using beats to tune

[Richard Brekne]

Tvak@AOL.COM wrote:

> Did I misinterpret something that was posted recently in the discussion
> regarding temperaments?  I was surprised to learn that ET did not really
> exist prior to 1917.  Now, the part I'm unclear on: I believe that it was
> stated that this treatise, published in 1917, was the first to utilize the
> concept of listening to beats in order to tune a temperament.
>
> First of all, is the above information correct?  And if it's true that tuners
> didn't use beats to tune a piano prior to 1917,  what did they listen to?  I
> can't imagine.  (I must have misunderstood the information posted.)
> Certainly, tuning unisons could not be done without eliminating beats.
> Perhaps tuners didn't use coincidental partials to tune prior to 1917?
>
> Straighten me out!
>
> Tom Sivak

If my reading of Owen Jorgenson is correct, beat counters  started poping up in
the piano tuning end of things around the middle of the 1800's. Prior to that
time pianotuners tuned truely by ear after going through a few years of quite
thorough ear training. In tuning, one started with ones pitch source and then
tuned not by comparing two notes played simultaneously, but by playing one note
then tuning the next by ear. Testing was done by listening to chords and not
intervals. We are still in a time period where key colour was very important and
trained into the tuners ears... they listened for the colour of major triads in
different keys within the temperament area.

The shift to beat counting took time to both research, figure out, and to train
into our collective ears. Probably as late as the 1950's most tuners were still
off on some quasi ET at best, as the understanding and skill in dealing with all
the coincidents that we now use hadn't progressed far enough to allow for any
thing else.

Ed Foote and Bill Bremmer know by far more then I do on the subject matter,,, and
probably will be able to straighten out my own errors in understanding this basic
history... so I wait anxiously for them to chirp in and fill in the rest of the
storry.


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