Chromatic aberrations

[jahloon]

This is really weird, try whistling or humming a chromatic scale, finishing an octave away from where you started. Should be twelve equally spaced notes ending on the thirteenth to make the octave, right?
When I do it, and it does not matter how many times I try it, ascending or descending, I get fourteen equally spaced notes, ending on the fifteenth, being the octave.
Anyone else suffering from this?

[aliensporebomb]

True fact: I can't whistle. At all. And when I try, you get a strangled exhalation of air accompanied by a barely audible pitch. It's embarassing.

So you're ahead of the game as far as I'm concerned.

[chrissh]

Can you identify which conventional intervals you omit or include? That could be interesting, to know if there is a consistency in your mind's ears' preferences and how they differ from 12TET.

[jahloon]

I've sussed it out, I was doing two half scales, CDEFGABCDEFGABC compressed into an octave, not equal intervals but still interesting, would be possible to play on a quarter tone instrument, or fretless, has certainly given me some ideas....

[mirth]

I think most likely you've spent too much time on your fretless (hehehe, like there was such a symptom) I'm betting you've only slightly lost the sound of a halfstep in your mind. Also, I don't know how good of a singer/whistler you are, that may be contributing to the shift. Especially with 13+ notes only slightly removed from each other. I'd be willing to bet if you practiced singing along to an equal temperament chromatic scale for a couple days, you'd be pretty right on most of the time. Definitely easy to lose the key center when you're thinking in half steps.

Actually doing so, especially with the key center in mind (not losing the starting note) you'd probably gain a lot of mastery over intonation, and knowing how each note sounds against the key center.

You may consider learning how each does sound against the key center, using something like Bruce Arnold's ear training method. Basically he plays a cadence ( I IV V I) then plays one note and you guess the note, eventually learning how it sounds against everything. That way a m3rd and m6th against the key center actually have there own feel. This comes in great handy when singing 20th century "modern" music, especially 12 tone.

We learned interval based ear training at school (what does a major 4th sound like, etc...) but I found that learning the note against the key center was a milliion times more helpful. I was able to site sings way easier when I was just trying to think what a 4th sounds like against the key center, then trying to sing a minor 7th down from some other note.

I have gotten out of practice a bit, but when you're on it, you can hear what key a song is in just by playing one note, etc... you can tell if you're sharp or flat pretty easy against the key center, no matter what note you're playing. Pretty interesting actually. I believe there are only 3 or 4 universities in the states that actually go after that approach, as opposed to learning "intervals". For an improvising musician, I really don't think there is any comparison.

Anyways, sorry to rant, thought it might be interesting though.

[jahloon]

Very interesting TIm. I can whistle fairly well and pitch harmonies to a lead vocal, though I'm no singer. Trouble is once I realised what I was doing I'm now stuck back with the standard 12 note chromatic, can't replicate the feat.