Historical tuning

[Jim Coleman, Sr.]

Hi to all on list:

Now it's History

At the California State Conference, I taught 2 classes on advanced tuning.
During this class there was a Coleman vs Coleman Tuneoff. Since one piano
was to be used for class demonstrations, we had the playing and judging 
of the two pianos at the beginning of the class.

No one knew which piano was tuned in advance. After playing several short
short selections on the pianos alternately, the audience was asked to guess
which piano was tuned in an historical temperament. The entire class pointed
to the piano on the Right. The entire class was wrong! Can you believe that?
Here was a large class of piano technicians and pianists who could not tell.

The piano on the Right was actually tuned in a Pure 5ths Equal temperament.
The piano on the Left was tuned in the latest Coleman-11 Well temperament.
This temperament was devised just 4 days before the Conference as a result
of the excellent instructions given by Bill Bremmer in his post on the 
"rules
for Well Temperament." It was a mild temperament with no wolf 4ths or 5ths.
The most quiet 3rds were 8 cents wide instead of the normal 14. These 
graduated in the sharps and flats direction to 18 cents width in the 
keys of
B maj. and Gb maj. If you played the 3rds chromatically, it sounded like a
terrible temperament, but during musical selections it was gorgeous.

The voting:

In the first class the voting was in favor of the pure 5ths tuning on Right.
In the second class it was an exact tie. This proves that musically speaking
there is not a dime's worth of difference when it comes to temperament.

Well now, it just so happened that Randy Potter's class on the various 
temperaments came just after my class. He took the liberty of using the same
tunings for an evaluation in his class.  His first class voted largely in
favor of the Coleman 11. During the second class, the performer for the 
Banquet of the previous evening stopped by and offerred to play the two 
pianos. Leonid Hambro is an outstanding Concert Pianist, educator, and 
entertainer. His choice was for the Left piano, and the large majority of
the class preferred the Left piano with the Well Temperament tuning.

This is the first time where the Pure 5ths tuning has gone down to defeat
in a decided manner. This is Tuneoff number 5. Last summer at Orlando,
Virgil Smith barely edged me out with his tunings against my Pure 5ths
tunings. All other Tuneoffs have shown the Pure 5ths tuning to be favored
until this weekend. One tie in my second class and then overwhelming defeat
in Randy's two classes. I am handling defeat well. I really wanted the Pure
5th tuning to win. (where did I hear this? You show me a GOOD loser and 
I'll show you a loser) Perhaps Bill Bremmer is onto something with his 
preference for Well and Modified Meantone.

Susan Kline was in one of my classes. I'm hoping she can write something 
from
her perspective. Don Mannino came by after class and played the two pianos
extensively. Perhaps he could write a little from his perspective. BTW,
thanks Don, for providing the two lovely Kawai pianos, one was an R1 and 
the other was an RA model, both over 6'. Also, for your info, Don tuned the
Kawai EX model for the Concert the previous evening. It was impeccable. He
also gave two very good classes on Concert Prep.

Jim Coleman, Sr.