Meantone, my personal adventure

David Renaud studiorenaud@qc.aibn.com
Mon, 15 Mar 1999 16:21:31 -0800


"Jim Coleman, Sr wrote

>  In essenceI was discovering that you can't have your cake and eat it too, so
> to speak.

> If you rob Peter, you must pay Paul. Equal temperament is the ultimate
> compromise, but in the process, much of the beauty of tuning and
> musicality has been lost.

    Mr Ray Anderson was kind enough to do a demo of a historical temp.in my
studio  as a guild demo. I liked so much I left it on the piano for some time.

    About a year ago I began experimenting. I was tuning for a
violin teacher who used her piano for accompanying. Since my daughter
began studying violin, I appreciate the favored keys of D... G..
I favored these two keys the most, with nearly pure 3rds,
F#, Db  major were much too bright.The tonic cords in D-G were magic. The
dominant cords of these keys had tension. I would describe the harmony as having

a kaleidoscope effect, increased tension-relaxation,  crest to harmonic tension
in the wave of  music, the purity of the tonic is appreciated even more after
the
dissonance of the dominant.----Ramble--Ramble----

    The bottom line is she loved it. And even though couldn't technically
describe what
was going on, appreciated the "lovely color in the music".....and I hadn't yet
told her what I'd
done(This teacher is a friend, and I felt a little liberty to experiment and
test her of
my own volition, beyond what I would do with clients)

   Since then I have tried things on my own piano, and find this whole area of
great interest. I  intend to use skewed temperaments in my recording studio
in the future.
  Do appreciate many of the discussions  here on this list.

                                                          David Renaud
                                                          RPT
                                                          Ottawa-Hull
                                                          Canada




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