String intonation (was Re: Hawkeye Harriet -Reply -Reply)[but she never did][she must finally have gotten tired of watching]<g> Hi, Richard -- >I would like to ask violinists if they notice that the thirds on >pianos are sharp, if the piano played M C and they played E do they >notice a difference from the piano E. I suppose it might be amusing >to ask four violinists to play three thirds and see if the fourth >player's octave was pure. Perhaps vibrato would be the only >musical way "out". But what music would have such a chord last long >enough to notice the discrepency? > >Richard Moody I think it would be decidedly interesting to see where violinists placed the 3rd when filling out a major triad (with the piano playing the outer notes but not the 3rd). I can give my impressions of where I think I would put a third, but they are only impressions, my _ideas_ of what I do, not substantiated by any physical observations by another person. In my internal model, major thirds are WIDE, and I mean Pythagorean wide. This is because they are decided by melodic rather than harmonic intonation. We play scales, we string players. Once we have finally learned to play them well, the major 2nds are sturdy and equal, feel kind of like pillars, and are wider than a tempered 2nd. The semitones are small and active, and wish to go places. When we play G-B as part of a dominant triad, the B is about to move, via the skinny semitone, to C. Therefore we place it high, and so the major third is wide. For the same kinds of reasons, the minor thirds feel narrow. D-F, for instance, may well be followed by E, and the discontented semitone will lead downwards instead of upwards. I know it sounds silly, ascribing all those nonmusical attributes to intervals, but there it is, that's how it feels. I don't know if anyone else ever thought about all this stuff this way ... there are a lot of people in the world; perhaps a few did. The difference between this string players' Pythagorean intonation (it's not a temperament since it changes from one moment to another, due to context) and equal temperament is that string intonation enhances the differences between types of intervals. The whole tones are larger, the semitones are smaller, the major thirds are wider to contrast better with the minor thirds. In a way, it's like pronouncing words more distinctly, bringing out the differences in them. As to vibrato as a way to fudge the pitch differences, it never occurred to me. When vibrating the note still contains a center, (it sounds totally lousy if it doesn't) which can be heard with a fair degree of precision if you listen for it. You can't just sort of "take your pick" from the whole range of pitch. Vibrato is a way to enhance tone, and an expressive tool besides, a way to inflect notes and give them vocal qualities. It should be constantly changing, adjusting to context from one moment to the next. Like bowing, which can change volume in very vocal ways, vibrato adds direction to notes. My teacher used to disparage players (sometimes fairly famous ones) who acquired one juicy tone, and used it unchanged most of the time. Being able to make fleeting changes to express musical ideas is what string playing has going for it. Certainly there are enough drawbacks! Volume: no contest with the piano, one can only beg for mercy. Duration: one keeps running out of bow. One gets stuck at awkward places on the bow, just at the wrong moments. One is pretty well confined to a single line: double stops and chords, except the very simplest, are fiendish to play in tune, and vibrating them is hard or sometimes impossible. The instruments are fragile, ruinously expensive, and change with the weather. They often cause orthopedic problems, tendonitis, etc. Calluses cause myriad problems, pinched nerves, scar tissue -- I'd better stop before I get depressed. People manage to overcome things all the time. I get carried away, but I've tried to make a fairly accurate picture of how it looks from here. Other string players' observations, corrections too, would be a lot of fun to read. Why shouldn't piano tuners have some idea what they're up against when they tune for string players? Yours, Susan >---------- >> From: Steve Pearson <SPearson@yamaha.com> >> To: pianotech@ptg.org >> Subject: Re: Hawkeye Harriet -Reply -Reply >> Date: Thursday, July 10, 1997 12:07 PM >> >> Moxie I can spell, but I apologize for misspelling Eidetic....oops. > It means >> the ability to precisely recall something one has seen. Many a >time a >> customer smacked a note repeatedly and stated, that note's flat!" >I too >> lacked the moxie to ask "...compared to what?" As a string player >I am >> also aware that we as a group tend to get sharper and sharper the >> higher we go, fudging those thirds and sevenths unconsciously. >Tuning >> for violinists is usually my greatest challenge, because they >don't >> understand why a piano can't be tuned to match these extreme octave >> stretches, or match the perfect fifths we fiddlists tune. sigh... >> Sometimes I suspect there is subconscious need to demonstrate their >> extraordinary ear, and test your willingness to comply. It usually >goes >> away after the first successful manipulation. "This is only a >test". >> just some thoughts... >> Steve > --------------------------------------------------------- Susan Kline P.O. Box 1651 Philomath, OR 97370 skline@proaxis.com "All the evidence concerning the universe has not yet been collected, so there's still hope." -- Ashleigh Brilliant
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