Re: [Shaku] Western pitch - was "Everything you wanted to know about re-meri"

From: Karl Young (kyoung@itsa.ucsf.edu)
Date: Sat Jan 08 2005 - 11:45:39 PST


Nice job Phil though I must say I think some of the psychological
effects of just intonation are perhaps subtler than you suggest. Maybe I
just have a tin ear (though I paid my way through college as a
journeyman musician so perhaps it's at least of a slightly higher grade
alloy) but when I programmed up some scales and intervals on my pc to
see how well I could hear the difference between equal tempered tuning
and just intonation some of the differences were easy to hear but
others were surprisingly hard for me to distinguish (it was a long time
ago and I now forget which was which but you've piqued my interest and I
may go back and investigate)

> There seem to be some confusions on this list about the theory and
> practice of Western tunings. So here's the Cliff's Notes:
>
> Until tempered tuning, the intervals (differences between pitches) was
> unequal - in a particular key, the pitch distance from a D to an F,
> for instance, was not not necessarily the same as from an A to a C.
> Intervals were derived from the overtone series, or from integral
> relationships between pitches (a string length that is a simple
> fractional relationship to another string length, for instance), or
> from other natural or arbitrary bases...

-- 
Karl Young
University of California, SF          Phone:  (415) 221-4810 x3114  lab
VA Medical Center, MRS Unit (114M)            (415) 750-9463        home
4150 Clement Street                   FAX:    (415) 668-2864
San Francisco, CA 94121               Email:  kyoung at itsa ucsf edu

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