This makes a lot more sense on a mean-tone tempered instrument like NSP, than on a notionally equal-tempered one like a piano.
Different keys do have perceptibly different intervals between the various degrees on NSP, so G-d is pretty true and E-B is on the flat side; but on a piano a fifth is a fifth is a fifth (nearly). John ________________________________________ From: lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu [lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu] On Behalf Of Richard York [rich...@lizards.force9.co.uk] Sent: 03 February 2011 18:25 To: NSP group Subject: [NSP] Esoteric tuning relationships I am sure I'm not the only person here who gets different feelings about different keys. G always feels fairly stable, A is a bit more exciting, Em is darker than Am , and so on. When playing an A minor tune I wrote for nsp's on the piano to see what harmonies it wanted, I was playing in Am, the written pitch, to get the right feel. It comes out on the pipes in more-or-less G minor of course, but still has that feeling of lift of being on A rather than G. While I lack the finger facility to play it in Gm on the pipes I suspect it would feel different there, just as it does on "real" Gm on the piano. I put this down to my pipes being tuned with G as their home key, as it were, so the maths is probably the same in relation to G on the piano.... if you can work out what I mean by this imprecise expression. I realise this could get far far more complicated than my maths will begin to understand, so will content myself with wondering if anyone else gets this feeling, and if it "transposes" itself the same way for you between nsp's and concert pitch instruments. Or am I just approaching ever nearer to being certifiably in need of locking away? Best wishes, Richard. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html