comparing temperaments

[David Ilvedson]

And in this corner, "wearing the darling blue trunks, weighing in at 90 pounds,
Billy, the whinner, Bremmer."  "And in the red trunks, weighing in at 200 pounds,
Eddy, the mouth, Foote."

"Break when I say and no hitting below the belt, well, from now on"

Davy, did I write that? Ilvedson

"Who needs a flame-suit when I live hundreds of miles away"



----- Original message ---------------------------------------->
From: Avery Todd <avery@ev1.net>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Received: Sat, 31 Aug 2002 23:31:27 -0500
Subject: Re: comparing temperaments

>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 =-