In a message dated 3/30/00 7:44:17 PM Central Standard Time, Tunebyear@AOL.COM writes: << If I were to encounter a piano that had been just tuned to an historical temperment I'm sure I'd think that the piano had been tuned by a novice. Why would anyone want to leave that kind of impression ? Enlighten me because I still don't get it. Tom Ayers Tunebyear@aol.com >> Many thanks to all who have carried out this thread, especially to Ed, he does seem like he is doing a good job. I have issues with teaching HTs "by the numbers" but I do acknowledge the advantage of accessibility. To those whose major thrill in life is to try to antagonize me, please give it up, you know that you are no match for me. Any contest with me in trying to prove who can be the loudest, most vindictive, mocking, mean, nasty, and outrageous will leave you being the loser. It is interesting that Tom says the above because that is exactly what the EBVT sounds like if you test it the way you would for ET, as if an apprentice had tuned it. I have scored it several times against the Exam standard and it gets 72-75, not passing, apprentice level. The fact is that it is not a valid way of listening to it nor evaluating it even though I know all the technicians will do so anyway. I get a kick out of playing it and hearing everyone guffaw then watching their faces when they hear the music. ET is a purely mathematical and arbitrary way of tuning the piano. The compromises it makes have no regard whatsoever for the music to be played nor to the reasons why any particular music is in any particular key. It seeks to make every key sound exactly analogous to the other. Historically, people wrote music and chose a key signature based upon a certain expected kind of tonality from each key. That is what arranging the 3rds according to the Cycle of 5ths gives you. Every HT that is being revived is a Cycle of 5ths based temperament as is the EBVT. Most any music commonly enjoyed today follows these historical precedents in spite of a century or more of ET dominance in keyboard tuning. All modern day technicians have been trained to tune ET. We are all taught that it is the one and only way to tune a piano. This has been going on long enough that there is no one really alive any more that remembers anything else. Any science or music book refers to and assumes ET. This is the result primarily of the influence of the teachings of the scientist, Helmholz in the mid 19th Century and Dr. William Braid White who wrote a definitive book on piano tuning and technology in the early 20th Century. In order to pass the PTG RPT Tuning Exam, you must be able to tune a reasonably good ET. Virtually all fine concert tuners can produce an ET with very smooth 3rds & 6ths and no 4ths or 5ths that stand out. All superior tuners have trained themselves to pick out any irregularity whatsoever. If you believe that ET is the only way a piano can sound "in tune" then yes, any HT or modern Cycle of 5ths based tuning like the EBVT will sound incorrect to you. It is indeed possible for a person to tune an HT by mistake. I used to do that back in the 70's. Here is how: I was taught that all 5ths should beat "3 beats in 5 seconds". I used a C tuning fork and tuned 4ths and 5ths in a cycle of 5ths pattern starting on C from F3 to F4. I used my watch to time the beats as I proceeded through the temperament sequence. My instructions were that at the end of the sequence, if my last interval did not fit [which it never did], then correct it and "back up" through the sequence until it was "evened out". The only thing I knew about 3rds was that I was supposed to hear a "very rapid beat" from them, nothing about "smoothness", certainly nothing about the 4:5 ratio of contiguous 3rds. When I backed up through my sequence, I made the 5ths among the black keys closer to pure. When things seemed to work out around the middle of the sequence, I stopped. This effectively produced a crude Well Tempered Tuning, probably a Victorian type. I tuned this way for about 10 years with the years 1972-1973 as a traveling musician with the Holiday On Ice show. I was not the pianist, I was the Bass player but I can honestly say that the pianist and the conductor never had a complaint about the way I tuned. Then I went to my first Convention in 1979 and saw George Defebaugh and Jim Coleman. I finally learned something about the Rapidly Beating Intervals (RBI). I learned what all modern day technicians learn about smooth 3rds & 6ths and with the 4:5 Ratio of Contiguous 3rds as the ultimate diagnostic tool, I learned to tune an aural ET at the drop of a hat the would score a perfect 100% on the Exam every time. But once that was learned and absorbed, people came along to me that had other ideas, ideas contrary to everything I knew and believed was right and was standard practice. I resisted those ideas just as many do. I cited all the reasons that everyone does. But one day, I happened to be working in a rebuilding shop where I had been shown a temperament that I thought sounded absolutely ridiculous, the Rameau-Rousseau-Hall 18th Century Modified Meantone Temperament (RRH18CMMT). [How's that for an acronym? Heh heh.] Shortly after I had begun working, a pianist arrived and played a set of Brahms on that piano. I was so moved by the sounds I heard that it changed my thinking and my life forever. Ironically, the EBVT is an adaptation of the RRH18CMMT. You see, smooth 3rds & 6ths "only sound good in the Exam room" as Tim Farley RPT who introduced me to the RRH18CMMT explained. Mathematical or technical consistencies in tuning intervals only sound good to a tuner. Real music has other requirements. It's not that ET and standard practice sound bad. It is that reaching back to the way keyboards were tuned in the past can offer compromises that are indeed much more musically appropriate. The main problem I have with FAC type, smooth curve programs is that they don't treat the octaves with the same logic at all. The EBVT may well be able to be expressed as Correction Figures to an FAC type program but the octaves would be all incorrect. I would not tune the octaves of just about any other temperament the way an FAC type program would. You can use an ETD device to help you tune accurately but smooth curve calculations do not offer the optimum compromises that are easily available with the Direct Interval and Programmed Tuning capabilities that ETDs have to offer. In order to be successful with Cycle of 5ths based tuning, you have to understand its purpose, listen to the music produced and work at developing a set of tuning styles that work for you. This is far beyond the Exam and far beyond the standard practice calculated tunings. My sincerest regards, Bill Bremmer RPT Madison, Wisconsin
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