I’d suggest smaller intervals, like a cent instead of a semitone, but the numbers are so absurdly large that dividing it by a hundred doesn’t really help anythi

I’d suggest smaller intervals, like a cent instead of a semitone, but the numbers are so absurdly large that dividing it by a hundred doesn’t really help anything. You’d need a good deal more than 64-bit floating point numbers for any pertinent calculations, 10³⁰⁸ is pretty tiny; and the theoretical string tensions involved would be quite something. Perhaps an organ is the right answer instead, with one key per pipe rather than the usual multiplexing. The Wanamaker Organ makes a good start with 28,750 pipes across 484 ranks (though it multiplexes them across a paltry six manuals plus pedalboard), but you’re going to need to come up with a lot more sounds, and the speed of sound is low enough that it’s not going to work very well done acoustically. (Hmm… y’know, there’s actual scope for an art piece here, an organ but producing light instead of sound, like lidar is to sonar. I think you’d struggle to produce anything the human eye would appreciate, but it’s a fun concept.) Or perhaps it should be splitting each manual into one for each combination of sounds it controls. That might well go over the 2²⁴, I’m not thinking about the numbers too exactly.