ht and et

[Susan Kline]

Dear Bill Spin-doctor:

I said exactly what I wanted to say, exactly the way I wanted to say it.
Please do not put confused, muddy, slanted, and inaccurate words in my
mouth. I hope you tune pianos better than you "translate." (Keep your day job.)

I'm sure your arguing would go much more smoothly if I had said what you
wished I had, but I didn't. 

While you are an _unbelievably_ easy target, I will try not to respond in kind.

Now, at the end of your post, you actually produced a few ideas:

>      I beg to differ.  Very small differences in a temperament do matter.

We certainly do not agree about this. You've obviously studied a great deal:
if you have a major third, in the temperament octave, and you change one
note 1 cent, what is the change in the beat rate they are making? As you are
listening to music, not one isolated interval, can you hear this change of
beat rate? Does it make an emotional difference if a third beats at 14 beats
per second instead
of 13?

How much difference in the musical effect does this one cent change make
compared to minuscule differences in regulation, voicing, string
inharmonicity, minor variations in terminations, scaling, and all the other
unavoidable  inequalities in real pianos?

>When playing an instrument or singing, the vibrato that is musical and proper
>varies the pitch greatly from flat to sharp. 

More importantly, it varies from one second to the next, in response to the
musical ideas of the player. It is an _inflection_, not a static state, like
beating intervals in pianos.

>In the piano, the temperament
>creates a vibrato-like sound.  When that vibrato is carefully and precisely
>arranged in line with the cycle of 5ths, it will be appropriate for virtually
>all music. 

? What is appropriate or inappropriate about it? As I said above, it is not
acting in a musically effective manner, because it cannot change during the
note. And why does precision help whatever it is that the beats are doing? 
Many intervals are sounding, in many different beat rates, and combinations
of beat rates, all the time. Why would making one of them _slightly_
different, in an amount that hardly anyone could discern even in slow
motion, cause a musically beneficial effect?

If a _small_ variation in pitch _could_ cause a musically expressive effect
(and I don't see how it could) how important would that be compared to the
other musical effects the pianist is using? The touch, the volume changes
(very subtly, usually), the pedalling, the rhythm and tempo, agogic accents,
length and attack of notes, voice leading, finger legato, terracing
dynamics, coordination of timing between bass and treble? Not to mention the
combination of notes and rhythms the composer uses in the first place. A few
cents of change in pitch in the temperament, even if noticeable, would be a
drop of water in the ocean.

Yes, composers wrote with different colors of keys in mind ... for
temperaments quite far from ET. It is an effect, like the natural horn in
the Benjamin Britten piece that people have mentioned today. In some music,
especially early music, it may be an important effect, but by no means the
most important one! It's just the one that we can change. As they say, to
someone with a hammer everything looks like a nail. Perhaps that is why
tuners obsess over perfectly accurate minor changes in temperament.

>     When you tune in ET, you divide up that vibrato uniformly so that every
>chord has the same vibrato all the time, no matter what key you are in or what
>the mood of the music is.  It may not be in opposition to anything but it also
>fits nothing well either.

I admit that key colors are lacking in ET. I just feel that key colors are
minor compared to the huge differences even between different intervals, let
alone all the other musical effects in any piece. And we were arguing about
_tiny_ changes of temperaments _very close_ to ET. I do not believe that
these tiny changes will produce noticeable key colors, for the reasons I
gave above.

>      When you attempt to tune in ET and make errors, even small ones, you
>disorganize that vibrato and cause musical chaos.  If you think that small
>errors in your temperament don't matter, then you imposing that which you
>disregard and don't care about on them. 

I don't think they matter. I think they matter so little that they are not
even "errors." I don't think anyone hears them. I think that good unisons,
stability, and musical octave spacing are hundreds of times more important.
I am imposing nothing on pianists by doing equal temperament. They have
always played equal temperament. The only chaos seems to be in your theory.
I have never heard this chaos, or met anyone who talked about it (except you.)

When you say that temperament either is _exactly_ equal, or it isn't equal
at all, you are confusing a scientific and a musical definition. There is
always a tolerance, even with the ETD. It is too small to hear, but never
mind. The one cent differences you are talking about are too small to hear
in music, anyway. 

Ironically, your "near equal" temperaments probably do very well, and cause
no dismay in those using them. They probably do well _because_ they are near
ET. They are "within tolerances" for the performers.

 I said: << If they have not already adjusted to the temperament in the past,
>several weeks of practicing with it might hardly be sufficient for them to
>change their musical interpretation and feel comfortable.>>

 You said: > In most cases, they just stop listening and "bang" harder.
They >just learn to "tune out" that which is musically incorrect.

And you consider it acceptable for us to make them do this? In concert?
Without warning? All I can say is, "seriously unprofessional."

>     << the 1 cent differences in temperament are totally
>indistinguishable.>> (about near-et temperaments)

>     <<Who are we to inflict our notions on them?>> (about mean-tone and
other non-mild historic temperaments in concert, with no disclosure.)

You repeated these, but you said nothing to discredit them. I can only
assume you repeated them because you had no answers for them, and they made
you very uncomfortable. I can't help that. You were asking for a list that
made people think, I believe? Start here ===> provide some _logical_ reasons
why 1 cent differences will cause musical chaos.

Susan


Susan Kline
P.O. Box 1651
Philomath, OR 97370
skline@proaxis.com

"By using your intelligence, you can sometimes make your problems twice as
complicated."
			-- Ashleigh Brilliant