Retuning?

[The Dong]

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....