The Cellar - View Single Post - You can tuna fish, but you can't tune a piano

Slartibartfast · 07-10-2004, 06:20 PM

Patrick sounds like a natural. Rock on!

Elspode, that first link mentions what I started off talking about, only in terms of a guitar rather than a piano, very cool stuff! Here is one that talks piano: http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/

Pythagoras' tuning method, like many others until recently, had a built in dissonance - a wolf. It was when you played E flat and G sharp. Calling it a wolf makes for a great turn of phrase. Musicians had to avoid the wolf when playing music. A good musician could also intentionally use the wolf to throw some excitement into the music. ( Our wolf makes for a lot of excitement around here, but she's in tune

)

Equal temperament, which is how instruments are tuned today, has no wolves to avoid - the dissonance has been spread evenly across all intervals. But this is at the cost of having everything be slightly out of tune.

07-10-2004, 06:20 PM	#12
Slartibartfast \|-0-\| <-0-> \|-0-\| Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: New Jersey Posts: 516	Patrick sounds like a natural. Rock on! Elspode, that first link mentions what I started off talking about, only in terms of a guitar rather than a piano, very cool stuff! Here is one that talks piano: http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/ Pythagoras' tuning method, like many others until recently, had a built in dissonance - a wolf. It was when you played E flat and G sharp. Calling it a wolf makes for a great turn of phrase. Musicians had to avoid the wolf when playing music. A good musician could also intentionally use the wolf to throw some excitement into the music. ( Our wolf makes for a lot of excitement around here, but she's in tune ) Equal temperament, which is how instruments are tuned today, has no wolves to avoid - the dissonance has been spread evenly across all intervals. But this is at the cost of having everything be slightly out of tune.