Klarinet Archive - Posting 000607.txt from 2000/08

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: [kl] Correcting each other
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2000 06:41:05 -0400

I'm a bit disillusioned that I was able to persist in my recent error
about the direction of piano anharmonicity for so long without anyone
in this quite sophisticated community correcting me.

David Renaud *did* say almost immediately what was correct -- but he
unfortunately also said in the same breath that I was right, so I was so
busy feeling good that I didn't read what he wrote in detail:-)

That's not to excuse myself, by the way.

Bill Hausmann said, after the event, "I hope everything is clearer now",
giving the impression I was the only one confused. But in his response
to the mistaken passage in my original post, namely:

> > The overtones are flat to whole number multiples of the fundamental
> > frequency, which is what an electronic tuner looks at. The
> > ear/brain system assigns pitch essentially by trying to fit the
> > overtone pattern into a whole-number template. Though it obviously
> > fails to do that, what the system delivers is a perceived lower
> > pitch.

he wrote:

> "Stretch" piano tuning attempts to compensate for this psychoacoustic
> phenomenon by deliberately tuning the upper parts of the piano
> gradually slightly sharp.

...thus failing to point out that I had my foot in my mouth, and
incidentally misexplaining stretch tuning in the process.

Because in the past I've understood the elementary physics of the
situation, I fortunately didn't draw any very damagingly wrong
conclusions from my error.

I just made up faulty arguments to myself (and accepted Bill H's) in
order to get what I knew to be the right answers. But I did confuse the
issue for much too long.

Now, I like to be right as much as the next person.

But I don't like to be right so much that I'm prepared to be *wrong*:-)

And I suspect that that goes for many people here.

So can I encourage everyone, including me, to be even more on the
lookout for each other's errors, as well as for our own?

It's the scientific ideal, after all.

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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