[EMAIL PROTECTED] (SUZANNE MACDONALD) writes:
> 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.
This is also to do with the fact that the twelfth-root-of-two (or 1.059)
ratio applies to `physically ideal' strings that have no diameter. If
you look at a piano with the various lids and covers off you will find
that this is obviously not true, especially for the bass notes. It turns
out that a piano tuning must be `stretched' somewhat for the piano to
sound in tune with itself on account of these deviations, and good piano
tuners are supposed to cater for this.
As a pianist, I don't know what to make of all this varied-interval
business. On the one hand, I'm half glad that I don't have to worry
about it; on the other hand it seems that I can't really play Scottish
music, which I think is a pity :^(
Anselm
--
Anselm Lingnau .......................................... [EMAIL PROTECTED]
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it,
and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She
will never sit down on a hot stove lid again, and that is well; but also she
will never sit down on a cold one anymore. -- Mark Twain
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