Otherwise, as a common "midi" twelve note system being 'straight up' you'd have a pretty strange machine with beats..

Then you'd have a guitar that was tuned straight up, with all the changes tuned straight up, with minimal cabinet drop, played by a person that was used to hearing and playing it that way, "guided" if you will, by a fretboard that was layed out in a true mathematical logrithmically correct manner.

Wait a minute!

There's one three feet away from me!

Time to turn it on.

EJL

[This message was edited by Eric West on 26 April 2005 at 09:29 PM.]

quote:

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train your ear; and that is by working long and hard with a fixed constant TONE.

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quote:

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Does a person train their ears by playing along thousands of times with people or instruments that don't flat their thirds 15 cents and learn to instinctively flat them?

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quote:

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Is it possible to train oneself to ET playing along with thousands of times of playing with instruments that tune that way?

---

I do fine, though the first twenty years was sometimes a struggle.

I was thinking as others' might have that you're confusing "tone" for "frequency".

Quality, too has it's manifold explanations.

EJL

Of course there are some that find ways to continue doing it, and adding to their ability. Some of course fall apart, or retire to their other pursuits.

Our minds, for better or worse, are more complex than most of us know.

Thank or beseech God I guess.,

Nite.

A fun quote from that website. "It is impossible to tune any modern musical instrument to acoustic perfection."

It's simply math versus nature. If you tune straight up, the overtone series don't line up. If you tune so they do, the fundamental frequencies find themselves a little bit off, but you have no beats in your harmonics.

I gave my love a chicken, that had no bones.

I venture the question, Why bother clinging to an antiquated, centuries-ago-disproven, "perfect" system when none of the instruments on the country bandstand agree with yours, except for the computerized MIDI keyboard, if there even is one in your band?

As I undseerstand it these tuners can be programmed to duplicate,in a silent tuning way
~YOUR personal choice of tuning your steel.

i.e. you can decide how much temporing to use, and then it will allow you to retune even mid song if needed, and not put anyone in the room out of sorts.

Now I appreciate tuning by ear and getting the "SOUND" I am looking for, but sometimes that can't be done.

So I think the Peterson is a great allternative tool.

If you change band and the new one is tuned a bit differently,
you can reprogram a cent here or there and adjust for the new playing situation.

Don't forget those antiquated "Fretted Instruments".

Why indeed...

DLD. It is now thereby, such that, as I said: "C can become C# or indeed 'B'".

Huzzah!

Still, choosing it to be "C" remains easy enough to defend.

EJL

[This message was edited by Eric West on 27 April 2005 at 06:17 AM.]

Whether ET or JI is the true "in tune" is a strictly semantic issue that depends on your definition of "in tune." JI is generally considered the "natural" method of tuning, because it derives from the overtones that occur when vibrating strings or air columns are broken up into equal subdivisions by nodes. However, this method does not produce 12 equal intervals in the diatonic scale. This creates problems for fixed pitch instruments in playing different keys. ET artificially lops the diatonic scale into 12 equal intervals. This is a compromise. All notes are slightly out of tune (compared to JI) in all keys, but they are equally out of tune in all keys, and acceptably so. ET is perfect in the sense that all the intervals are equal. But ET is imperfect in the sense that it strays from JI. It's like looking at your fingers and saying "Oh, they are not all equal length. I'll take this meat cleaver and cut them all to the same length. Ouch. Now they are perfect." Nevertheless, ET is a necessary and essential evil for keyboards and other fixed pitch instruments.

Variable pitch instruments don't play pure JI, but rather a mixture of ET and JI. The entire chromatic scale is pegged to ET by the A=440 criterion. The fretless strings are tuned in fifths (violins) or fourths (basses). Their strings are tuned straight up ET. But they are free to fret by ear according to JI when they are not playing open strings. If an open string happens to be the third of the key, that third will be ET when played open, but might also be played JI by fretting an adjacent string by ear. Orchestral strings tend to prefer fretting rather than open strings, partly to avoid the JI/ET conflict, but also to apply vibrato. So although the open ET strings may be incorporated in passing in runs, string players prefer to land on fretted notes for sustained tones. Horns have their finger holes, keys and valves manufactured to play ET, so they are pegged to the ET scale. However, the final pitch is set by the mouth, so any note can be played JI in any key.

Guitars are a special case. Although the frets are laid out to play an ET scale, it is possible to tune the individual strings to play the basic chords of a single key JI. Guitarists commonly strike the tonic chord for the upcoming song and tweak the tuning by ear to sound good, which will be close to JI. You can play keys with related chords without much tweaking (e.g., the keys of G and C). But any good guitarist knows that if you have tweaked for G, you will have to tweak again for a song in E or A. Of course you can tune all strings straight up and have passable intonation in any key, and some guitarists do this. But my observation is that very few guitarists leave their tuning straight up. Even those who use a meter staight up on every string will then hit a chord and tweak. If they change keys, they will tweak again. Obviously this does not work for modulations within a song; nevertheless, it is what I see most guitarists do. Because of this constant tweaking between songs, many guitar bands play close to JI.

What happens when ET and JI instruments play together? Well, somehow they muddle through. It is enough of a problem that symphony orchestras, with all the main instruments playing JI, do not routinely play with keyboards. However, when they roll out a grand piano for a piano concerto, it is not a disaster - somehow the orchestra adapts. Likewise, the JI tuned instruments manage to sound okay when playing along with the ET tuned harps.

In the same way, you can play a JI tuned pedal steel along with keyboards and ET-tuned guitars. I'm not sure exactly how it happens. Bob Lee suggested that the JI chord is centered over the ET pitch, so the JI third is not quite as flat as it should be (for JI), and the tonic and fifth are a little sharp of ET. Every thing is a little off, but nothing is glaringly off, the same way the whole ET scale is a compromise. Whether individual players actually carry this off well is another question. Certainly the majority of pro session players have always tuned their steels by ear (JI) rather than everything straight up, and have produced countless acceptable recordings along with pianos, harmonicas, and ET-tuned basses and guitars. JI-playing strings and horns also somehow make it work. Thus, there is no obvious necessity to tune everything and play everything exactly ET just because there is a keyboard in the group.

When everyone plays together at the same time, good ears will smooth over the JI/ET conflicts. When tracks are recorded at different times, and the variable pitch instruments cannot hear the fixed-pitch ET instruments, problems can occur. The “centering” of the chords that Bob postulates cannot occur. Also, if you play your steel or fiddle by ear to a guitar or bass track (or God-forbid a vocal track) that gets redone later to a slightly different pitch, there will be problems. Ideally steel and fiddle should play to the final mix, not scratch tracks. This is common sense, and any recording engineer or producer who doesn't understand this should have it explained.

Having a pedal steel play in tune with itself is a whole other subject. If you tune a pedal steel JI to the basic chords of one key, the straight bar will carry that tuning faithfully to any other key. Therefore, key modulations are not the problem. The problem is when a string that was tuned as a JI-flat 3rd for one chord needs to be used as another interval for another chord. For many of the basic chords it turns out that most of these potential conflicts are solved by the tunable stops of the pedals and levers. For example, on 10-string E9, the 6th string is played open and is the third of the open E chord. For JI it is about 14 cents flat of ET If you activate the A and B pedals to make an A chord, the 6th string is now the tonic. If it were played open, it would be flat. But in the A chord it is raised by the B pedal to the independently tunable pedal stop, so it does not have to be flat. Likewise, the 5th string, which was the 5th of the E chord but the 3rd of the A chord, can be tuned JI flat by the A pedal tunable stop for the A chord. If you go through the whole standard E9 copedant like this, it is amazing that all of the basic chords (I, IV, V7, VIm, IIm) at the main positions (open, AB pedals, A and F, A pedal alone, BC pedals) can be made to play JI with no conflicts. That is no accident. Changes that were tried along the way that did not sound good did not become part of the standard copedant. So, if you play simple songs with simple chords (which takes care of most country, rock and blues), you can tune JI by ear with no conflicts.

But if you keep adding pedals and levers to get lots of chords and inversions beyond the basic ones (for modern jazz, for example), you may eventually run into problems. That is why the tuning you use may depend on your style of playing, and why some players get by with JI and others believe it is necessary for them to tune everything straight up ET. There is no single correct tuning method for everyone.

I have a couple of questions:

Is there, or could there be a scale or musical system that would or could incorporate only notes which when combined together would have no overtones or "beats"?

How many notes would there be in it?

Round off to 5 figures if you wish.

A couple of over-reaching premises jump right out.

One is that "the ears (of violinists) lead them to JI".

All of them?

Do they tune in "beatless fifths"?

I liked the Meat Cleaver analogy.

*If an open string happens to be the third of the key, that third will be ET when played open, but might also be played JI by fretting an adjacent string by ear. Orchestral strings tend to prefer fretting rather than open strings, partly to avoid the JI/ET conflict, but also to apply vibrato.*

Do they? Do Vassar or Buddy S avoid thirds on open strings?

OK. I must ask..

A famous player has stated that he tunes STRICTLY ET as he has for the last twenty years,(now nearly twenty one) in the most black and white terms possible.

Does he play in "J.I." because that's where his ears must lead him?

Is it impossible for a person's ears to be trained to strict ET?

How long would it take in deacdes?

Are all men obliged to live communally because the least of them cannot survive otherwise?

( I just threw that one in..)

Mr C, I agree that this as well as other dominant tuning threads be accessable in the FAQ or other topics eternally available.

Mr Doggett, you've done it again.

You have a good way with words.

I see your points, I agree with what you are saying.

I just look at it, or rather "hear it" a little differently..

C is still C to me, whether it is the root, third or fifth. Simpleminded as it may seem.

Beats occur in the Planetary Music.

EJL

Here's a PS:

Absolutists abide Incrementalism in increments.

The reverse is not true.

[This message was edited by Eric West on 27 April 2005 at 09:14 PM.]

Unlike keyboards and harps, guitars can actually tweak to JI between songs of different keys, and this is very commonly done, even though many guitarists might not realize they are moving from the ET of their meter to the JI of the ear. On a six-string you only have to tweak one or two strings to get by. I have begun surveying all the guitarists I play with. They all do this tweaking. Few of them know anything about ET and JI. They just think they didn't get tuned to the meter perfectly, and when they play the tonic chord, they can hear how to "fix" that. They learn from experience that if they go to another key, they have to retune, but usually only the 2nd string.

The standard E9 and C6 copedants really achieve JI quite nicely for the basic chords (and I have charted this all out to prove it to myself). None of the basic chord positions give a full 12-tone chromatic scale (which is why we are forever trying to add pedals and levers to get those extra notes); however, the few extra notes beyond the basic triads also seem to work out close to JI, mainly because they are drawn from other JI chords in the same key. For example, to play the whole eight note scale at a single fret on E9, you can use the open E chord strings, the A and B pedals, and the "chromatic strings" 1,2 and 7 of E9 . All those notes come from the I (open), IV (AB pedals) or V (open strings 1,2 and 5) of the same key and scale. These JI chords within a single key are all compatible with each other and the whole JI scale. The VIm and IIm chords are likewise compatible. Other chords, such as the II major and VI major are not (they cannot get the proper JI intervals by using the notes of the JI scale). But we typically get those by moving one of the above good JI chords up a couple of frets, which maintains the good JI intervals within the chord. Similar stuff works out okay on C6.

But if you keep adding pedals and levers and trying to get three or more chords at the same fret, using some open strings or pedal stops in different chords, and using different strings as the root, you run into problems. People who try to do that typically decide they need ET. People who stick with the simple basic chords typically don't feel the need for ET and like the sweet sound of the JI chords. So far, I have found that I like to keep the basic commonly used major and minor chords sweet JI. The more complicated chords that tend to not be JI tunable are mostly dissonant chords where the departure from JI is not so noticeable. So "fixing" these with ET is not as important to me as keeping my main simple chords sweet JI. But I completely respect players who have more complicated setups and use more chords than me and decide they need to tune ET.

What I don't agree with is when those who tune ET say we all have to tune everything ET, or our guitars will be unacceptably out of tune with themselves and with all the others in the band who tune straight up. For tons of basic stuff, that simply is not true. And the less commonly used stuff where there is a potential problem are more tolerable to me than what happens to my main basic stuff if I tune everything ET. If some people play a bunch of non-basic stuff that doesn't work for them unless they tune ET, so be it. Those of us who don't play such stuff, or find it tolerable without ET, should be free to enjoy the sweetness of JI for our main stuff.

It all depends on where you want to make your compromises. I prefer to compromise on stuff I don't use a lot, rather than envoke the ET compromise on everything I use all the time. The vast majority of steelers over the years have done the same. We are not all insane or tone-deaf for prefering JI and sticking with it wherever possible. This is precisely what classical music conductors and musicians have been doing for centuries. They have figured out where they have to compromise with ET, and where they don't, and steelers should feel free to do the same.

[This message was edited by David Doggett on 27 April 2005 at 10:35 PM.]

Now I will break my own wish....

There's nothing magical or spiritual about 12 notes to a scale. Anybody who has studied Indian music knows this. As well as anybody who knows blues. When I play blues in E there are an infinite number of notes between G and G# (Jimmy Day knew this).

Midi is ONLY worried about note name / duration / volume level.

Yes there IS pitch bend, and vibrato, but that's a different issue.

The basic A above middle C is always one of two possible note messages depending on the system.
( Some are an octave lower A2 rather than A3...)

Where you get the issue of a synth or digital piano sound being tempored or equal is in the programing and design of the actual SOUND modual.

Depending on the designers choices, a digital piano can be more or less tempored,
so when the midi notes are saying A below middle C,
this is played a 1/2 cent different on a Roland than a Korg for example.

Or more diversly on an acoustic piano with midi control,
the hammers are sent a MIDI mesasge ;
play this note, this hard...
but the actual intonation is is up to the piano tuners style...
And pitch bend and vibrato messages are just ignored.

Also some synths are totally reprogamable for totally different tempering,

Even to the point of 3 notes per semitone the whole range of the neck,

or experimental tunings like Wendy Carlos works with.

So if one band plays a Kaiwa and the other a Waldorf synth,
you might likely need a different tuning schema on your steel to match the differnt bands identity.

HOWEVER, my fretted 6 string electric guitars always sound best to my ear when I tune them EXACTLY to a meter @440.. I certainly am capable of tuning properly by ear and often do, but I get my best over all across the neck intonation when using a meter on every open string, and setting the 12th fret octaves to 440 on the meter.
Acoustic 6 strings tend to sound better to me when setting the E's on a meter, and then adjusting the rest by ear.

NOW to add another monkey wrench to the cogs..My 12 string acoustics and solid body electrics behave best with a combination .. I tune the 6 "standard"
strings to a meter... sraight up. NOW, ALL the octave strings have to be ear tuned!!. Usually until all the beats are gone, BUT I always seem to have to sharpen the High G a bit,and depending on the guitar, may have to flatten certain strings a bit,.It would tend to be the low E or A,WHEN needed, It depends on the guitar.

This has been my tuning procedure on 12 strings for over 30 years. I have owned DOZENS of the very best and worst acoustic and electric 12's over the years [BIG Byrd's fan!}, and brand makes no difference.. this is the way I must do it if I want to sound in tune,weather the guitar cost $1500 [my Rics]or $150[the chinese piece of crap I play now that plays Better and sounds as good as the $1500 Rics!!]... anyway, am I screwed up here or is there some logic to how I tune my various instruments that I am unaware of/?? bob

[This message was edited by Bob Carlucci on 28 April 2005 at 06:29 AM.]

Your 12-string tuning method sounds suspiciously like you are stretching the tuning sharper up high, and flatter down low. If you look at that stretch tuning curve Eric posted, in some octaves you can see a noticeable amount of stretch even between notes a single octave apart. I have noticed on my pedal steel that if I tune both Es exactly straight up by my Boss meter, my ear wants to hear that top E tweaked just a little sharp of the meter. So I'm thinking we are putting a little stretch in our tunings.

Joe, by "perfect pitch" do you mean ET or JI? I don't have perfect pitch, but my understanding is that they do not hear just a single "perfect" pitch, i.e., just ET or just JI. Rather, they can hear all the pitches, and tell you whether it is ET or JI or something else. So someone with perfect pitch could tune an instrument by ear to ET, JI or anything else. They could set the tuning to please themselves, or to please the listener. If the person with perfect pitch and the listener prefer the same thing (e.g., JI), then there would be no conflict, and both would be happy.

[This message was edited by David Doggett on 28 April 2005 at 09:17 AM.]

Thank you for putting all this into perspective. I had the meat cleaver ready to go - whew! that was close!!

All these years I thought I was just bad at tuning - guitars, mandolin, bass, banjos, steel guitars. I just figured I had bad ears!

You have given us all a few things to think about and maybe some of us won't beat ourselves up too bad now for not being "perfectly in tune" in every key on every song all the time in every band with every instrument in all genres for eternity...

Thanks again,

Terry

[This message was edited by Terry Edwards on 28 April 2005 at 06:05 PM.]

quote:

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Is there, or could there be a scale or musical system that would or could incorporate only notes which when combined together would have no overtones or "beats"?

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quote:

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How many notes would there be in it?

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quote:

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A couple of over-reaching premises jump right out. One is that "the ears (of violinists) lead them to JI". All of them? Do they tune in "beatless fifths"?

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quote:

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*If an open string happens to be the third of the key, that third will be ET when played open, but might also be played JI by fretting an adjacent string by ear. Orchestral strings tend to prefer fretting rather than open strings, partly to avoid the JI/ET conflict, but also to apply vibrato.* Do they? Do Vassar or Buddy S avoid thirds on open strings?

---

quote:

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OK. I must ask. A famous player has stated that he tunes STRICTLY ET as he has for the last twenty years,(now nearly twenty one) in the most black and white terms possible. Does he play in "J.I." because that's where his ears must lead him?

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quote:

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Is it impossible for a person's ears to be trained to strict ET? How long would it take in deacdes?

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Now, Eric, let’s move beyond the thinly veiled questions and get to the heart of our disagreement. You always claim that it is simpler just to tune everything straight up by the meter and not have to worry about whether a note is a 3rd or not while you are tuning and playing. Aside from the fact that tuning ET sounds bad to me and ruins my enjoyment of playing, I can tune faster and simpler by ear than if I have to check every string and stop with a meter. So tuning JI by ear accomplishes two things at once for me. It sounds better and is easier to do. If I can’t tune by ear and have to use a meter, I know to tune my 2nd, 3rd and 6th strings 3 hz or 12 cents flat, all the rest are straight up (Actually I tune open strings 1 hz or 4 cents sharp. I know I have 2 hz or 8 cents cabinet drop with the pedals down. So tuning 1 hz sharp with the pedals off splits the difference of my cabinet drop between the pedals down and pedals up positions). This takes no more time or worry than tuning every string straight up. I tune my pedal and knee stops very carefully by ear at home, and usually don’t have to mess with them out on a gig. If I did have to tune these with a meter, I could think through most of them and get them JI (basically, major 3rds and 7ths are 3 hz or 12 cents flat, and minor 3rds and 7ths are the same amount sharp). It’s not higher math. The worst that could happen is that I don’t remember this and have to tune something straight up. Then a small part of my copedant would temporarily have the same dissonance your whole copedant has all the time. This does not seem like an insurmountable problem that makes me want to throw my hands up and tune everything straight up all the time.

And those of us who tune JI do not worry about where the thirds are while playing. We just play and try to keep it in tune. Fortunately the standard pedal steel copedants make it possible to automatically play the main chords JI by having pedal and lever stops that tune independently from strings (as I described in some detail above). If there are some less used chords that are a little dissonant, that is a small sacrifice I pay to keep my main chords sounding sweet. Your choice of making all the chords sound dissonant simply does not appeal to me and many others. Neither of us is wrong on this, we just choose to make different compromises.

Now about playing with other instruments tuned ET. Strings, horns, vocalists and countless steelers have played their variable pitch instruments acceptably with fixed pitch instruments. To this day, most pro steelers tune JI and play acceptably in the studio with pianos and ET-tuned guitars and basses – in fact some studio bosses insist on JI for the steel – ask Bruce Bouton. Jim Cohen has posted on the Forum that he tried both tuning methods with a piano in a studio. The consensus in the studio was that the steel sounded better tuned JI than ET. Does every steeler do this as well as Jim Cohen – I doubt it. Would some other steelers sound better tuned ET with the piano – quite possibly. The point is that it is simply not obvious that every steel guitarist must tune entirely ET to play with ET instruments.

I’m not trying to convince anyone who tunes ET to stop doing so. There are completely legitimate reasons for tuning a steel ET. If that works for some people, fine. But I am trying to counter the idea that those of us who tune JI must be crazy and tone deaf, and that we have to struggle to remember 3rds while we are playing, and other insanely complicated stuff. It just ain’t so. Anyone who chooses to tune either ET or JI has some good legitimate reasons for doing so, and has lots of good company. No one should ever have to feel apologetic about what works for them.

[This message was edited by David Doggett on 29 April 2005 at 03:21 AM.]

Here's my dilemma. Having been playing for over 40 years, and having been listening a lot longer, I must say I notice more "name" steelers that sound "out" (to me) than I ever did 40 years ago. As a matter of fact, I can't remember any famous steeler back in the '60s that sounded "out" to me!

But today, it's a different story. Strings are better, guitars are better, tuners are better, amps are better, and...we've had 40 years to get our collective act together. We should be sounding a whole lot better. Still, there's no denying that "pitchy" quality I'm hearing from some "name" steelers nowadays.

So, has anyone else noticed this? Maybe I'm alone in this observation.

Is it just me???

I'd like to take a little time here and thank Bob C. for opening this Thread, and all of ya'll who have offered exlpainations, opinions, technics, tuning methods, and much more. Even though it did get a little "heated" at times, the information is what I was wanting, as I'm sure that was what Bob C. was wanting also.

Even though I had developed a method for tuning that satisfied my tuner, and my ear, [some what] I still had tuning issues I didn't know how to deal with. I was stumbling around in the dark, not knowing how to ask the questions I wanted answers to.

Since I'm not one who is Blessed, or Cursed, which ever it might be, with perfect pitch, I've had to rely on my tuner to get me through the gate, then my ear to sweetin it up to where I could live with it.

Even though I have "chirped" in with my Off sense of humor here and there, I have been following these post really close. I know I won't remember it all, but quite a lot of the points metioned I've made it a point to retain.

Through out this thread, I've taken time to run out to the studio, and try something that was mentioned, and I think things are going to be better from here on out.

Once again, thanks Bob C. for opening up this can of worms!! And thanks every one for some needed information and thoughts..

Eric, you could e-mail me your "secret tuning chart" I wouldn't tell any one!! LOL...

Larry

------------------
Emmons S/D-10, 3/4, Sessions 400 Ltd. Home Grown E/F Rack
"ROCKIN COUNTRY"

Here's the latest direct quote I can find.

quote:

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I may go a cent or so flat in some cases but strictly to handle temp changes under certain conditions.

Also when I hear a JI steel third in a ET track, flat is the only word I can come up with. -Buddy Emmons-

---

That's exactly where the camel entered the tent..

I am totally slammed for time tonight btween work/gig, and I'll redirect as many points as I can if I disagree with more than your "Buddy Does it" attempt, apon my gaining of an hour or two of free time tomorrow.

What I notice being slipped in subtly, is the IMHO overuse of "everybody" or "The Studio" or "all players", et al. I understand most of your points, and your posts, except for the need for questionable, or otherwuse unnecessarily leading premise or postulation..

It is masterful use of several debating tools such as the "false premise" the "defacto endorsement", "forcing tacet acceptance" and a few others, whereby, black, after a fashion, is no longer black, white is no longer white, and "up and down" somehow switch positions with no appearant seam in gravitational shift..

It's good, and you have a friendly way of disagreeing with somebody without telling them how important you are, or insulting your victim ( I couldn't help that one..) so I don't mind in the least having these forays with someone of your courtesy.

When you inadvertently gain allies that might deign to cut me into ribbons, I don't take being done on your beckoning, and I deal well with sideliners.

Gotta run.

Believe me I'm tickled and pleased that you take the time to parlay different takes on things with me.

quote:

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When Bach wrote his two books of Well Tempered Clavier music, he meant 'well' not 'even' as is commonly misrepresented. In other words, every key was meant to have a distinct personality and sound; whereas today, every key in equal temperament is identical - every semitone difference between each note is identical. -Veryan Weston and Jon Rose-

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I threw this in because I don't buy it, for one, and it was only a matter of time before some obfuscatory source would tell us that JS Bach did not indeed propose "equal temperament".

---

If you aren't just trying to stir the pot, how about posting some informed opinion to back up your view?

Until you do, here's something for you to consider:

We'd probably all agree Bach was a pretty smart dude, right? I'm guessing he probably was a pretty fair logical thinker, at least when he had to be. Well then, why would he try to prove ET treats all keys equally by composing pieces for each key that are radically different? Isn't that sort of like making sure your kids all learn the same things by sending them all to different schools? Wouldn't the obvious (and best) thing to do have been to just compose a single piece, and then transcribe it to each of the twelve keys?

It seems very likely that his point in composing different pieces for each key (besides to simply show that something usable could be played in each key) was to highlight the unique characteristics of each key. The "Well" genre of temperament made it possible to play in all keys, but still allowed each key to maintain its individual character -- unlike ET.

These temperaments clearly existed during Bach's time, and, you know what? Whereas it takes a considerable amount of skill to tune equal temperament on a keyboard instrument by ear -- particularly, I would think, if you lived in the 18th Century, before the technology existed to mathematically calculate ET to exact frequencies -- tuning well temperament is far easier. The reason for that is well temperament still uses a number of fifths that are tuned beatless, whereas ET does not.

People who actually have played a keyboard instrument tuned to one of the well temperaments say that certain pieces in Bach's WTC composition definitely seem to highlight the strengths -- while avoiding the weaknesses, of each well-tempered key.

For the information of those not familiar with the term "well temperament," it was a genre of temperament popular on keyboard instruments between the eras of meantone, which rendered certain keys unusable, and equal temperament, which rendered all keys the same by equally spacing the twelve semi-tones.

Eric, I apologize if you respond to this post and I do not return the favor. I'm leaving town early tomorrow morning for a few days. I also apologize for not posting links to back up my stated internet search findings, but others and I have already done that on here; such articles are many, and can easily be Googled up by anyone willing to type the word "temperament."

So far, no one has posted anything to back up the idea that Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier was intended to advance equal temperament. As far as I know, nothing exists to do so, except dogmatic, unsubstantiated assumptions from books and music programs decades out of date.

In the interest of objective scientific inquiry, I'm willing to change my opinion in the face of new data. But, until then ...

Jeff

[This message was edited by Jeff A. Smith on 29 April 2005 at 09:35 PM.]

I don't have any problem admitting I had no idea that the "Well Tempered Clavier" was not written for equal temperament.

I was as wrong as the sources I used to come up with this conclusion.

I can see that tuning fifths beatless wouldn't get him to ET like the more modern piano tuning methods that give them .6hz beats on the sharp side. It would be slightly "angrier" than the harpsicordian single scale Just Intonation I guess,

That explains a lot.

This is indeed becoming interesting.

In a way I'm tempted to throw in the towel and start trying to remove the beats in all my changes, and open strings, and then after widening my frets by a half inch, trying to get a feel of which notes in my single note runs will have to be moved up or down a third of a fret midpoint to be played depending on their usage, substitution, or linear location.

I don't know if I've got the 50 years it will probably take.

Then I will take a decade or so to find a way to explain why the "E" I give the guitar player from my C neck is 15 cents flat.

In the meantime, I will continue to tune to a good electronic tuner, same as the guitars I play with and in line with the electronic and well tuned keyboards I play with.

That will have to do for now..

Thanks, though you're off for a while.

I've got plenty to think about for answering Mr D's post later in the morning.

It's been a long day, and I just got done playing 5 hours with an electronic keyboard and well tuned telecaster. Funny how one's ears can be accustomed to such heretical tuning after a few thousand of these sessions...

I dont know how to break it to them that I'm going to be sharp or flat to them for a while once I start "tuning right"...

Maybe I'll just play louder..

EJL

PS.

So Bach had nothing to do with Equal Temperament.. I could be knocked over with a wilted flower about this point...

Early in his career it was less of an issue,
but as harpsichords and church organs improved during his lifetime,
and his ability to write for them and finish the delvelopment of the fugue form,
he saw clearly that his musical progress would be hampered by purist ET, versus a more flexable tuning system.

Organ builders had gradually been quietly veering in this direction,
and it was then applied to the Harpsichord and later early pre Erhardt pianos.

On the large organs the tuning became more of an issue,
especially when playin ensemble,
and Bach had personally reached the limit of what he could effectively write for ET,
and yet saw the possible music available with a tempered tuning.

Prior to that on the clavichord and such it was less an issue,
because strings just didn't sustain long enough to be highly noticable.

He noticed when conducting ensembles, that the harpsichord would sometimes be out of tune with what sounded natural for the single note instruments played together.

So after tweaking around for a few years he wrote this group of pieces for a Well Tempered keyboard.

One that relfected his observations of how real world ensembles
naturally bent their tunings to match the best ear apparent sound.

[This message was edited by David L. Donald on 30 April 2005 at 04:04 AM.]

Word was that he "tweaked around" quite a bit..

I'm still reading, and I don't pretend to have done much baccalaureate or doctoral level reading on the history of music. I say that having done volumes and volumes more than the "average consumer" I do know that most of them are frightfully unmarked by any knowledge of why they like to listen to what they like to listen to. It certainly doesn't mean that they don't or shouldn't like it.

I still haven't seen how it is not possible for the human ear and auditory processing system to learn to expect twelve equal tones, even in the light of the underlying sonic waves' differences.

I might opine that there are several notable people, as well as many underschooled working dolts such as myself, that have learned to play fretless instruments in a manner such as to relegate all the differently cycles harmonics to twelve equal tones, sometimes taking twenty years or more of solid steady performance of such. Many have admitted it on this public forum.

Also there are those that have learned to acceptably place "wave form centered" passages over the logarithmic grid of other fixed pitch instruments. I look at them with envy for the most part, only occaisonally being consterned at their sometimes expressed disdain and belittlement of those that do otherwise.

It seems to be not unlike our relegation of 24 hours to a day that is slightly shorter, months that number twelve in a year of thirteen lunar cycles, and then leaving an extra day hanging out every four years where girls can ask boys out on dates. ( Sadie Hawkins Day)

It might be insensitivly expedient for us as a biological phenom to do this, but absent a concensus, as the aztecs seemed to have, or maybe some obscure tribe in the South Pacific who recently took to higher ground on the recent tsunami that was scheduled on their calendar, the twelve-centered system, with all it's "commas", and "remainders" seems to be what has kept us from slipping into species-wide chaos. Or it maybe just made a date available for marking when we did...

I'm still hopeful that the human ear and mind can some to accept the twelve tone note system in a slightly shorter time than it took our appendixes to grow...

I have my doubts.

EJL

PS to DD: As I have time, I'm reading and digesting your information, and none of it will go to waste.

I did spend a good deal of time checking my post for false premises, and overassuming postulations. Hopefully well spent.

[This message was edited by Eric West on 30 April 2005 at 01:19 PM.]

I don't doubt for a minute that BE can hear the difference between JI and ET thirds on recorded tracks. Nor would I be surprised that on occassions some steelers lay down tracks that sound flat. I would be surprised if a top studio steeler who was tuned JI and layed a track while listening to the final mix sounded off. Of course you can't always lay the steel track down last, because you don't always have studio people who understand this problem. The big egos like vocalists and lead guitarists tend to want to lay their tracks last.

In my limited studio experience I have noticed that if two instruments are slightly off from each other (because of JI/ET or any other reason), the one that is loudest in the mix sounds correct, and the background instrument sounds off. So if your track will be relegated to the background, and the foreground instruments are ET, then it may be safer to tune closer to ET. If you are doing a solo album on steel, then you will mostly be in the foreground in the mix, and so can stick closer to JI.

I don't think Eric's worries over scales is as big a problem as one might thing from the theoretical conflict between JI an ET. If you tune your open strings to a JI E chord, the A and B pedal stops to an A chord that is JI to the unpedaled E strings, and strings 1 and 2 to a B chord with the open 5th string as the root, then you will automatically play a correct JI scale using any of those strings and pedals and holding your bar at any single given fret. This happens because all of those scale notes come from one of the JI chords you have tuned. You are JI whether you play the chords or the scale. There are no conflicts. The few chromatic notes you can get at a single fret can be tuned by their stops to be correct JI, for example the minor 7th you get on string 2 with the D lever.

Similar things happen with the scale you get at the V fret with the AB pedals down, and the minor scale you get with the A pedal down, and the minor scale you get with the E lower lever. These chords are all tuned to the same JI scale, and so their notes will play that JI scale correctly. Things don't work out quite so well for the BC pedal postion or the A pedal/F lever position, but they are no worse than the dissonance you get tuning everything ET, and compensators can correct these problems. So as I said before, the basic chords and scales work out amazingly well; but if you add enough pedals and levers and try to use different strings as roots, you will eventually run into problems. So it all depends if you want to compromise on changes you don't use often and leave your commonly used stuff sweet JI, or want to compromise on everything and tune ET.

Of course if you play a single note scale going up the neck, you will play ET if you are exactly over the frets. If it is too fast to adjust by ear, then nobody will notice whether it is ET or JI. If it is slow, your ear will adjust to the rest of the band, which may come out JI or ET, depending on the situation.

As for giving the guitar player an E, I give him Es and As from the E9 neck, and tell him to do his own tuning from there - or just hand him my meter.

None of this is a conclusive argument to switch from tuning ET to tuning JI. But these things help explain why tuning JI has worked out okay for so many of us for so many years. A lot of the potential problems one might imagine simply don't occur when you start looking at what actually happens.

quote:

---

Also there are those that have learned to acceptably place "wave form centered" passages over the logarithmic grid of other fixed pitch instruments. I look at them with envy.. - A Tired old Steel Player-

---

I don't doubt in the least players being able to do this, and not just "the best" or "the most accomplished". Our mainframe cranial computers can do things that they themselves can't explain. Many players of just a few years seem to have very keen innate abilities approaching extra-sensory.

Sometimes there are players that have other priorities than "fame", whose points are no less valid.

Sometimes..

Mr Cohen is very knowledgeable and from what I've heard has a very good tone center. I wasn't there. I was reading your statement "in the studio" to imply that it was that way in "The Studio". That's all. It was just over reacting to my feeling that you were again painting with your "broad brush™".

I don't know about Mr Bouten's experience of almost being fired from RS. I understand it went farther than that over a mere giving of a news interview in England. Lots of these artists have quirks and things I'm happier without knowing. Grandpa Jones fired a guy for trying to keep measures to 4 beats in a 4/4 song. (Stupid him...)

Your segment on JI Tunings mechanics obviously doesn't apply to those that tune "ET" (exceptinh adjustments for "cabinet drop"). Most guitars being different anyhow, I wouldn't want to start a project of doing all my 8/6 changes with all the new double stops/ additions on my Marrs.

Incidentally I can now let that in the last few year of my PIII's hard life my cabinet drop was getting bad and my fingers were grooved badly. Still "ET worked best for me.

David.

I TOTALLY agree with your conclusion for once.

I might add that none of my points, soliloquys or rubbish ( no comments from the peanut gallery ) is meant to present an argument for switching to ET, from those that have other tuning systems.

The possible exception being those just starting out and being floored by all the complexities to begin with. Making it much harder might discourage otherwise worshipful students.

I find you, as well as the other DD ( DLD) Mr Cohen and others, to be very civil, understanding, and willing to go point by point on things where there's a legitimate, or even an irreverently light hearted jibe.

I think that through discourse of a few thoughtful and courteous people this "Tremendous Tunin' Question" has been brought to a very good understanding, rather than spraying out into tons of confusion.

The last sentence in your post applies IMHO to both.

Thanks again. as always I have been given much to study.

Even with a 40-50 hour day job, and playing weekends, I find that my time is really slammed a lot of the time. (I did more when I was in my 40s and earlier..)

I don't know how those that have demanding schedules do it.

Here's to "looking at what actually happens".

Cheers my friend.

EJL

[This message was edited by Eric West on 30 April 2005 at 04:35 PM.]

Eric, it's your jabs that have partly inspired me to look into all this to the extent I have. As a piano and sax player and fan of classical music, I was vaguely aware of the JI/ET dilemma, but not the real details of it. As a 6-string guitarist I had learned the difference between straight up ET and "tweaked" JI. But pedal steel really brings a whole lot more complexity to the problem. With the bar we can move JI chords around all over the place in a way guitar cannot do except with a few bar chords. So that partly solves the problem for us. But when we start adding lots of pedals and knee levers and using different strings for roots, we get right back into the problem.

I have some spreadsheet charts that show how the main chords work out for JI tuned E9 and C6. If anyone is interested in these, I'll try to find time to post them.