Real instruments

[Batz Goodfortune]

Y-ellow Roel 'n' y'all.

At 01:07 AM 01/14/00 +0100, Roel Das wrote:

[bobbit]

>And another point, a whole tone is divided into 9 comma's (or whatever you
>call it in English). A cross raises the tone with 5 commas, a flat lowers it
>with 5. So C# and Db differ one comma. This is never 'implemented' on any
>instrument for practical reasons. (Although I'd love to hear an instrument
>tuned this way.)

I think what you're talking about here is Equal Temperament. It only came
to mind since the ABC just ran "Howard Goodall's Big Bangs." A 5 part
Television documentary in which the composer Howard Goodall explained what
he thought the 5 pivotal developments in music were. And out of interest
they were.

1)written music
2)Opera
3)equal Temperament
4)the Piano
5)recorded music.

I can't say I disagree with that. Although for me, number 6 might be the
synthesizer. Howard suggested it might be the internet.

Natural tuning works up until about the 5th. After which it  can no longer
be naturally mathematically devisable which means you have to  re-tune for
every key you play. What that meant is that you virtually had to have an
instrument which was tuned for every song you played. Or, your repertoire
was very limited. Which, up until the 16th century, it was. If memory
serves it was a mate of Bach's, his star pupal,  who cracked that nut by
making adjustments to the tunings such that they became equally spaced.
Thus you didn't have to re-tune your instruments and you could
play/transpose into/from any key.

As evidence of this, Howard Goodall showed us a Romany wedding procession
band. Although they were using more modern instruments such as the
accordion, they still used the original scaling. To us it sounds
discordant. To them it sounds perfectly natural. The thing is that our
preference for equal temperament is a _learnt_thing_. We find the music of
ethnic Chinese and Middle Eastern cultures to be discordant but they don't
hear it that way.

Our keyboards are therefore tuned so that all the scales lock together
equally but natural harmonics follow the predictable logarithmic scale.
Therefore when you hear a naturally occurring set of over tones, they beat
with, out of tune with, other notes in our tuning scale.

Over time what we have done is try to remove those harmonics from our
instruments because we instinctively know they cause unpleasant dissonance.
It is something we've learnt from birth. But to someone like, say a Romany
musician, they probably wouldn't find them displeasing.

>This brings out the cultural aspects of tone recognition. How perfect CAN
>perfect pitch be?
>Any considerations on this?

Yup. That's pretty much how Howard put it. Our so called perfect pitch is a
learnt thing. To another culture who has learnt a different "perfect pitch"
our music probably sounds just as discordant.

>On the other side, i HATE instruments that are out of tune.
>I really like this discussion.
>All yours.

Yup. I have no desire to _un-leaarn_ that scaling. :) And out of interest,
according to Howard, the thing that spread what we know as equal
temperament around the world, particularly through Europe, is the humble
accordion. Fixed in tuning, Cultures such as the Romanies had to adapt
their traditional music to work with the accordion.

And if you ever get to see Howard Goodall's big bangs, I can highly
recommend it. Indeed any of Howard's other documentaries are excellent. His
history of Organs (Howard Goodall's organ works) would be of particular
interest to a synth builder.

Hope this helps.

Be absolutely Icebox.

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