Retuning?

[Tony Hardie-Bick]

Whew, I was just about to start a long spiel, but the Dong saved me.

I would add, if you tune a synth to say, Barnes-Bach or whatever, it sounds 
"wrong" to my ears, and that's because I've become accustomed to hearing equal 
temperament my whole life, much as one gets used to hearing a particular accent 
or a language.

Having said that, many physical instruments have non-linearities, so, as high 
harmonics travel faster through a string than the fundamental, a piano's 
harmonic series is slightly sharp. This is more true in uprights, because this 
enharmonicity is greater when the ratio of a string's thickness to its length is 
higher. And to make a piano sound in tune with itself, the notes are naturally 
tuned slightly sharp. Every piano being different, the skill of a piano tuner is 
to (given the particular requirements already implicit in the equal tempered 
scale) make the piano sound beautiful/musical by adjusting the tuning of the 
higher notes so that these coincide in a certain way with the harmonics of lower 
notes. Wonderful stuff. Very hard core. Grand pianos are popular for orchestral 
music, not just because of their loudness and projection, but because they can 
be tuned less sharp wrt themselves, ie closer to "ideal" tuning, and hence, on 
average, closer to the tuning of the orchestra as a whole.

What is wonderful about an orchestra, is that all the instrumentalists with an 
instrument that can adjust its pitch, are constantly shifting, not to 
necessarily achieve exact harmonic relationships, but to employ a certain sound 
arising from the degree of detuning with their neighbours or those instruments 
currently sounding in the performance.

"Tuning In: Microtonality in Electronic Music" is a really excellent, humourous, 
light and yet serious introduction to microtonality. For me, it's the bible.

http://is.gd/3WN5n

Tony (HB)

The Dong wrote:
> Peter Korsten wrote:
>> So the question is, is the chromatic scale the way it is because people 
>> prefer those intervals, or I am conditioned to listen to them?
> 
> It is the way it is because it is too difficult to make nearly all 
> instruments (and make music) with 'proper' pitch relationships. You are 
> 100% conditioned to accept them as normal, because it is practically all 
> you hear.
> 
> If you can tune a guitar with the 5th/4th previous fret and next string 
> or computer tone to tune up to, when your pitch is off, you will hear 
> beating in the sound, then a flattening of these beats when it 
> approaches standard tuning. As things are, as soon as you start to 
> combine single notes into chords, or even move up and down the 
> fretboard, it doesn't take a genius to realise that this perfectly tuned 
> guitar is far from perfect.
> 
> There are various 'schools' of 'perfect' tuning, most are to produce 
> this perfect tuning with no beats, OR, to create pleasant sound 
> utilising this beating effect. Throughout history, many changes of 
> concert pitch have happened but, as you can imagine, it is quite an 
> upheaval to do so on a global, western scale. Many composers experiment 
> at some point outside the norm and these western tunings don't even 
> apply to the majority of historical tunings and scales of the planets 
> population anyway!
> 
> The rest of it is just a shifting approximation of whatever one can get 
> away with without being labelled unable to tune ones instrument, 
> sometimes along with other variably in tune instruments, let alone play 
> it pleasingly ;)
> 
> Or something....
> 
> 
> 
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