3.3.2. Setting

Most of the session happens in a room, in the Temple of Music, the Hall of Pitch, where a small group of subscribers, interested in natural harmony, and experimenting together for a little while, have discovered a mysterious room with 5 small antechambers leading to it.

These subscribers are about to start to discover and experiment with diatonic mode structure. Although they have seen the room and antechambers, they have yet to discover what they are about.

In fact, they already have a few hints about the antechambers, mostly because of the doorway inscriptions and the sounds resonating in the antechambers, but also from previous experience in an underground Science Crypt room called the Chamber of Measurement.

The antechambers form a passage the mysterious room and each has an inscription inside, over its arching doorways and on the walls on each side. As well, each antechamber was producing two notes, one coming from each side of each antechamber:

• The 1st antechamber inscription reads "1/1" and both sides are playing the exact same note, in unison, a D4
• The 2nd antechamber inscription reads "2/1" and the same D4 is playing on one side but the second note is a D5, an octave higher
• The 3rd antechamber inscription reads "1.5/1, 3/2" and the same D4 is playing on one side but the second note is an A4, a perfect fifth above the D4, but lower than the D5 of the second antechamber
• The 4th antechamber inscription reads "1.25/1, 5/4" and the same D4 is playing on one side but the second note is an F#4, a major third above the D4, but lower than the A4 of the third antechamber
• The 5th antechamber inscription reads "1.125/1, 9/8" and the same D4 is playing on one side but the second note is an E4, a major second above the D4, but lower than the F#4 of the forth antechamber

Also, as they stood in the doorway between every two antechambers, they could hear the sounds of two antechambers vibrating simultaneously, especially standing between:

• the 2nd and 3rd antechambers, they could hear the octave of antechamber #2, split in its natural center, but creating two unequal half, the lower one slightly larger than the upper half; in fact, the lower half was sounding from one side and the other from the other side; more so, they figured that if notes in antechamber #2 where in a 2/1 ratio, as indicated and the ones in antechamber #3 in a 3/2 ratio, that the smaller half must be in a 4/3 ratio
• the 3rd and 4th antechambers, similarly, they could hear the 3/2 interval in the back, the 5/4 interval dividing still in two unequal half, a larger 5/4 on one side and a shorter 6/5 on the other side; more so, they happily surprised to recognize the major triad with D4-F#4-A4, they were hearing
• the 4th and 5th antechambers, they noticed the same division process, but that the sounds where becoming quite dissonant and that the 9/8 ratio was not based on prime numbers like the preceding intervals, as it could be produced by applying the 3/2 ratio twice, concluding that they may have reached the end of the sequence of prime intervals; it also seemed that this was the last antechamber

Of course, back in the Crypts, their experiment in the Chamber of Measurement had well prepared them for this. Also, they noted that the process of division in mathematical series, especially helped them understand that the smaller half of every prime interval division was somewhat like leftover change in a purchase, as if buying a 3/2 and paying with a 2/1, left a 4/3, and that it was the division of the larger half that generated the next prime interval.

They also found it interesting and intriguing that while they had experience rhythm foundations earlier and noticed the importance of equal divisions and groupings, that prime pitch intervals seemed to have priorities and that they were even somewhat incompatible with one another.

They had a lot to think about already, but mysterious room that these antechambers lead to, left them perplexed and hoping for support