Useful programs

Useful programs

         Here are some computer programs useful in understanding and implementing dissonance-based tuning and timbres. Since I usually program in the language MATLAB, most of these are MATLAB programs, although the dissonance calculating program is also available in Microsoft's version of BASIC. Morgan Thunder has also translated the dissonance measuring program into C, and updated by Prof. Frink while Mauricio Rodriguez has translated it into LISP -- thanks Morgan, Prof. Frink, and Mauricio!

       To calculate the dissonance of a sound with a given spectrum, use the following program, which should be placed in your MATLAB folder and called dismeasure.
The logical structure and the meaning of the variables are discussed in the section How to Calculate Dissonance Curves of the paper Relating Tuning and Timbre, which is available on-line for your browsing pleasure.

      A pair of useful MATLAB programs converts from musical ratios into cents, and back again. The which should be named ratcent and centrat and placed in your MATLAB folder. As usual in MATLAB the input variables cents and ratios can be scalars or vector.