Dear Rob Kiddell, you write: > So I must comment (why not?) Why not, indeed? <snip> > Emphasis on historical. Creating your own temperaments is a >noble challenge, but one worthy of tuners who have a broader >understanding of a specific goal with a tuning system. >Creating a universal tuning system is tantamount to hubris, and >had better be all it claims to be, and accept and acknowledge, rather >than condemn, the current system. I have been having some thoughts as to why the current system is so universal, but I need to do more work before I can talk about it with enough authority even to beg the readers' indulgence. The direction my thoughts are drifting: People not only have different backgrounds, they listen in different ways. So far, the crux of the matter seems to be their taste in thirds and sixths. (There would seem to be a fair amount of agreement that pure fifths and fourths would be desirable, if they could be accommodated without overly expanding octave size.) Thirds, there's the rub. People, as far as I can tell, come in two flavors: those who like a narrow, slower beating third, and those like me who want something much more Pythagorean. (The "ahhh" and "yuckkk" people from my former post.) I think of this as being a difference between harmonic and melodic intonation. The mean tone systems favor the slower beating thirds and put them in the "good" keys. For me, this is kind of ironic: the only time I have really _liked_ a Well temperament was when hearing the Raindrop Prelude in Jim's class, which was intended to be the sterling example of a piece which would fail due to the "bad" key it fell into, at the "wrong" end of the cycle of fifths. Taken to the "good" end (I'm _really_ glad you can transpose so well, Jim!) it failed utterly for me. I think it was the fast-beating thirds which I liked. I have a lot more work to do before I can say this for certain, but it's the only thing which makes sense, as far as I can tell. Prematurely airing my ideas, it seems to me that those who like slow- beating thirds have a rather tough row to hoe. A tempered third beats fast -- that's all there is to it. To get it to any sort of stillness calls for draconian measures, and leaves even faster-beating thirds in "wrong" keys, and/or objectionable fifths and fourths. But far more important, and this has been ignored as far as I can tell, it makes an absolute hash of the diatonic (melodic) scale. Unaided by theories or technical gadgets, good singers and string players seem to fall into a common practice as far as interval size is concerned. When I ask myself of what this consists, the following are rough guidelines: Whole steps should be equal, and slightly larger than those in a tempered scale. Semitones should be equal (except the leading tone at musically important moments), and should be smaller than those in a tempered scale. At the aforesaid "mims", they should be smaller yet. Fifths and fourths should be pure and beatless (not that string players care about beats, except when tuning open strings.) Major thirds should be on the generous, wide side; minor thirds should be on the narrow side. This stems naturally from the wide major seconds and narrow semitones. This difference is critical: Major and minor thirds should not be close to each other in size! This would lead to a kind of sleazy "cutting corners" feeling. They should be well distinguished from each other, quite decisively. I think of this as akin to good diction in an actor, with consonants very clear. Given these desiderata, which I believe are _practiced_, though perhaps not articulated, by a large number of musicians, you can see why the equal temperament cuts it with them, while the various meantone tunings don't. I think the ET is universal because it is the best compromise so far found between the two types of listening I described above. The slow thirds group will be the least happy, but not _as_ unhappy as the fast thirds bunch would be with mean tone. If these differences are ignored, the fight could go on for years and years ... as it has. It's no good maundering on about bigotry and thought police if more innocent but stubborn basic tendencies in different types of people are what is keeping ET in place. Here is something hard, which I think would be valuable: listen to singers and acappella choirs and string players, especially unaccompanied string players. Try (you won't get to use a gadget!) to discern the sizes of thirds, sixths, whole tones, and semitones. You will hear a _tremendous_ amount of lousy intonation, even in otherwise fine musicians, but forge ahead, and see what size of thirds these folks actually practice. I would be _very_ surprised if you find narrow major thirds, but I'll keep an open mind. You may also find that string players stretch octaves in an entirely scandalous fashion, and that _all_ (virtually all) soloists tend to be sharp. There's a message here for us, but I haven't mastered its meaning. > In a more positive vein, I have worked with Bob Scott's TuneLab97 >program and constructed several Historical Temperaments, which I can >send to interested parties in .tem format. I'm tempted, dyed in the wool unaided aural tuner that I am, to buy a used PC laptop, just to put Bob Scott's TuneLab97 on it. Rob, do you happen to know how big a computer it requires? (Amount of RAM and chip size? Flavor of Windows?) Best wishes, Susan P.S. Egad, what a screed! Shall I ship out some gold stars to those who stuck with it this far? Susan Kline P.O. Box 1651 Philomath, OR 97370 skline@proaxis.com "Time will end all my troubles, but I don't always approve of Time's methods." -- Ashleigh Brilliant
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