Tuneoff challenge

[Richard Brekne]

Jim Coleman challanges Ric (Moody ?) to a tuneoff....

Richard Brekne comments....

Personally,  I wouldnt really be interested in the "audience" critera for
such events. I would be more interested in sampling each and every note
afterwards and computing beat rates for several relavant intervals over
the entire range of the keyboard. And I would also be interested in some
information pertaining to octaves, double and triple octaves that I am not
yet sure can be read with the present software.


> JC: My prediction as in the first Tuneoff is that there will not be a
> dime's worth of difference (10% differential in the voting of the
> audience)

Really I would think that such a judjement would not really be so
informative. Given the experiment where a room full of RPT's couldnt even
tell when a mild well temperament had been placed on a piano. No.. an
Equal temperament tuning is clearly enough defined in terms of beat rates
/ relationships. A valid comparison would be to find some way of
confirming which tuning best met those specifics.

> We could add another twist to this by having the tuning scored by
> the PTG Tuning Examiners.

That would require two master tunings... would those be done strictly by
ear, or would they be machine aided ?... could influence the outcome.

> Since you have done a lot of original study of the Historical
> Tunings recently, perhaps the following year we could do another
> Tuneoff where you pick your favorite Historical temperament, Bill
> Bremmer does
> his EBVT and I do the Coleman XI. I would not want this to become
> an ego trip, but an educational experience. Competitive, YES, but
> for bragging rights, NO. I commend Bill and Virgil for their last
> encounter, To this date I have not heard who WON, but I HAVE heard
> that it was very educational.

Appropos that particular tuneoff and this buisness about audience being
the judge. Bill Bremmers EBVT won the event if being voted "Most Musical"
is the determinant. What does that say about the validity of such tests ?

> Of course, if there is enough interest shown in another Tuneoff,
> we should let the Institute Committee make their comments on it if
> this is to happen at all. They are the ones who would make any
> final decisions as to this happening at a Convention.
>
> What do you the other readers say?
>
> Jim Coleman, Sr.

A tuneoff in itself is really just for fun anyways. If one was to
seriously attempt to validate the ear vs machine thing I would think a
more just set of critera for evaluating a tuning would be neccessary.

--
Richard Brekne
RPT, N.P.T.F.
Bergen, Norway
mailto:rbrekne@broadpark.no