Ok boys and girls. I tuned my first HT today. The Young Villotti, on a Yamaha LU series upright. Posted a note on the door that I would keep it like this for some weeks forward and encouraged all students and teachers to experiment and experience it. As for my own reactions. A couple things came to mind right away. First this continuing discussion about the Reverse Well. Ok... there are obviously degrees involved here. Because I can tell you the Young Villotti was so very very obviously not an ET tuning that you would have to be completely useless as a tuner if you could not notice the difference after playing this for a bit... if not like within a few seconds really. With this in mind I would suspect that the Reverse Well disscussion is somewhat an over driven point, curious enough in its own right.. but I cant imagine this phenomena resulting in a tuning that is so removed from ET as what I tuned today was. Either that or something is very seriously wrong indeed with how we decide what comprises a tuning that is good enough to pass the RPT test, and frankly I doubt things could get that out of hand. I must say tho I liked very much the resulting tuning. It was very different, and certain chords, intervals, keys.. etc etc.. were of course too discordant to be at all pleasing. Yet those that were, were indeed beautiful to listen to in a completly un-accustomed to manner. It is easy indeed to imagine a composer with these tonal parameters at hand utilizing the different kinds of effects different beat rates create for what in ET are essentially the same intervals,, chords... what have you. In ET a major third is indeed a major third in a sense that simply is not the case in the Young Villotti. Some of these "major thirds" indeed approach distances that would require another lable.. as in diminished fourth.. or perhaps even an augmented minor third if you get my meaning. The piano itself reacted well to this temperament in the sense that I got no feeling at all that this modern instrument was unsuitable in any fashion whatsoever to being tuned in this fashion... quite the opposite really. It sounded quite nice indeed. I will keep you all posted as to the responses I get from the different students and teachers as the next few days and weeks pass. This is an interesting adventure, one that I can recommend to one and all. -- Richard Brekne RPT, N.P.T.F. Bergen, Norway PS... The tuning was accomplished by use of the RCT historic tuning library. I followed along with the recipie given in Owens book. Wanted to do it this way the first couple times to get a feel for how it basically should sound. Will let my ear take over when I feel comfortable enough with the aural temperament routine.
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