We would presume if you tune fifths by ear, you would tune them pure, but ... if you have listened to fifths in equal temperament long enough in your life, you might well unwittingly tune tempered fifths by ear. So much for conditioning. In equal temperament fifths are about 2 cents smaller than pure fifths (700 cents in stead of a perfect fifth of 702 cents). That comes close, so if your ears perceive them as the same, be happy with both your ears and your tuner and forget about the theory. Just for the fun of it, set your Korg to Pythagorean temperament and then check the fifths. In Pythagorean temperament fifths are pure. Does your Korg have a playback function? Maybe you can hear the difference. Although the two notes of an interval are best heard played together (harmonic interval) to listen to the beats they make, you can still try to hear the difference in melodic intervals.
David On 24 June 2012 18:11, Edward Mast <[email protected]> wrote: > A question perhaps better posed on a bowed string forum, but I'm confident > someone here can help me. When tuning my cello with a Korg chromatic > electronic tuner, what pitches am I tuning to? Is it tempered tuning? The > reason I ask is that though I usually tune the A string from the tuner and > then the strings below by ear to fifths, if I tune each string from the > tuner the results seem to be the same - still perfect fifths. > > Thanks. > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- ******************************* David van Ooijen [email protected] www.davidvanooijen.nl *******************************
