>No, I don't want to get into that anymore today. We've all staked our >positions for now. Not me! In my view the volume issue is more significant than that of tunings. The instrument cannot continue to evolve until tastes change. I'd love to see a big company like Yahama with lots of engineering muscle develop a "parlour" model with only 3/4 the strung tension (or less), and promote it as a home instrument for "people who want to explore more channels of expression." All kinds of things might then be opened up. Less stress would invite the use of new materials (not necessarily all-natural), and perhaps make the instrument more user-servicible and tunable, thereby inviting experimentation with tunings, thereby moving musicology away from chortling pedants and into the mainstrem. INO, de-evolving for a while until we've cleaned out the 100-year-old assumptions that have embalmed the instrument to the point of ridicule. I got a small taste of what this might be like at a Melvin Tan "forte-piano," concert several years ago. But the whole convention was modern, with the exception of the old instruments. INO, passive listeners marveling at robot-like virtuosity, and then wandering back into the world of deafing noise around Lincoln Center to have all those sweet harmonics immediately erased from their memory. . . FWIW, George Gilliland ---------------------- Little Garden Design 134 Broad Street 2nd Floor Stroudsburg PA 18360 717 422 1255 717 422 1257 (fax) ----------------------
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