<html> <head> <meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> </head> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> On 5/26/2012 5:38 AM, Ron Nossaman wrote: <blockquote cite="mid:4FC0CEB0.3020500@cox.net" type="cite">nor was I awfully convinced by the tunings I followed that were flat through octave 5-6, and were nearly a semitone sharp at c-8. </blockquote> That was what I heard at a Guild meeting about ETD tuning, and what I also heard in ETD tunings which I followed. The dip in octaves 5-6, and then the horrid overcompensation in octave 7. I haven't heard this pattern much for a long time now. I suspect that the machines got better. These days I usually hear (in recordings) that octave 7 is a little on the flat side, enough to keep the beats out when octaves are played with notes in octave 7, but not high enough to be musical. Sometimes octave 7 is SEVERELY flat. And this from recording studios or concert recordings. There are harmonic intervals, and melodic intervals, depending on whether the notes are sounded at the same time or in sequence. Jim Coleman, Sr. once illustrated quite beautifully that these are not the same. In his class he played a note in the middle register, and had people tell him how high to make a note three octaves higher, without playing them together or playing the octaves in between. He only played the high note sequentially after the lower one. The roomful of piano tuners chose a place for the high note which was over a semitone sharp. In the middle register this problem of differing places for melodic and harmonic pitches doesn't seem to be a problem, but by octave 7 it certainly is. I temper between the two extremes. If I go with what sounds really great for a melodic interval, the harmonic interval sounds bitter. If I go with straight beatless octaves all the way to the top, the notes sound flat when approached melodically -- and music often jumps melodically into the upper octaves, sometimes placing a note in the upper register from two or three octaves away. When that upper note is exactly right, and sounds like exactly the same note as the one below, which does require considerable stretching past the beatless harmonic octave or double octave, the result is a glistening sense of clarity and order. Besides, why should the highest register be beatless when played in octaves anyway? The notes in the top octave tend to be so full of false beats some almost sound sandy, even when the unisons have been cleaned up as much as possible. I think it's to help the tone project. Any slow beating with octave 6 will be totally obscured by the false beating anyway, so why not go with something which sounds better when played melodically? I must admit that I got a free ride for octave stretching -- all those years of cello study and work on intonation and listening to recordings and playing in orchestras left me with a good "template", one might say. The old recordings usually have truly beautiful octave stretching. I was able to go with my taste for stretching instead of leaning on tests and figuring out partials. It is a lot easier, and it has never let me down. YMMV, as they say. Susan Kline </body> </html>