"Phil Holmes" <m...@philholmes.net> writes: > I have quite an interest in intonation, and my degree dissertation was > based on the study of musician's reaction to just and equal tempered > music, and was created using LilyPond. However, I'm not clear why you > believe that accidentals in non-equal temperaments require different > signs (I think that's what you're proposing here). It's said that > early music was based on one or other form of just temperament, and > used normal accidental signs. To me, they indicate that the music is > altered to the next higher or lower semitone in the key and > temperament being employed: so why are other signs needed?
Well, Urs' printing of the cents does have educational purpose. For example, I can spell out the tuning of a guitar done by pure harmonics (the highest-sounding two strings in relation to harmonics of the lowest-sounding one): e, as a, * 3/4 (e, +2) a, as a, (a, +0) d as a, * 4/3 (d -2) g as d * 4/3 (g -4) b as e, * 3 (b +4) e' as e, * 4 (e' +2) And if that kind of information is spelled in a scale, it becomes obvious why G major and E minor chords have a problem sounding good out of the box if you tune to perfect harmonics. Because the interval g-b should end up as -14 (!) in order to be a pure third, but actually ends up as +8, a discrepancy of 22 cent. Which explains why my default manner of tuning a guitar, namely just tuning each string to sound as I think it should in relation to the sequence of previous strings, has a good chance to end up more playable than the followup work of a "serious" guitar player believing in tuning by using harmonics. In the scheme of talking about tunings or ad-hoc modifications, a scheme like Urs' that can accommodate basically a continuity of values certainly has some merit. As a continuous notation for the sake of playing, I think it would end up a nuisance. -- David Kastrup _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
