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Thank you, Prout.

..."If a UT sounds out of tune to you, it could easily be that you are not acclimated. But, for me, the reality is that I can hear a freshly tuned UT as being 'in tune' because I know how the various chords should sound. But I am sure I could not identify which UT was being used if I did not tune it myself, unless I played chords on that particular keyboard and figured out the relationships. Sitting in the audience I can only tell that it is not ET because some of the pieces have more calm (more just) tonics and I-IV-V-I chord progressions than other keys."...

I see, so basically you are saying that you can recognize when the scale geometry is not ‘regular’, though not ‘how’ irregular it is (which UT, unless you played chords on that particular keyboard and figured out the relationships). And it is ‘chord progressions’ that tells you that it is not ET.

..."You pose an interesting question regarding an UT being out of tune. On my own piano tuned in Young, which is a very strong Well Temperament, many intervals are not very pure, and many are very pure. I am used to the sound that results, but I can't really tell when the temperament starts to go out of tune. I can only tell when the unisons and octaves start to go out of tune."...

Yes, I thought so... ‘octaves and unisons’. So, basically, as long as octaves and unisons are okay, you would be willing and ready to acclimate, perhaps you are acclimated already to different type of intonations, meaning that any irregular scale geometry would not bother your ear, really.

And I guess that, depending on the composer, you would (you might) expect (and/or detect (?)) a certain UT, or is it more related to the individual_piece tonic, following the I-IV-V-I progression rule, independently from the author? Or perhaps it would depend more on the historical period and what the literature reports?

In other words, you could not ‘identify which UT was being used' if you did not tune it yourself but, are you able to say whether the UT is correct, depending on the author?

Hmm... All this is very interesting, really.

I guess there must be something related to our inner ‘intonation detect system’ (Mark, how do you like IDS :-)), otherwise I would not know how to explain my ‘hearing’ and the hearing of many other musicians and technicians, when we notice that something sounds repeatedly (and inconveniently) out of tune. If I stand correctly, when you do not hear any difference in chord progressions, you are able to conclude that that is ET (?).

It is getting late now, but I hope to be able to elaborate more.

..."With regard to acclimating to a voice - Yes, I think we all acclimate to weird sounding voices. I used to think female singers from India used a very weird tone production. Now I am used to it. With regard to female jazz singers, I find the unsupported, breathy sound of many modern female jazz singers as weird and unpleasant. I like the traditional full voice sounds of the great jazz musicians of the middle 20th century. But, to many people, the new sound is what they apparently want. It is 'weird' to me, but not to them. To each, his own."...

By reading the above, I think I must have been ambiguous. I was not referring to exotic voices and ‘weird tone production’, i.e. when timber/color and abbellimenti (embellishments ?) happen to sound weird = new or different, I was referring to a western voice in a (more or less) tipical/musical environment, when it sounds weird = out of tune.

Thanks again, Prout, a.c.

P.S.: Hi Bill,

You wrote: ..."I have said it before and I will say it again: The very effort to suppress any knowledge or performance in non-equal temperaments is what will insure that Reverse Well will be more commonly heard than ET. It will also insure that this lofty standard that can rarely be achieved, will very rarely be achieved."

Bill, IMO, that might depend on us.

Cheers

I do not know what "the same characteristically backwards from a Well Temperament sound" is. That was what you were supposed to be demonstrating. That your demonstration was so inept is your fault. If a unison is out of tune, which string is supposed to be the one that determines the temperament? If an octave is out of tune, which one is supposed to determine the temperament? If "reverse well" is so common, why could you not find a single recording with perfectly good unisons and perfectly good octaves that demonstrates it? As it is, you have not demonstrated anything.

I usually stay out of these threads on temperaments.

But I come to same conclusion as BDB.

If the unisons are out, you can't tell what temperament the tuner wanted.

Exactly. That is what the problem has always been. You wouldn't know it if you heard it. The question I have is that since you seem to know so much about so many facts about the piano, why don't you know what Reverse Well is and what it sounds like? I do.

You do not seem to know what it is well enough to explain it to anyone else, apparently. I know facts. Reverse well temperament does not seem to be one, as far as anyone has demonstrated to me.

Something is not unreal just because you can't grasp it.
I think it's clear to most people what reverse well is, it's a quite elementary concept. And Bill has explained it quite well at the elementary school level. I have even measured the beatrates in the example he posted. What is it that you don't understand??

Kees

He gave a definition, and then contradicted it when I pointed out by that definition, you could transpose a well temperament and get a reverse well temperament. The implication of that is that a reverse well temperament is no worse than a well temperament. That does not fit the alternative definition of reverse well as a "bad" temperament.

Guys, let's not get into a p***ing match. Historically, the vast majority of temperaments used the key of C as the most pure M3 and very narrow fifths and progressed through fifths on either side of C toward less pure M3s. Reverse Well makes the fifths around C closer to pure, which forces the thirds toward impure.
Since most of the music written for strong UTC clustered around keys closely related to C, reverse well is a bad temperament.

If the claim is that a well temperament is good, and a transposition that makes it into a reverse well temperament is bad, then neither can be good nor bad all the time.

But it is beside the point. The fact remains that people give examples of demonstrably bad tunings to back up a claim that some temperament has some characteristic which is supposed to be desirable or not.

Some people are bad drivers, which is equally off topic. Unless you want to achieve 30000 posts perhaps. I can see no other reason for these random remarks of yours.

Kees

Now that is an interesting comment.

What if you are working on the C# and F# major Preludes and fugues from the WTC? Then reverse well-temperament should sound great.

To me it does indeed. But a normal (non-reversed) well temperament also sounds better than ET to me. How can that be?

I am tending to a personal conclusion that reverse-well is also better than ET, because I like to hear a variety of differently tempered intervals, it makes the music more colorful.

For example I have my piano tuned in a 1/6' normal well temperament, similar to prout's Young. I play the E major prelude from WTC1 both in E major and Eb major. And they both sound great, though different. In ET it sounds more boring to me.

Just a personal subjective point of view, I have no desire to convert anyone to this.

Kees

I also have no desire to convert anyone. I am just looking for a convincing demonstration. It should start by being tuned well enough so the unisons and octaves are reasonable. Then whatever is played needs to go through enough keys that I can hear whether I notice a difference, and if I do, whether it sounds better or not.

Personally, my goal is to give the pianist a blank canvas. The pianist should provide the color.

On the thread where I submitted a recording of my temperament, Bill gave what I thought was a very clear explanation of of he defines as a reverse well temperament: Link to post



Briefly, it's a misguided attempt to purify some of the 5th's, usually in white-key scales. The result of course being essentially wolf intervals elsewhere in the temperament.

To me, it's a lack of discipline in striving to temper all 5th's equally.

However, what Mr. Bremmer's explanation boils down to is that he calls poorly tuned pianos reverse well tempered, just as the videos he linked to demonstrated. My point was that none of this has anything to do with the temperament, the piano is just out of tune. How it got out of tune is pure speculation. He claims it is because it was tuned that way. To me, it could be that the tuner could not tune well, but it more likely could have be neglect, use, humidity swings, or any of the other ways that pianos get out of tune.

BDB,

I will do you a favor in pointing out that it is presumed that nobody ever tunes Reverse Well intentionally. It is through ignorance that they do. Specifically, ignorance of what a Well Temperament should sound like.

Unlike many others, it seems, when I come across a piano I have not tuned before, I put in the muting strips and then listen to the progression of M3's from F3-A3 to C#4-F4. If what I find is that all sound fairly even, I presume that the temperament had been ET or at least a reasonable approximation of it.

Sometimes, of course, especially in the kind of climate that prevails over most of North America (but not where you live or anywhere on the West Coast), a piano goes wildly sharp or flat in the low tenor, so sometimes I really can't tell what must have been done. Like you, the pianos I tune in the city where I grew up, Los Angeles, the pianos I tune stay satisfactorily tuned for what seem years at a time. It took fighting a losing battle with extreme conditions to become a solid tuner.

That being said, when I consistently find: F3-A3 way too fast, F#3-A#3 way too slow, G3-B3 way too fast, G#3-C4 as sweet as candy, A3-C#4 more or less the way it should be, A#3-D4 a bit too tart, B3-D#4 as mellow and slow as one could ever wish a M3 to be, C4-E4 screaming fast, sour as lemons, 21 cents wide or more, out stripping all other M3's in speed by far but then C#4-F4 is again as slow and sweet as one could ever wish an M3 could be, I think I am onto something.

That kind of pattern does not emerge from instability alone nor could seasonal Relative Humidity (RH) changes explain it. Only one factor does: Cumulative error produced by tuning in a cycle of 5ths sequence and making what John Travis identified as the "Tendency for the tuner to err towards the just 5th".

Every piano goes out of tune sooner or later. Some poor pianos can only be rather approximately tuned because of their very design and how far off pitch and out of tune they were when someone finally asked for them to be tuned.

The examples that were so proudly put up about a year ago of famous pieces being played in a Well Temperament as an example of why Well Temperament should be considered were admittedly not very good. Still, despite poor unisons above all else, I could still hear that the piano had been tuned in a Well Temperament.

So, why should I not also be able to tell, under at least some circumstances, from a You Tube type video, that a piano had been tuned in Reverse Well? If such a video were a piano that seemed fairly reasonably well tuned in a presumably reasonably good representation of ET, I would have no reason to point a finger at it.

But let one person offer up an example of a Well Temperament or any other kind of non-equal temperament as an example of how such techniques may have merit, people like you will climb all over it, criticizing anything and everything about it. It is so consistent, that kind of attack, that in many cases, if no one had ever said the piano was in a non-equal temperament, no one, even those highly skilled technicians among us would have ever noticed that it was only the temperament hat was different.

Technicians such as I do not tune pianos in a deliberate way to make them sound out of tune or "weird". I actually follow and believe in the teachings of people such as Owen Jorgensen who never advocated any specific temperament as being the one which would satisfy everyone all the time.

He did point out in his writing, that in past centuries, musicians and keyboardists were not completely satisfied with ET. It is only now that ET is being literally forced as the one and only solution.

It is admittedly true that the broadcast and recording industry have bought into that nearly completely to the point that the technicians who serve that industry find anything other than what they do to be somehow inferior. Therefore, nearly any commercially produced recording today would exhibit a reasonably executed ET.

It all sounds acceptable, I will agree with that but I do not pay for such recordings, to be sure. They simply do not interest me. Sooner or later, the broadcast and recording industry will catch on to the fact that a piano can actually sound more interesting and be compatible with all other kinds of instruments when tuned in something other than ET.

So, what you asked for in a previous post (one of the many now exceeding 20,000), frankly appeared to me to be either a joke, a revelation of complete ignorance of the subject, or merely an attempt to further the agenda of a "one size fits all" music.

For that, I may have played my own joke in return: The center string was always tuned to a perfect ET. Nobody does anything other than that. It is the right hand string that is tuned in a Well Temperament and the left hand string tuned in Reverse Well. When the piano goes out of tune, the middle string always morphs somehow into Reverse Well but the left hand string morphs into ET. The right hand string always stays in Well Temperament.

That would be absurd, of course but so is your question about why I did not ever find a piano with perfect unisons and octaves but was also tuned in Reverse Well? Indeed, I looked for such an example tonight before I went to my music rehearsal. I won't spend much time on it but I am certain that such an example exists.

But even if I do, will you not say as others have, "One example is only anecdotal evidence".

There is one technician on here who recently posted a video that attempted to show how to tune an ET within a pure 12 parameter. I did not have the heart to say that the results were Reverse Well and for the very reason I mentioned.

The results were the consequence of favoring one interval over all others: the 5th. In case you do not know already, that is what is done to tune a Well Temperament. But since only about half of the 5ths can be favored in such a way, the other half must be compromised. Again, the very definition and purpose of a Well Temperament.

None of that is ever given even a paragraph in any tuning book from Braide-White onward. It is only ET and whatever you do, will be ET! When you reach the end of the sequence and you cannot reconcile the 5th and the octave, "Back up!" (and make sure you do that by slow pulling!)

You will only be a "real" technician when you can do it with a tuning fork, one single mute and an expensive tuning hammer! I recommend only buying the most expensive tuning hammer for such a goal. The most expensive hammer will allow what BDB wants to hear: a piano tuned with perfect unisons and octaves but a temperament that is Reverse Well! Follow a sequence that has 4ths & 5ths tuned upon each other. You will get the most beautiful Reverse Well that you ave ever heard!

Those very kind of instructions will lead virtually all tuners except those who sit aloft in the Recording and Broadcast end of our field to tuning Reverse Well! The tuning will be unstable, the octaves all over the place and the temperament, no matter how well intended, to have that characteristic sound that Reverse Well has.

What a pity, also this thread is being weighted by an issue that we have read ad nauseam.

Bill, this thread is about what follows:



I read: Should there still be a universally-accepted standard of tuning; something that is a failsafe upon which all musicians can ultimately rely?

...//Snip//..."Technicians such as I do not tune pianos in a deliberate way to make them sound out of tune or "weird"."...

Sure. Nevertheless, you well know that every UT will produce intervals that sound wolfish, depending on which key is played as the tonic. They knew about this evident notion very well, 300 years ago, as well as you yourself know about this today. Of course, not everyone would "hear" something 'weird', perhaps even today the vast majority of our customers would never complain, but here the OP would like to focus on a standard "that is a failsafe".

..."I actually follow and believe in the teachings of people such as Owen Jorgensen who never advocated any specific temperament as being the one which would satisfy everyone all the time."...

Before you can advocate a temperament, you have to get to know about it and you have to be able to execute it.

Did your mentor know about Bernhard's tunings? Had he considered the idea that our scale reference must go beyond the octave?

Was he too conviced (as you seem to be) that we need to stretch the octave because of inharmonicity?

I do not really know why, but I believe that your mentor would have been thrilled at the idea that the first ET has been improved, and who knows, he might have changed his mind about "the one" temperament.

..."He did point out in his writing, that in past centuries, musicians and keyboardists were not completely satisfied with ET."...

I would not be surprised at all, who could ever tune 12 root of two? Even today, how can you tune aural non-beating octaves, no matter the temperament, and be "completely satisfied"?

..."It is only now that ET is being literally forced as the one and only solution."...

If that was true, you would be forced to tune ET. But, are you? Let's be realistic, ET was only meant as a better 'compromise', and it has been adopted as an international standard in that it represents a 'regular' scale geometry. So much so that - today - you can calculate any 'variant' and any scale in terms of cent deviation from ET.

..."It is admittedly true that the broadcast and recording industry have bought into that nearly completely to the point that the technicians who serve that industry find anything other than what they do to be somehow inferior. Therefore, nearly any commercially produced recording today would exhibit a reasonably executed ET."...

What can a "reasonably executed ET" produce, if not a mild 'irregular' (wolfish) tuning? And what could a "reasonably executed" WT produce, if not a more irregular tuning? To me, it seems likely that you do not mind confusing the point of arrival with the point of departure. Yet, you know very well that three centuries ago they didn't even need to acclimate to a UT, they actually needed and wanted to depart from those solutions.

IMO, today the actual question should be: How is any temperament and tuning meant to be expanded, both in theory and practice, beyond the first octave? How can we manage the whole scale semitonal geometry?

..."It all sounds acceptable, I will agree with that but I do not pay for such recordings, to be sure. They simply do not interest me. Sooner or later, the broadcast and recording industry will catch on to the fact that a piano can actually sound more interesting and be compatible with all other kinds of instruments when tuned in something other than ET."...

Well, I would really hope so, "something other than ET" as normally understood, it is being shared in these days, Bill, "something other than ET", in terms of scale geometry evolution, is called Modern ET's. And our customers do not even need to acclimate, as it sounds simply better.

Regards, a.c.
.

Alfredo,
You said, "IMO, today the actual question should be: How is any temperament and tuning meant to be expanded, both in theory and practice, beyond the first octave? How can we manage the whole scale semitonal geometry?"

While the above statement is not about a standard, it is a very interesting question. Put another way, " On a piano, how many octaves above and below the temperament octave can one maintain the essential character of the temperament and still maintain a cohesive musical sound over the whole piano? This would true of ET as well as UTs.

How does he/she do that? By playing louder or faster?

No they do not. There is a threshold within which any M3 would be tolerated. Many badly attempted ET's exceed that threshold but are accepted nevertheless as ET. That is the reason why Reverse Well goes so often unrecognized for what it is.

Or slower or softer, or with whatever other expressive techniques that is within his or her technique. I like to make the piano as even and as responsive as possible, so that it responds to what the pianist wants to bring out of it, rather than having her or his interpretation distorted by anything that I do.