hysterical temperaments

[Jim]

To Doug and the list:

You might want to try a more mild form of Well Temperament before you
write it off as "Crankmeister II" or some such.  Equal beating has to do
with only certain intervals which are adjusted to equal beating like a
3rd beating the same speed as a 5th etc.  The milder Well temperaments
still provide you with an opportunity to utilize the skills you have
developed in tuning ET. In these types you will find that usually the
major 3rds will be slower in the keys with fewer sharps or flats and then
the 3rds will be faster than equal temp. in the more distant keys, or
those with more sharps or flats.  If you have access to an AccuTuner, you
can tune the simple ColemanIV (OK, its not very historical, I just
developed it about 2 years ago).  It only involves setting up a regular
ET tuning and then altering the C's and F's 2 cents sharp, and
altering the B's and E's 2 cents flat.

Even if you don't have an AccuTuner
you can tune your regular Equal Temp. and then alter the C's to be pure
with the 4th above (that's approx 2 cents plus). Next, you can lower the
E's approx 2 cents to be pure with the B's a 4th below. Then you can raise
the F's to be pure with the Bb 4ths above. This will make the C-F 4ths
in Equal temp. speed again.  Lastly, you can lower the B's to be pure with
the F# below. This will leave the B-E 4ths at ET relationship and the
E-A's at twice their normal speed.

Now if you play the maj 3rds in the tonic keys from C to F#, you find the
3rds increasing from less than ET speed to greater than ET speed up thru
5 #'s.  Likewise, going from C, adding flats till you get to Db, the maj
3rds will also increase from less than ET to greater than ET. The F# 3rd
will still be in ET relationship since neither F# nor A# was changed. The
Bb-D 3rds will be in ET (no change), also the D-F# 3rds will be in ET
speed. The Ab-C, B-D#, E-G# and Db-F 3rds will be faster than ET.  The
C-E, F-A, G-B, and Bb-D maj 3rds will all be slower than in ET.  You can
see that by just changing 4 notes from ET you can have much more color
distinction in the various tonalities which is what the classical
Boroque and even Romantic musicians dealt with.

Jim Coleman, Sr.

PS Perhaps if there is enough interest, I'll explain how I came up with
an even better Well temperament which have even less differences in the
4ths and 5ths and more difference in the 3rds and 6ths - the Coleman VII.
There are no objectionable beats in this temperament. Tone color is more
distinct, but you wont hear any bothersome intervals.

On Thu, 20 Mar 1997 DougHersh@aol.com wrote:

> Dear list,
>    The recent thread about historical temperaments has been very interesting
> to me. I have a harpsichord that I tune every week or two and it sounds alot
> better in a more historically correct temperament. I have a copy of the book
> on tuning the equal beating temperments by ear by, Owen Jorgensen. I suspect
> that all this talk about well temperaments works better in theory than in
> real life when it comes to tuning these temperments on modern grands. I tried
> the Kirnberger well-temperament in C Major on a Steinway B that I was
> prepping, just for fun, for my own education and it sounded pretty weird. It
> sounded so foreign to my ear, like when you hear an Indian scale or
> something. Trying to tune a just third on a Steinway B is very interesting. I
> also tried the Classical Piano Concerto Temperament and I liked the effect of
> that one. I have a couple of questions about this particular book if anyone
> is familiar with his work(Owen Jorgensen). I'm probably going to show my
> ignorance, but here goes; Why does he call it equal beating temperaments?
> When you are done with the temperament the intervals are anything but equal
> beating. Maybe it is because when you are actually tuning you are tuning most
> of the intervals just. Second question, when you are extending outside of the
> temperament by octaves are you tuning pure octaves, what test do you use? Mr
> Jorgensen says in his book that trying to tune the piano in Equal T. for
> playing Bach's well tempered Clavier is ridiculous since it was written to
> demonstrate tone color changes in the different keys.
>    I am pretty much a novice when it comes to this stuff but the book I speak
> of is excellent and practicing these temperament was probably the best tuning
> excercise I've ever done. Mr Jorgensen is in my opinion one of many great
> thinkers we as Piano techs have amongst us.I believe I followed his
> directions correctly on putting a well-temperament on the above mentioned
> Steinway B but it sounded so weird I've dubbed that temperament a hybrid of
> the Widowmaker III and the Crankmeister II Temperament.
> So Long,
> Doug Hershberger, RPT
>