source file: mills2.txt Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 09:33:55 -0800 Subject: Re: Post from Brian McLaren From: alves@osiris.ac.hmc.edu (Bill Alves) I enjoyed Brian's posts on tuning and technology, but I have an honest question: >The upshot of these precision machine tools >was the 12 tone equal tempered scale. Musical >instruments built by mass production could not >be economically individualized so as to accomodate >dozens of different meantone variants. To make >money turning out modern musical instruments, >you must *standardize*--all exactly alike. When you >build only one or two harpischords per year, you >can easliy afford to use exotic three-tier keyboards >fitted to special custom meantone tuning schemes... >but when you build 100 pianos a year you must >settle on a single rigid standard keyboard. I can understand how this change enforced a 12-pitch-per-octave standard keyboard, but pianos are hand-tuned, even now. The construction of a piano does not have to be changed to accomodate most historical meantone, just, or well-tempered tunings, as long as they don't stray radically from a 12TET median. Granted, modern high-tension piano strings cannot be safely sharpened more than a semitone or so (unlike low-tension harpsichords), but the difference between 12TET pitches and those of these other tunings is usually no more than about 20 cents. In fact, given that, without electronic help, 12TET is generally much more time-consuming to tune than 1/4-meantone (to take an obvious example), one would think that the capitalist piano manufacturers would have *avoided* it. Bill ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^ Bill Alves email: alves@hmc.edu ^ ^ Harvey Mudd College URL: http://www2.hmc.edu/~alves/ ^ ^ 301 E. Twelfth St. (909)607-4170 (office) ^ ^ Claremont CA 91711 USA (909)621-8360 (fax) ^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Fri, 15 Nov 1996 19:45 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA13471; Fri, 15 Nov 1996 19:46:46 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA13473 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id KAA25329; Fri, 15 Nov 1996 10:46:43 -0800 Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 10:46:43 -0800 Message-Id: <9611151045.ZM16922@frollo> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu