website experiment in intonation

I would like to announce my new website
http://musicweb.hmt-hannover.de/intonation .
This site contains a short description of an experiment in intonational
adaptation with 2 trumpet players.
Comments and discussions are welcome.

Reinhard Kopiez

Thanks Reinhard. I reproduce the conclusion for Carl Lumma's benefit:

>We can confirm the predictions from expertise theory, namely that expertise
is always domain->specific (see Ericsson, 1996): there is no evidence for
successful task-adaptation if there has >not been enough time for skill
acquisition.

[the players had 10 days to learn the example they were presented on a CD --
some received a JI version and some received an ET version -- PHE]

>The standard tuning system for a trumpet player in an orchestra is the
equal tempered system. >This seems to be already internalized in the early
stage of higher music education, as with a >conservatoire student. The
student player "H" already shows a remarkable instinct for his major >thirds
and minor seventh. From this point we can say that subject "H" was not a
novice and his >near-perfect adaptation to ET was not expected.

>There is no evidence for an automatic adaptation to a so-called "natural"
tuning system like JI. >Both performers had far less expertise in ensemble
playing (without piano) and had had little >chance to acquire intonational
skills for JI to the same extent as for ET. We can assume that >the player's
adaptation to JI would be much better for instance after one week of
intensive >rehearsals in a brass ensemble. On the basis of Sundberg's (1987,
p. 178) studies on intonation >in barbershop singing which showed that these
singers can adapt to beat-free just intonation >with a mean deviation of
less than 3 c, we can hypothesize that expert musicians are capable of
>perfect task adaptation.

>These results open perspectives for music education. The surprisingly
successful adaptation to >the "unnatural" ET system shows that only
deliberate practice is required to adapt to a given >task. So we cannot
support Vogel's assumption (see quotation in the header) of the
>unattainability of ET for brass instruments. From our point of view the
role of the human >factor, the professional musician and his skill to
compensate for a wide range of imperfections >has been underestimated. In
other words: not the trumpet, but the trumpeter makes the music.

>http://musicweb.hmt-hannover.de/intonation.
>
>This site contains a short description of an experiment in intonational
>adaptation with 2 trumpet players. Comments and discussions are welcome.

That's a very interesting experiment, which bears on a topic Paul Erlich
and I have been discussing. The experiment, or at least its write-up, has
one major hurdle for me, and that is the playing of an entire song. It
would help me to see data on lone intervals first, obtained under the
conditions of the rest of your test. I am also concerned about the size of
your sample space, and the fact that they were both highly trained musicians.

I would like to ask how the players heard themselves during the recording.
Was their sound mixed into their headphones? If so, how?

-Carl