Beats vs cycles vs cents

[Farrell]

"There is no musical way of defining <<in tuneness>> based on cents..."

Point well made, but understand also that "cents" deviation are the basis
for scoring the PTG tuning exam!

Terry Farrell

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard Brekne" <Richard.Brekne@grieg.uib.no>
To: "Pianotech" <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2004 2:59 AM
Subject: Re: Beats vs cycles vs cents


> Don A. Gilmore wrote:
> >
> >
> > Cents are really a more accurate indicator of how far out-of-tune a note
is
> > than beats are since they are based on the actual perceived musical
pitch of
> > a note (100 cents is always a half-step no matter how high or low the
> > frequency is.
> >
> > Don A. Gilmore
> > Mechanical Engineer
> > Kansas City
> >
>
> I really have to take issue with this. No one <<percieves>> cents at
> all.  Our perceptions of out of tuneness have far more to do with how
> "clean" any given interval relationship sounds, or how close any
> interval is to what we expect of it. This is exactly beat related.
> Cents is an idealization, a mathmatical representation or modeling of
> musical pitch. There is no musical way of defining <<in tuneness>> based
> on cents to begin with. Only close approximations.  Beats are used both
> individually and whollistically to create a musical effect... the very
> best tuners know exactly what kind of vibrational effects they want a
> piano to send out through the air for each interval and are very good at
> achieving these. Many tuners I know speak of a the overall <<tone>> of a
> tuning.... in kind of voicing sense. <<Voicing>> through tuning is a
> mulitpartial prospect to begin with, which removes it from a simple
> cents perspective from the get go.
>
> 100 cents is not always a half step in real piano frequencies.... it is
> at best only a half step for one partial at a time.  Pitch perception is
> a conglomerate of all partials, their relative loudness, and a good deal
> more.
>
> Cheers
> RicB
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