5 ms·

Equal temperament only applies to a handful of instruments that can be kept in tune long enough for it to matter, and that can play the same note, the same way,

by narag 5y ago

Equal temperament only applies to a handful of instruments that can be kept in tune long enough for it to matter, and that can play the same note, the same way, twice. I'm confused. If I'm not mistaken, equal temperament is the norm for all instruments since Bach. Any keyboard instrument is tuned that way. Or any instrument with frets. Or any instrument that must be played alonside with one of the previous ones. If you meant something else, could you ellaborate?

leephillips 5y ago
I think that’s what analog31 said, and he gave examples. For an orchestra without a piano, there is no temperament issue.
- narag 5y ago
  Do you mean that there are issues otherwise? Which ones?
  - analog31 5y ago
    Many issues. The tuning of each instrument is a bag of compromises, especially on instruments where the notes are not entirely independent of one another. Woodwind instruments have fewer keys than notes, so each key has multiple roles. Each octave has its own quirks. Woodwind instruments have "bad" notes, and I once saw an advertisement for a flute with a "new improved scale." Brass instruments have their main valves, but also little tuning slides with hooks on them so you can work them in and out with your extra fingers while playing. It's fascinating to see someone play tuba, it takes both hands to work the thing properly. Intonation is a lifelong journey for most musicians. Near the end of his life, they interviewed Ray Brown and asked him if he still needed to practice. He said that he still practiced every day, to improve his intonation. If players sound in tune, it's because of an almost obsessive effort to make that happen. What I'm saying is you can't begin to talk about temperaments until you can play the same note at the same pitch, in any octave, at least twice. I'm a double bassist, and I'm still working on that, after playing for nearly 40 years.
    - narag 5y ago
      Thank you for the detailed explanations. For some reason these details don't get to the widely available texts.
kzrdude 5y ago
Lots of instruments use "just-in-time intonation". Like the signing voice or playing a violin: the intonation is what you play. The ear prefers each chord to follow just intonation if you really try to be that accurate. In that sense, your violin's strings might be tuned to match an equal tempered piano, but your own intonation will not (probably) follow any "equal temperament" for the notes you play on the fingerboard, unless you follow an external reference, not your ear. When you try to play a fifth on a violin, your ear will help you to play it exactly (ratio 1.5), not the equal temperament approximation. Of course, for the fifth the difference is very small, but the same idea applies to the other intervals.
- narag 5y ago
  In my understanding and all the more knowldgeable people than me that have taught me music, that's absolutely not correct. Equal temperament is just the water you swim in, for all western music since Bach. "Natural" tuning by integer fractions would sound very unusual to everybody.
  - mrob 5y ago
    Do you find Barbershop music to sound "very unusual"? The defining feature of the style is just intonation (and microtonal just intonation at that, because a harmonic seventh can't be adequately approximated by 12 equal temperament).
  - kzrdude 5y ago
    I think you're mixing it up with some other aspect of temperament. Take the example barbershop's use of justly intonated chords. It doesn't sound unusual, it sounds very clean and pure. Take the example of Jacob Collier's vocal arrangements, he likes to sing the chords justly intonated too. He has various explanations of this on youtube. Also gifted with an insane ear so that he can clearly sing/explain the difference. Maybe this is an ok explanation of Collier. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHC2XNGerW4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHC2XNGerW4
    - kzrdude 5y ago
analog31 5y ago
I think that mathematically equal temperament didn't come into use until the modern piano with an iron frame, though I don't know how pipe organs were tuned. At the time of Bach, a keyboard instrument would go out of tune quickly, so a musician had to be able to tune their own instrument quickly, before every performance. Modern piano tuning is a specialized skill. Temperament methods evolved towards ever-better approximations of equal temperament. They all had names. Bach's "Well Tempered Klavier" was written for an instrument tuned in the Well temperament, and explored the unique tone quality of each key. String and wind instruments can't be played in tune consistently enough to worry about temperament. And musicians will push notes slightly sharp or flat for emphasis. On the cello, I was taught to slightly stretch whole-step intervals, and squeeze half-step intervals together when playing scales. It made a major scale sound "more major" for instance. Every wind instrument has one or two notes that are known to be bad and must be corrected on the fly, though it's less noticeable on faster passages. The musicians play in tune by listening to one another. Fretted instruments in Bach's time were an odd situation. Gut strings vary in density along their length, and go out of tune as they age. The viola da gamba had frets, but they were movable and required periodic adjustment. Even the temperament on a modern steel-stringed guitar is approximate. The compensated bridge is an attempt to correct the scale, but it's not perfect. And it's not systematically tempered, as in, adjacent octaves are not in tune with one another.
- narag 5y ago
  I see you're talking about orchestal music that seems to be a world apart from pop music instrumentation, both because there's less use of electronic sound generation and because chords are played yuxtaposing several instruments. About guitars, I can believe the bridge, or even finger pressure provide adjustement for individual notes. But if you're playing a chord, you just trust the frets, that are uniformly spaced, following the logarithmic scale.
kansface 5y ago
Negative. I’m a classically trained guitarist with degrees in music and physics. You are correct about the frets, but not the strings themselves. Sometimes, you really need the two E strings to be perfectly in tune, sometimes, some piece has an octave on two adjacent strings as a drone, and that needs to be aligned, or in the key of D (with a drop D), you’d probably want the two Ds to be in tune. Whatever you choose, something will be out of tune because of physics . Half steps don’t perfectly align with their equivalents - thirds in particular drive me nuts. It’s just a matter of picking what you hate the least. It’s not uncommon to see professional classical guitarists give a string a micro adjustment during a whole note/rest while they are playing, or tweak tuning between each piece.
- narag 5y ago
  OK, I see what you mean, thank you very much. That's actually very interesting for me and explains some inconsistencies that I had attributed to too new/too old strings, badly adjusted bridge or whatnot.
  - kansface 5y ago
    Old strings are a different matter. Strings ideally obey Hook's law for small perturbations and undergo simple harmonic oscillation with standing waves (overtones) that have nodes at the neck and bridge (or fret and bridge). With old strings in particular, the fundamental of the string changes over time (as the string sounds). Audibly so! My mental model is that the "length" of the string is a really fuzzy concept for [worn] strings in motion. Plucking the string deforms it, and the string slowly retracts back to the stable length (at rest) as it dissipates energy. I haven't done any math or seen any, but I don't think its linear, either. You can easily verify this using an electric guitar if you plug it into a tuner thing with a visible meter - the arm will swing around. Also, I haven't done any physics in over a decade because I write software now...

by narag 5y ago

leephillips 5y ago

I think that’s what analog31 said, and he gave examples. For an orchestra without a piano, there is no temperament issue.

narag 5y ago
Do you mean that there are issues otherwise? Which ones?
- analog31 5y ago
  Many issues. The tuning of each instrument is a bag of compromises, especially on instruments where the notes are not entirely independent of one another. Woodwind instruments have fewer keys than notes, so each key has multiple roles. Each octave has its own quirks. Woodwind instruments have "bad" notes, and I once saw an advertisement for a flute with a "new improved scale." Brass instruments have their main valves, but also little tuning slides with hooks on them so you can work them in and out with your extra fingers while playing. It's fascinating to see someone play tuba, it takes both hands to work the thing properly. Intonation is a lifelong journey for most musicians. Near the end of his life, they interviewed Ray Brown and asked him if he still needed to practice. He said that he still practiced every day, to improve his intonation. If players sound in tune, it's because of an almost obsessive effort to make that happen. What I'm saying is you can't begin to talk about temperaments until you can play the same note at the same pitch, in any octave, at least twice. I'm a double bassist, and I'm still working on that, after playing for nearly 40 years.
  - narag 5y ago
    Thank you for the detailed explanations. For some reason these details don't get to the widely available texts.

kzrdude 5y ago

Lots of instruments use "just-in-time intonation". Like the signing voice or playing a violin: the intonation is what you play. The ear prefers each chord to follow just intonation if you really try to be that accurate. In that sense, your violin's strings might be tuned to match an equal tempered piano, but your own intonation will not (probably) follow any "equal temperament" for the notes you play on the fingerboard, unless you follow an external reference, not your ear. When you try to play a fifth on a violin, your ear will help you to play it exactly (ratio 1.5), not the equal temperament approximation. Of course, for the fifth the difference is very small, but the same idea applies to the other intervals.

narag 5y ago
In my understanding and all the more knowldgeable people than me that have taught me music, that's absolutely not correct. Equal temperament is just the water you swim in, for all western music since Bach. "Natural" tuning by integer fractions would sound very unusual to everybody.
- mrob 5y ago
  Do you find Barbershop music to sound "very unusual"? The defining feature of the style is just intonation (and microtonal just intonation at that, because a harmonic seventh can't be adequately approximated by 12 equal temperament).
- kzrdude 5y ago
  I think you're mixing it up with some other aspect of temperament. Take the example barbershop's use of justly intonated chords. It doesn't sound unusual, it sounds very clean and pure. Take the example of Jacob Collier's vocal arrangements, he likes to sing the chords justly intonated too. He has various explanations of this on youtube. Also gifted with an insane ear so that he can clearly sing/explain the difference. Maybe this is an ok explanation of Collier. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHC2XNGerW4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHC2XNGerW4
  - kzrdude 5y ago

analog31 5y ago

I think that mathematically equal temperament didn't come into use until the modern piano with an iron frame, though I don't know how pipe organs were tuned. At the time of Bach, a keyboard instrument would go out of tune quickly, so a musician had to be able to tune their own instrument quickly, before every performance. Modern piano tuning is a specialized skill. Temperament methods evolved towards ever-better approximations of equal temperament. They all had names. Bach's "Well Tempered Klavier" was written for an instrument tuned in the Well temperament, and explored the unique tone quality of each key. String and wind instruments can't be played in tune consistently enough to worry about temperament. And musicians will push notes slightly sharp or flat for emphasis. On the cello, I was taught to slightly stretch whole-step intervals, and squeeze half-step intervals together when playing scales. It made a major scale sound "more major" for instance. Every wind instrument has one or two notes that are known to be bad and must be corrected on the fly, though it's less noticeable on faster passages. The musicians play in tune by listening to one another. Fretted instruments in Bach's time were an odd situation. Gut strings vary in density along their length, and go out of tune as they age. The viola da gamba had frets, but they were movable and required periodic adjustment. Even the temperament on a modern steel-stringed guitar is approximate. The compensated bridge is an attempt to correct the scale, but it's not perfect. And it's not systematically tempered, as in, adjacent octaves are not in tune with one another.

narag 5y ago
I see you're talking about orchestal music that seems to be a world apart from pop music instrumentation, both because there's less use of electronic sound generation and because chords are played yuxtaposing several instruments. About guitars, I can believe the bridge, or even finger pressure provide adjustement for individual notes. But if you're playing a chord, you just trust the frets, that are uniformly spaced, following the logarithmic scale.

kansface 5y ago

Negative. I’m a classically trained guitarist with degrees in music and physics. You are correct about the frets, but not the strings themselves. Sometimes, you really need the two E strings to be perfectly in tune, sometimes, some piece has an octave on two adjacent strings as a drone, and that needs to be aligned, or in the key of D (with a drop D), you’d probably want the two Ds to be in tune. Whatever you choose, something will be out of tune because of physics . Half steps don’t perfectly align with their equivalents - thirds in particular drive me nuts. It’s just a matter of picking what you hate the least. It’s not uncommon to see professional classical guitarists give a string a micro adjustment during a whole note/rest while they are playing, or tweak tuning between each piece.

narag 5y ago
OK, I see what you mean, thank you very much. That's actually very interesting for me and explains some inconsistencies that I had attributed to too new/too old strings, badly adjusted bridge or whatnot.
- kansface 5y ago
  Old strings are a different matter. Strings ideally obey Hook's law for small perturbations and undergo simple harmonic oscillation with standing waves (overtones) that have nodes at the neck and bridge (or fret and bridge). With old strings in particular, the fundamental of the string changes over time (as the string sounds). Audibly so! My mental model is that the "length" of the string is a really fuzzy concept for [worn] strings in motion. Plucking the string deforms it, and the string slowly retracts back to the stable length (at rest) as it dissipates energy. I haven't done any math or seen any, but I don't think its linear, either. You can easily verify this using an electric guitar if you plug it into a tuner thing with a visible meter - the arm will swing around. Also, I haven't done any physics in over a decade because I write software now...