comparing temperaments

[Avery Todd]

Oh s***. Here we go again!

Avery

At 08:43 PM 08/31/02 -0400, you wrote:
>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
><http://www.billbremmer.com/>Click here: -=w w w . b i l l b r e m m e r . 
>c o m =-