HT files in the Library

[Robert Scott]

The suggestion from Michel Lachance about a FILE SHARING LIBRARY got
me thinking about something I would like to see in such a depository -
Historical Temperament files.

In Jorgensen's book on Tuning there are 57 HTs described in terms
of cents offset from equal temperament.  There are also several
"historical" temperaments that have been proposed by Jim Coleman, Sr.
These are all available as part of the TuneLab download.  But what is
lacking is a description of the character of these temperaments that
would help guide a newbie to HTs in making a choice.  Seeing a list
with a selection entitled "Equal-beating Jean-Jacques Rousseau.tem"
or even "Coleman XI.tem" is not very enlightening if each of these
files just contain a list of 12 numbers.  Now it is true that a person
could fork over the $75 and buy Tuning and read it cover to cover and
educate himself on HTs, and perhaps that is the ideal case.  But I
assume that many tuners have neither the time nor the inclination
to engage in such study at first.  Wouldn't it be a great boost to
the accessibility of HTs if there was a source that listed some
temperaments together with such comments as "This one is great for
Beethoven" or "This can be applied to most any music except 12-tone"?
(Now I'm wishing I had attended the class in Arlington on How to Choose
an Historical Temperament.  But I did see Ed Foote's overview which
was fascinating.)

My suggestion is that those of you with more experience with HTs might
deposit a few HT files in Mr. Lachance's library or somewhere else.
I cannot speak for the RCT, but if the file is a TuneLab-style file
then you can add any descriptive text you like after the cents offsets
in the 12 lines of data.  So if a person were to open the file with
Notepad or some other text editor, he could learn something about the
temperament that is defined by those 12 offset numbers.

And speaking of temperaments defined by offsets from ET, some guidance
is needed here too.  Most of the temperaments described in Jorgensen and
others (including Bill Bremmer's EBVT) are described only in terms of
an aural method.  How about developing a general way to translate 
aural temperament methods into offsets from ET?  Obviously Jorgensen
knows how to do it since he did translate 57 of his temperaments
into such offset descriptions.  By calling for such a facility, I make
no claim about the relative merits of aural HT setting vs. ETD HTs using
offsets from ET.  I realize the due to inharmonicity, the results of
an aural method may not always produce the same cents offset from ET.
But even those of you who swear by aural HT methods
might agree that popularizing HTs using ETDs and offsets from ET can 
only help your cause.  So if anyone has suggestions on how to generate 
ETD offsets from aural desriptions I would like to hear them.

-Robert Scott
 Ypsilanti, MI