Poetry? Get Real!!!

[Baldwin Yamaha Piano Centre]

Careful I am being sent to Norway to fix you, not get your dried Cod and 
defend yourself.  <G>
Anon.



At 06:31 PM 8/8/02 -0400, you wrote:
>Susan writes:
>P.S. All this chasing after .15-cent-perfect exactness of
> >equal temperament reminds me of a statement by a very fine
> >professor of ceramics in the 1970's, when teaching people
> >to use a potter's wheel: "A perfect pot is a dead pot."
>
>    Hmm,  since I got my BFA in ceramics, and spent many smokey nights on the
>potter's wheel,  l feel compelled to say, "there is no such thing as a
>perfect pot....".  I think this can apply to ET.  There is a limit to what a
>listener can distinguish, so once you have every third beating no faster than
>the one above, nor slower than the one below, there are very few people that
>can tell the piano is not tuned "equally".
>
> >Now, when one tunes an HT, the "distant" keys get further
> >and further toward the spicy side, and the "simple" keys
> >are bland, right? And the progression is even? That is,
> >A major would be tangier than D major, and E major would
> >be tangier than either?
>
>     "Tanginess" depends on how a pianist uses the resources.  As Enid Katahn
>has said,  "You can use the tempering to make things sound harsh, or you can
>use it to make things expressive".   The progression is not always even, (the
>Young, and Coleman tunings are extremely symmetrical, but the Young is the
>most "even", in that the steps between keys are all the same size).
>
> >Two questions, really:
> >
> >First of all, why is it assumed that all HT's will
> >center (and ALWAYS HAVE centered) on C? Or isn't
> >that assumed, but no one has bothered to
> >mention other options in my hearing?
>
>    Virtually every documented WT follows the way key signatures go, ie,  the
>keys of C and Am have no accidentals, so their tonic thirds are the
>smoothest.  The key of F# has the most accidentals, so its tonic third is the
>widest.  The Vallotti is one that centers on F, but represents a minority.
>
> >Secondly, if people are aiming at Equal, and make a few
> >little "mistakes", or slight inexactitudes, small enough that
> >they aren't aware of them, WHY (she asked, incredulously)
> >would one assume that these errors would line up perfectly,
> >so that the keys progressed evenly but BACKWARDS?
>
>    Random errors will not line up at all.
>
>
> >Also, it seemed to me, when I first heard about Reverse Well,
> >that if it happened at all, it would likely happen with
> >a fourths-and-fifths tuning. But, I feel, most of us use
> >something more sophisticated these days, so we just don't
> >chase around the circle of fifths. So why would any small
> >discrepancies from a scientifically "PERFECT" ET end up
> >with a backwards slant?
>
>They don't.  However,  an F temperament, such as we learned at North Bennett,
>uses fourths down, fifths up, with M3-m3, M3-6th tests.  I don't think you
>would want to call it "unsophisticated", in that it enables me to create an
>octave in which ALL intervals progress evenly in their beat rates.
>     The "backward slant" can occur when a tuner attempts to tune the first
>four intervals in the typical Holder bearing plan too consonant, making the
>first encounter with a M3(the C-E) wider than it should be.
>
>David adds:
> >>I think the reverse well fear mongering is so much politics.
>
>    I agree. There is only one person I have ever heard use the term to
>describe a temperament, and it seems to fall into the "straw man" category.
>Regards,
>Ed Foote RPT

Roger