 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Hiroshi
Date: 2002-02-26 05:11
As typically sung in Chants d'Aubergne, perfect(just) pitch singers like Irish Enya are heard quite often these days especially since that 9.11 incident. The movie Lord of the Ring is a typical example. It seems to have a healing effect on us.
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Author: Eoin
Date: 2002-02-26 07:57
Since Enya sings along with her keyboards, I think it is unlikely that she sings using the Just Intonation scale. It is more likely that she sings in the Equal Temperament Scale, the same as the rest of us. I think most people would be surprised at how out of tune the so-called "perfect" just intonation scale sounds, because we are no longer used to it. The Scottish bagpipes use it for most (but not all) of their notes and they sound strange to us.
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Author: JMcAulay
Date: 2002-02-26 14:48
Eoin McAuley says, regarding Just Intonation: "The Scottish bagpipes use it for most (but not all) of their notes and they sound strange to us."
Strange? Us? Speak for yourself, lad.
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Author: jez
Date: 2002-02-26 14:58
Eoin,
The Highland bagpipe has a scale all of its own, nothing to do with classical diatonic scales. It only plays 9 notes so there's no chromatic element. If you get a chance to hear organ or harpsichord tuned to 'just' intonation I'm sure you won't associate it with the skirl of the pipes.
Unaccompanied singers tend towards just tuning naturally, it is hard to detune towards equal temperament unless there is a keyboard or similar influence.
The Scots always get a mention whenever bagpipes crop up. Can I put in a word for the uillean pipes of your country. I recommend anyone to listen to them for beautiful, haunting sounds. Or, from my own, the Northumbrian smallpipes. Both infinitely preferable to their Scottish cousin.
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Author: JMcAulay
Date: 2002-02-26 16:10
And now jez (one who evidently dislikes any musical instrument which has a name beginning with the letter "B") pipes up with an utterly groundless and erroneous opinion on Uillean pipes and Northumberland smallpipes: "Both infinitely preferable to their Scottish cousin."
Infinitely preferable? Well, they may be good, but I do believe things have taken a rather nasty turn around here....
Regards,
John Angus McAulay
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Author: diz
Date: 2002-02-26 20:48
Hmm, the best thing for a highland bagpie - IN MY HUMBLE OPINION - is for it run run into a loch and drown
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Author: diz
Date: 2002-02-26 20:48
Hmm, the best thing for a highland bagpipe - IN MY HUMBLE OPINION - is for it run run into a loch and drown
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Author: Eoin
Date: 2002-02-26 21:11
Experiments done on the Great Highland Bagpipe, to give it its proper name, show that its scale does in fact have a lot to do with classical diatonic scale. It uses a just intonation major scale with a very flattened seventh and a slightly flattened octave note.
Organs and keyboards never use the just intonation scale, not even very old ones. The old ones used the mean intonation scale, which was a different scale again.
Most modern singers sing "perfect" fourths and fifths, that is ones with a freqency ratio of 4/3 and 3/2 respectively. They do not tend to sing perfect thirds, because they rarely hear them, so most singers sing something much closer to the equal temperament scale than urban myth would have us believe.
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Author: jez
Date: 2002-02-26 21:16
Sorry John Angus,
I don't really mean to knock the highland pipes. I do,truly, love the sound in the right circumstances. I just want to persuade some people to try some of the alternatives and to stop automatically associating bagpipes with Scotland.
The Northumbrian pipes are very close to being in the clarinet family. Cylindrical bore, overblows at a 12th, Single reeds (in the drones), Variety of keywork.
The highland variety, however majestic, is amongst the most primitive of pipes and, let's face it, you wouldn't want to be in the same room as one. In fact it isn't really Scottish, having been adopted from the Irish war pipe, the Piob Mhor.
Any other pipe-playing clarinettists out there?
jez
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Author: JMcAulay
Date: 2002-02-26 21:55
jez suggests, re The Pipes: "The highland variety, however majestic, is amongst the most primitive of pipes and, let's face it, you wouldn't want to be in the same room as one."
Surely not if it's still alive.
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Author: Hiroshi
Date: 2002-02-27 02:05
>Most modern singers sing "perfect" fourths and fifths, that is ones with a freqency ratio of 4/3 and 3/2 respectively. They do not tend to sing perfect thirds, because they rarely hear them, so most singers sing something much closer to the equal temperament scale than urban myth would have us believe.
I think you do not understand just pitch scale clearly. The biggest deviations occur at 4th and 5th from the equal temper. Especially 5th. For example, take 4th. This can be calculated without calculator. 4th in equal temper is 4/8 power of 2, i.e. Square root of 2 =1.414. On the other hand 4/3=1.333. This is a very big difference. Since octave notion is the same with both temperaments, all intervals cannot have big differences with each other. It is not a myth. It was invented by Pythagorian school in Greek era. Mozart hated equal temperament. All excellent wind instrumentalists can bend their tones to match string players or singers. Flute or trumpet have bending tone exercises although I do not know if there is any for clarinet.
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Author: Hiroshi
Date: 2002-02-27 02:12
Another thing to note is just pitch's defect of the code D-F-A. It sounds terrible. These are based on 3rd intervals. We automatically avoid playing this code progression in just temperament.
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Author: JMcAulay
Date: 2002-02-27 05:08
Hiroshi, the interval of a fourth in equal temper is calculated as the root note's frequency times the fifth power (five half-steps) of the twelfth root of two (12 half-steps make up one octave). My calculator cannot be located right now, so I leave this as an exercise for the reader. 
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Author: Rene
Date: 2002-02-27 05:44
I have my calculator ready: The equal temperament fourth is 1.3348..., which I bet noone can distinguish from 4/3 by ear.
The fifth is 1.498..., which is further off 1.5, but still I offer a bet to anyone, who claims to tell an equal tempered note by ear.
The third appears as 5th overtone only, and is too remote for the ear to hear exactly anyway. It is 1.2599... compared to 1.25. The next half tone is 1.33 so you can see the relative pitch differences.
I visited the "Ring" saga movie lately, and the intonation of the music was hardly to bear. Not because of the musicians. The movie projector is not exactly a HIFI instrument, ye know. In some scenes, it sounded ridiculous.
Also, from my experience even trained singers use quite different seventh. If the instruments play along, they use their pitch. But if not, anything can happen. And we all know those operatic tenors and sopranos, who sing out of pitch all the time, if you can tell the pitch at all in all this vibrato. People tend to tolarate this.
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Author: Hiroshi
Date: 2002-02-27 05:55
Even good piano tuners tune the piano how well out of equal temperament tuning.
This is a good site on this matter.
http://www.midipal.co.jp/~archi/pmse.html
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Author: Eoin
Date: 2002-02-27 07:33
Hiroshi,
Be careful before you say someone else does not understand something properly. I have done a detailed study of the pitch of scales and certainly understand it. Probably better than you, since the figures you quote are completely wrong. Please check your facts when attempting to correct someone else.
As Rene has said, the correct figure for an equal temperament fourth is 1.3348. This figure comes from 5 semitones so it is 2^(5/12). It is only 2 cents out from a "perfect" fourth, which is 4/3. Most musicians can hear a pitch difference of about 5 cents but not a difference of 2 cents. The equal temperament fifth 2^(7/12) is also 2 cents from the perfect fifth (3/2).
There are four different scales that I know of, the just intonation, the mean tone intonation, the pythagorean scale and the equal temperament. They all use different values for semitones and thirds. Although the just intonation scale is considered by theorists to be the "most natural", there is no evidence that people actually use it. Most people who are fed on Equal Temperament from the time they are born do not use just intonation. They feel much more comfortable with Equal Temperament and this is what they use in singing. The Scottish Bagpipes use Just intonation for most of their scale (except for the flattened seventh and the high octave note being slightly flat). Non-bagpipe enthusiasts feel the third note is flat, because it is flatter than the third they are used to. To me this is the proof that "singers using just intonation" is a myth.
Measurement of the pitch of world-class violinists has shown that they also do not use just intonation. Instead, they vary the pitch to suit the mood of the piece. A semitone in passing in a piece might be quite small, less than an equal temperament semitone, but a leading semitone (that is one from just below the tonic to the tonic) is usually exaggeratedly large, much more than an equal semitone.
Quoting Mozart only confuses things. Equal temperament scales were not well established in his day, so he would have been exposed to a completely different set of scales to us. His ear would have been tuned to them.
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Author: jez
Date: 2002-02-27 09:31
If we judge intonation by listening to difference tones which tuning do we get? Surely this method is kindest on the ear.
I remember something called (I think) 'Quarter comma mean tone' where does that fit in? Can you recommend where one could look to study this subject further?
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Author: Elenna
Date: 2002-02-27 09:51
An interesting web site:
Why I hate Valotti (or is it Young?) by Ross W Duffin
http://www-midischool.cwru.edu/Duffin/Vallotti/
This has info on historical temperaments, especially (as the name suggests) Vallotti and Young. It also has some info on quarter comma meantone. There are audio examples of different temperaments (which unfortunately my computer won't play).
Incidentally, I do not hate Vallotti...
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Author: jez
Date: 2002-02-27 11:58
Elenna
could you check the web-site address you've posted here. I can't seem to access it and it sounds just what I want.
Thanks
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Author: JMcAulay
Date: 2002-02-27 17:41
I recall a couple of lute players many years ago who must have spent ten minutes carefully tuning their instruments to some obscure mediaeval temperament (I'd never heard of it -- still don't know what it was). I feel confident that within 30 seconds after they began playing, it was all over for the tuning.
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Author: GBK
Date: 2002-02-27 18:45
JMcAulay...You probably are familiar with this limerick, but it might bear repeating:
There once was a man who played lute
Who said "I admit it looks cute,
"But it's too soft to hear,
"And to tune takes a year,
"I wish that I'd learned to play flute."
- and my favorite lute quotation - I forgot who it was attributed to:
"If a man spends twenty years playing the lute, he will spend five of those years tuning it" ...GBK
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