Pierre Audétat conceived and constructed empirically the first Diatonic Bell in 2006. This system provides a map of the 462 heptationic modes. Having verified mathematically the correctness of the procedure in 2008, Julien Junod applied it to the pentatonic modes. The procedure, being further generalisable to other temperaments, yields this atlas of modes.
At its inception, this project earned support from the Musical Representations team at IRCAM, and from Lausanne’s University of Music.
J. Junod et al., A Generalisation of Diatonicism and the Discrete Fourier Transform as a Mean for Classifying and Characterising Musical Scales in Proceedings of the Second International Conference in Mathematics, Computation and Music, New Haven, 2009.
Festival Node, Lausanne, 2016.
J. Junod, Les Cloches diatoniques : un atlas visuel et sonore des modes musicaux, Journées d’informatique musicale, Strasbourg, 2020.
We would like to thank Moreno Andreatta and Carlos Agon for their support and advice. The sounds on the keyboards were adapted to the tunings after a convincing demonstration performed by Thomas Noll and Andrew Milne.