Hermode Tuning

For those of you interested in tunings, my friend Chris introduced me to hermode tuning. If you click on the "HMT" link at the top of the home page, you can get an introduction to the concept. Apparently the creators of hermode tuning use dynamic rather than static tuning. Most tunings use a standard ratio for all intervals, i.e., static tuning. Dynamic tuning adjusts to the musical content, apparently. Personally, I think this is really amazing, but I don't know of any other dynamic tuning systems. If anyone does, please let me know!

You can listen to hermode tunings here. What I particularly like about this site is that they give several different sound options for each example. It's often difficult to hear the differences between equal temperament and something less standard unless you can hear them in succession. But it really does make a difference.

More Temperaments

Somehow, I doubt that anyone who reads this blog is as interested in temperaments as I am. However, I find it fascinating. As a result, I want to be able to explain it well, and I'm afraid that I fell short last time. This is merely another explanation. I'm not forcing you to read it, and forgive me for my single-mindedness concerning topics that interest me.

Lou Harrison Piano Concerto

I don't want this to be a blog about temperaments, but I've discovered this whole world of temperaments and I think that it's fascinating. So you get to hear all about it!

My piano professor recommended this piano concerto to me. It's composed and performed using a tuning called Kirnberger II temperament. I'll talk more about that in a bit, but I want to give a background on the composer. Lou Harrison was an American composer whose life spanned most of the 20th century. As far as I know, he's not terribly well-known, but then again, I don't know a whole lot about contemporary American composers. His music tends to focus more on rhythm and melody, rather than harmony. His music, at least this piano concerto, reminds me a bit of Copland. Just a bit.

The piano concerto was written for the pianist Keith Jarrett, who, incidentally, was a famous jazz pianist. (As a side note, I want to start writing about jazz, but as of right now have only the vaguest knowledge of it. Give me time though, it'll start to pop up in this blog.) As I mentioned before, it uses the Kirnberger II temperament. It was developed in the 18th century by a German theorist and composer named Johann Philipp Kirnberger. Recall that the ideal tuning would be acoustically pure fifths. This can't really be done because when you tune from C to C, up in pure fifths, you don't have a real C by the time you get to the top. However, Kirnberger wanted to get as close to this as possible. To compensate, he shrunk two of the fifths, while the other fifths remained pure. He was also able to keep three pure thirds, the rest being slightly wider. If you go to the Wikipedia article, it's got a helpful little graph.

Anyway, the concerto in itself is really lovely. Movement 1-Part 1, Movement 1-Part 2, Movement 2, Movement 3, Movement 4. I urge you to listen to the whole thing. Of course, I always urge you to listen to the entire piece, but don't stop at the first movement with this one. It's so American, particularly the fourth movement, I think. It's most definitely my favorite piece of the moment. It's a bit difficult (for me, anyway) to hear the difference in temperament, because the differences are so incredibly minute. It's subtle, but a bit richer, as are most of the non-equal-tempered pieces which I've listened to lately.

Equal Temperament Tricked Me

When I started this blog, I meant to write more than I’m writing now. I have more free time than I think I do. In other words, I like to pretend that I’m super-busy and not a social recluse when all I really do is play the piano and read books all day. Not that it’s a bad lifestyle. But I am, in fact, akin to a hermit. Meaning, I do have time to put into writing. And it’s beneficial for me.

I just finished reading a book entitled “How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (And Why You Should Care)”. It’s by a man named Ross Duffin. (I feel the uncontrollable urge to point out that Duffin is a pansy name, but that’s not what I’m going to talk about.) He’s an early music scholar of some sort. I think the title of his book is misleading. It makes it sound as if his argument is more forceful than it is. Essentially what he’s saying is that equal temperament is often not the best tuning option, particularly concerning voice, strings, and woodwinds. Rather than arguing against the banishment of equal temperament, he’s arguing against the exclusive use of that particular tuning system. Dr. Duffin wants people to be aware of other options of tuning an instrument. And I agreed with him more than I thought I would.

First, I feel as if I should give a definition for equal temperament. If a musician tunes a piano (for example), starting at C and tuning up in *acoustically pure* fifths, by the time the C is reached again, it’s not really a C. It’s just a bit higher than a C should be. This causes serious problems, obviously. An instrument tuned using equal temperament contains fifths which are slightly smaller than a real fifth. We’re talking quarters of semi-tones. Very minute differences. Of course, this means that the fourths are slightly wider, and the thirds are much, much wider. Our modern ears have become accustomed to this, and it sounds fine to us. Also, it allows for every key signature to be used, and they all sound exactly the same. It has its perks.

What most people don’t know, however, is that ET didn’t become prominent until the 1800s, and permanent until later. This means that Bach, Mozart, Haydn, and even Beethoven, didn’t use ET. And *this* means that their music probably sounded much different than how we hear it today on ET-tuned instruments. I don’t want to go too far into all the different tuning methods which Dr. Duffin discussed. However, I wanted to point out that most of them employed a concept called “extended meantone”. Essentially, a musician using extended meantone differentiates sharps and flats. For example, D-sharp has a different sound than E-flat. The interval from D to D-sharp is smaller than that from D-sharp to E. I hope that makes sense. I’m not sure if this is even possible to do on a keyboard instrument. The author didn’t go into it. But it seems fairly easy for string players, and would certainly produce a different tone than that which today’s audience is used to hearing.

I think it’s an interesting concept. I didn’t know that other tuning systems were ever used. I thought that equal temperament had always been the only way to tune an instrument. Even in my two solid years of music theory at Baylor, it was never brought up. But I think that it’s at least something which people should know about and explore, particularly when dealing with early music.