Temperaments...

[Andrew & Rebeca Anderson]

On these various instruments you mentioned you only tune certain notes or 
intervals and the rest are obtained by fingering, sliding etc.
On the violin you tune only four notes.  I helped my sister-in-law perfect 
her tuning using a Peterson strobe (in ET) and the instrument came 
alive.  A lot of violinists who are working on their tuning skills will 
start by tuning each string to a piano, thereby ET.  The proper method 
would be tune A and then intervals from there.  Just intervals would seem 
to be the most likely result, they're easy to hear.  Why would you tune ET 
when it's harder to hear and you will naturally intonate your instrument to 
match in the presence of a fixed intonation instrument?  Of-course when you 
are working with an instrument of fixed intonation you can tune each string 
to unison with the corresponding notes on that instrument.

Andrew

At 10:10 AM 4/5/2004 -0500, you wrote:
>It seems to me that you would want to tune/design wind instruments to ET.
>And I say this not to tout the Almighty Equal Temperament; I say this
>precisely because these instruments can bend pitches.  I would think that
>you would design the hole layout so that a musician can avail himself of the
>maximum pitch-bend range.