On Apr 17, 2010, at 7:11 AM, Ed Foote wrote: > A major change is one of greater overall consonance in music, which > removes some inherent harshness caused by ET. Not to pick nits, but this is only true if you play in the more diatonic keys. If you play in the keys with more sharps or flats, there is more harshness than in ET. > The other major effect is the removal of the constant 14 cent > beating, everywhere, that triads in ET create. This is where the difference lies. There is more of a homogenous sound to ET due to the even progression of beat rates. And the question of which one prefers is probably attached to this fact. But UETs are NOT more consonant overall, unless you accept playing within the parameters of mean tone or thereabouts (Eflat to Gsharp). What is given to one is taken from another. There will be more noticeable dissonances in UET by its very nature. The consonances will only really be more so in contrast to the dissonances, as they aren't really consonant (unless you get to the extreme of actual just thirds, which we don't in modern UETs). In fact, the slower beating of, say, CE may be more noticeable than in ET, as the beat rate slows to something average ears are more likely to hear. Regards, Fred Sturm fssturm at unm.edu http://www.createculture.org/profile/FredSturm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100417/353d31ae/attachment.htm>
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC