[CAUT] ET vs UET

[Fred Sturm]

On Apr 20, 2010, at 9:41 PM, Laurence Libin wrote:

> So, if I were commissioning an encyclopedia article on ET (not the  
> space alien), who would I ask to write it? It's not a simple  
> definition; you can appreciate the problem by comparing the  
> discussions in the New Harvard Dictionary of Music and the 1955  
> Oxford Companion to Music. If authoritative sources conflict, who's  
> right? Can they be reconciled? Tune in next week.


	Interesting question. Obviously one has to start with the precise  
scientific definition, but to be useful, one needs to add at least a  
couple other aspects. Which would require studies that probably  
haven't been done yet.
	First, psychoacoustic: what do people hear, and what do they  
distinguish. This is a very complex study, and would need to include  
acute, professional musicians to be really useful. The question being  
to establish the parameters of what is actually distinguishable as  
either ET or "other than ET."
	Second, practice. What do musicians do and what do tuners do? What  
are the parameters within which professional tuners are capable of  
achieving ET when they are aiming for it? (Aural and ETD should  
probably be separate studies). Some historical background would be  
wonderful - Al Sanderson measured a lot of piano tunings in developing  
his ETDs and the PTG tuning test. I doubt they were thrown away. There  
are also records within PTG of master tunings for the tuning test, and  
perhaps test tunings as well (I'm not sure those are archived for long).
	With respect to musicians, one would want to measure what they do.  
Have an oboist, clarinetist, violinist etc play scales (trying to  
achieve ET) and measure the notes. Enough of them to make it  
statistically significant. Measure pitches in recorded music to find  
out what people do in practice as opposed to what they say they do.  
Pitches of a violinist playing with piano, for instance, as opposed to  
playing with string quartet.
	Without this kind of study, it is mostly speculation and anecdote.
	BTW, for a good summary of the psychoacoustic study of "just  
noticeable difference" in pitch, see	http://www.h-pi.com/theory/huntsystem2.html#2 
  (I met the author, Aaron Hunt, at the Wright State colloquium. He  
has developed some interesting electronic tools for varying tuning,  
including a "box" that goes between a midi keyboard and whatever to  
vary the pitch of each note at will, programmable. Very impressive. http://www.h-pi.com/TBX1buy.html 
  )
Regards,
Fred Sturm
fssturm at unm.edu
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." Twain

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100421/e34fac98/attachment.htm>