Klarinet Archive - Posting 000412.txt from 2000/08

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] Perils of Equal Temperment
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2000 01:39:58 -0400

On Tue, 15 Aug 2000 17:29:00 -0700, kevinfay@-----.com said:

> Tony Pay noted:
>
> > There's another experience I've had that's influencing me to take
> > this line: if you listen to an organ, which is usually tuned to
> > equal temperament, playing a simple major chord, and then make the
> > mental shift of imagining that that chord is instead being produced
> > by an orchestral wind section, it suddenly sounds much more 'out of
> > tune'. . . . This indicates to me the possibility that there's some
> > mechanism that chooses one note, or one instrument, as a standard
> > against which to judge others, and that several factors may be
> > operating in that choice.
>
> This has been pointed out to me before. Perhaps it's because we
> actually don't play in equal temperment? Sure, the instrument makers
> try their darndest to start them out that way, but don't we all adjust
> to get the "true" intervals, as opposed to the one-size-fits-all
> approximation that our keyboard friends must live with?

Yes, of course that's why the chord 'is' out of tune.

The point is rather that with an organ accurately tuned to equal
temperament, we don't experience "that organ is very out of tune",
(probably because we're used to it being that way), even though, making
the mental switch on the same aural stimulus, we *do* experience "that
wind chord is very out of tune" (probably because we're *not* used to
wind chords being that way).

What I'm suggesting is that we perhaps experience 'rightness' or
'wrongness' over and above our experience of 'in tune' and 'out of
tune', and that it could have been *that* effect that Lelia was hearing.

I'm not making any scientific claims for the above, by the way. It
would be quite difficult to test, and probably reflects nothing more
than that we're quite complicated creatures.

(Like testing whether or not a clarinet player on a recording *really*
sounds more out of tune if you know it's you than if you think it's
someone else, and the *real* effect of alcohol on the phenomenon.)

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE GMN family artist: www.gmn.com
tel/fax 01865 553339

... Does this condom make me look fat?

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