which temperament?

[benhall.1]

OK. Sarcasm aside, I've had a quick look. I won't be spending any longer over there. Firstly, I'd get into too many arguments with people pretending they know the first thing about what they talking about; secondly, I can't understand the forum structure. It's too complicated for me.

[jemtheflute]

[Terry McGee]

This might help, Ben.

Quantz was keen on Just Intonation, to the extent that he added a second R4 key so that he could have separate notes for Eb and D#. This makes sense - he gives fingerings for all the other enharmonic notes (G#/Ab, etc) but since you need a key to play Eb, duplicating the key is the only solution. Here's an image of his style of flute, with the two keys:



When we look under the keys, we see how it's done - the Eb hole is much bigger:



The difference in pitch is around a quarter of a semitone, so it's not insignificant. So that's what a flute properly designed for Just Intonation will look like. Ours don't have that.

By the time we get to the 19th century, JI has bitten the dust. It was already well wounded by Quantz time, by the development of the early well and mean temperaments. Equal temperament was now the go.

There are strong reasons for needing compromise tunings. Fretted instruments are not capable of JI. Keyboards can be, but require split sharps:



Imagine a box or a concertina with 19 notes to the octave!

So, we regretfully turn our back on JI, and do our best to tune to the most authoritative instrument in the session. Or, assume it's tuned to ET and use an ET tuner.

Terry

[benhall.1]

Not sure I agree with that last bit, Terry. You'll never get a fiddler, in whatever genre, to play in ET, no matter what other instruments are playing. I think the same is true for flutists. Mind you, of course, compromises have to be made if there are boxes in the session. Fortunately, the sort of compromises you have to make if it's pipers you're playing with, instead of boxes, are much more musical compromises.

As for Quantz, yes. Just finished the book two days ago.

[benhall.1]

Oh, and I would just like to point out that Quantz, unless I've completely misunderstood the entire book and its footnotes, was not much in favour of JI, seeing meantone as far more suitable. He has a whole section where he argues against those who insist on the 'old' tunings. Quantz points out that you can't modulate very far if you're using JI (he doesn't call it that), and that in 'modern' music you need to, so JI won't do. It's one of the early chapters in the book. I'll dig it out later ...

I'd also like to point out that those split-key keyboards couldn't play in any sort of JI. IIRC they were designed for meantone. Mostly they're based on the 55-comma octave, aren't they? Which, of course, is not JI.

I can see this one requireing the digging out of loads of books, which I haven't got time for right now. Probably won't have for a while ...

[jemtheflute]

I can see this one requiring the digging out of loads of books, which I haven't got time for right now. Probably won't have for a while ...

'Sides, I think you gave me some of them back.....?

[Terry McGee]

Not sure I agree with that last bit, Terry. You'll never get a fiddler, in whatever genre, to play in ET, no matter what other instruments are playing. I think the same is true for flutists. Mind you, of course, compromises have to be made if there are boxes in the session. Fortunately, the sort of compromises you have to make if it's pipers you're playing with, instead of boxes, are much more musical compromises.

As for Quantz, yes. Just finished the book two days ago.

Well, the fiddle players or flute players are either playing in ET (if there are boxes, keyboards or fretted instruments present) or they are playing out-of-tune. Assuming the aim of tuning the flute is to minimise discord with the other players, you really have to take into account what they are tuned to. In the case of having a piper and a box, that might require a decision or a compromise!

If you want to be really picky, you could use your tuner to measure what the dominant instruments are tuned to. You should also have predetermined which note on the flute best represents the flute's average pitch. (It's not uncommon for example to find that A is sharper than the average of the others.) Then use the tuner to tune the representative note to the same pitch as the dominant instrument(s). Of course, if you are going to be that picky and rely on it, you need to check that again once the flute has really warmed up!

Terry

[benhall.1]

Well, the fiddle players or flute players are either playing in ET (if there are boxes, keyboards or fretted instruments present) or they are playing out-of-tune.

It is, as you'll appreciate, Terry, a huge subject, and one which, whilst undoubtedly inherently interesting, I've have my fill of for now. So I'll content myself with this: I don't agree. And I doubt whether there is a single fiddle player anywhere who has ever played in ET. Well, there was a famous string quartet (can't remember who), a couple of decades or so ago, who took a year off to re-adjust their playing to ET. It was, needless to say, a massive failure and they had to take another year off to relearn how to play in tune.

With the exception of a short period in the early 19c, when there was almost a campaign to promote ET, I don't think there would be any serious treatise on how to play the violin that would advocate playing in ET, even when playing with fixed pitch instruments such as a piano. (Dig out what my old pal Robin Stowell says on the subject if you can find it - I don't have time to look.) IMO, playing the flute is the same. Most importantly, I suppose, one can hear that top flute players do not play in ET, even when playing with fixed pitch instruments. Maybe you think they're playing 'out of tune'. All I can say to that would be that I don't think so. Playing in ET, when you have an instrument capable of playing properly, is playing out of tune.

A couple of caveats:

Of course, compromises have to be made, particularly when playing with fixed pitch instruments.
I'm not claiming any great shakes for my own intonation.

I suppose I ought to point out, while I'm here, that those enharmonic keyboards weren't designed to be tuned to any form of JI, and that it is impossible to do so. They were designed to be tuned using a meantone temperament. Even the early Renaissance ones (as opposed to those produced in the 18c, which predominantly used a different variant of meantone) were still designed to be tuned using a meantone temperament rather than JI.

As for flute players in sessions being picky about their tuning ... chance would be a fine thing!

[Terry McGee]

I'm not sure we are in disagreement; I think we might be talking about different things.

I don't imagine a fiddle player or flute player would naturally play in ET if solo. The flute player might, if the flute were perfectly tuned to ET, but as we know that's unlikely. But why would the fiddle player?

But in consort with dominant fixed pitch instruments, I think it will be a very different story - we will all do our best to fit in. What else would logic and manners demand? Stick to your guns and plead the moral high ground?

Terry

[benhall.1]

Maybe not as far apart as all that.

What I'm saying is that, yes, sure, compromises are made when playing together with fixed pitch instruments (it's another whole story as to whether such instruments themselves are in ET ) but not such as to mean that, when playing fiddle, you ever get as far as playing in ET. If you did, the fiddle would sound wrong. I think the same applies to flute.

[hans]

All ET tuned instruments sound somewhat wrong
Are melodeons tuned ET or do they have a trad tuning? Some harmonicas have (Seydel for instance), others not (Lee Oscar I think).
There are micro-tunable fretted instruments, ones with movable frets, like the Indian sitar and the Turkish saz.

[benhall.1]

There are micro-tunable fretted instruments, ones with movable frets, like the Indian sitar and the Turkish saz.

And viols ...

[Doug_Tipple]

There probably is no simple way to generalize, but let me try. So far the discussion has focused on three different types of musical instruments, and to represent these, I will mention the piano, the violin, and the flute.

The piano has a fixed internal tuning in ET and a fixed performance in ET. Since this is Black Friday in the USA, I might also give a "Good" rating to this arrangement.The tuning of the piano doesn't sound that great to most musical ears, but it is a compromise that we have grown to live with. It beats having to retune every piano string every time that you want to change keys.

The violin has only four strings, so the tuning can be easily adjusted. The strings are tuned a perfect fifth apart, which is JI, and without frets on the fingerboard the player is completely in charge of the performance. In a string ensemble the player most likely would play in JI along with the other players in the group. However, if there is a fixed-pitched instrument in the group, say a piano in a piano quintet, the string players would need to match the ET of the piano. Because the violin can easily shift from ET to JI, I would give it a Black Friday rating of "Best".

The internal tuning of the flute is set by the flutemaker with the position and size of the finger holes. I would assume that most modern flutemakers use ET as the standard for the internal tuning of the instrument for the same reasoning that is used for the piano. However, in contrast to the fixed-pitched instrument, such as a piano or box, the flute player has some performance latitude because of the player's personal embouchure, making it possible to lip the pitch of the note up or down, depending on the musical setting. So a flute with an internal tuning in ET can perform in JI. In my mind the flute gets a Black Friday performance rating of "Better", although some on this forum would no doubt give it the "Best" rating, as well.

[Mike Meyerstein]

k, here are the results of the intonation tests using Cleartune in ET mode. The resuls will surprise only me, due to my level of General Ignorance.
The Morvan D flute: I tuned the bottom D to the standard pitch. All notes in 1st and 2nd register were quite close to their ET values.

The Purday D flute: when I tuned the bottom D to the standard pitch, all other notes except middle C# were significantly sharp. The further up the scale, the more pronounced the discrepancy. When I tuned bottom G to the standard ET value, all notes except C# and D were close to the ET values. So this is one of those flutes, perhaps typical of that period, where the D is flat. Also the C#, it seems. Does anyone know why flutes of that period are like that? The mistake I have been making in sessions is to tune the bottom D to the drones of a Uillean piper in the session. That put all the other notes sharp.

The Murray Eb flute: similar characteristic to the Purday, but to a less pronounced degree. N.B. I don't notice this when playing the flute. I play with another fellow who has an identical SM flute and it sounds good, so either we are both lipping the notes into tune or else we are both off to an identical degree. We have guitar accompaniment which works nicely, so I imagine it is the former.

Thanks for all the advice

[benhall.1]

I agree with your overall assessmenst there, Doug, but disagree on a couple of things where the violin is concerned.

The strings are tuned a perfect fifth apart, which is JI, and without frets on the fingerboard the player is completely in charge of the performance. In a string ensemble the player most likely would play in JI along with the other players in the group.

No, I think that's extremely unlikely, if not close to impossible. String instruments also have to make compormises all the time because of the need to play melodies that sound like melodies, harmonies that sound as true as possible, and also to be able to modulate to different keys. The reality is that string players use a mixture of a form of JI, ET (at times) and a sort of "expressive intonation" where leading notes are frequently modified from where they would be in JI or ET, with rising leading notes being sharper and fallking leading notes being flatter.

However, if there is a fixed-pitched instrument in the group, say a piano in a piano quintet, the string players would need to match the ET of the piano.

Not in my experience. I have not heard this done, as far as I recall. If you listen to a good, classical string quintet, it's quite easy to hear that the violins, in particular, are simply modifying their usual intonation just slightly to fit in as much as possible with the keyboard.