flex_points: Voice-leading inflection points

In musicMCT: Analyze the Structure of Musical Scales

Voice-leading inflection points

Description

When considering an n-note set's potential voice leadings to transpositions of a goal (along the lines of vl_rolodex() and tndists()), there will always be some transposition in continuous pc-space for which a given modal rotation is the best potential target for voice leading. (That is, there is always some x such that whichmodebest(set, tn(set, x)) == k for any k between 1 and n.) Moreover, there will always be a transposition level at the boundary between two different ideal modes, where both modes require the same amount of voice leading work. flex_points() identifies those inflection points where one mode gives way to another. (Note: flex_points() identifies these points by numerical approximation, so it may not give exact values. For more precision, increase the value of subdivide.)

Usage

flex_points(
  set,
  goal = NULL,
  method = c("taxicab", "euclidean", "chebyshev", "hamming"),
  subdivide = 100,
  edo = 12,
  rounder = 10
)

Arguments

set	Numeric vector of pitch-classes in the set
goal	Numeric vector like set: what is the tn-type of the voice leading's destination? Defaults to NULL, in which case the function uses set as the tn-type.
method	What distance metric should be used? Defaults to "taxicab" but can be "euclidean", "chebyshev", or "hamming".
subdivide	Numeric: how many small amounts should each edo step be divided into? Defaults to 100.
edo	Number of unit steps in an octave. Defaults to 12.
rounder	Numeric (expected integer), defaults to 10: number of decimal places to round to when testing for equality.

Value

Numeric vector of the transposition indices that are inflection points. Length of result matches size of set, except in the case of some multisets, which can have fewer inflection points.

Examples

major_triad_12tet <- c(0, 4, 7)
major_triad_just <- z(1, 5/4, 3/2)
major_triad_19tet <- c(0, 6, 11)

flex_points(major_triad_12tet, method="euclidean", subdivide=1000)
flex_points(major_triad_just, method="euclidean", subdivide=1000)

# Note that the units of measurement correspond to edo.
# The value 3.16 here corresponds to exactly 1/6 of an octave.
flex_points(major_triad_19tet, edo=19)

musicMCT documentation built on June 21, 2026, 9:06 a.m.