Stretch Vs.Temperament, (was Beat Rates)

[David Andersen]

>I saw Virgil, at a workshop. Extremely elegant stretching, and a great human
>being. But were his fourths the same at the expense of clean unisons?
I would say no; I've talked to him at length, and there is no time at 
which he purposefully "fuzzies" a unison to make a fourth work out.  It's 
so difficult to recreate a great tuning in a class situation---for one 
thing, for all the classes he's done, I think Virgil still gets nervous 
in front of his peers.  Plus, everybody gathers around the piano, and all 
those bodies probably drive the temperature and humidity way up in a 
short period of time, wacking out the tuning so far.

Here's what I know:  when I started to take Virgil literally about 
fourths beating the same about 3 years ago,  a whole new, intense, 
joyful, precise, musical level of tuning a piano opened up for me, and 
after a little while my longtime serious-player clients noticed a 
difference:  it sounded "more right," "smoother,"  "finally in tune in 
the treble," "wow! It sings now," "the action feels so much better (and I 
didn't do a damn thing to the action)," "it rings so clear,"  "it sounds 
like a recording,".........you get the idea.  Everybody loved it.  And 
most importantly, I loved it.  I feel like I'm really on the road to 
mastery.
AND---I don't know a damn thing, really, about how I got here.  I'll 
leave that to the theoreticians and propellerheads, God love 'em. I DO 
know what sounds great to me, and on a piano, it's all the fourths 
beating at basically the same rate..........toodle-ooo........David A

>
>There's a lot I didn't understand about Virgil's tuning,
Join the club.  I was confused or intimidated by it until recently (8 
years).
> and I wasn't
>convinced by some of his explanations, but it was a good experience
>to watch him and listen to what he did.
Absolutely.  Trust your ears; trust your body; trust your musical 
sensibility.

Best.......David Andersen