comparing temperaments

[Billbrpt@AOL.COM]

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Sheesh!  I won't do Ed Foote's writing the honor of copying it.  As usual, 
the intent is to discredit and as usual, he knows absolutely nothing about 
what he is writing.  If Ed *could* tune the EBVT, which he couldn't, even if 
his life depended on it, he'd know that all of what he wrote has no 
foundation.

I posted Jason Kanter's graph on my website because as a graph, I've never 
seen better.  It runs circles around the ones that Ed has done.  While I 
honestly do not understand why virtually none of the numbers guys can ever 
get things really right, I appreciate their efforts.

The EBVT is a true Well Tempered Tuning and does not have the kind of 
imbalances which Jason graphed and Ed seized upon to try once again to 
discredit what I've been doing for 10 years.

The fact is that it has 4 pure 5ths, the same 4 pure 5ths that *any* 
historically documented  Well Tempered Tuning has.  The other nearly pure 
5ths are also right along the lines of what any Well Tempered Tuning would 
have.  *Anyone* can create a Well Tempered Tuning by tuning a chain of pure 
5ths from C about half the way through the cycle of 5ths, then temper the 
rest of the 5ths so that they all will fit.  It's as simple as that.

But there are some people who just cannot tune by ear.  They've just got to 
go dialing in numbers on an ETD and hope that what comes out will sound good. 
 That's what Ed does and until my dying day, I promise to myself and the 
world that I won't do it.  I tune by *listening* to the piano and sorting out 
the compromises I must make according to my own plan and sense of what sounds 
good to my ear based on a lifetime of 50 years of interest in, practice and 
performance of music.  I do not depend upon a calculation which I have no 
control over.

What I manage to do with my EBVT is create a mild, Victorian style 
temperament and still retain some of the properties of earlier temperaments, 
namely 4 pure 5ths, which no other Victorian Temperament, including the Moore 
does.  This is accomplished by breaking the chain of pure 5ths that earlier 
WT's have and which create extreme harshness, which ultimately makes them 
unacceptable.  Instead of having an unbroken chain of pure 5ths, 
C-F-Bb-Eb-Ab-Db-Gb(F#), I offer C-F-Bb and F# -C# -G#.  The 5ths in between 
are tempered but less so than in ET.

It follows all of the rules of Well Tempered Tuning and is in no way a 
"sideways well" as Ed proclaims.  Owen Jorgensen approved of my work when I 
presented it to him 10 years ago and that alone, is good enough for me.  Dr. 
Herbert Anton Kellner, a well known temperament guru became aware of my work 
and praised it, calling it "genius".  He said that the Equal Beating and 
Proportionate Beating found in my temperament, the sets of 3, 6, 8, 9 & 12 
beats per second were in concert with the very pulse of humanity. 

Yes, all of the beat speeds are exact multiples of 1 beat per second.  I 
arrange all harmony in the piano to fall within these very regular and 
orderly patterns.  Yet Ed says that is not right for 18th & 19th Century 
music.

I'd rather listen to the opinion of a man who has been studying and 
practicing this art since the 1930's than to a Johnny-come-lately who first 
was inspired by these ideas when he attended the Convention in Milwaukee 
(where the EBVT was first presented to PTG).  And of course, Ed condemns that 
event too as he did the 1/7 Comma Meantone at the 1995 Convention.  Soon 
thereafter however, he is *teaching* it and producing CD's to promote it.  
Sure, I like Ed's CD's, except for the Chopin in Reverse Well and the Mozart 
in Meantone but the comments of listeners are certainly not unanimously full 
of praise.

I'm not interested in trying to discover what the right "correction figures" 
for the EBVT are because I know that even if they were figured out, the 
octaves would still be wrong.  I tune my octaves in a way which Ed denounces 
as not making any sense at all but I'm still doing them that way, have been 
for 20 years and always will.  Sooner or later, Ed will be *teaching* it. 
He'll find some other source which says the same thing and proclaim it to be 
the bees knees of tuning and he'll still try to find a way to say that what I 
do is wrong.

So, others who want to try to figure out what those numbers should be are 
encouraged to keep trying.  It shouldn't be that hard.  The EBVT is 
constructed much like many other HT's.  But what really makes me skeptical is 
that if today, so many people who really want to find the right numerical 
values can't, then how good are all those published sets of numbers?  Not 
that I dispute any particular one but really, I would never want to even try 
to tune a piano that way, Ed's way.

I'll say one thing without reservation.  I can tune a better sounding piano 
than Ed Foote can and I could have it half done by the time it would take him 
to finish dialing in his numbers.  

Anybody want to give me a chance to prove it?

Bill Bremmer RPT
Madison, Wisconsin
 <A HREF="http://www.billbremmer.com/">Click here: -=w w w . b i l l b r e m m e r . c o m =-</A> 

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