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Just to set the record straight. I have had my piano in Young, (as well as Vallotti, Werckmeister III, for fun) for the last year or so until my wife said she had had enough and wanted something less strong so she could transpose as necessary. Those were easy to tune, so I thought I would try ET, knowing it was the hardest of all. I figure once I can set it well (after a decade or so of practice) I would try Bill 's temperament or a late victorian style.
So many technicians have told me they have never encountered a piano that had been tuned in Reverse Well but nobody seems to recognize it when it is right there. Sure, it has bad unisons too and it is really bad over all but the foundation for this really bad tuning is none other than Reverse Well.
I didn't tune it and I didn't make the video. I have never even seen this piano but the young man who did wondered if what he was hearing was what I had been talking about, so he made the video.
Then again, I suppose the claim could be made that it was ET and it just morphed itself into the way it is now. It is ET because according to the TV documentary that was displayed on here, according to Stuart Isacoff's book and just about any other source that one may read, all pianos have been tuned in ET since the time of J.S. Bach.
Since there never has been any such thing as Well Temperament or if there was, so few people ever used it that it did not deserve any mention in any books or documentaries, this video must be an example of ET.
It is ET because the person who tuned it used a 4ths & 5ths sequence from a book that told him how to tune ET. He thought it was ET and he intended it to be ET, so therefore it must be ET. He had never heard of such a thing as Reverse Well, so it could not be that.
If what people have said on here is correct, this tuning is perfectly fine because there are no effects from Well Temperament that are significant, so there must not be any effects from the way the piano in this video was tuned that make any difference to the music played on it either.
The school where the piano is paid for the tuning that you hear in this video. The Band Director accepted it as a piano tuning and assumed that the temperament was ET, so all things considered, it must be ET. The gentleman from Tokyo says that it is a fact that virtually all pianos are tuned in ET with few exceptions. One frequent poster on this forum claims that 99.9% of pianos in the entire world over are tuned in ET. That is a statistic which is absolutely certain, so the piano in this video must be in ET.
If an untruth is told often enough and is repeated virtually everywhere, people in general accept it as the truth. So there it is, folks! The piano in this video is tuned in ET!
It is no wonder that people cannot get their around temperament when there are people like Mr. Bremmer "explaining" it!
Maybe we need to go back to the basics:
"Tempering" means "softening." People get confused because "tempered steel" is steel which has been hardened, and then softened. There is soft steel that has not been hardened. There is hard steel that has not been tempered. Tempering is a method of obtaining a specific amount of softness in hardened steel.
In music, "tempering" refers to methods of dividing the octave into a specific number of fixed tones. In Western music, it is usually 12 notes.
Just intonation, dividing the octave into pure intervals from one specified tone, results in some harsh intervals which beat rapidly. Tempering softens those intervals.
Many instruments are capable of playing varying tones which are not fixed. They do not have a specific temperament.
Examples of instruments which have temperaments are keyboard instruments; xylophones, vibraphones, and marimbas; fretted stringed instruments like guitars, mandolins, and banjos; harps and ocarinas. Many of these instruments cannot be tuned particularly accurately. Somehow, people manage without worrying very much about their temperament.
The fact that these instruments can play together even though their temperaments may be different shows that temperament is not such a big deal.
Temperament is not the only explanation for a poorly tuned piano. It is not the only thing one needs to be able to cope with when tuning a piano.
ORIGIN Old English temprian‘bring something into the required condition by mixing it with something else,’ from Latin temperare ‘mingle, restrain oneself.’ Sense development was probably influenced by Old French temprer ‘to temper, moderate.'
Well, I will just let others decide whether the definition is apt or not, particularly at the time that the usage was adopted, and more importantly, whether questioning it impedes understanding the subject.
Mr. Fujita, thanks for your comprehensive and logical approach.
It saddens me to see this vitriol and complete misunderstanding concerning temperament. The more misinformed opinions spout, the more confused young ones in the world, trying to learn, will become.
Temperament is not a difficult issue to understand, aside from the dire lack of scholarly input. This wash of incorrect explanation does make it nearly impossible to penetrate.
Fixed tone solutions which rely on one rate of curvature for tuning (all keyboard instruments) will never have all intervals in tune. But this is simply a resolution problem! Equal temperaments such as 53-TET allow almost all common intervals to be pure. Infinite resolution or fluid pitch can achieve purity everywhere!
Mathematicians understand this. Physicists know that exact whole number ratios have little to do with pure intervals because of a concept called bandwidth on real instruments.
Unequal temperament is beautiful testament to variable tone solutions on a fixed tone instrument. Equal temperament on our modern instruments became a beautiful solution only because of increased bandwidth, increased inharmonicity and the scientific understanding needed to apply it.
Over matters of art and taste, what is the point of argument?
I agree, misinformation doesn’t help.
...“Fixed tone solutions which rely on one rate of curvature for tuning (all keyboard instruments) will never have all intervals in tune. But this is simply a resolution problem! Equal temperaments such as 53-TET allow almost all common intervals to be pure. Infinite resolution or fluid pitch can achieve purity everywhere!”...
Let’s treat the resolution problem later; from the above, it might be understood that “in tune” can only be referred to “pure” intervals. Yes, in early days the idea of “consonance” was related with “non-beating” intervals, but – careful - “in tune” does not mean “beatless”. As an evidence, today we understand and appreciate dissonant intervals, and dissonance too can, in turn, sound “in tune” or not.
...”Mathematicians understand this.”...
True, but Mathematicians of the past were asked to keep the octave in a 2:1 ratio, and perhaps (I guess) not being familiar with actual beat-curves, they only worked onto the scale numerical values. In those terms, with those constraints, there was no solution.
...”Physicists know that exact whole number ratios have little to do with pure intervals because of a concept called bandwidth on real instruments.”...
True, “whole number ratios” work as a “representation”.
...”Unequal temperament is beautiful testament to variable tone solutions on a fixed tone instrument.”...
Yes, there is something “beautiful” about UTs testament, “how” they slowly shaped the tonal scale.
...”Equal temperament on our modern instruments became a beautiful solution only because of increased bandwidth, increased inharmonicity and the scientific understanding needed to apply it.”...
If possible, remember to put an 'IMO'. Tuning an 1802 Cabinet, to me, made no difference, albeit it wasn't 12th root of two. All in all, I would re-word that sentence.
...”Over matters of art and taste, what is the point of argument?”
Hmmm..., IMO talking about “art” doesn’t make the whole subject more comprehensible, and yes, “..taste..”, I look forward to listening to your favorite tuning, all intervals in a slow chromatic succession.
If an untruth is told often enough and is repeated virtually everywhere, people in general accept it as the truth.
A fantastic and very eccentric 80-something year old pianist, Russell Sherman, gave a master and delivered one of his many charmingly whimsical axioms:
"Tradition, after all, is nothing more than the memory of a bad performance."
Michael
"Genius is nothing more than an extraordinary capacity for patience." Leonardo da Vinci
I think any comment on that recording of a "temperament" being anything but out of tune, is reaching for meaning where none exists. That was just a bad tuning.
BTW Marty, when I read your post, I was BLINDED BY THE LIGHT.
That's not yelling, that's the title of a song, I was singing it. BTW, if CAPS mean yelling, what keyboard technique means "singing", hmmm? Gotchu there there, didn't I? Right back atcha!
BTW Marty, when I read your post, I was BLINDED BY THE LIGHT.
That's not yelling, that's the title of a song, I was singing it. BTW, if CAPS mean yelling, what keyboard technique means "singing", hmmm? Gotchu there there, didn't I? Right back atcha!
Oh, this has me giggling with my morning coffee. Good one, Mark!
Just as the next line in the song is one of the most misunderstood in all of rock literature, so goes the reading of many a thread in this forum. Or, "many a poor lad" if we are at the "House of the Rising Sun."
BTW Mark, you don't happen to own a Farfisa, do you?
Marty in Minnesota
It's much easier to bash a Steinway than it is to play one.
I think any comment on that recording of a "temperament" being anything but out of tune, is reaching for meaning where none exists. That was just a bad tuning.
Mark, that is Reverse Well, plain and simple. I really have no idea why anyone would deny that. There is a reason why the temperament ended up being the way it is. If you think that it is just a random example, then you don't know what you don't know and that goes for anyone else who may think the same thing. I know what the reason is. I know what the entire foundation for it is. You had it posted on your website but I am happy to see that you took it down. That was a good move on your part.
Sorry, I haven't taken anything off the site. What are you referring to?
Although, maybe I did take it off but didn't know it, since I don't know what I don't know and if I didn't know it was taken off and it was, then I wouldn't know, know?
BTW Marty, when I read your post, I was BLINDED BY THE LIGHT.
That's not yelling, that's the title of a song, I was singing it. BTW, if CAPS mean yelling, what keyboard technique means "singing", hmmm? Gotchu there there, didn't I? Right back atcha!
Oh, this has me giggling with my morning coffee. Good one, Mark!
Just as the next line in the song is one of the most misunderstood in all of rock literature, so goes the reading of many a thread in this forum. Or, "many a poor lad" if we are at the "House of the Rising Sun."
BTW Mark, you don't happen to own a Farfisa, do you?
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