Equal temps are "easy"

Hey Monzo...look, I know you're a sharp fellow, and I enjoy your
ideas. But, do you really think eq temps are "easier?" Boy, that opens up
a whole canful of ideas about music and expression; I mean, I guarantee
you that John Starrett's upcoming pieces on the forum CD are
extraordinarily difficult to play, even though they're in 19 eq, and
they're great music to boot. On the other hand, I've heard a BUNCH of
music in pure tunings that didn't take much skill or imagination to play.
If you mean that understanding pure tunings is on a higher level of some
sort, as opposed to the "simpler" eq temps, maybe. There is surely a
depth in the exploration of the harmonic series that approaches infinity;
how intellectual knowledge translates into music and sound is a whole
different ballgame, though. I'm not sure if my 34 tone eq temp guitar is
any "easier" to play than Rod Poole's 17 tone purely fretted axe. In
fact, Rod told me that even 22 notes was uncomfortable for him. So, pure
or tempered, "easy" is a tricky term to use regarding a choice of
instruments. People can surely have various reasons why they choose a
certain tuning system. As has been pointed out many times,
temperaments allow a musician to utilize a lot of chord changes,
while often, pure tunings are more modally oriented. I like and respect
any form of profound expression, chordal or scalar; I see the study and
application of different tuning systems one more tool in my musical bag.
I try to apply tunings much the same way I do modal ideas in my 12 tone
playing; as Ivor Darreg often pointed out, each system has it's own mood
or feel; this is absolutely correct. So, I will continue to study and
apply new concepts of tuning in an effort to improve my art. But, if I
want to expand on Coltrane's "Giant Steps," I'll bet, first of all, that
it is "harder" than snot to play, and is much better suited to an equal
temp (such as 19, where I have adapted it), than it is to a purely tuned
instrument...Hstick