Comma shift and the speed of the galaxy

>>Is there a way for a multiplicity of tunings to co-exist in a way that
>>performers from different camps can play together or is there a need for a
>>"standard" tuning for practical reasons such as instrument manufacturing and
>>performance?

I don't know of any reason why there can't be a variety of tunings in use.
My good friend, who is in his 3rd year at Julliard, has 4 trumpets, all of
them approximate 12 to a different degree. So why can't he have instead 4
trumpets that approximate 4 different tunings? I would think different
tunings would be a boon for manufacturing- they're always looking for
something to sell.

Keep in mind that only fixed pitch instruments are fixed in pitch. My
abovementioned friend has a brass quintet. They played a concert this past
Monday night at a local catholic church. Any chord longer than .5 seconds
was played in pure 5-limit Just Intonation, despite the fact that none of
them know what that means any better than they know what equal temperament
means. They do know the old rule: "Raise the 5th and Flat the 3rd!"

They played some songs along with the organ, and it wasn't hard to hear the
intonation fight on these tracks. Afterwards, they all confirmed the
difficulty of keeping in tune with the organ. Anybody familiar with groups
like the Canadian or Empire brass can confirm that JI is nothing new to
ensembles of this kind.

>>Will the fragmentation of opinion among tuning pioneers inhibit a popular
>>movement beyond 12TET, so that alternate tunings remain the province of
>>academics and isolated pockets of experimentation?

Who wants a popular movement? A bottom-up enema is needed. It starts with
a generalized midi keyboard and GOOD MICROTUNING SYNTH in every ear training
room in the conservatory. Assignments for analysing the various ET's.
Singing Just Intervals.

We've got it in Barbershop. I went to a week-long camp called "Harmony
College" this past August. I took a class called "Tune it or Die". It
discussed the problem of where to put the comma so you don't go flat. The
prof had a PC running Justonic's Pitch Pallete (which the Barbershop Society
has been involved with from the beginning), and some software that would
measure the harmonics of a sound (good Barbershop vocal technique aims to
cull every harmonic possible from the human voice).

He also had an old Xen-modified keyboard called the "Just Intonation
Trainer". It automatically tunes 4-5-6-7 chords in every key, in any
inversion, but only if all 4 notes, and no others, are used. (When one
plays a 4 and 6 on the 12-tone physical keyboard, a simple gait opens to a
pair of virtual keyboards: one for the 5's, the other for the 7's.) It has
two waveforms and a 3 octave range. Really a very limiting instrument, but
great for singing and hearing- except when the logic was turned off!

Now, as to where to put the comma...

>>Certainly, singers temper intervals.
>>However, they do not require an explicit system to do so.

If they did, they wouldn't. But I don't think they do, at least not without
a keyboard. I'm NOT saying they always sing right on in any system. But
"tempering" usually means adjusting intervals in a specific way, for the
purpose of modulating in a specific way. Singers just don't do this, and I
for one, am glad.

>>As odd as it may seem, I must agree with Gregg Gibson that most traditional
>>Western music requires temperament, not necessarily always ET but necessarily
>>a meantone temperament, to adequately perform it.

I don't think i'd say "most". Much of it really should have meantone, true
enough. But at least as much of it can be tuned in JI with good results.

>>If the pitches were not adjusted in the midst of playing them, the key of
a >>typical piece of classical music would drift, usually downwards, by
several >>commas by the time the piece was completed.

The first thing to consider is if this pitch drift is important. In pieces
that resolve to the tonic, I believe it most definitely is. Even listeners
who do not know that the song has gone flat will without a doubt have some
feeling of being let down. In pieces with plenty of modulation, I'm not
sure it's as important.

The second question is where to put the comma. In the abovementioned
Barbershop class I took, the following example was given...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chord: CMaj E7 A7 A7 D7 G7 Cmaj
(I) (III7) (VI7) (VI7) (II7) (V7) (I)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tenor 5........8........12 7 10 7 5
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lead 4 7 10.......5 7 5 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bari 3 5 7 4........6 4........3
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bass 2 3 4 3 4........3 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Here is why some guys sing flat"

..I wish I could include the music. Although there were no ties, the
dotted lines indicate that the same 12-tone note is repeated in that part.
Now, for frequencies...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chord: CMaj E7 A7 A7 D7 G7 Cmaj
(I) (III7) (VI7) (VI7) (II7) (V7) (I)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tenor 327.03~~~327.03~~~~327.03 381.52 363.36 339.13 322.98
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lead 261.63 286.15 272.52~~~272.52 254.35 242.24 258.39
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bari 196.22 204.39 190.76 218.01~~~218.01 193.79~~~193.79
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bass 130.81 122.64 109.01 163.51 145.34~~~145.34 129.19