Klarinet Archive - Posting 000450.txt from 1998/09

From: "Mark Charette" <charette@-----.org>
Subj: Re: [kl] Re: Pitch standards
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1998 17:11:11 -0400

>I have read about the ISO for years, and it is obvious that they have a
>very significant effect on our lives as musicians. In your dealings
with
>this group, did the question of pitch standards ever come up? Is it
your
>feeling that the A=440 standard is under attack? What is the
likelihood
>that the ISO will be convinced to change it to 442 or something even
>higher? (If we don't have at least the reference to the ISO standard
as
>justification, we don't have very much at all to counter the arguments
of
>those who want to continue to raise the pitch.)

No - I worked in the realm of computer graphics and language APIs. The
standards organizations have literally hundreds of different
departments; here in the US the keeper of the standards is NIST (which
used to be the NBS). I do know that changing anything within the ISO for
any reason, solid or specious, is a long and involved process, and
something that likely will take in excess of at least another decade
with something as "unchanging" as a pitch reference (unchanging in
respect to computer languages and interfaces; FORTRAN 66 went 11 years
before it became FORTRAN 77, 13 years before it became Fortran 90, and 5
years before it became Fortran 95. And Fortran is a "very old" language
:^) I remember our ISO rappateur losing his hair rapidly during our very
contentious meetings between ANSI X3H3.1 and our counterparts in ISO
over the period of 3 years ...
----
Mark Charette@-----.org
Webmaster, http://www.sneezy.org/clarinet
All-around good guy and devil-may-care flying fool.
"There can be no freedom without discipline." - Nadia Boulanger

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