natural beats (was Re: )

[Richard Brekne]

Phil Bondi wrote:

> ..Ed, you're too modest!..but to get back to the Richard/Howard exchange(Hi
> Howard)..natural beats/matching partials..please pardon my rookdom, but
> doesn't inharmonicity play a factor into this?..and if not, why not?
>
> roo(k)

Yes....well thats one of the real problems with this, at least the way its
presented. Virgil speaks of a Beat phenomena that has (at least) the following
characteristics:

1 --Octaves can be tuned so that this kind of Beating disapears (is beatless)

2 --The resulting Octave regardless of register is somewhat wide of a 6:3
matching partial octave type, and narrow relating to the octave types that
result in the use of Jim Colemans perfect 5ths temperament.

This is what he himself declares in his article along with a few other goodies.

I have big problems accepting that a wide 6:3 octave in the upper treble is
going to sound beatless in any mans book.  Further... Virgil seems to be
pointing at a universal tuning proceedure, one that works on all pianos in
exactly the same way. Inharmonicity is figured into the equation already if you
get my meaning, it has to be as we are taking a kind of wholistic approach to
listening to coinciden partial beating. If this is possible, then it is because
one can hear it... and if that is so then one can most certainly measure it.
You would think given the age of Virgils "natural beats" theory that someone
would have bumped into and quantified it by now. If not, then its high time it
were done.. or shown to be the imaginary construct it may well be.

Terminology used in the description of the physics of acoustics as relating to
piano strings in a  very misleading sense is not particularily helpfull. It is
perhaps time to demonstrate once and for all just what, if anything at all,
Virgil is talking about. If something turns up then no doubt some new
terminology will need to be used to describe it.

--
Richard Brekne
RPT, N.P.T.F.
Bergen, Norway
mailto:Richard.Brekne@grieg.uib.no