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Synthesis of the Musical Scale Using Noninteger Frequency Divsion

The method of noninteger frequency division may be applied to the synthesis of the musical scale, with consequent advantages of accurate pitch and good spectral properties. A set of noninteger dividers has been constructed from ripple-carry counters and exclusive-OR gates, which generate from a 1-MHz, source the semitones in the octave 4434-8372 Hz with a worst error in relative pitch of 0.4 cent. Lower octaves are obtained by further binary divisions, and digital circuitry for key shifting and vibrato is incorporated.

Author: Small, Greig W.
Affiliation: CSIRO Division of Applied Physics, National Standards Laboratory, Sydney, N.S.W., Australia
JAES Volume 21 Issue 4 pp. 262-266; May 1973 Import into BibTeX

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