Keith writes:
The significant two features that made me say what I have were:
1) The hammer technique awakening (truly remarkable)
2) The equal temperament experience (contiguous thirds, didn't mention that)
Other that Ed, I got nothing to offer.
Fairly disconcerting offering on my part, don't you think?
Greetings,
I'm up for anything. One thing I can be accused of is always having had a problem with the status quo. I was intrigued by the idea of a machine being more equal than the SAT. I suppose it depends on how they are used. The SAT defaults to an even ascension of beating in the thirds, but it doesn't have to be used that way. I have used mine to line up the thirds, at some small and usually imperceptible cost to the evenness of the fifths, and then compared it to another in which I allowed the thirds to suffer some irregularity to create a bunch of fifths that sounded alike. I wasn't able to tell the difference in the triad, only by clinical examination, which isn't closely related to musical values. The way Bill Garlick demonstrated was the fudging of both thirds' and fifths' evenness, forming the temperament's compromise on more than one dimension.
Seems like this would be a good class topic; have two identical pianos, see if there is a perceptible difference. I've seen a lot of them listening to two temperaments, but two machines? That would be of interest to me. Rooms full of piano techs always exhibit more personality when there is something hard to detect.
Studio tuning is different, no stretch in the bass, etc. I have come to recognize the profound difference there is between a SAT stretching in the bass and what my ear would have me do. The machine likes a wider octave down there than I do. I have also had my hair stand on end listening to octaves so stretched that you could see through them, while their creator stood, beaming by the bench, exclaiming how brilliantly clear theyt sounded. He probably uses way too much hot sauce, too.
For all our microscopic examination, I've never had a pianist mention thirds and their evenness. The clarity of the octave has more of the stage, and with ET, stretching is about all, (beyond volume) one can do to create some stimulatory effects. I think it burns some emotional sensitivity out of the listener, but that is another thread.
Thanks for the post,
Ed
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