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The fact that you want to ask other technicians about the work of three authors working on equal temperament improvements and not the authors directly (we are all three still alive), is very unusual for a scientific and objective documentation about theories and makes me assume that your motivation is not primarily to document objectively about equal temperament improvements, but may be rather another attempt to install unequal temperament as common standard until the 19th century. Your project thus has a documentation form i want my work not to be part of.

Bernhard Stopper

I do not dispute that (thanks for all those video's on the subject, learned a lot from it).

I just think a stable tuning can be anything, it has nothing to do with the actual frequencies that the strings are tuned to (within say 5 cent or so).

I'm not sure what acoustical equilibrium is in the aircraft industry, but whatever it is I think there are enough differences between airplanes and piano's that such concepts do not readily carry over. Or have you tuned aircraft?

Kees

Hope the movie will have time to mention split key keyboards.
There is one on the Stanford campus (Fisk-Nanny organ), I'm sure you can film there.
The organ has a giant lever to switch between 1/5' meantone and a well-temperament.

Kees

Hello Kees,
Thanks for the heads up; we will be in that area and the Fisk Nanney organ sounds very interesting!
Berhard, if I am not mistaken you live in Germany? Although, it would be great to go to Europe, it just is not possible for the documentary. I will honor your request and not mention you in the documentary.

What confirms me about your priorities.
Anyway, your respect for my request is very much appreciated.

Bernhard Stopper

Appasionato, I wonder if you would be interested in the Equal Beating Victorian Temperament which I have developed now for 18 years? It began as a quest to tune a very mild Well Temperament for which there were no good aural tuning instructions. Although there was a considerable trial and error involved in putting into writing just how it could be tuned and replicated, the final version did come about in 2007.

What you may find of interest in that final version is that it is virtually identical to the Circulating Temperament Number 2 that Johann George Neidhardt designed in 1724. It is documented in the book by Murray Barbour that BDB suggested.

Contemporary piano technicians and/or mathematicians tend to think in monolithic terms about how the 12 tone scale should be divided: equally. There is a popular book on that subject which I will not name here that in my view, mixes valid research with supposition and substitution of temperament designs which were clearly not equal but called them “equal” anyway just to support the notion that equal Temperament (ET) is now, always was and always will be the only way to temper a scale.

Furthermore, there have been many on-going discussions which are active presently about how the octaves of a piano should be tuned. The more the subject is discussed, the less agreement there is upon what the solution is or should be. The reason for that is simple: it is a dilemma for which there is no perfect solution, only one compromise or another which is deemed to be the best by whoever advocates it at any particular time.

I believe I have found a compromise both in temperament and octave stretch that lends a powerful and beautiful effect to all music played upon the piano. It is a regular and daily practice for me as a piano technician. The compromise in temperament restores the “color” to the key signature that is lost and neutralized by ET. The choice of equal beating intervals both within the temperament and among the octaves provides a canceling effect which effectively suppresses the “noise” caused both by the Pythagorean comma and inharmonicity. I have found a way to turn these two foes against each other to create a sound from the piano that to most people is more interesting and engaging than standard practice.

Recently, I returned to the home of “Grandpianoman”, a long time participant in the tuner-technician forum. He is a professional, classically trained musician who became interested in tuning his own Mason & Hamlin grand piano which has dual player systems (the original one that plays paper rolls and a modern one that plays CD’s). He had taken me up on my offer to come to his home in Portland, OR to tune the piano for him and provide the electronic data for the results so that he could replicate the tuning thereafter. He has been more than thrilled with the results and therefore a very long discussion has ensued.

I suggest you take a listen to this recording of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition:

http://www.box.net/shared/51dnxxpqb1

(You do not have to download the file just to listen).

While because of the equipment failure of the primary recording device, the backup device was used, the recording is still quite good. The pianist is a professional and knows the music well. However, being also a fine organist, he tends to use the sustain pedal sparingly.

The music has all of the elements alluded to in the film clip: from very soft, single note playing to widespread use of the entire keyboard, rumbling Bass to piercing treble. You will be able to hear the effects of “key color” in the modulations that would be absent and neutralized in a standard practice tuning.

It was a single take and therefore has a few wrong notes here and there, especially in the loud and difficult parts where all ten fingers are used, so bear that in mind, please. If this were a recording intended for commercial distribution, it would have been done in a studio and those flaws would have been corrected.

I would just like you and your partners in this project to give this recording and audition. It is a fine example of what can be drawn from the piano using a specific choice of compromises. If you are then interested in exploring further what I have to offer, I would be willing first to contribute monetarily to your project. Secondly, I have ties to Los Angeles and visit there frequently. You may want to have me tune a fine piano in a recording studio and have artists and engineers consider the results. I could provide my own transportation and lodging for that.

If you find these results to be of interest, a further mathematical analysis of what Neidhardt theorized nearly 300 years ago would be in order. Also, just what does happen acoustically and mathematically when equal beating intervals are deployed? There is a film producer in Los Angeles whose name I will not mention here but who has experienced and embraced my work in his home. He has very valuable skills, expertise and experience with just the kind of project you are working on. His contributions could be of considerable value to you.

Please give the link an audition and feel free to audition other links posted on the “My piano in the EBVT III” thread. Compare the recording of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures…” with any other commercially released CD of the same music, if you will. Is there an enhancement or does the piano just sound “out of tune” by today’s standards and the opinions of artists and professional recording engineers?

That is for you and your group to decide. You will see that there has been much heated discussion pro and con about both temperament and octave stretching. That is to be expected. Piano technicians tend to hold very strongly to the set of ideas which they have developed. What matters most however is not what any piano technician thinks about the way he or she may tune a piano or the way anyone else may tune but how that work is perceived by the artists, producers and recording engineers.

I look forward to your comments, whatever they may be.

Sincerely,

If you're in the Bay area anyways; there are quite a few organs in unequal temperament over there. Berkeley (forgot the name), Lutheran church Palo Alto, and more. I know an organist there that plays them all (and refuses to play ET organs). Send me a personal message if you want his contact info. He'll be thrilled to show/tell you more.

Kees

I know what I heard. I didn't expect that anyone went to the trouble of changing the tone of the harpsichord itself when just a twist of a mixing knob will do it. I suspect the pitch was raised, also.

Strangely the WT version is played at A=440, but the ET version at A=415 with reverb added. Just a test shooting of course...

Kees

For this project to be funded they need to have $2000 pledged by September. I signed up with $15 which gives me a DVD of the movie when it comes out. No money will be charged to your credit card if the project is not funded. They are at $1615 already.

(Hint.)

Kees

Appassionato,

Thank you for your interest and for trying to contribute to music.

I'd better say immediately how Chas renews the age-old static approach. Chas Theory approach to temperament is dynamic.

Chas shifts the hub of the matter and, perhaps for the first time ever, describes how our semitonal scale can be ordered in a sound-whole, by beats. This new approach is then featuring three main “keys”: Beats, Proportions and Time.

During the whole history of temperaments, previous models have elected one single interval - the octave first and more recently the fifth (Cordier - 1981) and the 12th (Stopper - 1989) – fulcrum of the scale, in other words one of those intervals should sound “pure”, i.e. beat-less, and the frequencies were derived from this axiom.

Chas describes a dynamic system and a dual ratio: all intervals can beat, and their beat-ratio can define and order the scale-ratio and frequencies values.

Our semitonal scale, so far calculated on the basis of one pure interval, can now be represented as a “beating whole”, a pure whole in that sounds frequencies and beats find their closest interrelation, their biunivocal correspondence, the “in Time” proportion.

Chas is not anymore featuring a compromise but a fusion that can reach the absolute integer. In fact, all partials can share a “difference-ratio”, the 1:1 beat-proportion which now defines the scale exponential ratio. By modifying this beat proportion we can re-find past settings, or create new ones. This may prove how this modern theory is assumption-free. Our numerical generator - one (1) - can order our logarithmic scale together with primes 2 and 3, and still we could arbitrarily variate that “tare” (the 1:1 proportion) and calculate either an old or a new scale, ET or note by note.

From an “economic” point of view, it ends up that we loose one pure interval in favor of an integer and perfectly coherent whole, that we can dismiss a static, unjustifiable zero-beat approach in favor of a thoroughly dynamic one. We can dismiss a limited module - be it 7, 12 or 19 semitones - and go for an inter-modular, infinite set.

Conceptually, we can overtake the one-interval-supremacy idea and elaborate on the infinite beat-relations (you could read colors) of a dynamic sound whole. Beats can open to synergy and lead towards new degrees of harmonic resonance. More is linked below.

Stopper, you write:..."The fact that you want to ask other technicians about the work of three authors working on equal temperament improvements and not the authors directly (we are all three still alive), is very unusual for a scientific and objective documentation about theories and makes me assume that..."

Sure Cordier is still alive? Have you already posted your tuning sequence? How do you justify "beat-symmetry" and "zero-beat" 12ths? What is the meaning of a 19 semitones module? Let's tell each other, we are still alive, perhaps now it may be Time.

Regards, a.c.

Discussion in PW:

http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1438536/1.html

https://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubb...ISTORICAL%20ET%20AND%20MODERN%20ETs.html

CHAS tuning practice in PW:

http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1326050/1.html

CHAS MP3 - Amatorial recording on a Steinway S (5’ 1”, 155 cm)
http://www.box.net/shared/od0d7506cv

CHAS THEORY - RESEARCH REPORT BY G.R.I.M. (Department of Mathematics, University of Palermo, Italy):
http://math.unipa.it/~grim/Quaderno19_Capurso_09_engl.pdf

Would that be "the smallest positive integer not nameable in under eleven words"?

Kees

I do not think so. Nice paradox though, thanks.

Regards, a.c.

I saw someone display their "absolute integer" in heavy traffic the other day...

Signore Capurso,

we may take up further discussions if you can negate (or find someone else doing for you) the three falsification points i provided ealier in the CHAS thread about your CHAS paper: (link below)

https://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1340096/Re:%20CIRCULAR%20HARMONIC%20SYSTEM%20-.html#Post1340096


Bernhard Stopper

Bernhard, Stopper, Signor/Herr/Mr. Stopper, do you have a preference? For me it does not matter, you can call me Alfredo.

I shall reply in Chas thread.

Regards, a.c.

I don't think he's aware that he's posting on a forum where the people developing these temperaments discuss them. He's just recently heard of these temperaments, and is assuming that technicians in general will be able to tell him more, in the same way that they might explain ET.

just pledged! the digital download is nice for people like me living abroad, though i think the step of 35$ from 15$ to 50$ is a bit tough if you're interested in the bonus material.

Thank you everyone for providing the information and supporting the project! We have been shooting and are still shooting for the next few weeks; apologies for not posting earlier.