Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum I just can't get my head around temperament!

Try as I might I cannot get to grips with "just" and "wolf" tuning. Help!

"The piano is an untunable instrument. With only 12 notes in an octave, their combinations (intervals) cannot all be perfectly "in tune" at once. Tuning a note to perfect one interval will spoil others which use that same note ,thus, compromises (tempering) are used to create the maximum number of usable intervals"

Untuneable? Ugh?
From
http://www.piano-tuners.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html

Larry,

May I suggest you watch this video by Mark Cerisano

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euNO51xDaj8

Ian

If you want to have some fun, feel the temperature rise as the tuners become ill-tempered whenever temperament is mentioned.

Marty,
I thought you were "ill tempered" towards "bickering"? Here you seem to invite it.

I'm not inviting it, I'm acknowledging that it is rife in this forum whenever the topic comes up.

Larry, now you know how to tune equal temperament here's a bit of history from Pythagoras to the accordion.

Greetings,
That is a quote I took from Bill Garlick. It refers to "in tune" as being as consonant an arrangement as possible. "Just" if you will.
In this sense, ET is totally out of tune. However, this is a semantic delineation, and has very little to do with the sensual qualities that various sizes of intervals create. I hear, repeatedly, that the WT tunings I sell make customers' pianos sound far more "in tune" than they had heard before. (their word$, not mine).

To temper is to depart from "in tune", unless one considers wide thirds to be "in tune" . If so, I don't know how they would describe pure intervals while at the same time describing 13.7 cent wide thirds are "in tune". If 13 cent thirds are "in tune", then what are 10 cent thirds, or 17 cent thirds?

Some listeners have their sense of consonance set in concrete, and anything that departs from their choice of "in tune" is "out". I have usually found that these people don't know what they like, but rather, they like what they know.

I don't know what "wolf tuning" is, unless it is perhaps a dangerous attempt to change a particular canine's vocal quality.
Regards,

The assumption is being made that the modern orchestra and modern vocalists perform in absolute "equal" temperament. We know that just isn't true. So much for the final example.

On another note, has anyone ever heard an accordion which is actually in tune, even with itself? Ah yes, das wohltemperierte Akkordeon.

Yet so many of us sally forth weekly in fine fettle and well temperament to joust bravely at the windmills of making something untunable, ... well, ... tuned.

In that vein, every time I get a call to tune a wolf, I politely decline.

That video is on the level of TV programs on UFO abductions in the Bermuda Triangle.

Kees

What if the wolf was howling "in tune"?

We could only reliably determine that by having Ed Foote examine the animal at close range.

So, Larry. Are you any clearer now on temperament, from the point of view that pure or just intervals and playable keys in all 12 signatures is not possible, never minding different types of temperament for now?

This is when it goes from head wrapping to an exploding head.

I wonder if this would help:

Yeah, what does that guy know?

http://www.howardgoodall.co.uk/

The orchestra at the begin is all than playing in ET, BTW.

I like the super hero approach, but have been deceived not to see a meteorite falling in real and making an end to all previous intonation systems.

ALso the guy does not really smoke from the noses , while he sits at the top of the volcano, it would have been more impressive, me think.

Larry? Are you still reading?

I haven't had chance to view the video yet, but I have the feeling I'm gonna regret asking...