Explanation of Reverse Well-back

[Ron Nossaman]

>Thank you for your post.  Ron wanted a *brief* description of what Reverse
>Well is and I gave it to him twice.  This was not good enough for him, so I
>wrote the long version.  It seems to me that Ron expected that I could not
>define it and when I did, he wrote what he was planning to write anyway, some
>kind of nasty, condescending, inflammatory response.

* What I wanted was a meaningful description of your terminology, limited to
that description, without three pages of anecdotal evidence of the
superiority of your tuning method. The first two descriptions were
superficial and dismissive, and I asked for clarification. I had no doubt
that you could define it, just whether you would. When your explanation
indicated that the condition was just a failed attempt at ET, because the
tuner hadn't used whatever tests were necessary to meet the guidelines for
ET, I said so. Reading the rest of your post here, I wonder if I may not
have misinterpreted something you wrote in your definition of reverse Well.
You seemed to be describing a series of consecutive thirds in which the beat
rates weren't progressive. Now I'm wondering if you weren't describing
progressive thirds, but with detectably uneven beat rate progressions as the
signature of reverse Well. Please clarify this for me. So you will know
where this is going, I am trying to determine with some degree of certainty,
just how fine a hair you are splitting here.  



> It seems to me that what I said threatened Ron's peace of
>mind and really made him wonder if he is making the errors that I >identified.

* If your awaited clarification of my above question indicates that you are
talking about less than absolutely perfectly spaced, but progressive, thirds
beat progressions, you are correct, but I wouldn't consider it an issue
worthy of the adrenaline. If you mean consecutive thirds that aren't beat
progressive, you are incorrect.



>I stick with what I said before, you really need to know how a Well-Tempered
>Tuning sounds before you can be sure that what you are tuning is not a
>backwards version of it.

* So one should learn to tune ET correctly by learning to tune Well, and
reverse Well, and then being careful to do neither from then on. Why not
teach these misguided souls some aural checks to improve their ET. I still
submit that someone who can't tune an acceptable ET, can't tune an
acceptable HT either, unless the standards for the HT are so loose that it
doesn't matter. Tuning skills will apply to any temperament you care to
learn, as will their lack. You can't have it one way without the other. If
the standard temperament was Well, would there be a majority of aural tuners
producing ET by mistake, all the while believing they were doing Well?    


>Well, by now, I guess a few more people know what Reverse Well is than did
>before.  I put the words in capitals because it is a proper subject.  I could
>say that I consider Reverse Well as a *capital* offense against music but that
>would just be a joke.
>
>Regards,
>Bill Bremmer RPT
>Madison, Wisconsin
>


And that would be a shame.
 Ron