Jim and list, At 03:37 AM 3/20/97 -0700, you wrote: > >To Doug and the list: > - snip - > You can >see that by just changing 4 notes from ET you can have much more color >distinction in the various tonalities which is what the classical >Boroque and even Romantic musicians dealt with. > Jim has pretty well stated my own case. Modifying ET tuning in this way allows a very great deal of latitude, and, doesn't get the piano so far from ET that it is a bear to redo, as needed. Further, changes can be made much _like_ they would have when the various well temperaments were in more general use, and, the keyboard players (most likely) did their own tuning. When doing this kind of tuning (and, of course, accompanying that doing with an expectation that ordinary folks will "ooh" and "ah"), it helps me to keep in mind that ours is a relatively young profession - as an independently practiced one. Realistically, only 150 years or so old. To a certain degree, we owe our existence to the same changes that drove piano development in the 19th Cent. Greater power (and all that goes with it) means greater tension (duh), and more time to do the work. (Highly glib, but I think you know what I mean.) This is a very different story than tuning (in the case of the harpsichord, anyway) what amounted to a whole bunch of monochords which happen to be assembled into one case. Low tension, the plucker plucks or it doesn't, etc. (Sorry, harpsichord buffs, I acknowledge that this glosses over a good deal of important ground, but, if one restricts the discussion to the intracacies of tuning only, I hope we can agree that the harpsichord is, by comparison, more easily tuned than the piano.) The point here is that as our end of things has developed along its own track, performers have become increasingly divorced (by and large, big generalization here) from direct interaction with their instrument(s). Thus, aural information of which we, as technicians, are (hopefully) aware as a part of our intellectual process, most of them will be aware of (if at all) as a greater tranparency of the instrument. This is pretty far out, I'll quit while I'm ahead. (Assuming of course, that I am.) >PS Perhaps if there is enough interest, I'll explain how I came up with >an even better Well temperament which have even less differences in the >4ths and 5ths and more difference in the 3rds and 6ths - the Coleman VII. >There are no objectionable beats in this temperament. Tone color is more >distinct, but you wont hear any bothersome intervals. Jim, I, for one, am interested. Dogs and tricks, you know. Best. Horace Horace Greeley Stanford University email: hgreeley@leland.stanford.edu voice mail: 415.725.9062 LiNCS help line: 415.725.4627
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