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On the Step-Patterns of Generated Scales that are Not Well-Formed

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Mathematics and Computation in Music (MCM 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 9110))

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Abstract

It is well-known that generated scales (with irrational generator) may have two or three different steps. It is also known that the scale has exactly two steps precisely if the number of notes coincides with the denominator of a (semi-)convergent of the generator. Moreover, the step-pattern is a Christoffel word: a mechanical word with rational slope. In this article we investigate the bad case: generated scales with three different steps. We will see that their step-patterns share some properties with the Christoffel case: they are Lyndon words and their right Lyndon factorization is determined by the generator. Some conjectures on their left Lyndon factorization are also given.

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Correspondence to Manuel Domínguez Romero .

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© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Castrillón López, M., Domínguez Romero, M. (2015). On the Step-Patterns of Generated Scales that are Not Well-Formed. In: Collins, T., Meredith, D., Volk, A. (eds) Mathematics and Computation in Music. MCM 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9110. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20603-5_36

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20603-5_36

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-20602-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-20603-5

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