For your Listening Pleasure - tuning thoughts

Richard Brekne Richard.Brekne@grieg.uib.no
Wed, 26 May 2004 23:05:31 +0200


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Issac..

I couldnt disagree more with you about the P 12ths tuning.  The 12th 
tunings curve results in a very condensed stretch which has the peculiar 
effect of sounding as tho it has a greater stretch then its actual 
stretch numbers would suggest.  Typically the highest C is no more then 
28 cents stretched... which is about as slight a stretch as they come. I 
can hardly see that a more conservative stretch is really possible 
without creating narrow 2:1 octaves at some point.

In the temperament range, this tuning has fourths and fifths that are 
nearly identical to the standard temperament. The distance between D3's 
third and A4's fundamental is typically narrowed by 0.3 to 0.5 bps for 
this range. Spread over the 17 notes of the 12th this is hardly 
something the human ear can directly discern. A3's 2nd is placed such 
that A3 has a comfortable 6:3 relationship with A4, whilst at the same 
time maintaining an acceptable narrowness with D3's 3rd... typically 
about 0.35 bps... also very very standard stuff.  In fact... the only 
real area of significant divergence from a standard tuning scheme is 
found in the area around A5- E6 in which octave based tuning curves 
usually display a temporal shift in direction for the resulting 12ths.  
The P 12ths tuning results in the most singing and warm treble I have 
ever heard from a tuning... as long as one is careful not to allow any 
error on the wide side of just 12ths. This is because of the natural 
warmness of pure intervals, and because of the resulting calm of the 
double and triple octaves this yields.  But beyond the warmth this 
creates the constancy in major 10ths and 17ths that also results, and 
the increased sustain times resulting from frequent incidence of pure 
coinciding partials in the octaves AND 12ths contributes to a clarity in 
addition to the warmth this tuning imparts.

If you have had strange resulting 5ths from attempting an aural 
implementation of this tuning... then you have not succeeded in tuning 
it precisely enough  I would guess, as one of the most pleasing results 
of this tuning is the resulting 5ths. Jim Coleman  mentioned this in a 
private note to me, along with his opinion that resulting octaves in the 
fore mentioned range (A5 - E6) were particular illy pleasing.

Reading through the rest of your comments... it seems to me that you 
havent really understood what the P 12ths tuning is all about... as in 
several spots you allude to a high stretch factor that simply does not 
exist in such a tuning.  Anyone tuning double  octaves that are wide 
enough to begin to silence triple octaves is contriving a tense and 
piercing tuning  indeed, which goes tonally in the opposite direction of 
the warmth you indicate below. Not that there are not uses for this 
approach mind you.

I havent had opportunity to tune with the VT yet, so I will certainly 
reserve comment as to the nature of its standard tuning. Tho I imagine 
it to be a fine ETD. 

And by the way.... I personally thought the violinist was from time to 
time a bit less then on top of his game intonation wise. What you deemed 
as fourths slightly smaller then the pianos... I deemed as just plain 
flat, at least at several instances sitting in the concert hall.  And I 
wasnt the only one judging from the discussion afterwards. Perhaps 
understandable since he was suffering from a very bad cold.

Cheers
RicB

Isaac OLEG wrote:




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