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Alexander writes:
| ... Under certain circumstances,
| when two notes sounded simultaneously are only a few cycles apart, the
| ear finds the result pleasing, giving a vibrato effect [sort of].
| However when this occurs, the ear's perception of the note is the
| average of the two notes which of course means that you're not yet
| "tuned".
Hmmm ... In my experience, people tend to hear the lower as the
actual note, with the tremolo of course. My accordion has a musette
reed that is set up like this. The (almost) "in tune" reeds are tuned
to A=441, which is close enough for most ears. The musette reeds are
tuned 3 to 4 cycles sharp. People don't hear the instrument as being
out of tune so much as they hear the wavery sound. I turn off the
musette reed when I'm giving a note to others, and they seem to find
it still in tune when I turn the musette back on.
Similarly, I play mandolin, and I've found that the best sound is had
by tuning one string of each pair to standard pitch and the other
just a hair sharp. I've discovered that a lot of mandolin players
have discovered this themselves. They are often surprised to be told
that there's a name for this sort of tuning, and that a lot of other
double-string players do exactly the same thing.
I just got back from the first festival where I was invited solely as
a mandolinist. I did have my accordion along for use in jam sessions,
and managed to sneak it into a few things on stage. But it was an
Eastern-European festival, so I suppose it's not quite on-topic for
this list.
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