Jim Reid wrote:I hear absolutely no difference between your two recordings, the
mixed or the left, right separate speakers.
Hi!
Yes - through my computer speakers I find the same, except for some reason the MajorThirdMixed file is less loud.
If the separate tones through separate speakers really is that, the IM distortion is that which happens in our ears on loud notes. It is this triad effect that makes equal temperament so foul and strident as if the bottom note is sounded, a discord occurs. This is the joy of playing Couperin and de Grigny in Meantone where Tierces and Grand Tierces on the pedals can be added at will created great sweetness. I have always said that Tierce en Taille refers as much to sweetness in the body as technically the Tierce in the Tenor.
Perhaps that is why I am so happy with my two channel stereo
HW audio system.
Yes - that's what old Percy Vickery used to say and, within limitations, I have come to agree with him.
A few weeks back, I was bothered by beat-notes from the electronic organ and thought that there was something wrong with my amps or speakers . . . as it's something that never _normally_ troubles my system and then realised that the beats were only coming through the speakers through which electronic reverb had been processed. So added reverb at a high level will sound artificial and if one wants reverb, wet samples will be much more successful.
Guess David P.s system would do me no good
or improvement for me at all.
To the extent of avoiding the beat notes, no, my speakers won't help because the beats happen in your ears, sometimes even in your brain -
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_beatHowever, conventional speakers tend to have a series of related flaws of which you'll have taken for granted until you've heard otherwise. I'm not going to detail the root of this in public, but a pop-group did a recording session here earlier in the year and, becoming so annoyed by the sound of their studio monitors, I plugged in my speakers to be able to enjoy what they had created and after that, the record producers also became annoyed at the sound of their monitors. One of the things that was very obvious was that having recorded samples of drums and cymbals in the acoustic they were looking for, when reproducing those sounds, you can't get a cymbal out of a studio monitor 1 inch tweeter!
Temperament:
What temperament do you suggest David? I've tried many of them in HW and although some may sound better in a certain key, in other keys they sound quite bad.
Playing Couperin in Meantone is very instructive. It's very unforgiving of wrong notes and one starts to find chords and harmonies that express love and the breadth of love in a purity that Equal temperament cannot achieve, especially using pieces requiring the plein jeu, and other chords which in contrast express angst. He moves in this way between crisis points and you can hear this with the Premier Kyrie played on Plein Jeu of the deux Masses, l'une a l'usage des paroisses . .. , l'autre propre pour les Couvents, page 49 of the Guilmant edition which is the one that you'll find available free online.
Having become used to this, one starts to relish those chords which make you cringe, to create tension, only to be release in the next stroke by a chord of total purity. A friend was playing some Bach on meantone earlier today which did exactly this too. Bach exploited meantone tuning and it's good to try it out to see what he was doing and where he was applying it. It's for this reason that when Mark Shepherd performed the Dorian toccata and fugue here, in view of the modal nature of the piece, we tried it in Meantone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbwXpBcGm6Yhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Uj9MORwoF0 (Don't like the registration of this so much as the fugue)
The discords of unequal temperament were intended and we are simply not used to the colour. However whilst Bach encouraged "well temperament" and personally I like Kellner, many instruments remained tuned to Meantone, so one should try it - and the results can be surprising - as well as trying Kellner too. One should remember that all composers up to and including Mendlessohn and Cesar Franck, and perhaps a few beyond, would be working with unequal temperaments whether by choice or by dint of circumstances, and we cannot properly understand their music if we don't try hearing their music on the temperaments they would have heard it played on. The French temperament may be different - D'Alembert is good and effective and among the Hauptwerk choices, St Maximin is superb.
What is really interesting about the St Maximin temperament is that it does have key colour and is capable of expressing Couperin's angst, but it's mild enough for Boellmann's Priere a Notre Dame in Ab to be utterly charming. One just wonders . . . whether perhaps Boellmann might even have been using such a temperament.
I have wanted to do a series of recordings of repertoire in different temperaments to see what repertoire is precluded by a choice of an unequal temperament were it to be specified for a new pipe organ, in the spirit of using electronics as the experimental platform, as an aural CAD as it were, for the encouragement of building pipe instruments.
(If anyone would like to do an Unequal Temperament demonstration concert, then a platform is always available here . . . (OK - sorry for the downright complexity of the hardware here - I know there is technology not far away from this forum to make life a whole load simpler and possibly a good deal better))Of course this diverges from the stereo/multi channel mythbusting thread in the domestic arena controversy, but it does go towards the sweetness and concord of the instrument that we play. Playing it at close quarters hearing beatnotes, or beatnotes generated by a reeverb process, certainly puts temperament under the spotlight.
Best wishes
David P