Re: Tuning

[John Santana <santana@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Tommy Morgan, the Hollywood player out here, carries harps tuned to 440 
and a couple of others tuned slightly higher.  Sessions in Hollywood are 
done quickly with almost no rehearsal and require musicianship of the 
highest level,  including the ability to play in tune with unusual 
combinations of instruments and players that you don't work with all the 
time.

Another reason some players tune them a little high is that throat 
vibrato will pull down the pitch some so you have to start higher to come 
out close to the ensemble's pitch.

Just for the record, equal temperament is not equal in the meaning of 
each simitone being 1/12 of an octave. Such a tuning system does not 
work.  Rather it refers to a type of temperament that strikes modern ears 
as neutral, more or less like a piano.  The term is difficult to use with 
any real meaning becuase of this.  

As has been pointed out here,  there are several systems of tuning that 
may be more pleasing and colorful given the proper conditions, but the 
alternate tuning to these is not equal, but something else.  And that 
something else depents on how you hear these things personally from your 
training and early experiences in life.

BTW, for an example of what exact equal termperament sounds like,  listen 
to Wendy Carlos' Secrets of Synthesis album, wherein she tunes her 
instrument to true equal, and plays some examples. Unlistenable.

Other examples can be heard in electronic greeting cards and computer 
games. Often these are programmed by non-musicians.  The instructions 
with the chips usually state that you can get the frequency desired for a 
certain note by deviding up the octave into 12 equal parts,  that is, 
just take the 12th root of 2 and multiply the starting pitch with that 
result to get a semitone.  When they do that, you get these funny little 
electronic melodies that are really irritating.

John