[impedance]

[Kent Swafford]

on 6/14/00 12:11 PM, Robert Scott at rscott@wwnet.net wrote:

> If you really want to prove that voicing affects inharmonicity, here is
> what you would do.  Get 5 different technicians to measure the inharmonicity
> of several strings on a piano.  Allow each technician to be alone with the
> piano while making the measurement.  Do not allow the 5 technicians to
> compare notes until all 5 have made their measurements.  Then change
> the voicing.  Then bring in 5 more technicans who have not talked with
> the first group and have them make inharmonicity measurements.  Use a
> variety of devices to make the measurements, both before and after
> voicing (RCT, TuneLab, SAT, whatever).  When you are all done, look at
> the results.  If voicing really plays a role in determining inharmonicity,
> then the "before" and "after" readings should cluster into two clearly
> distinguishable sets of numbers with little or no overlap.

This would be a great experiment to run. I believe that appropriate
"controls" would require that some of the strings measured by the first
group remain unvoiced throughout the experiment. And, of course, the second
group would not know anything about what measurements the first group had
obtained, and the 2nd group also would not know which strings had been
voiced and which had not been voiced.  If the measurements by the two groups
of the unvoiced strings remain consistent, and the measurements by the two
groups of the strings that underwent voicing changed, that would definitely
teach us something. If there turn out to be differences between the two
groups' measurements of strings that had not been voiced between the two
sets of measurements, well, then that might teach us something else. :)
 
Kent Swafford