What temperament is a guitar tuned?

[Tim Keenan & Rebecca Counts]

Bill and list:

Quoth Billrpt:

> Before saying that something is impossible, you should at least try it first.
> You can temper a guitar in other than ET.  You cannot create any and all
> temperaments but you can do something other than ET.
> Gosh, I don't remember saying that anything was impossible...and I thought I was kind of supporting at least 
some of what you said, Bill. And I surely did not say that guitars were or should be tuned in ET--I simply 
agreed with you that the positioning of the frets would produce an equally tempered scale in that dimension 
on an ideal guitar.  I certainly did not intend any of what I wrote as a personal attack--I *thought* I was 
expanding on the rather interesting idea of what "temperament" means in 2-dimensional context and that the 
standard conception of temperament as it applies to a one-dimensional array such as a keyboard is inadequate 
to describe a guitar.

My point is that in the dimension parallel to the neck, the temperament is fixed by the fret positions, 
regardless of whether that is ET or not, and that it will only vary with the parameters that I described, 
including string, action height and player parameters. So you can only *vary* the intervals between the open 
strings, i.e. the dimension across the neck. I don't care what you *call* it besides a compromise. It is an 
uncontestable fact that the same note played on different strings--say, for argument D-flat played on the 11th 
fret on the D string and D-flat at the second fret on the B string can *only* produce the same fundamental 
frequency for a given unique relationship between the fundamental frequencies of those two strings played open. 
 You may be able to set the frequencies of the open strings to those of a known keyboard temperament, but as 
soon as you play up the neck, the relationships no longer hold.

As I said, 
 
> << Any attempt at using
>  other temperaments [produces] different harmonic results depending upon
>  how you voice any given chord and which form (or "shape") of the chord
>  you use.  >>

Billrpt said:

> When you say that any given guitar's intonation is not perfect, is it still in
> ET just because[you?]believe in ET as the one and only possible temperament and you
> tried to tune it that way?  If it isn't ET, then what is it?

Again, Bill, I did not say it was-- or should be-- ET, in fact I said I tweak the tuning for the piece. And 
excuse me for sounding a little shirty, but what in the world do you know about what I believe about 
temperaments, equal, well, historical, mean, just, or just plain ornery?  Did you entirely miss the part of my 
post about open tunings approaching just intonation?  There is certainly room to play with temperament in a 
system where most of the piece is built around the open strings, with only occasional strings fretted. 

I believe, for the record, that the best general-purpose tuning for any given guitar/string/player combination 
is unique to that guitar/string/player combination.  I further believe that the temperament can be 
advantageously micro-adjusted to the tonality of the piece in question, and the simpler the harmonic structure 
of the piece, the farther it can deviate from the best general-purpose tuning and still be pleasing to the ear. 
  I am not a dyed-in-the-wool devotee of equal temperament--I am a choral singer, for goodness sake. And as far 
as the guitar is concerned, I don't worry about what to call it--I just tune it so that it sounds right.


Tim Keenan
Terrace, BC