How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care), by Ross W. Duffin, is a cranky but fascinating look at how music went astray:
For nearly a century, equal temperament–the practice of dividing an
octave into twelve equally proportioned half-steps–has held a virtual
monopoly on the way in which instruments are tuned and played. In his
new book, Duffin explains how we came to rely exclusively on equal
temperament by charting the fascinating evolution of tuning through the
ages. Along the way, he challenges the widely held belief that equal
temperament is a perfect, "naturally selected" musical system, and
proposes a radical reevaluation of how we play and hear music.
You can get Bach’s Well-Tempered Klavier played this way, but to my ears it is not a revelation. Of course unequal temperament (not my preferred terminology) has struck back through popular music, whether it be bent blues notes, pedal steel guitar, and the drone tunings of My Bloody Valentine or Sonic Youth. Oddly the author doesn’t mention this. Listeners want variety, and simply "pegging the scale" does not control the real sound which results, just as in um…macroeconomics.
A MBV mention on MR!
Shields would achieve the effect buy holding the “whammy bar” of the guitar as he strummed. This would keep the guitar shimmering in and out of “tune” with each strum. Combine with a little reverse reverb, overdrive and feedback and you get some amazing beautiful dissonance.
Tyler, if you want to hear something of highly unequal temperament, you should check out guitar virtuoso Steve Vai’s “Sex and Religion” album. There is one solo on which he uses a special guitar whose neck divides the octave into sixteen “third-tones” rather than the usual twelve semi-tones.
Guitarist Jeff Beck, who is well-known for his playing dynamics, is also a master at using quarter-tones as ghost notes. So much so that a pompous neoclassical Swedish guitarist once said in a blind listening session that Jeff Beck played “out of tune”–the joke was on the Swede.
Anyone interested in alternative tunings should check out the Just Intonation Network: http://www.justintonation.net/
I’m not a member and I don’t subscribe to their journal, “1/1″, but I bought a couple compilation cassettes from them of artists using all kinds of nonstandard temperaments. Some of it’s really good.
Also, Wendy Carlos (formerly Walter Carlos, the guy who did the music for A Clockwork Orange) has an album called Beauty in the Beast, exploring alternate tunings. It’s fantastic.
It is. Tyler as a dilettante.
“…check out the Just Intonation Network: http://www.justintonation.net/“. If you think libertarians are prone to fractious purity arguments, you should see what the just intonation people do. Libertarians are newbs in comparison.
A good way to stretch your ears beyond western tunings is to listen to Islamic music, particularly the Persian. It’s a new emotional landscape.
MBV! What divine taste.
Jason, when Paris Hilton puts out an album, music can only have gone astray, I’m afraid.
‘the widely held belief that equal temperament is a perfect, “naturally selected” musical system’
This is nonsense – equal temperament is a compromise system which allows soloists and ensembles to play in more than a couple of (tonic) keys without retuning. Das Wohl-Temperierte Klavier was a deliberate demonstration of how well this works, that is, why it is not necessary to tune exactly for each key. Each key is slightly out, but to most modern ears (and evidently to J.S. Bach) it is not disagreeable.
All keyboard instruments are (normally) equally-tempered as well as standard guitars (you can’t play ‘out of [equal-temperament] tune’ on a guitar unless you mistune the strings or do some kind of wierd fingering). Playing wrong notes or in dissonance does not necessarily involve tuning. A brass & woodwind band does not have the option of changing the tuning (playing in just tuning for each piece), although the tuning of each instrument is not necessarily precise.
jm may be right about string orchestras and choruses (ancient choral music may not even be tonal) – I would think that this question could be resolved with computer analysis.
I found this website to compare guitar strings, called Stringlinks.
They don’t sell anything; they just provide a way to compare prices side by side.
The site was created so guitar players could have an easy to use reference of guitar string venders, all in one place.
Just click on a Vender to compare string prices. A new window will open (to their “Strings† page) from each vender; so you don’t lose you place.
Check it out at http://www.Stringlinks.blogspot.com
It’s pretty cool.
I love comments that begin with “I found this website”…
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Unless I miss my guess, the Swede is Yngwie Malmsteen, and “neoclassical” is short for “neoclassical metal”, which has nothing to do with neoclassical composition and everything to do with ripping off Paganini with gajillions of 32nd notes.
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