Danger!

[Avery]

Alan,

At 01:50 PM 4/15/2006, you wrote:

>I've been thinking (that's the dangerous part) and doing some experiments.
>
>When setting ET temperament on virtually any 
>piano—big and nicely scaled or Crappiola & 
>Sons—the 3rd partial of D3 ends up within about 
>1/3 Hz of 440.00 and almost always on the sharp 
>side, like 440.26 Hz (440.04 on an M&H A).
>
>At this pitch, that turns out to be 
>significantly less than 1/2 bps on better pianos 
>(almost pure) and the most I found was a little 
>over 2 bps on a Lester She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named 
>and that one almost certainly due to compromises crossing the break.
>
>Does this not, or should it not, have big-time 
>implications for setting or testing the 
>temperament, as in a durn-near P12 at 3:1?
>
>Fur eggs ample:
>
>What if you tuned D3 to A4 at an exact or the 
>teeniest bit flat 3:1 twelfth (stick a mute 
>alongside A4 keystick to hold it down, play and tune
>D4 beatless at A440), then tuned your D4 to A4 
>as a 5th, tune A3 to A4 and compare to the D's 
>and make sure you have two dandy octaves, 2 
>identical 5ths, etc? Would that not nail down 
>four solid notes closely referenced to your 
>foundation A4, including the stretch across the break on smaller pianos?

It's hard to know since you didn't include the post you're responding to! :-)

Avery

>
>If this is goofy, be gentle.
>
>Alan Barnard
>Salem, Missouri
>