Billbrpt@AOL.COM wrote: > In a message dated 12/5/99 8:19:34 AM Pacific Standard Time, > kswafford@earthlink.net (Kent Swafford) writes: > > << My personal preference when dealing with a > large difference in inharmonicity at the tenor break is to give up on > smooth beat rates in the 3rds in favor of smooth beat rates in the 4ths, > 5ths, and octaves. >> > Hmmm.. An interesting thread really... Actually I'd like to point out that in a sense the whole point is really that there is no such thing as ET at all. At very best one can equally space only one and the same one partial for every string on the piano. This is illustrated by the fact that a perfectly equal spaceing of say the 4th partial for all 88 notes, is no guarantee that any other partial will be equally spaced. In fact it is more like a guarantee that all other partials will be unevenly spaced. Such an perfectly even spaceing of the 4th partial then would automatically lead to some degree of uneven thirds, fourths, fiths,, all intervals for that matter. So we are left to some degree with a comprimise situation. One can force a pretty even progression of major thirds... or one can go with 4ths and 5ths. In good pianos you can get both to work out quite nicely. Which one you choose in a challanging piano is in the end a matter of taste... within certain rather vaguely defined parameters of acceptability. Add different stretchs into the equation and the "unequalness" of all partials and coincidents outside of the present control or determinant set, can become quite significant if you want to get picky enough to measure it all out. Jim Coleman got me started on this buisness with Baldersins book about six months ago. We use octave types, 5th types and other types all the time without even knowing it. In fact I am convince that most aural tuners dont really know (conciously and easy to fetch from the back of the mind) much about these "types" formally at all. I am also convinced that the more familiar one is with them, (on a very concious and active level) the more powerful a tuning tool it becomes. I find myself more and more being able to sit down and quickly discern another tuners style because of an accute and increasing awareness of these types. In the process I have begun to think less of different tuning styles and stretches as right or wrong.. rather as one or another set of priorities from the tuner. Its actually quite facinating. Richard Brekne I.C.P.T.G. N.P.T.F. Bergen, Norway
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