The Dawn Of Beta


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The Dawn Of Beta

It had to happen, sooner or later: I quit Carlos Gamma!
I composed my first piece using it,
Adagio Gamma, in April 2009.
I have spent a considerable amount of time studying it, trying to figure out how to notate it, how to create a reasonable note layout for my isomorphic keyboard as testified by my many blog articles. But I felt it was time to move on and decided to choose another of Wendy Carlos’ non-octave tuning systems:
Carlos Beta.

The legacy of Gamma made possible to create a Beta setup in less than a week including a new note layout:

BetaNoteLayout

and the transnotation of MIDI notes coming from the
Opal Chameleon and remapped by Disarray. The following is a picture taken while I was setting it up:

BetaRemap2

I used the same methodology developed for
Gamma, adapted to Beta (if anyone needs more details simply ask me).

It did not take me long to realize Beta and
19tET are similar:

CarlosBeta

19tET

So I decided to adapt a note layout usually associated with 19tET to Beta even though the first is octave-based and the second is a non-octave one.

My stretched octave has 7 natural, 5 sharp and 7 flat notes:

C C# Db D D# Eb E Fb F F# Gb G G# Ab A A# Bb B Cb

Coming from Gamma, Beta looks like a piece of cake!