Unisons

[JIMRPT@aol.com]

David;
  Since I am the one who most recently brought up the subject of "unclean"
:-)
unisons permit me to explain my meaning and perhaps someone else will jump in
and correct any illogical thinking on my part.
 For the purpose of defining a "clean" unison I will say that it is "when
there is no discernable variation in pitch before a note is released.  Due to
the fact that a piano is played in much shorter segments of note sustain time
than the true sustain time that most notes are capable of, the "clean"
portion that I refer to is that time after hammer strike and before "normal"
dampening of string movement.
  As someone, I'm sorry I don't recall who, pointed out adding depth in this
fashion also makes the note "quieter".  When you have a note that contains a
false beat or beats can you not amileorate the falseness to some extent by
offsetting the contiguous strings of that note?  The same principle is at
work when you purposely leave an "unclean" unision.
  So the "unclean" portion that I was speaking of is the 'used' portion of
the note and not the dampened portion of the note.  We must remember that
what we listen to in our tuning is not what the performer hears in their
performance, same noise but different levels of perception and usage.
  In my opinion there is certainly such a thing as too " clean" of a note. an
absolutely beatless note, carried to the extreme, is sterile sounding as
compared to note with a slight, again almost inperceptable, waver.
 Fortunately most of us don't have to try to do this, it just happens. :-)
  Anyway discussing this is rather like discussing whether the ETD is
listening to the 5th partial or the 17th partial, i.e. does it really matter
?
Finally "clean" unisons that remain clean throughout a note's full sustain
time are acheivable but why would you want to do that ?  They will not stay
that way very long, matter of fact possibly only as long as you tune the next
note or unision.  :-)
  As I said in my original post David, I get lost just about here and depend
on the theoreticians among us to keep me on the right path.
  Memory , one of the tunes in Cats, is one of my favorite melodies and the
difference in this song is tremendous when sung by one with a clear, "clean"
voice as opposed to one with not as clear or "clean" voice.  The clean voice
almost makes my hair stand on end, not that it is so hard to do these days
:-),and gives me goose bumps of the pleasure kind.  Whereas the not so clean
voice, while just as good perhaps, leaves me saying 'nice job'.
Have I made myself muddy again ??
Jim Bryant (FL)