Re: [LAU] Developing perfect pitch

From: David Olofson <david@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Sat Apr 17 2010 - 12:14:27 EEST

On Saturday 17 April 2010, at 04.38.34, Rustom Mody <rustompmody@email-addr-hidden>
wrote:
[...]
> How easy is it to understand (hear and sing) the difference between an
> equal-tempered major triad, and a just or a Werckmeister-III etc?

Basically, if you hear some really great sounding harmonies, the notes played
(or sung, more commonly) are *not* on the equal-tempered scale. ;-)

Beyond that, I don't really know... The theory doesn't seem all that
complicated; it's mostly about the intervals, and different compromises trying
to make harmonies sound better than they do in twelve-tone equal-tempered, as
I understand it. What you want is to eliminate unwanted low beat frequencies
between notes in a chord; that's what makes it sound pure.

When it comes to synthesizers, there are some solutions that re-tune the scale
dynamically, based on the harmonies at hand - again focusing on making the
harmonies sound better.

Either way, I don't think it's something one is actively thinking about when
singing or playing (other) "continuous pitch" instruments. One rather focuses
on making the harmonies sound good - and if they do, one is most likely off
the TTEQ tuning. :-)

-- 
//David Olofson - Developer, Artist, Open Source Advocate
.--- Games, examples, libraries, scripting, sound, music, graphics ---.
|  http://olofson.net   http://kobodeluxe.com   http://audiality.org  |
|  http://eel.olofson.net  http://zeespace.net   http://reologica.se  |
'---------------------------------------------------------------------'
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user@email-addr-hidden
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
Received on Sat Apr 17 12:15:02 2010

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Sat Apr 17 2010 - 12:15:02 EEST