redhead and the Yamaha

[Billbrpt@AOL.COM]

In a message dated 3/12/99 4:26:04 PM Central Standard Time, A440A@AOL.COM
writes:

<< He went for it.  As I was going
 through, I played a big G chord in the middle of the piano, and he came in
and
 said,  "That's me, right there!,  I don't know what you are doing, but that
is
 what I've been looking for".  
     When finished, he took off on it.  He was incredulous at how  the sounds
 that he had been imagining were all of a sudden, right there!  He is sold and
 told me to leave the top up,  he was going to spend the rest of the morning
 playing, since he had never heard his Yamaha sound so good.  >>

This happens to me almost every day and is what keeps me going.  Ron N. asked
what Reverse Well was and the answer is that it is the opposite of this
experience.  There are no "cents deviations" that are going to help anyone
understand what the scourge and tragedy of Reverse Well is. 

You get through tuning a piano in what you *thought* was ET and what you
really *meant* to be ET but somehow, all of your 4ths and 5ths weren't really
quite equal.  You tried to get them a little too pure among the white keys and
fudged a little on the black keys and BINGO!, you've got Reverse Well.  It
doesn't take much error at all.

You show me a piano that was tuned aurally and I'll show you a piano tuned in
Reverse Well,  9 times out of 10.  People like Jeffrey Siegel who freely makes
condescending remarks about HT's, dismissing their relevance today in his
"Keyboard Conversations", ends up being the real fool because every time he
plays in this town, he doesn't get ET, he gets good ol' Reverse Well.  The
very idea of him talking about all of the various aspects of music while
demonstrating what he means on a piano that is tuned literally "ass-backwards"
and having the chutzpah to make derogatory comments about something that is
completely over his head, seems ludicrous to me.

When that artist heard the key of G being played on the piano the way Ed tuned
it, he suddenly heard what he had been hoping to hear, expecting to hear and
searching for all of his life.  His sense of musicality and tonality told him
there should be a certain "sweetness" to that key but until that day, he had
never really heard it.  When he finally did hear it, he absolutely loved it
and became emotional about it.  It would have been just another day of
struggle for him if he had heard the key of G played on a piano tuned in
Reverse Well.  If it had really been ET, he might at least have not been
injured by it.  

I'm not against true ET although I virtually never choose to tune it but I am
against Reverse Well which is truly harmful to all music.  The only way for
you to really know that your tuning that you mean to be ET is not actually
Reverse Well,  is for you to thoroughly understand how to tune a true Well-
Tempered Tuning and know how it relates to music.  Once you have done that,
you'll wonder why so many people *insist* that only ET is appropriate or
practical.

Bill Bremmer RPT
Madison, Wisconsin