Answer to my own question: Beers and Frequencies

I have not yet located the original experiment, but I have more details on
the duplication of the experiment by artists James Turrell and Robert
Irwin.

In Craig Adcock-s monograph on the artist _James Turrell_ (subtitled _The
Art of Light and Space_), I found the following:

_...the team redid a lighthearted study carried out by Kristian Holt-Hansen
in 1968 involving _Taste and Pitch_. The _experiment_ tested how the tastes
of Carlsberg Lager and Carlsberg Elephant beer were affected by sound:
_Certain tones produced no effect on the tastes of the beers, but when the
relationship occurred, i.e., when the tone was at the particular pitch
cited (650 Hz for the Elephant beer, 10-15 Hz for the lager), the beer
tasted distinctly better._

Lawrence Wechsler (in _Seeing is Forgetting The Name of the Thing One
Sees_) states the result slightly differently:

_...they were able to confirm that Carlsberg Elephant Beer tastes best when
drunk within the aural context of a particular tone (650 Hz) and that
varying that pitch only slightly renders the brew almost undrinkable._

I look forward to hearing of any further confirmations of this experimental
data. The Carlsberg brewery assures me that there have been no substantial
changes in their product since 1968.

Daniel Wolf/Material Press/Frankfurt

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/DJWOLF_MATERIAL/mphome.htm

Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl
with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sun, 6 Oct 1996 17:30 +0200
Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA23028; Sun, 6 Oct 1996 16:31:29 +0100
Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA22290
Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI)
for id IAA05619; Sun, 6 Oct 1996 08:31:21 -0700
Date: Sun, 6 Oct 1996 08:31:21 -0700
Message-Id: <199610061529.LAA16621@copland.udel.edu>
Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu
Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu

> Actually i believe that the Kurzweil k2000 and the new k2500 have the
> ability to have each individual key tuned to whatever pitch you need. [...]
> it is however a tedious process to retune the kurzweil.

According to a friend who has a K2500, the process of tuning it completely
arbitrarily comes down to assigning a separate (I don't know the Kurzweil
terminology, be the Ensoniq term is "wavesample") to every single key on the
keyboard, and individually tuning each wavesample to the desired pitch. That as
opposed to allowing each wavesample span across several keys as usual, and
having a pitch table adjust the pitches, as you can do on Ensoniq machines and a
mere handful of others.

I understand though that somebody markets a program to help K2x00 users in
performing this sort of retuning process. I believe it runs on the Mac.

Now I'm not suggesting by any means that the K2x00 is a bad instrument. It's
a very powerful machine, but it's apparently not optimized for unusual tunings.


As I've mentioned before though, I do have a gripe about the Ensoniq scheme:
Which wavesample it plays is based upon key number alone, instead of the pitch
that the pitch table defines the key to. (This, I believe at least, is not true
of their "synth" line, but only their sampler line.) So, if you load up a
tuning table that makes an octave span across a significantly larger number of
keys than 12, the lower keys sound squeeky and the upper keys sound groggy. You
have to redistribute the split-points between wavesamples for some tunings.
(But that is still a lot easier than on the K2x00, and in many cases you don't
have to do it at all.)

There is of course a potential problem with having tuning tables
automatically move the wavesample split points, which is that it can wreak havoc
with "mapped" instruments like drum sounds for example. The answer of course is
to make that an option, or far better still, to allow the user to define regions
of the keyboard to which you independently apply the effects of the pitch table.


Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl
with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sun, 6 Oct 1996 20:26 +0200
Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA24221; Sun, 6 Oct 1996 19:27:54 +0100
Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA24283
Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI)
for id LAA06523; Sun, 6 Oct 1996 11:27:49 -0700
Date: Sun, 6 Oct 1996 11:27:49 -0700
Message-Id: <9610061125.ZM14279@frollo>
Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu
Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu