[Harp-L] more temperment



Vern asked:

"Is it true that ET is used whenever the same instrument is used to play in different keys because JT in one key isn't JT in others?"


As Tim pointed out, the question is one of what the instrument is capable of. If we are to assume most fixed-pitch instruments, then the majority today are tuned to 12TET. However, there are many other non-equal temperments which could be used instead of a pure Just Intonation (or something similarly austere such as the various mean- tone tunings) and even other numbers of equal temperment (such as 19TET, which fits Western theory better than 12TET in many ways). While these temperments are better for certain keys than others, most are intended to be useable in all keys.



Slim asks:


"Harmonica content: I'm trying to imagine what a physical-modeled bass
harmonica would sound like with gigantic reeds... ;-)"


Like any physically modeled synthesizer--interesting for itself. However, I've tuned free reeds in the 32' range which are truly enormous, and they basically sounded like any other free reed, just louder.


Bob Laughlin writes:

"I am not a piano tuner, but took three semesters of piano tuning and
regulation at a local community college. We were taught that the piano was
tuned Justly until the time of Beethoven, at which time they began tuning
the piano in equal temperament, to avoid the "wolf tone" that resulted from
certain keys being played, ones that the piano was not intended to play in."



Then you were taught very badly. From before Bach's time most keyboard instruments were tuned to a variation of mean-tone, which is not a pure system but rather a form of temperment. During the late Baroque period (Bach's era and slightly before) many systems of tempering the octave were tried (Werkmeister, etc...) which tried to spread the wolf tones out more evenly across the range and thus be better suited to the increasingly chromatic music which was being played. 12TET was one of the systems then being advanced, but certainly not the only one and probably not the most prominent one. By Beethoven's time we still see these various temperments in use, and the debate over what was best was still quite unresolved. This is best seen by the primary fixed-pitch instrument of the time, and the one hardest to change: the organ. Here 12TET didn't really become the norm until well into the 18th century (1840's or so in the US and probably France, with at least one prominent English firm still using meantone as late as the 1870's--the English having a well deserved reputation for conservativism). This was in response to the highly chromatic music of the Romantic period, where weighting of keys was not at all wanted.


The discussion of piano tuning is interesting. I can only talk about how my company tunes organs, as others do differently. We tend to set the middle octave using an electronic tuner, and then we clean it up. By this I mean we check the fourths and fifths of each note of the middle octave and adjust their beats so as to be more regular than tuning to the electronic tuner usually allows for (for various reasons--the human ear is a better judge than a mathematical program, IMO). We then go up and down in octaves from the middle, again checking fourths and fifths as well. This is for 12TET, of course. When tuning to something else we use the system of checks which make sense for that temperment (ie, if the first four fifths are beatless, we tune and check those, etc...).





 ()()    JR "Bulldogge" Ross
()  ()   & Snuffy, too:)
`----'







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