Interesting comments Ed. The differeing effects that temperaments, tuning styles, and stretch yeild are really underestimated IMV. Most tuners and playes dont even think about this kind of thing directly at all. In the case of this 12ths tuning, the 3rds and 10ths remain very much the same in the middle range( a tad faster often depending on inharmonicity of the piano), from about C5 to F6 they get a bit tense, and yet at the top they are quite a bit slower then usual octave stretching allows for. This along with the fact that 12ths are all pure give this approach its own unique character. I concur with your last statement below, and this might help explain why I find so many young pianist who just dont "get it" when I tune a mild Well variant, but notice immediatly when I do this 12ths tuning. In anycase... its really a wide big tuning world we have at our feet if we first care to do more then just follow one particular recipie. RicB A440A@aol.com wrote: > > I believe that was Jim B, and it stands to reason that string players > would go for this, they seem to play on the edge of sharpness no matter what! > Vocalists may be another matter. > It may well be worth remembering that the wider the octave, the faster the > thirds, (thirds and fifths work in acoustical opposition). When the fifths > are slowed, the thirds are speeded up and this has its costs in the > smoothness of the sound. Jim Coleman once wondered why my Young temperament, > as recorded, sounded smoother than his. It may have been because we were > using different widths of octaves. > While more octave width creates an particular effect in equal > temperament, I think there is more expressive contrast in the harmony found > in well-temperaments with less. This may be because there are heavily > tempered intervals available, (depending on the key) and the musical nature > of the tuning comes from the contrasts between various colors. In ET, these > particular contrasts are not there, so the correspondingly faster 3rds, > 10ths, and 17ths, of wider octaves are not noticed as much, being lost in the > ever-present haze of beating that ET creates. > In well-temperament, some fifths don't depend on an octave to be stretched > to be pure. That is one beauty of the "expressive" keys, they juxtapose a > pure fifth with an active harmony in the thirds,(keys with slower thirds > usually have more highly tempered fifths, and vice versa) and there is no > reason to heavily stretch the octave to obtain them. > I also suspect that in ET, the ear is not as acutely aware of the > tempering, since beating is ubiquitous and we don't really notice it without > an alternative. This tips the balance of favor to the wider octave, > improving the fifths and double octaves with no real cost incurred because > all the thirds are already busy. > > Ed Foote RPT > www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/ > www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html > <A HREF="http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/399/six_degrees_of_tonality.html"> > MP3.com - Six Degrees of Tonality</A> > _______________________________________________ > pianotech list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives -- Richard Brekne RPT, N.P.T.F. UiB, Bergen, Norway mailto:rbrekne@broadpark.no http://home.broadpark.no/~rbrekne/ricmain.html
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