With my historical precursor of the Hurdy Gurdy - the Symphonia, I can tune the chanter stop pegs to any pitch I want, then the drone string to any of these I want. You can stuff around with the 'fifth and beats' game to get real 'Just tuning' or use a very expensive electronic tuner set up FOR 'Just' tuning - but if you use a 'normal electronic Tuner', you will always get it 'Even Tempered'!

If I want to play with any other muso with a 'normal modern instrument' I have to tune it back to normal, so it's not worth the bother unless you play it solo all the time - and frankly, it always plays So Low, you can hardly hear it on its own in a big room anyway! :-P

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"So if [...] and all the instruments were in tune with each other (no matter what "key" they happened to be in")

As Charlie Brown said... ARRGHH!!!!

"all the instruments were in tune with each other" would only be the case if they were all MADE as a ensemble SET - examples still exist in Collections of such Sets, but no random grab bag of itinerant strolling musicians dare DREAM that they COULD EVER BE in 'pitch tune', as well as 'mode tune'...


"if you take a simple folk harp with no levers and tune it to a C major scale you end up with modes following the classical nomenclature system: where each mode starts on a different note but is using the notes of the C major scale: "

Arrrggggh!!

Not if you tune it with an Even Tempered Electronic Tuner, you don't! OK, CLOSE, but no cigar! You only get 'Modern-Pseudo-Modes'! The resonances are all 'wrong' as they JUST (sorry!) are not 'Just Tempered'... you CAN play tunes in all 24 major and Minor scales on it (except where you lack the necessary chromatic 'accidentals') and they will all sound nice - no jarring sounds. That IS the whole point of the maths behind 'Even Temper'!

There is a music cult that claims that each scale has its own 'emotion' - perhaps true when using 'Just' instruments, but technically impossible (but not mentally impossible - the brain is wonderful!) for 'Even' instruments, you need to really understand the mathematics and physics to realise that this can be only BS, as all the intervals are 'EVEN', and when we threw away the 'Just tunings' - those 'emotional sounds' went with the bathwater. Ok, if you really suck hard on that funny smelling cigarette, you CAN convince yourself of anything 'emotional'...

OK, OK, OK, I can feel a tiny 'emotional' difference between a Major and Minor, but for each of all the 12 Major and all 24 (Harmonic and ...) scales, I only possess a normal 'relative' and not a precise 'absolute' 'pitch sense', so can't really feel much emotional difference. Now when you play a particular PIECE of music, I can feel 'emotions', but that often has more to do with use of particular pitch interval progressions, or combinations of particular instruments.

But, there is perhaps an exception - if you have acapella voices that are VERY well trained, the human voice has a tendency to be attracted to 'Just' pitch differences (tunings) [all to do simply with the Physics {Maths} of vibrating objects, as first accredited to Pythagoras], unless you have been thoroughly 'culturised' to reject that for 'Even'. Ever wondered why SOME acapella groups give you a different buzz? You need accurate measuring instruments to tell, because most people's ears are not that good (and the human mind is exceptionally good at forcing our perceptions of reality into predetermined models - ha! nearly said 'Modes'!), but there IS an emotional difference :-).


"But you CAN drive a American car in Australia or Great Britain!"

Yes, BUT! IF you don't want to keep running into things, like other cars, you'll have to be sensitive enough to accept that you must drive on the OTHER side of the road, and then you'll find that the driver's seat is inconveniently not positioned where you can easily see down the centre of the road, but can see only the gutter... :-)

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The curse of being a well trained modern musician, is that you have forced your brain to automatically adjust to 'Even Temper', so that when you raise or lower the reference pitch by a few Hz, the scale still sounds the same... When I was a youngster and entering Eisteddfods, my teacher transposed all the pieces I had to sing, into some really weird keys with lots of 'fly specs' everywhere, just to get the tune (alright - Mode, in ONE sense of meaning!) into EXACTLY the right pitch range to suit my vocal range, and thus was not forcing me to sing other than right in the center of my natural range! She WAS a very good teacher, so maybe THAT's why I often did pretty well in the comps...

:-0