My concerns about the availability of aural descriptions of the various temperaments may very well be rendered moot if Jason Kanter's graphs prove to be authoritative, and stay generally available. I don't have a problem working to tolerances that are beyond some of our customers' abilities to perceive and/or understand. Historical temperaments themselves are beyond what some of our customers are capable of hearing and appreciating. A piano professor at one of the colleges where I occasionally work dismissed historical temperaments in general with a wave of her hand, saying, "Oh, that's just a _tuner_ thing." Right. Well, we're the pros. Our customers have varying needs. A few of our customers can hear and understand right up to the highest level that we can produce, and I think we need to be ready for them -- up to and including having the ability to explain the relative beat rates that are forming the key colors they are hearing in the esoteric temperament we just tuned for them. :) Kent S On Saturday, October 5, 2002, at 02:25 PM, A440A@aol.com wrote: > Greetings, > There is a point of diminishing returns involved in these > decisions. If a > particular harmonic quality depends on distinctions of less than one > cent, > there are going to be few pianos or venues where they will make any > difference. Pianos move around. Octaves that vary by 1 cent will > usually > not be noticed by musicians, and the effect of an equal beating triad > is > rarely altered by the amount of divergence a machine-only tuning > allows. > This is more true of well-scaled pianos. Any short scale spinet can be > better tuned by ear, since the machines don't make compromises very > well,(the > VT may do better than the others, depending on operator skill). > Also, the difference between a fifth that is Just and one that has > 1 cent > of tempering in not a difference that can be heard in the music, > unless there > is a particular use, in isolation, that sustains long enough. Or, to > put in > another way, in fast passage work,(Scarlatti?) the tuning is almost > irrelevant. > It is also seen that due to the coupled nature of piano strings, > they can > "draw" one another away from the pitch that would be produced in > isolation. > (hold down an ET C3-E3 and strike a staccato on the E5. You will not > hear > the beating for a couple of seconds, then the "drawing" created by the > single > frequency of E5 will be overcome by the resonant periods of the lower > strings > and you will hear the beating begin). > As we tuners go through measuring intervals, we are hearing > phenomena on > a degree of scale that musicians don't. I have seen this in changing > the > stretch for studio engineers and musicians. Even the most astute ears > didn't > hear the difference between two tunings where the final C's ended up > 10 cents > apart. I have tuned the top octaves of a piano with so much stretch > that it > almost sounded like two different notes, but the group of techs in > front of > me didn't notice anything until I pointed it out. Only when the single > octaves were played in slow movements did it become apparent. > > It has become evident in the last 9 years that the arrival of the > programmable machine has had a lot to do with the increased use of the > temperaments. Though the knowledge required has been out for decades, > working > tuners never took up the cause, and I think it had to do with the > amount of > work involved. However, there have now been far too many pianists > successfully playing many venues and pieces, on machine-based non-ET > tunings > to think that the ETD can't produce. They can. I have seen world > class > artists blown away by a straight FAC, so I wonder if my 1 cent > "tweaks" are > really worth the effort. > (I am reminded of the first Sight-O-Tuner, which produced a tuning > that > Arthur Fiedler thought highly of!). I also believe that Jim Coleman > has > demonstrated a machine only tuning that compared nicely with the best > of the > best ET tuners we have. > The machines aren't perfect, but they don't need to be in order to > produce > results that far exceed musicians ability to discriminate. Many of us > that > learned to tune strictly aurally will always believe that the ear will > always > outperform the machine, but you will have a hard time finding > musicians that > can tell any difference between highly skilled techs using either. ( > I will > be giving an aural demo at the chapter meeting this week and will try > to > record what differences are noted between the machines interpretation > and my > own). > Regards, > Ed Foote > _______________________________________________ > caut list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives >
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