"exactly the same B" as he had in the chord at the beginning >of the piece. The rest of us immediately said, "That is the >problem. In the first chord your B was the fifth in the E >minor chord, and at the end it is the 3rd of the G major chord."
This is the same phenomenon as I was banging on about a few days ago. >(i.e. concert F or G depending on which chanter is >being used) because that is a better note to tune to than the >traditional A - especially if most of the tunes to be played >will be in G, It is my speculation that the F+ tuning originated from a prolific maker taking an A = 440 tuning fork as the reference for the nominal B and then tuning chanters by ear, with the (desirable) result that the nominal G ended up around 14 cents sharp of concert G because it had been tuned acoustically pure rather than to an equally tempered reference tone. Reverse this process, and a "concert F" chanter will have a nominal B that is (desirably) around 14 cents flat of the A string of a violin tuned to A = 440. F+ is often described as "around 10 to 20 cents sharp" of concert F. 14 is near as dammit in the middle of that range. >When you listen to really good "a capella" (unaccompanied) >small vocal ensembles such as the "King's Singers" you are >struck by the perfection of their harmonies. Or the Hilliard Ensemble. Or autotuned pop singers! > >Perhaps other people disagree with me and this will stir up a >hornet's nest. It is just my personal thoughts on the subject >and i don't claim to be an expert. Sheila, these may be your personal thoughts, but not "just". They are backed up by physics and arithmetic. Details of tuning may well be a matter of preference, but they are not a matter of opinion. I don't claim to be an expert either, but I do claim to have understood the essentials and to have an ear that is sensitive to pure intervals. Any hornets nest could only be stirred up by people with bees in their bonnet ;-) HTH Csírz To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
