Wendy Galovich wrote:
I dunno.. in all honesty I find this assertion baffling. It goes without
| saying, that beginner fiddlers often miss the pitch they're aiming
for. But I
| didn't think this thread was about beginners. And it seems to me that
if
| playing "out of tune" as you describe it (and I'm putting it in quotes
| because I don't agree that the altered pitches in question are out of
tune),
| was a universal *fiddler* problem, it would turn up with *all*
fiddlers,
| regardless of the style being played. In other words it would be just
as
| prevalent among mature fiddlers specializing in bluegrass, contra etc.
etc.
| etc. (insert whatever fiddle tradition you like here), but it isn't.
The
| bluegrass and contra fiddlers around here in Connecticut and
Massachusetts
| stick to the tempered scale. So I can't concur that it's sloppy
fiddling, at
| least not among seasoned players.
...
My comment:
It does turn up in other fiddle traditions.
The Connecticut and Massachusetts fiddlers cannot be playing,as you say,
in the tempered scale because that is impossible on the fiddle. That
would require each ascending note in the chromatic scale to be be
exactly higher in pitch over the preceeding note by the ratio 1.059 and
larger intervals to be exact arithmetic multiplies of this ratio. The
human ear cannot do this. That is why a piano tuner has to achieve
this objective by listening to the interplay between repeated fifths
and fourths. Even employing this method and with infinitely more time
than a fiddler has to play a single note, it has been demonstrated that
the best piano tuners deviate somewhat from the ratio.
John Chambers wrote responding to Wendy's note:
This isn't just a Scottish observation. A funny thing happened this
afternoon. The wife and I were wandering around in a local clothing
store, and she pointed out that the background music was an Abba
song. Which one isn't important; what I noticed was that the singers
were consistently singing the 7ths in a particular repeated phrase as
a "half-flat" 7th, in between the two tempered 7ths.
My comment:
The seventh note when played [or sang] in tune lies between the two
tempered sevenths.
As with the fiddlle it is impossible to sing in the tempered scale for
the same reason.
Alexander
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