source file: mills2.txt
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 1995 12:22:26 -0700

Subject: ET, Bach, and me

From: wabi@server.net4you.co.at (Helmut Wabnig)

Did you ever listen to a digital piano's sound? 
Some offer a choice between several temperaments.
Select Equal Temperament and play a melody. 
Play some intervals (2 tones) and some chords (3 or more tones)
You will notice, that intervals sound absolutely ugly.
Not so bad are the chords, in fact they "live" through their beats.

Now go back to your good old wooden piano and do the same.
What about the intervals? How do they sound? Chords, melodies?
Not so bad, right?

I have been investigating this for quite a while now.
Talked to piano tuners, read lists, collected literature...
What I found, I call it:

Wabi's First Theorem: Digital Instruments sound bad, because their
                      ET tuning is absolutely perfect.

Within a millisecond this leads to:
  
Wabi's Second Theorem: Piano tuners can't tune Equal Temperament.

In fact, this has been known for long. Not only do they 
make errors, they apply microtonal
variations to each string of a tone, correct for inharmonics
of individual strings, and they apply "stretch". 
How much of "stretch" did Bach use?

Wabi's Third Theorem: Bach did not use Equal Temperament,
                      because he had    E   A   R   S.


(Theorems are there to be important.)
(That's their very nature, and if you happen to have one, 
 you are important)
(At least a little.)

Yours
Helmut Wabnig
wabi@net4you.co.at


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