Harmonium temperament

[David M. Porritt]

My best guess is out-of-whack.  Much of it is kind of "reverse well"
that has been talked about ad nauseam.  The C-E third is wider than
ET and F#-A# is narrower.  Others kind of fit in between.  

If the pianist is happy, that's the name of the game.  I probably
would have just gone for a regular tuning, and only adjusted the
pitch from 440 by enough to match the Harmonium.  Of course, when
there is that much variance, how do you "match" the Harmonium?  

Again, if the customer is happy, it sounds like you did the right
thing.

dave

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 11/28/2002 at 10:07 AM Tvak@aol.com wrote:

>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
>
>_______________________________________________
>pianotech list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives


_____________________________
David M. Porritt
dporritt@mail.smu.edu
Meadows School of the Arts
Southern Methodist University
Dallas, TX 75275
_____________________________