Harmonium temperament

Tvak@aol.com Tvak@aol.com
Thu, 28 Nov 2002 10:07:34 EST


I recently posted my approach to tuning a piano to a harmonium, whereby I 
copied the temperament from the harmonium via RCT and tuned the piano with 
that temperament.  I dont' know if this is a standard way to approach the 
problem, but it worked for me:  the client is happy with the results.  I 
personally find the piano sounding less than sweet on many of the "white 
note" chords, and I think I'm going to round up or down some of these values 
on the next tuning.

Here are the offsets from that harmonium temperament:
        A :     0
        G# :    -3.7
        G :     0
        F# :    -1.7
        F :     -2.2
        E :     -1.1
        D# :    -3
        D :     -3
        C# :    0.5
        C :     -5
        B :         -3.2
        A# :    -4.1

Alot of negative values;  I offset RCT to measure A as 0.  It was actually 
17cents sharp, meaning that many of the negative values are closer to 440.  
It occurs to me that it is possible that the harmonium is simply out of tune. 
 (After all, A4 is way sharp.)

Can anybody look at that chart and determine whether this is an intentional 
temperament or whether it's just out of whack?

Tom S


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