Klarinet Archive - Posting 000450.txt from 2000/08

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: [kl] Tuning: let's get it sorted out
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2000 17:06:37 -0400

On Wed, 16 Aug 2000 09:03:44 -0400, bhausmann1@-----.com said:

> At 07:06 AM 8/16/2000 +0100, Tony Pay wrote:
>
> > ... if the sample were essentially a wavelength duration, then the
> > generated sound would be periodic, and therefore harmonic, unlike a
> > real piano.
>
> That depends upon the quality of the digital piano. Cheap keyboards
> have relatively short samples, and the periodic nature is very clearly
> heard during the decay of a sustained note. This is not anywhere near
> as noticeable in better units.

This is a misunderstanding. 'Periodic', in the context in which I was
speaking, means that the waveform in one wavelength is just like the
waveform in the next wavelength. So the repetition is 440 times a
second at the tuning 'A', for example.

'Periodic' in that sense means that the overtones are whole number
multiples of the fundamental.

The 'periodic nature' that you find very clear in the cheap keyboards is
over a much longer time scale, and wasn't what I was talking about.

> > 'Stretch tuning' is just 'tuning', ie what you have to do to make
> > the piano 'sound in tune', as best you can. That such 'best tuning'
> > doesn't correspond to making the lowest partials of all octaves bear
> > a 2:1 relationship is just a fact of life, described technically.
> >
> > > But because all of it is simply numbers, they can be manipulated
> > > differently, have corrections/alterations added to change the
> > > overall tuning, transpose, etc.
> >
> > Yes.
> >
> > > On some of the better ones you can undo [the stretch tuning]
> >
> > This is what I don't believe. It has to be built in, surely, one
> > way or the other.
> >
> > Either it's anharmonic, but 'best tuned', or it's harmonic, and
> > 'best tuned':-). We have to ask someone who knows the details.
>
> All I know is what they print in the literature that comes with them,
> and they show multiple, selectable tuning schemes on the better
> models, including equal temperament, just temperament, and several
> variations on them with names I don't recall.

OK, we need to talk to someone who knows more, so that we can both learn
more.

These selectable tuning schemes have nothing to do with 'stretch
tuning', as I explained in the paragraph you deleted.

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

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