Is the tempered scale overrated?

Subject: RE: Is the tempered scale overrated?
From: Anglo
Date: 09 Jan 07 - 03:18 PM

There's an interesting blog here.

Music theorist Kyle Gann's Post-Classic column on the Arts Journal site, "The Tuning Tide Turns," Jan. 4 2007.

(Well, I thought it was interesting).

Subject: RE: Is the tempered scale overrated?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 21 Apr 07 - 03:06 AM

what would be a tempered tuning for the guitar?

Subject: RE: Is the tempered scale overrated?
From: pirandello
Date: 21 Apr 07 - 07:57 AM

I just use an A440 tuning fork and my ears. Lucky I play the guitar!

Steganpid; um, is there something you need to tell us?

Subject: RE: Is the tempered scale overrated?
From: leeneia
Date: 21 Apr 07 - 10:38 AM

John in Kansas wrote: "Since a little before Pythagoras' time, some academics have had the notion that "nature is better pleased" with relationships that can be expressed as ratios of whole numbers, and just tuning sort of "fits" with that idea."

After studying this thread, I have decided that Just or Natural tuning is one of those ideas that the ancients had that actually never worked out. Other ideas like that were:

the planets must have circular orbits,

there must be a Terra Australis somewhere to balance Eurasia, because God wouldn't make a seriously asymmetrical world. (They didn't know how big Africa was, apparently.)

the stars are immutable.

plants resemble the organs whose diseases they cure. (liverwort, pulmonaria.)

======
I am not trying to be snide when I say that after a certain point, tuning should be entrusted to the ears, not to theory. I am thinking of recorder groups I have been in, where the teacher tells us to play a certain chord and tune it ourselves. It is amazing what nexperienced players can do just by listening intently and aiming for a beautiful sound.

Hearing is a primitive function, and it can accomplish things that language cannot put into words.

Subject: RE: Is the tempered scale overrated?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 21 Apr 07 - 12:03 PM

The tempered scale was created so that instruments could play together without sounding out of tune with each other. Bach's "Well Tempered Clavichord" was probably written with this in mind since musical aggregations were getting larger culminating in the Viennese symphonic styles.

Tempered scales are probably not important in music from Asian, African or less urban areas of the world. They are useful for soloists who don't have large musical aggregations with which to contend.

Frank Hamilton

Subject: RE: Is the tempered scale overrated?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 21 Apr 07 - 01:35 PM

It is absolutely dead certain that Bach did *not* have equal temperament in mind for any piece he ever wrote. We don't know for sure what temperament he had in mind for The Well-Tempered Keyboard, but "anything reasonable" sounds like a good bet. He circulated it in his lifetime and didn't provide an accompanying secret decoder ring. He wouldn't have got many takers if it didn't work on the usual unequal temperaments of his own time.

It is very easy for instruments to play together in large heterogeneous groups whatever the tuning they use. There have been court orchestras in the Far East much larger than any present-day symphony orchestra.

---

This thread is the Sargasso Sea of spam hits. If you wish to post a real message here ask a mod to reopen it. ---mudelf