What a fun journey this is! As many of you know, I really enjoy trying out new things- new gear, new temperaments, new stretches. One of the interesting dilemmas I run into is how to asses the musical qualities inherent in any different tuning approach. Over the years I've enlisted different performers, teachers and owners to help me to determine the worth of different tunings. It's easy for the technician to determine if the tuning is successful based on the checks or the design - that is, does the tuning match the "recipe"? For some, the primary test is even spacing in the speed of the chromatic major thirds. For others, what's more important is the progression in circle of fifths order. Some even use tempered octaves to try and enhance the resonance, or cancel out beating intervals with others to make a more mellow tuning. Yet none of these recipe tests have much to do with how music responds to the tuning. My "go to" tester is a Suzuki piano teacher who owns a nice Yamaha C3. From her background with early music and harpsichord, she's been a valued source of feedback for many different tunings over the past 15 years or so. Here's what she had to say about a recent tuning using the Onlypure software: "It seems much brighter. At first it was a bit shocking, but I think our ears have gotten used to it. Now that we have the air on, I'll continue to further assess it. So far so good." Her recent default tuning is equal temperament using a Verituner custom style(stretch) that I developed. Previous to that was the Lehman/Bach well temperament with a different custom style. Good? Bad? Similar? Like it? Not so much? So far, it's "brighter" and "a bit shocking"... more later Ron Koval Chicagoland _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail® is up to 70% faster. Now good news travels really fast. http://windowslive.com/online/hotmail?ocid=PID23391::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HYGN_faster:082009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20090817/eeefe560/attachment.htm>
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