which temperament?

[hans]

Now who's saying the same stuff?

What seemed (and still seems) to me important, given how the early posts in this thread read and the apparent misunderstandings inherent in them (to my reading), was to avoid and clearly quash any misapprehension by the caught-in-the-headlights, technologically mesmerised and less-than-well-informed about the concept and practicalities of temperament reader that they should be expecting to use a fancy tuner to try tune their flute to some special tuning. They shouldn't, they can't.

So far as that aspect of this thread is concerned, forget it. Just tune your flute to a reference pitch/the company and then do your best to play it in tune by using your ears and the player controlled variables.

somewhere in the middle of that long sentence i got lost, encountering the word reader, and wondering what the heck that had to do with the rest...., BUT Feadoggie said it all right at the start, second answer to the OP, clear and to the point!

[benhall.1]

Really Hans? I thought it was perfectly clear. He's saying get a fancy tuner, tune it to some special tuning or other and Bob's yer uncle. Isn't he?

[jemtheflute]

That's Just not fair........

[david_h]

If one is going to make a flute to play in other than one diatonic scale is it even theoretically possible to make it play a Just scale in more than one ? Did the 19th century players tweak the tuning slide for playing in different keys ?

FWIW I find comparing everything to 12TET and having a note of how the other options vary from that fairly straightforward (as jem suggests). It doesn't take long to end up remembering the main features.

[Mike Meyerstein]

As a result of an intercession from Jem off-thread (yes, against the rules [Queensbury] but what the heck?) I have been led to believe that I may have misread what Doug was saying. I have therefore come to the conclusion, led by Jem, that it IS imortant to tune to a tuner, and to choose which temperament to set the tuner to, as only then will you be able to play the flute.

Thank you Jem!

Ok so once I have completed that imortant task I will finally be able to play at the level to which I aspire. I will let you know if it works

[jemtheflute]

Ok so once I have completed that imortant task I will finally be able to play at the level to which I aspire. I will let you know if it works

"Pitch"?

Only if you've got the temerityment.....

[Mike Meyerstein]

Ok so once I have completed that imortant task I will finally be able to play at the level to which I aspire. I will let you know if it works

"Pitch"?

Only if you've got the temerityment.....

I tend to use almond oil. I find that pitch is not really suitable

[jemtheflute]

Ah. I see you have (got the t......), but you're a softie.... nice hands? Too soft for pitch and toss.....

So, we can't tar you with the same brush, then?

[jemtheflute]

If one is going to make a flute to play in other than one diatonic scale is it even theoretically possible to make it play a Just scale in more than one ? Did the 19th century players tweak the tuning slide for playing in different keys.

Back to more serius matters..... No, so far as I understand it if you tune an instrument to a Just scale, it can only be Just in relation to a chosen fundamental (starting note - usually the one used as primary drone, in the case of bagpipes). The modes/scales starting on the other degrees of that first scale will not be Just in relation to themselves. If you are only going to play in keys/modes closely related to the base-line JI-tuned one, especially if over drones, that's fine. But it doesn't work if you want to play in a more chromatic fashion, in more distant modes/keys, and to be open to greater variety in harmonic accompaniment.

Since C19th flutes were intended to be usable in a wide variety of keys (if not all the most awkward to play ones! - in theory they were, in practice, well...) it follows logically that (other tuning/intonation issues aside) it is very unlikely any quality maker would have attempted to tune flutes to a JI D scale, or even a C one. That does not mean that one cannot play a flute (including a modern 12TET Bohm one) in a fashion approximating to JI on any given fundamental note where context demands, by "lipping in".

I don't think we have any historical performance practice knowledge from contemporary commentary that can properly answer your last question, though. But it seems unlikely they'd have done that since it wouldn't actually help. In fact, it doesn't make any kind of sense..... Retuning on a particular note (say F instead of D) won't change the built in scaling significantly (can't turn JI D into JI F) - "retuning" on what?

[benhall.1]

Well, we do have Quantz, Jem. I've just finished reading it. Can't access the book at the moment, but somewhere in it Quantz says just that: alter the tuning slide slightly depending on which key you're in. IIRC correctly, the example he gives is that you would push the slide in slightly to play in Ab compared with playing in G#, the reason for that being, of course, that Ab is higher in pitch than G#.

[benhall.1]

18c rather than 19c of course ...

[jemtheflute]

Long time since I read Quantz! Memory fail.

There's an interesting debate on related stuff going on on Earlyflute at the moment re: enharmonic differences and Quantz's double keys for Eb/D#.....

[benhall.1]

Oh what fun! I can hardly wait!

[I'm so-o-o excited.]

[jemtheflute]

Oh what fun! I can hardly wait!

[I'm so-o-o excited.]

Well, you know where to go.....
(and remember who told you!)

[benhall.1]

Oh, I will, don't you worry about that ...