hans wrote:
I am aware that this will not harmonise quite with E minor chords played to the Bs, because the B is flat and not a pure fifth above the E. But harmonisation and chordal accompaniment are different problems.
I think that many people (no one in particular in this discussion, btw, but many people in a generic sense) put a lot of weight on the theory, and not enough investigation into the practice. So they do some math, and they say, a ha! You can't use JI because this note doesn't line up with that one, so it can't work.
But in practice the ear doesn't necessarily hear things the same way the theory suggests. Theory is, afterall, an attempt to explain practice, not a recipe for success.
Regarding using a JI solo instrument with chordal accompaniement the theory would lead one to believe that if you played a whistle with JI, then the "problem" pointed out above would be a problem, but my ears tell me it probably isn't. I listen to a lot of recordings of bagpipes, including some celtic-rock and other types of modern mixed ensembles. Most of the pipers in the celtic-rock scene tune their bagpipes normally, and play with ET accompaniment (guitar or other frettet strings, typically). One band in particular is Clandestine. I asked the piper (EJ Jones) about how he tunes, so I know he tunes his chanter to his drones (harmonically just). He never sounds out of tune or in-harmonious, even though nearly every track they've recorded in many years has ET accompaniment.
I'm not proposing any theory to explain this fact, but a fact it is -- you can mix JI solo instruments with ET accompaniment and it sounds just fine. There could be ways to mix them that don't sound fine as well, but there are ways that work out. Another interesting example is from classical music -- in the violin sonata, a solo violin is accompanied by a piano. The piano is obviously ET. The violinist though, doesn't play ET, except in (fairly rare) spots in the music where the piano and the violin are in unison.
) buying yet more flutes (FlOA).
