013, by first post is below:
CALLING ALL SOUND MODEL NERDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Had this idea last night, figured out this morning. How it works:
This is a relative way to see how balanced a sound model is. It counts the number of duplicated frequencies and compares that as a ratio with the total number of present frequencies. It is automatically set so each note has an octave and a 5th and does not take other tuning variations into account. You can however adjust by manually inputting other variations.
As with any online forum, this idea sparked celebration, confusion, and critique. Thankfully, one of the members was far better that I was at spreadsheets took my idea and ran with it. After a few revisions we have what I still use to this day. Below is a link to download your own copy (if that is your type of thing) as well as a video of me demonstrationg how it works and what it all means.
