At 06:25 PM 3/5/2002 -0800, you wrote: >If "WT" or ANYthing other than ET is so much better, in your opinion, than >why, I wonder, is ET so universally employed as the "standard?" I'm more >than open to hearing your thoughts. I only know that our Steinway tech >tunes ONLY ET and his results are glorious! Let's remember that ten tuners >can tune ET on the SAME piano, and each may sound different, depending on >the accuracy, stability, and the amount of stretch of each tuning. > >Terry Listen to a WT. You have to hear the difference yourself. "It's like trying to tell a stranger about Rock & Roll" Do you believe in magic? I do now. WT transformed an edgy console to melodious. The "Representative Victorian" temperament in the Verituner is the one I use. Ron Koval says it is a Moore (or similar), he posted the offsets a few weeks ago; I don't have them. Those two pros were really impressed with WT yesterday. Their faces lit up while listening. While setting the temperament on the console yesterday, I tried a Kimbeger and didn't care for it at the time. Then a Vallotti-Young, ditto. I set the Moore and liked it. It's like getting a new tool :-) Setting a temperament aurally takes years of practice and once established learning a new pattern may not excite everyone, it didn't me. Not until I expanded my capabilities with an EDT did I get the ambition to try something else. As to why ET is the 'standard', it has it's merits. As to being universal, it's not a one size fits all. Maybe it became accepted as a change, 'the new kid on the block', and for similar reasons HT's are being looked to as a change. Is ET a more easily repeated scheme when tuning aurally? Is the evenness of the tuning pattern and intervals easier to reproduce? I'm not the one who can compare the logistics of setting different temperaments. but one thing is certain, we need something to stir the musical pallette. Sameness is boring. Ask your wife to change her wardrobe to one color. Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-ET, there is a place for it. I am now pro-HT because I have that capability with the VT100 and I think it does have an application. I wouldn't bother myself to crunch another temperament scheme before. The temperament is the only thing different - intervallic relationships - nothing has change tuning octaves and unisons. As in the old TV commercial, "Hey Mikey, try it, you'll like it". Regards, Jon Page, piano technician Harwich Port, Cape Cod, Mass. mailto:jonpage@attbi.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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