"Reverse Well"?

[Susan Kline]

At 01:13 AM 3/15/98 -0600, Richard Moody wrote:
>
>
>----------
>> From: Billbrpt <Billbrpt@aol.com>
>> To: pianotech@ptg.org
>> Subject: Re: Got a laugh from this one
>> Date: Saturday, March 14, 1998 6:38 PM
>> 
>> In a message dated 98-03-14 04:27:34 EST, you write:
>> 
>> << Richard the Moody Tuner (governed by instinct principally but
>thirds
>>  second and fifths FIRST)  >>
>> 
>> 
>> DANGER!!!  I sense the presence of Reverse-Well on a bad day!
>> 
>> 
>> Bill
>
>
>Uh oh.....  not knowing what a Reverse-Well is,then is that bad??  If
>it has beating fifths, you could never call a temp of mine that even
>if I did make a mistake. That's why I use thirds as a second test. 
>Not to mention the third, fourth and fifth tests, and a couple more I
>might yet learn. 
>	That to me is the magic of ET. It is so exact that really it is like
>a performance, there is never the perfect one.  But the ones close to
>perfect, its the experience to live for. 
>
>Richard Moody
>

This confused me as well, Richard. Since I and just about every aural
tuner I know tune with thirds, 4ths, and sixths (I also start by bracketing
the temperament (f to f) octave with major thirds), and test with fifths,
thirds, sixths, and fourths, and then, on completing the pattern, run
consecutive chromatic major thirds, perfect fourths, perfect fifths, and
major sixths, all of which have to be at least reasonably even and
progressively faster, ( pause for breath ) .....   HOW   ..... could we end
up with a pattern where "advanced keys" are more consonant than simple ones?  

Bill Bremmer described at one point awhile back how this "Reverse Well"
pattern comes about. As I remember, it comes from tuning a fourths and 
fifths temperament without checks, finding oneself with a fairly gross
error in the last interval, and then haring back along one's track,
leaving a dab of it here and a dab there, till it all disappears. 

This sounds to me like something only a rank beginner would have to do.
There were a few days early in my tuning course where we were doing a
fourths and fifths tuning without checks. We started with unisons and
octaves, without checks, went to fourths and fifths tuned beatless (without
checks) to demonstrate for ourselves the Pythagorean comma, then were told
to temper the fourths and fifths (still without checks) to gain a sense of
about how far we had to temper them to end up in the right place. I had the
big error, (rather as Bill describes it) at the end of the pattern about
three times, then I had figured out what size of fifths would add up all
right. Then a day or two later we started the real tuning pattern of
thirds, fourths, sixths, with tests, etc. 

Not wishing to start another knock-down drag-out fight, but 
unless there is something I am missing here, either the tuners in Wisconsin
are very old-fashioned and not too well trained, or Bill
Bremmer has a very active imagination. 


Susan Kline
P.O. Box 1651
Philomath, OR 97370
skline@proaxis.com		

"Time will end all my troubles, but I don't always
approve of Time's methods."
		-- Ashleigh Brilliant