>>>>> "John" == John Henckel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
John> Is "well-tempered" and "equal-tempered" the same thing?
No.
John> I don't think so. I was under the impression that
John> equal-spaced half steps produced bad-sounding music.
No, most "modern" music assumes an equal-tempered scale. If you try
to play music more than a couple of centuries old that way, you get
something that doesn't sound the way the composer would have heard
it. Which most people who are used to equal temperament don't think
sounds bad, but if you have gotten your ears used to the kind of
difference between keys and purity of intervals that other tuning
systems provide, it sounds bland or even out-of-tune.
John> One time I watched a professional piano tuner and was
John> surprised to see that he didn't use any electronic pitch
John> measuring device. He only used ONE tuning fork for middle
John> C, and he tuned all the other notes from there! I said,
John> "why don't you just tune each note separately to its correct
John> frequency" and he said that would sound awful. He said it
John> is impossible to tune any piano perfectly, but it is always
John> a compromise of many different factors. In other words, it
John> is an art.
Yes, but he still tuned the piano to an equal tempered scale. Piano
tuning is an art because piano strings are stiff, so the harmonics of
the string are not the same as the mathematical overtones. Also, the
tone sounds better if the 2 or three strings that are struck for one
note aren't exactly in tune.
So you don't tune anything exactly to the "correct" frequency. For
instance, you don't tune the octaves exact, because if you did, you
would get horrible difference tones between the fundamental of the
higher note and the first overtone of the lower note.
And of course the great composers for the piano play games with these
peculiarities. I remember a chord in a Messiaen piece that is just
left to ring for about 10 seconds. Depending on the piano and the
room acoustics, the different harmonics damp out at different rates,
so the sound changes from second to second in really marvelous ways.
Harpsichords (and fortepianos) have less stiff strings, so you can
tune them to the "correct" frequencies for the tuning you've decided
on. It's deciding on the right tuning for a given concert that may
have pieces in several keys and from a range of composers and periods
which constitutes the art in that case.
--
Laura (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://www.laymusic.org : Putting live music back in the living room.
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