Simon, I agree with you 100% Once you have played a gurdy in Just Temperament, you wonder how you thought that Equal Temperament sounded fine, it now sounds dreadful
As you say its all to do with the relationship between the keyed notes and the drones Talking G/C, if you have an Equally Tempered D on the keyboard, what do you tune the D trompette to ? If you tune it to the same note, then its not quite in tune as a drone to your Gs If you tune it true to the Gs, then it will clash with the keyed D I spent a large part of my early life trying to work out why I could never adjust my guitar so that all the chords were in tune, in later life I found out why Another aspect of tuning which I think is doing player's musical ears a great disservice is the growing reliance on electronic tuners (almost always Equally Tempered) If you don't use your ears when tuning, you will never develop that essential skill Have you ever seen an orchestra tuning up using "clip-on" tuners ? Tuning drones with a tuner is a really bad thing, you get the wrong note in some cases A good player should be able to set the tangents and tune all the strings by ear alone What matters is that your instrument sounds really good when listened to Tune it so it sounds good by listening to it I did a quick tangent tweak on a friend's HG recently She could not believe the change in the sound of her instrument She protested "but I set it all up carefully with my tuner, why was it wrong ?" The answer was of course "because you used your tuner not your ears" Now dismounting from Hobby Horse Graham -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Simon Wascher Sent: 19 June 2008 19:31 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [HG] Re: [HurdyGurdyForum] Intonation and tuning Hello together, there is one simple answer to all questions about hurdy gurdy and equal tempterament tuning: Whatever tuning a hurdy gurdy is tuned to - as long as there is a drone sounding, equal temperament will sound muddy. Of course there are some hacks like tuning a guitar open or leaving out thirds in bass chords,... But that all is not a hurdy gurdy thing, that is a drone thing (its the same on a keyboard). A drone puts every single note into a relation towards it and equal temperament is made for the opposite - its the definite no-drone-tuning. kind regards, Simon Am 13.06.2008 um 15:54 schrieb Augusto de Ornellas Abreu: > One thing I never understood quite well, and I have asked and no > one ever gave me a straight answer... > > For my particular situation, in which I am going to play in a band > with the following instruments > > acoustic guitar > bass (either bass acoustic guitar or eletric bass) > silver flute > recorder or clarinet or tinwhistle (one of them, since it's the > same player!) > violin (probably tuned in just/perfect fifths) > voice > (percussion) > > and provided I stick to regular HG tunes in G major, G minor (both > with a D trompette), C major and C minor (both with a C trompette - > I have a capo on my trompette for that), and maybe D and D minor > (disengaging the G and g chanterelles, engaging the D chanterelle > (3rd chanterelle) and playing with a D trompette and raising a > drone to D) > > Can I tune my HG to just temperment and still play this standard HG > tunes with my mates? Remember, the two other main melodic > instruments - the violin (in perfect fifths) and the flute - are > pretty fluid in intonation, but the guitar and the bass aren't that > much because of the frets... > > Will we sound better than if I just give up and accept the > imperfection of equal temperment? > I like Graham's article a lot and I intend to experiment just > temperment on myself, but I want to know if I will sound any better > in the band using these adjustments. > > ... --- have a look at: http://hurdygurdywiki.wiki-site.com http://drehleierwiki.wiki-site.com --- my site: http://simonwascher.info
