The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #84304   Message #1559449
Posted By: The Fooles Troupe
08-Sep-05 - 09:32 PM
Thread Name: Irish music : why is it in D and G ?
Subject: RE: Irish music : why is it in D and G ?
It depends on how the pianos were tuned.

A 'Modern Tuner' may use a tuner box tuned to the equal temperament '12th root' 12 tone system.

I have read 'Piano Tuning Handbooks' of the old school which specified that certain notes were tuned to specified pitch forks, and then the other notes were tuned to 'beat frequencies'. This was from the days when those 'electronic tuner boxes' were not even thought of.

A piano tuner 'touching up' an instrument in a house will usually just 'bend back' the worst notes out of tune to the the original tuning of the instrument itself, unless you want to spend more money for his time to reset the whole instrument, even change the 'reference pitch' of the whole instrument. I have a friend whose very old piano is in tune to itself, but nearly a full semitone in pitch lower than my piano accordion (which is set to A=442, not unusual for an Italian manufactured piano accordion). my ears aren't good enough to tell if it is not tuned exactly to 12th root tempered tuning.

So the instrument may be actually tuned to one of the old 'tempered tunings', and not exactly 12th root tempered tuning.

Those with high 'pitch sensitivity' can tell what the key is and of course if they 'already know' that some keys have different 'attached emotions'...