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Author Topic: 19 Tone Equal Temperament  (Read 6720 times)

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Chris Ryall

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Re: 19 Tone Equal Temperament
« Reply #20 on: November 07, 2013, 09:29:03 AM »

How does dominance work in 19TET? To take out friendly old G7, its BF tritone might be BE# … or should that be B#F. Or do you use sus effects? I'm clearly not thinking outside the "12" envelope in this. Maybe our habitual 4 note chords don't even make sense. I can certainly envisage dominants that resolve to major or minor without the trouble adding in 9ths of appropriate colour.

Think I can knock up an html5 page for exploration using stuff already in ME, but it'd need the right mp3s. Sadly Theo has tuned my kit the old way ;)
« Last Edit: November 07, 2013, 09:32:45 AM by Chris Ryall »
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Owen Woods

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Re: 19 Tone Equal Temperament
« Reply #21 on: November 07, 2013, 01:15:20 PM »

I think that it would be tricky to directly compare four note chords between 12TET and 19TET. For instance, to take G7, although the G-B, B-D, D-F, G-D and B-F are close to just intervals, the G-F is not and may sound dissonant. This may be what you want, but if it isn't then you would have to look at E# instead of F. But it might be that in places where you would normally use G7 you would actually use a 4 note chord not possible with 12TET. Only playing around would tell.
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Chris Ryall

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Re: 19 Tone Equal Temperament
« Reply #22 on: November 07, 2013, 07:54:53 PM »

that was the idea. But I need 19TET mp3 or ogg files to make it happen. HTML5 audio tags don't work by frequency.
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oggiesnr

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Re: 19 Tone Equal Temperament
« Reply #23 on: November 09, 2013, 10:23:58 AM »

For those interested in some more theory this is quite a good (but fairly dense) read http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/hhowe/articles/19-Tone%20Theory.html.

One of the fascinating aspects of playing solo double bass is how often the enharmonic equivalent of a note sounds "wrong" and how the fingers more naturally aim for the actually note.  Not good when playing in a group  (:) and part of the practice is to train your ear to play the twelve note chromatic scale and not deviate.

Steve
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Owen Woods

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Re: 19 Tone Equal Temperament
« Reply #24 on: November 09, 2013, 03:20:43 PM »

That's interesting. Surely it would only be "not good" when playing with other people if they weren't as aware of temperament issues as you are! I have heard that interesting things can be done in say a string quartet (or whichever string ensemble a double bass fits into!).
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Steve_freereeder

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Re: 19 Tone Equal Temperament
« Reply #25 on: November 09, 2013, 07:06:00 PM »

One of the fascinating aspects of playing solo double bass is how often the enharmonic equivalent of a note sounds "wrong" and how the fingers more naturally aim for the actually note.  Not good when playing in a group  (:) and part of the practice is to train your ear to play the twelve note chromatic scale and not deviate.

That's interesting. Surely it would only be "not good" when playing with other people if they weren't as aware of temperament issues as you are! I have heard that interesting things can be done in say a string quartet (or whichever string ensemble a double bass fits into!).

A good orchestra or chamber music group (string quartet, wind quintet, etc.) is, or should be, constantly adjusting the intonation of chords and harmonies 'on the fly'. The players may well tune to the oboe (or other) A=440 before commencing to play, but that doesn't mean that other notes in the range of the instruments are going to be 'in tune'; nor does it mean that all chords and harmonies are going to sound OK automatically. They won't!

To be a good instrumental musician, you have to listen and adjust all the time. For wind and brass players in particular, this means that you can't just 'stick it in yer face and blow it'; you have to use your embouchure (mouth shape, lip positions, etc.) or employ alternative fingerings, to minutely change the pitch of notes to fit in with the music. So - if you played the note D# 'in tune' at one point in the music, it doesn't mean that it will be in tune at another point in the music a few bars further on, and so on. What is happening is that the orchestra/chamber group is playing in a constantly shifting 'well temperament' to make the harmonies sound 'right'.

Additional problems arise and have to be solved when playing alongside an instrument whose tuning cannot easily be changed, for example, in a piano concerto. All of a sudden, this comfortable temperament doesn't always work when accompanying a ET-tuned piano. A different set of orchestral adjustments then have to be used. It would be summed up by saying that the players are 'listening to the soloist' but what is actually going on is hugely but subtly complex.

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oggiesnr

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Re: 19 Tone Equal Temperament
« Reply #26 on: November 09, 2013, 10:11:05 PM »


Additional problems arise and have to be solved when playing alongside an instrument whose tuning cannot easily be changed, for example, in a piano concerto. All of a sudden, this comfortable temperament doesn't always work when accompanying a ET-tuned piano. A different set of orchestral adjustments then have to be used. It would be summed up by saying that the players are 'listening to the soloist' but what is actually going on is hugely but subtly complex.

Which is the problem whenever I play with a squeezebox.  (:)

Steve
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Owen Woods

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Re: 19 Tone Equal Temperament
« Reply #27 on: November 10, 2013, 01:50:48 PM »

Quite Steve! My clarinet playing was never quite good enough for that level of subtlety and sadly my principal instrument, the piano, is part of the problem!
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Rog

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Re: 19 Tone Equal Temperament
« Reply #28 on: November 10, 2013, 02:20:31 PM »

Slightly off-thread... hope you don't mind..
So this is fascinating. I've been a fan of music using quarter tones for as long as I can remember.
But the problem is surely what you do with your 19 TET box?
I have a copy of Bach's The Well Tempered Clavier vol 1 (I can't play much of it - they are impossibly hard); but as you probably all know this was written apparently to prove you could play the same instrument (clavier tuned to equal temperament) in all the different 12 tone keys, so maybe it's not fair to play Bach using 19 TET, but anyway..

But in the mean time here are a couple of examples of music using I think quarter tones...
first the great Egyptian Umm Kulthum; first heard her on the radio when I was (v briefly) working in a building site in Eilat in 1979.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPGHpBOt5sE

And here is an example of Rempetiko; I've got umpteen cassette tapes of this trad Greek music bought in the backstreets of Athens in the late 1970s. I've never actually seen the feature film Rempetiko, but this singing performance is really very special.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdMy_RyIpQk

triskel

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Re: 19 Tone Equal Temperament
« Reply #29 on: November 10, 2013, 03:32:49 PM »

Additional problems arise and have to be solved when playing alongside an instrument whose tuning cannot easily be changed, for example, in a piano concerto. All of a sudden, this comfortable temperament doesn't always work when accompanying a ET-tuned piano. A different set of orchestral adjustments then have to be used. It would be summed up by saying that the players are 'listening to the soloist' but what is actually going on is hugely but subtly complex.

This was an issue in the mid-19th century for the classical concertina virtuosi, like Giulio Regondi, who might have (what was then) a "normal" English-system concertina in meantone tuning (for which its keyboard was designed, having enharmonic buttons for both G♯ and A♭, as well as D♯ and E♭ - to obviate the "wolf" intervals) and an equal-tempered one to play with the piano.

triskel

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Re: 19 Tone Equal Temperament
« Reply #30 on: November 10, 2013, 03:49:29 PM »

... Bach's The Well Tempered Clavier ... was written apparently to prove you could play the same instrument (clavier tuned to equal temperament) in all the different 12 tone keys ...

It's a very common fallacy, but not correct. Bach's clavier was tuned to a "well-tempered" scale, not an "equally tempered" one, which allowed him to play in all keys without retuning (which would previously have been normal for a clavichordist/harpsichordist) whilst still keeping the individuality and flavour of those different keys.

Quote
so maybe it's not fair to play Bach using 19 TET, but anyway..

I agree, and it's certainly not "authentic".

forrest

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Re: 19 Tone Equal Temperament
« Reply #31 on: November 10, 2013, 07:41:12 PM »

... Bach's The Well Tempered Clavier ... was written apparently to prove you could play the same instrument (clavier tuned to equal temperament) in all the different 12 tone keys ...

It's a very common fallacy, but not correct. Bach's clavier was tuned to a "well-tempered" scale, not an "equally tempered" one, which allowed him to play in all keys without retuning (which would previously have been normal for a clavichordist/harpsichordist) whilst still keeping the individuality and flavour of those different keys


My 1905 edition of Elson's Music Dictionary also erroneously declares that Bach's 'Well-Tempered' tunings were a support for E.T., which he attributes to 16th century composer Adrian Willaert.

  As mentioned in the guitar video, there could be multiple uses for the further division of the tonal scale; a micro-tonal scale, and as a means to improve harmony. So it's important to ask why we are doing this. It is also interesting that the demonstration is given on a Fender Stratocaster. A well set up Strat can easily sharpen pitch by bending the light strings with the fingers of the fretting hand; additionally they can be sharpened or flattened almost a full tone using the vibrato bar. Why re-fret this instrument, when perhaps frets should be removed altogether, yielding the infinite possibilities available to the violin?

 Perhaps the solution might lie (with free-reeds anyway) in devising a method to modulate the tone of the reed by increasing/decreasing  air pressure/volume of air thru the reeds in a way that would shift the tone to the desired degree. This is certainly what wind players must do by control of breath and embouchure to achieve similar results. That way, one can stay in the compass of twelve buttons tones, and merely learn to finesse the desired result. 

Edited to enhance coherence
« Last Edit: November 11, 2013, 01:11:26 AM by forrest »
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Rog

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Re: 19 Tone Equal Temperament
« Reply #32 on: November 10, 2013, 07:59:49 PM »

As a tech exercise it's all very interesting; but unless you play Mid East music or compose your own, there is no reason to have a box with all these notes, except to monkey around with music written for the 12 note scale.

Jack Campin

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Re: 19 Tone Equal Temperament
« Reply #33 on: November 11, 2013, 12:44:47 PM »

When Arab musicians say they're using quartertones, they aren't really.  It's a lot more complicated than that.

http://shumays.libsyn.com/microtones-in-arabic-music
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