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From: symon@lhotse.cs.unc.edu (James Symon)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: Tuning (e.g. pianos)
Message-ID: <11298@thorin.cs.unc.edu>
Date: 22 Dec 89 16:18:50 GMT
References: <15132@well.UUCP> <11435@goofy.megatest.UUCP>
Sender: news@thorin.cs.unc.edu
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In article <11435@goofy.megatest.UUCP>, djones@megatest.UUCP (Dave Jones) writes:
> . . .
> In Western, Eastern, and every other kind of music, the dominant is 3/2
> the frequency of the tonic, not 2/3. "A" is not the dominant of "C", nor is
> "C" the dominant of "A".  And C' is twice the frequency of of C, not half.
> 

Thank you Dave Jones and others for pointing out what a mess that
original article was before some poor soul took it seriously. Of
course, we all know what it's like to fire off a posting only to read
it later and groan in embarassment over the careless errors. However,
beyond the carelessness, assuming tempered tuning and that we didn't
play the transposed version right after the original, what difference
does it make how far in the circle of fifths one is from the other? I
leave open the question of latent perfect pitch detecting such small
differences.  Certainly composers have felt differently about
different keys.

There is one aspect of this phenomenon (toons transposed taste tangy)
that I haven't seen mentioned. I may have missed it. Even if you are
given that your piano is well-tuned to be properly well-tempered (so
no mathematical difference between the keys of C and C#), and even if
it seems doubtful that most of us have enough latent perfect pitch to
react differently to C and C# versions played far apart in time (I'm
not sure about this), it may be that on a typical piano some keys get
used much more than others. ("I don't want to try that piece, too many
sharps.") This may lead to a difference in wear in the key actions and
the way they strike the strings. Even more noticeable would be
differential aging of the strings leading to a difference in the
overtone structure. I can imagine several ways that differences in use
could cause differences in the strings.

Jim Symon			| symon@cs.unc.edu
Computer Science Dept		| {uunet, decvax}!mcnc!unc!symon
Chapel Hill, NC  27599-3175	| (919) w:962-1893 h:968-1024

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