Aural Pure 5ths Temperament Part III

[Jim]

Hi Walter:

As far as I can tell, you may be the very firsst who has actually
tried the newer stretch concept with a SAT. Thanks, that's
very gratifying. This morning I tuned an older Hamilton studio
using 1.0 additional stretch for the A4 number only. Because of
the greater inharmonicity of this piano in the temperament octave,
the 5ths came out very pure, and the octaves were still almost
normal. Last week's experience with a Yamaha console produced
sharper sounding center octaves, but the overall fit was still
very good.

Jim Coleman, Sr.



On Tue, 27 May 1997, w sikora wrote:

> Jim,
>
> A couple of weeks ago I was called on to do a voicing overhaul on an
> Acrosonic that had just been tuned by the most popular, well established
> tuner in town.  I was keen to hear what one of his fresh tunings sounded
> like.  Sure enough, the double octave 5ths and triple octaves were very
> smooth. I'm very conscious of the sound of double octave 5ths as I use this
> interval as part of my final aural checks on every tuning.
>
> I liked this highly stretched tuning style, but didn't known how to
> duplicate it with the SAT.  Yesterday I tried your method on a customer's
> Steinway M and Bechstein grand.  It worked beautifully.  I got smooth
> double octave 5ths and triple octaves with a nice progression of 17ths up
> and down the scale. I thought single octaves actually sounded better,
> although I could hear some roll.  Both pianos sounded very musical and the
> customer was delighted.
>
> Thanks for providing this great new tool.  The only situation I can think
> of where I might hesitate to use the pure 5ths method is in churches where
> the accompaniments to hymns have so many major thirds and their relatives.
> Even so it's probably worth experimenting.  Maybe our ears are becoming
> ever more  accustomed to dissonance in the major thirds.  And a little
> added dissonance there is tolerable musically when the consequence is a
> more musical sounding stretch.
>
> Walter Sikora, RPT
> Chapel Hill, NC
>
>