<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Mar 14, 2008, at 10:49 AM, Don Mannino wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 128); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; ">I was thinking that it would be fun to take a piano recording and modify the temperament throughout the recording! It would then be possible to listen to the exact same performance, exact same piano, but with different temperaments.</span></blockquote></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>That would be quite the editing project! Along those lines, I have some recorded materials that show differences between "representative Victorian Moore" and ET. I have written earlier about my stealth experiment a few years back where I tuned all pianos in my department to Moore for a year (and heard not one comment one way or another). During that year I did a good bit of recording (myself on solo piano). I did one complete new CD in the fall, and in the summer I did a re-recording of all the material from my first CD ("Brazilian Soul - music of VIlla-Lobos). After listening to takes, I decided to redo about half that material, and did so in the fall, after having changed tuning from Moore to ET. So for that CD I have materials that are done by the same performer on the same instrument, two different temperaments. Not quite "exact same performance" but not too far off. The final CD has a random mix of tracks in Moore and ET. It has been mastered, but not yet produced and released.<div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>In my own personal effort to get at how significant temperament differences are, I have given these CDs to various tuners and asked if they could tell anything about the tuning (asked in various ways, sometimes saying "this is Moore, can you tell?" sometimes a different approach). In all cases the answer was that they did not notice, and were unable to tell the difference. I thought I'd go a step further, and try to do a blind test, and so far I have managed to get one fairly prominent tuner, who is a strong advocate of non-ET tuning (not subscribed to this list) to participate. I sent him the full CD in Moore, a second CD of mine in ET, and the Brazilian Soul CD with about half of each. He listened and was quite certain that he could hear the difference, and very positively identified everything. But he was wrong. He identified the full CDs wrong, and the tracks he identified wrong about 60% of the time (IOW, worse than random). This along with other evidence has reinforced my belief that the range of temperament "accepted and identified as ET" is pretty large. (Moore is subtle, but has definite key color, very obvious if you play cadential formulae, or play ascending M3s or the like. Cents variants from ET reach 3.0 cents.)</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>It occurs to me that some on this list might be interested in doing the same experiment, seeing if they could distinguish. And others might be interested in listening to examples. If anyone is really gung-ho to do the whole thing, let me know and I'll send you the materials. If you are just curious and interested in listening to samples, the two CDs I sent my "guinea pig" are at <a href="http://www.cdbaby.com/fredsturm3">www.cdbaby.com/fredsturm3</a> and <a href="http://www.cdbaby.com/fredsturm4">www.cdbaby.com/fredsturm4</a> with streaming audio of samples of all tracks (I think 2 minute samples of each, which often gives you the whole track). I won't say which is which now, but will be happy to let you know later, privately (in exchange for you telling me whether you can tell the difference, and which you think is which. I'd like to keep open the possibility of more blind testing). And I'll think about the possibility of putting together side by side takes of both ET and Moore from my Brazilian Soul recording sessions. I had been thinking of posting material like this on my own web site, but I will have to create a web site first <G>. Far too many things to do, and I'm afraid my top priority is learning new music and polishing old. Not to mention getting the irrigation ditches cleaned out, and the trees pruned, and, and . . .<br><div><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline">Regards,</div><div>Fred Sturm</div><div>University of New Mexico</div><div><a href="mailto:fssturm@unm.edu">fssturm@unm.edu</a></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div></div></div></div></body></html>