John Walsh wrote:

>I wrote:
>
>>>(...)This effectively means that they are in some kind of just tuning:
>>> the ratio of the frequency of each note to the drone frequency is a
>simple
>>> fraction with fairly low denominator. (...) It's close to the even
>tempered
>>>ale for the fifth
>>> and third, not so close with the second, for instance.  (15-17 cents
>
>And Simon Wascher replied:
>
>I> disagree strongly! the just third is quite far from the equaltempered.
>a>nd the fifth is really different too.
>>
>
>       Sorry, I was going from memory, and had the second and third
>reversed.  Here is the table someone posted to the UP list.  (Made up, I
>am sure, with a hand calculator, not a tuner on a set of real pipes.)
>Anyway, the second is reasonably close and the third is not, as you say,
>but the fifth on the other hand is quite close. (There's an interesting
>choice for the G#: the two possibilities differ by 35 cents.)
>
>Note    Just Ratio (to D)    Equal tempered fraction   Difference in cents
>----    -------------        -----------------------   ---------
>D       1:1                  1.00                      0
>D#      16:15                1.0595                    +12
>E       9:8                  1.1225                    +4
>Fnat    6:5                  1.1892                    +16 (!)
>F#      5:4                  1.2599                    -14
>G       4:3                  1.3348                    -2
>G#      7:5 or 10:7          1.4142                    -17 or +18
>A       3:2                  1.4983                    +2
>A#      8:5                  1.5874                    +14
>B       5:3                  1.6818                    -16
>Cnat    9:5                  1.7818                    +18
>C#      15:8                 1.8878                    -12
>D       2:1                  2.0

That's a very dissonant interval (G#) so it probably doesn't matter
which you choose.  You also have a choice for the C natural, which
is much less dissonant.  Instead of 9:5 you could use 16:9 which
comes out much closer to the equal tempered fraction (a couple of
cents flat).  Need to do some careful listening tests to see which
sounds better.

Phil Taylor


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