another organized religion?

Jay here,
All these discussions concerning the how's, wheres. and whens of the
establishment of 12tet prompt me to ask: Just how prevalent is equal
temperament in practice, knowingly or unknowingly?
It w2asn't long after I was out on my own as a pianotuner that I began to
look for ways to moderate the rattly fifths and fourths that equal
temperament contributed to a piano's treble til finally, I happened to be
tuning in the presence of Charles Fisk, the great organ builder. He remarked
that I wasn't tuning an equal temperament, was I? I said that was probably
true as I wanted purer fifths and that I didn't much care what happened to
the thirds as et made them so rattly anyway, just let 'em vary a bit from
key to key.
He said my temperament sound to him like the Werkmeister III temperament and
told me that he always tuned his organs to that intonation. He proceeded to
demonstrate and it was clearto me that I had intuited something awfully like
that tuning.
I notice more and more, that recent piano recordings sound suspiciously
sweeter to my ears than those of years ago, and I just wonder if tungers in
general aren't taking a more "spiritual" rather than "religious" approach to
tuning. They may say they tune in et and profess it, but are they really? I
think not.
Most of us have a lazy streak somewhere in our systems, and if ya tink about
it, tuning a 12tet is damned hard work. I find tuning a "well temperament"
much easier and it sounds a bunch nicer, so I do it.
While we're at it, do some of the rest of ya notice that the tunings on a
lotta synths are pretty poor excuses for et?
And just so ya know, I'm constantly being told by pianists that my tuning is
"sweet" and they want more of it.

Jay Williams wrote,

>While we're at it, do some of the rest of ya notice that the tunings on a
>lotta synths are pretty poor excuses for et?

That would seem odd, since most digital synths have an internal tuning table
that is a multiple of 12 equal steps per octave. Which synths did you have
in mind?

At 05:30 PM 2/7/00 -0500, you wrote:
>From: "Paul H. Erlich" <PErlich@Acadian-Asset.com>
>
>Jay Williams wrote,
>
>>While we're at it, do some of the rest of ya notice that the tunings on a
>>lotta synths are pretty poor excuses for et?
>
>That would seem odd, since most digital synths have an internal tuning table
>that is a multiple of 12 equal steps per octave. Which synths did you have
>in mind?
>Well, my Kawai K5 and Roland SC55 are pretty well matched and are very
close, but nevertheless, slightly different. They both have
constantly-accelerating beats as you move chromatically, but they're not
identical. I admit, for those two, ya kinda hafta look hard and make
simultaneous comparisons to catch the differences.
However, on my Turtle Beach Tropez sound card and my Prophet 2002 Sampler,
anything goes. They just sawed off the tops
of those 12tet tables and never planed 'em.
And that got me curious as to just how they build those tables, so I looked
up the data on the old Radio Shack 276-1780 "top octave synthesizer" chip.
So, at some point, there has to be some digital rounding-off into 1's and
0's. I wonder if something equivalent to "dithering" is ever used to taylor
the final result.
Thanks for prompting me to obsess awhile. <grin?
Jay
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