I used to keep my three chanterelles as G g g. Over time I experimented and found I much prefer G g d'. The octave + fifth combination creates a very rich sound full of high harmonics.
But overall I think the octave vs. unison tuning bit is a matter of taste. Unison chanters do sound richer than a single chanter and, for some situations, are more appropriate than octave chanters. The difficulty is in getting them in tune with each other, but I should note that chorus tuning relies on *very* slight deviations of tuning (< .5 Hz variation) to give more life and volume to the sound. If you could get two strings absolutely perfectly in tune you would find that they sound relatively dead. So the trick is keeping the variation below a certain maximum threshold. By the time you are hitting more than 1 Hz difference between pitches you are in trouble. (Incidentally, experiments I read about many years ago showed that piano tuning relies on these tiny, tiny variations. Pianos carefully tuned to completely eliminate even that tiny variation do not sound right to listeners.) One other use of unison chanters is if you systematically remove tangents from certain notes to allow for (limited) polyphonic playing, a technique I know Simon Wascher has used and that I have played around with and quite like in some contexts. That you cannot do with octave chanters, so, as with most things, there are times and places for different tunings and absolute statements tend not to serve anyone over well. Best, -Arle -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "hurdygurdy" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/hurdygurdy The rules of posting, courtesy, and other list information may be found at http://hurdygurdy.com/mailinglist/index.htm. To reduce spam, posts from new subscribers are held pending approval by the webmaster.
