On Apr 30, 2010, at 7:02 AM, Ron Koval wrote: > What's been missing for some time is a resource to > be able to hear the difference between tunings - either for > performers or techs. Hi Ron, The resource you describe is an interesting one. It would be much more valuable if there were, say, an ET file paired with each EBVT file. Which, of course, is a lot of work - re-tune the piano at the minimum. And we have the same caveats about whether the tuning is solid, unisons are good, conditions when the piano was tuned got in the way of the tuning, etc. There is another possibility that is much easier to execute (for someone with the equipment and knowledge). That would be to use digital technology. I posted this link a while back http://www.h-pi.com/TBX1buy.html It is a tuning box that allows one to put any tuning on a midi interface device. So, using this box, one could take a live midi performance and vary the tuning at will. Or one could take a raw file from Sibelius or Finale or some other music scoring software and generate a performance. Yes, the sound will be synthetic, but synthetic sounds are awfully close to acoustic sounds when listened to through speakers or headphones. Not an area I have expertise or equipment to pursue, and I don't really have the obsessive interest some have in this area. I have done my own experimentation, and have convinced myself that "the earth doesn't shake for me" when changing tuning patterns (I'm far more interested in what the performer does, as long as the unisons or the voicing don't get in the way). But it is an avenue that could give people the possibility of making up their own minds based on real life experience rather than the descriptions of others. On a related topic, at this point, assuming pianos are available, I think there will be a "Temperament Gallery" in Las Vegas, with pianos tuned in various ways, available for people to play. I will volunteer to do some demo. One thing I had in mind was to play four preludes from WTC I: C and C# major, and A and Bflat minor. This gives two pairs, major and minor, with the extremes of key signatures: all naturals, and all accidentals. The C and C# I would play both in the original key and then transposed into the other (each would be played in both C and C#) as an interesting additional wrinkle. I could also play a couple movements of Mozart Sonata in F major K332, which wanders a good bit in Mozartean style (via augmented sixth chords), by no means harmonically static. And we can try to recruit other volunteers to perform, maybe some romantic period literature as well. (Most of what I do is 20th and 21st century, but the pieces I mentioned I can easily get together and sight read). Anyone interested in participating actively, please contact me. Regards, Fred Sturm fssturm at unm.edu “Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” Brecht -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100430/50bc0832/attachment.htm>
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