Talk:Rothenberg propriety

Perhaps an example of falsibility may be in order.
I'm finding it hard to understand what the Rothenberg property is. I gather that the diatonic scale satisfies it, but it is quasiperiodic. Then again, the scale "C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#" (repeating at all octaves) is also quasiperiodic, but it doesn't satisfy the Rothenberg property. Explaining why the first satisfies it, but the second doesn't, may make things a lot clearer. Tphcm (talk) 09:00, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Math notation
Notice this difference.
 * a-b
 * a &minus; b

See Manual of Style (mathematics). I've cleaned up this article in those respects. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:43, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * A minus sign is not a stubby little hyphen.
 * A space precedes and follows "&minus;", "+", "=", "<", etc. (I often make these non-breakable spaces.)
 * Variables (but not digits and not punctuation) are italicized.

Plain English, please.
Is there any chance of someone familiar with this subject inserting a plain-English explanation of what this is about, please? I have been trying to find out what "proper diatonic scales" and related terms mean, but this article is totally opaque, and conveys absolutely no meaning to me - even though I claim to have reasonable familiarity with music theory as a whole. And the link to "Quasiperiodic function" was less than helpful - one of the most abstruse mathematical articles I have seen on Wikipedia. And I could see nothing there that related to musical scales in any way at all.

I don't ask that the technical jargon be eliminated - I quite grant that it may be very enlightening to those who know the jargon. But an additional section (maybe an introduction) saying the same thing in plain English would be nice. Maybe it's necessary to assume the reader knows how to read music, understands music notation, and the like - but I suspect it could be made much easier to understand by people not familiar with the specific theory around abstruse concepts such as quasiperiodic functions, proper diatonic scales, and the like - terms and concepts I had never heard of before now, even after a lifetime of studying music theory, modern harmony, and the like.

Thanks. M.J.E. (talk) 18:27, 3 July 2010 (UTC)


 * This reply is rather late, six and a half years later. Anyway just noticed this article, and added a non technical explanation with examples. Robert Walker (talk) 01:11, 27 January 2017 (UTC)