what's with the new temperaments?(x post)

[Richard Brekne]

A440A@aol.com wrote:

>
>    If you think a clinically perfect ET is has a different quality of sound
> from one in which there is a 1 cent error somewhere in the 12 notes, I will
> disagree.  And I will be glad to wait for you to find an artist that will
> tell the difference.

Well... here we are bound to disagree Ed. Not only do I think such a difference is
hearable.. I know it is. By your own argumentation tho, I doubt you will be able
to find a pianist who could sit down and describe for you the difference. Tho I
would expect to see a pattern develope as to which of these was most often picked.
And THAT would be interesting to pursue.

While I find your enthusiasm for HT's wonderfull, I do take issue with some of the
conclusions you seem to have arrived at, and I dont buy for a moment that
"pianists" can not hear the differences we argue ourselves about. As you say
yourself... this is because they are not listening for the right things. What they
can learn to hear and utilize, just like tuner / technicians.... is quiet another
matter... and remains very much unresolved IMO.


>
>    The well-temperaments don't have to have that exactness to produce their
> characters. Variety is their hallmark. For them, variety is a feature, not a
> bug.  However,  ET  is based on math and nothing more, so it is easy to
> measure a deviation.

Here's an area BB would (and has) taken issue several times. I am not nearly
enough aquainted with HT's to argue the point... but it would seem to me on the
surface of it, that the closer one comes to achieving the formal definition of the
orientation of Coincident partials that a temperament by and large is.... the
better the end effect and result is.


> That doesn't mean that the ear can perceive it.  If a
> tuner feels that an extra hour is justified to erase the last 1% of deviation
> from their ET, thats fine, but the value lies in that particular tuner's
> opinion of themselves, not the practical difference it will make in the way
> the piano sounds.

I dont need the extra hour myself... just a bit of extra care... and I still
havent been able to confirm your 1 cent wandereing... and if I could.. I could
hardly expect it to wander as evenly as would be neccessary for it to be a simple
shift in overall pitch... with no "variety" as it were. To start out with a 1 cent
margin for error note for note to begin with... strikes me as .... well... grin...
no good.


> >> As for your argumentation about why HT's sound "better"... this is built
> on some
> pretty large assumptions about matters we will never have comfortably reliable
> information on. <<
>
>    Back up there Richard.  I never said that "HT's sound better".  I said
> that customers overwhelmingly prefer them.  After 10 years, and hundreds of
> customers,this is not an assumption, but rather, a demonstrated denominator.
> I am very comfortable with that.

Well,,, excuse me then for rewording your point in an inappropriate manner :) The
point is that you have demonstrated evidently that a significant degree of your
customers, in your estimation prefer non ET tunings... while at the same time
telling us how little these same folks are able to discern about temperaments in
general. This just tells me theres a lot of interesting questions here that need
to be asked. It certainly doesnt tell me much more.

Tell you what... you do a formal survey....take all precautions neccessary to
assure as much objectivity as is possible, and eliminate whatever influence your
own views preferences might have on your subjects... and then publish the stuff. I
got an similiar
experiment in the works about voicing btw...

Then we can see where any of this takes us.

And dont get me wrong.... I am pretty much on this wagon myself..... its just that
my results so far simply do not bear out your own. I have had a few exceptions...
like the Broadwoods best # 5 quasi ET.... but then that didnt even qualifie as a
Well temperament.

Still.. I plug on.

Cheers

RicB


--
Richard Brekne
RPT, N.P.T.F.
UiB, Bergen, Norway
mailto:rbrekne@broadpark.no
http://home.broadpark.no/~rbrekne/ricmain.html