RE: Comments on the importance of tuning in New Scientist.

Gary M. responds to the letter quoted by Charles Lucy:

> >For most of us, the difference between the "cooked" [tempered] and the
> natural
> >[just] version is so slight that it becomes lost in the idiosyncracies of
> >performance.
>
> I believe that to be both thoroughly true, and thorougly false in two
> different ways. Anybody who has played an indefinite-pitch instrument
> (e.g., virtually all orchestral instruments) can easily confirm that the
> pitch-biasing imperfections of these instruments, combined with the time
> and attention limits of normal-speed music, make it extremely difficult to
> precisely perform in, for example, 12TET vs. QC meantone, much less the
> subtle variations of different well temperaments.

I'd like to add, as a reminder of something most of us no doubt have found by
experience, that the "subtle" differences in pitch, though often difficult
for the untrained ear to detect *as pitch differences*, can, and often do,
make a dramatic difference in the timbre of the ensemble (or of the chord in
the case of a single polyphonic instrument).

David

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Thanks for putting me straight on the facts, Daniel! These are
the sort of gems I subscribe to the list to pick up. Are the
Burmese tunings in that scales list similarly unreliable, then?
There does seem to be a connection, beyond the regional one, and
they do have their characters, albeit not as good as the Thai
one.

Were accurate and reliable measurments ever made to give 7tet
before the era of digital tuners? It would actually support one
of my own arguments if this were the case.

I repeat my suggestion to you all to tune up that Thai scale.
Whether by accident or design, there is some magic in it.

Graham

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>Were accurate and reliable measurments ever made to give 7tet
>before the era of digital tuners?

I suppose that partly depends on HOW "accurate and reliable". A good
human ear can tune 7TET pretty darned accurately just by its sound.

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>Were accurate and reliable measurments ever made to give 7tet
>before the era of digital tuners?

I second Gary. If the tuner has plenty of time and sets out by trial and
error at the task of tuning seven tones so that a pentonic of the form 123
56 can be played on each of the seven degrees without any of the modes
sounding different from the others (other than in pitch level), then tuning
7tet without measuring tools is not an unreasonable task. Once an
acceptable model instrument has been tuned up, the experienced tuner can
tune by eliminating beats and will be approximately as fast as someone
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