A short return to the just vs equal temperament discussion

[Cayden]

A while ago,in the High end or just expensive thread, wanderer wrote:

It was when someone tried to use "just temperament" as a possible excuse for this brand of whistle to be so badly out of tune that I realized that there was just no rational discussion to be had with certain Generation apologists. :roll: I realize that there's no 'convincing' the established folks like Peter and others...

This referred to a comment I made in the past, I think just intonation is more suitable and an equal tempered whistle is just not as nice (see my comments on receiving my Sindt whistle) when playing Irish music. My comment at the time was that the whistles I have were all close to just intonation and that that could lead some people to believe they were not 'in tune'.
Whether this way of tuning is by design or by chance I don’t know but I think it is by design, if you read the flute board you often hear the comment that old flutes need to have their Fs sharpened (to get the tuner to tell you it's right). the old flutemakers were no fools and I think the good ones chose their tuningwell. WHistle makers quite possibly followed their system and some of the equal tempered thinkers are probably not considering the possibility that these makers used a system that might just be very suitable to certain situations, more so than equal temperament. Those of us working the elctronic tuner as the measure of all things instead of their ears can be easily led to think this tuning isn't right.

In the other thread I didn’t respond to Wanderer but I didn’t think his was a very well considered comment and I suspected there’s a gap between his and my understanding of the issue that will not be bridged anyway.

Last week I received a whistle made in just intonation, I am thrilled to bits with it and a review will follow as soon as I have a the time (after the Willie Clancy week is over).
However, yesterday I spent some time talking whistles with Sean Potts and some interesting nuggets of wisdom and opinion appeared. One of the comments he made about modern high end whistles was ‘they all have their f too sharp’.
He thought my just intoned one was just perfect.

Food for thought maybe?

[chas]

There is a difference between just intonation and bad tuning. I'm not aware of the just scale differing from instrument to instrument, which is the case for some whistle brands.

Awhile back I received a couple of flutes from one maker. The F# and one other note (I think the B?) were horribly out of tune on the one, and the other was tuned as one would expect -- The F and (what's the other note, A?) a little flat of equal-tempered, could be lipped up or left just. I think sometimes makers overcompensate -- their ears are used to equal temperament, so they flatten a couple of notes "a little," which may be right one day or too much another.

My big complaint with the tuning of some flutes is the E -- in an effort to make the reach comfortable, the E is sometimes sharp or just weak.

[Martin Milner]

Most fiddlers I know tune with an electronic tuner first (Even Intonation), but then microadjust by bowing the strings in pairs and finding the perfect fifth (Just Intonation) by ear.

If they tune the A only, with a tuning fork maybe, and then tune the other strings in fifths, again they end up with just intonation.

May this explain why fiddlers are occasionally accused of being out of tune?

[pizak]

Although I make my whistles in even temperament, I have made one in Just. However, at the time my whistle making wasn't perhaps good enough to do justice to the difference.

I have been considering trying again - though I would expect to use the whistle more for solos that sessions.

I use an excellent software based tuner called GTune from http://www.jhc-software.com/ that fully supports just, even, plus around 15 other temperaments, as well as user modified. I highly recommend it as a tuner.

Paul

[Lorenzo]

The reason why focus is on the F#, and most noticeable (on a D whistle), is because that is the major 3rd (above). In the equal temperament, the 3rd is probably the farthest note off from just of any of the notes.

That's the way it is tuning a piano to equal. The difference between the 4th and 5th (G and A above)...you probably would have to have a very expensive tuning machine to measure the cycles, to really tell the perfect difference between just and equal. By ear, you'd have to be able to count the beats, which wavers off 1 beat in 5 seconds, with the 4th, near the center of a persons hearing range. Not 1½ beats or 1¼ in exactly 5 seconds. By comparison, the 3rd would waver about 20 beats in 5 seconds. I don't remember the exact number, but there is one. It may be as high as 25.

The F# is interesting because the pressure difference between the low F#, and the upper F#, compounds the problem of the already existing extreme difference in the major 3rd .

[Andreas]

Most fiddlers I know tune with an electronic tuner first (Even Intonation), but then microadjust by bowing the strings in pairs and finding the perfect fifth (Just Intonation) by ear.

If they tune the A only, with a tuning fork maybe, and then tune the other strings in fifths, again they end up with just intonation.

May this explain why fiddlers are occasionally accused of being out of tune?

But since the tunes are mostly in D, the Dstring should be the one tuned to (electrical) pitch, and then the other strings tuned just from that one, right?

[John S]

The thing is that you can only use just intonation in 1 key, so you would need various differently tuned "D" Whistles to do the job in all the keys and modes you would use.
Playing GHB I know this well, so I tune my whistles in ET.
Nothing wrong with just intonation, but as modal centre changes are used to add excitement and interest to sets some amount of tempering is unavoidable

John S

[Bloomfield]

Whether this way of tuning is by design or by chance I don’t know but I think it is by design, if you read the flute board you often hear the comment that old flutes need to have their Fs sharpened (to get the tuner to tell you it's right). the old flutemakers were no fools and I think the good ones chose their tuningwell. WHistle makers quite possibly followed their system and some of the equal tempered thinkers are probably not considering the possibility that these makers used a system that might just be very suitable to certain situations, more so than equal temperament.

I've long wondered whether Generations are tuned just. I hadn't considered the flute origin. But the longer I've been playing whistles, the more I appreciate the Generation/Feadog/Walton mouthpiece design, and I don't any longer doubt that they knew what they were doing. It seems to me also that just tuning for a two-octave diatonic whistle would be the natural choice.

[PhilO]

Ok, just (no pun intended) tell me that I need not understand this to continue and learn how to play this music...

Not trying to put down the discussion, but it's a bit difficult for me to understand and I do appreciate and try to follow along. I've never (obviously) been trained musically other than teaching myself to read music (only that written for whistle, recorder, fife, flute) and taking whistle playing lessons (and drums a long time ago). I started to understand the modal stuff that Grey had in his book, but I kind of peter out at the discussion of just tuning; makes me feel like I'm missing an important key (again no pun intended) to understanding that will open new realms.

Philo

[Jerry Freeman]

There seems to be some variation in tuning among Generation whistles. I suspect this is an artifact of the inexpensive mass production process.

Most Generations I've checked seem to be tuned to something between just and equal. The notes that are flatter in just temperament tend to be somewhat flat compared to equal temperament, but usually not quite all the way down to the just temperament version of the note. (But as I said, this does vary some from whistle to whistle.)

The notes tend to be close enough to just, I believe a player who's sensitive to pitch matching would be able to blow the notes in true harmonic tune with the instruments s/he's playing along with. This would be especially significant playing with other just intoned instruments. Pipes and fiddles come to mind: pipes because they're just intoned to begin with; fiddles because being a fretless instrument, a good player will naturally gravitate towards the true harmonic (just intoned) note in the scale, rather than the equal tempered one, as a good singer will also do.

I agree with what Bloomfield and Peter have been saying. The inexpensive, Generation type whistles are quite a bit more sophisticated than one might expect from first impressions.

Best wishes,
Jerry

[Bloomfield]

Phil, it's actually pretty straight forward, if you don't worry about the why's and how's. The problem is that if you tuned a piano to be perfectly in tune, it would be in tune in C (only white keys) and would gradually go out of tune the more sharps and flats (black keys) you'd add to your playing. To avoid this, every single key/scale on the piano (C, G, D, A, E, B, F#/Gb, Db, Ab, Eb, Bb, F) is tuned a little bit dirty, and most people get used to it. It's great for playing all sorts of music in all sorts of keys.

In Irish Trad, there are two reasons why this isn't as desirable: First, most of it happens in D, G, and A with related keys thrown in (that means, it's not as much of an issue as it is in classical/pop music). Second, If you play against drones (like on the pipes), you want every note to be in tune with that drone. So you tune "clean" against the drone note, without the little bit of dirt that the piano has in every scale/key. And that's Just temprament.

One of the marks of just temprament is that the major third (f# on your D whistle) is flatter than it would be on a piano.

[sturob]

If you tune something by ear, you end up getting something much more akin to just temperament (or perhaps meantone) than even. Even just sounds wrong to a lot of people when you get right down to it.

If you get your piano tuned by a hack, he/she'll bring a whole mess of tuning forks. If you get it tuned by a master, he/she'll bring just one (or maybe a couple). The best tuning job I've ever heard on a piano was done with just one fork, one for middle C, and the rest by ear. You get kind of a whopping comma (if you want explanation of the comma, I can do it, but let me have a bunch of caffeine first), but the piano sounds absolutely wonderful.

I've seen webpages describing whistle and pipemaking that show the maker dutifully sitting in front of a tuner checking the scale. That's not the way to go about it, I don't think; you want the tonic correct, and the other notes to work with the tonic. If you think about it, why on earth do we need a whistle or a set of pipes to be even-tempered? They're not really fully-chromatic instruments. The minor keys (like E and A) sound really good because they're actually relative minors and not some crazy averaged set of pitches (like they are on a well-tempered piano). And have you ever tried to play an even-tempered pipe chanter? YUCK. Double yuck with drones.

That's kind of why (I always seem to come back to ze flute) these reviews of flutes that talk about "perfectly in-tune F#s" are so amusing. If they're perfectly in-tune with a tuner (and not relatively flat), they're perfectly out-of-tune.

Gosh I'm opinionated! Somebody slap me.

Stuart

[sturob]

Oh no . . . Bloomfield and I posted similar things at a similar time. I guess our cycles have merged.

But Blooms . . . you do get a comma (you and I both talked about the comma) even if you do just intonation. Commas vary, but you still get them. In a two-octave instrument (like pipes/whistle/most fluteplaying), the comma is negligible.

Stuart

[Loren]

Gosh I'm opinionated! Somebody slap me.

Stuart

If only I lived closer!

Loren

[Cayden]

just a quick recap (i am just in the door, back from listening to nice music all afternoon).

equal temperament is a compromise designed to enable instruments to play in different keys. Just intonation follows 'natural' harmonies. there are a few tuning systems in between, a friend of mine tunes concertinas to Mean tone comma, which is sweeter than equal but not quite just, allowing for more key changes. My impression is that old flutes have some compromise, stopping short of just intonation but certainly flattening F and B.

I revived the subject just because I thought it was very interesting that Sean potts immediately said about modern high end whistles 'their f s are too sharp'. Sometimes it's good to hear your own ideas confirmed by someone who is a decent whistle player.

I don't think it's a problem on the whistle having just intonation, you can influence intonation while plaing, I can easily blow B up to equal tempered pitch, jsut as I can drop the B on the equal tempered Sindt pretty much to where i want it ( f is more tricky in that respect). I noticed playing Sweet Biddy Daly in A you har the b is slightly flat for that key but really I play very few tunes in A and the increased sweetness in the other keys is such a boost I really love having a whislte tuned this way.
interesting too that all good musicians remarked on how well the whislte was tuned, without realising that it was a just intoned one. Played with one equal tempered box during the week, that wasn't quite right.


Like sturob I have my question marks about these 'perfectly tuned' whistles, an electronic tuner is a good thing, if you know how to use it.

proof of the pudding for me was blowing the new whistle and the Sindt at the same time, playing G on one and B on the other. Gs would be the same on both whistles but blowing the Sindt's B against the G would give a rattly harmony, not very pleasing. Playing the just intoned B against the G gives a lovely sweet and pleasing harmony.