Non-ETs; more organic than ET?

[Don]

Hi Jason,

I am a musician--but you are what you "eat" so I hear HT's simply as out of
tune. I'm sure that most keyboard players don't listen in the same way to
pitch as your average French Horn player as well. I agree keyboardists do
not listen in the way a piano tuner does.

The personal experience of hearing Ed Foote's (clearly a master tuner) mild
temperament in Edmonton left me cold and hating the sound. I was not
wearing my tuner's hat and was trying to be as open minded as possible. The
pianos were not "twins" of each other, but he had chosen the larger
instrument (better?) for the HT. There was a professional pianist there to
demonstrate by playing music. No one during the class sat down and played
parrallel or contiguous 3rds.

By the way I'd recommend Ed's class to anyone in a "flash" it was the
highlight of the convention for me.

Perhaps I would like a "stronger" HT better--it might be far enough away
from ET for me to "enjoy" the flavor.

I'd be more interested in HT's if there were supportable documentation to
say that Mozart (for example) composed a particular piece of music for a
specific temperament.


At 07:52 PM 4/3/2004 -0800, you wrote:
>The reason any WT, even a very "good" one, may sound out of tune to an
>ET-trained piano tuner, is that tuners tend to assess a tuning by chromatic
>thirds, sixth, tenths etc. Our brain checks with "little faster ... little
>faster ..." and it doesn't work for any WT. The musician, on the other hand,
>plays a piece of music. In a well-tuned WT, odds are the piece of music
>sounds terrific.
>----- Original Message ----- 
>From: "Don" <pianotuna@accesscomm.ca>
>To: "Pianotech" <pianotech@ptg.org>
>Sent: Saturday, April 03, 2004 8:47 PM
>Subject: Re: Non-ETs; more organic than ET?
>
>
>> Hi Don,
>>
>> The only people who play equal temperament are the keyboard players. The
>> rest of the world doesn't. The other problem is that it is impossible to
>> satisfy *all* the conditions of ET with any temperament sequence. The very
>> best is only an approximation of truely ET.
>>
>> Personally having lived and eaten approximate ET for ever I find even a
>> master tuner doing even a mild ET leaves the piano simply sounding "out of
>> tune" to my ear. However tuning and temperaments are a matter of taste and
>> I'd certainly not put down anyone who likes something I don't.

Regards,
Don Rose, B.Mus., A.M.U.S., A.MUS., R.P.T.

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