Re: OT: high-precision tuner app

[Thomas Morley]

2016-05-27 8:16 GMT+02:00 Michael Hendry <address@hidden>:
>
>> On 27 May 2016, at 00:53, Wols Lists <address@hidden> wrote:
>>
>> On 26/05/16 10:43, Olivier Biot wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thursday, 26 May 2016, Michael Hendry <address@hidden
>>> <mailto:address@hidden>> wrote:
>>>
>>>    I seem to have struck an interesting chord, here!
>>>
>>>
>>> Definitely!
>>>
>>>
>>>    Another phenomenon about which I have doubts involves people who
>>>    claim that when they hear music in “sharp” keys (e.g. G, D, A, E)
>>>    their experience is of brightness, while the flat keys make for a
>>>    more sombre sound. I’ve even heard in a radio interview that this
>>>    applies to F# and Gb (the one bright, the other dull).
>>>
>>>
>>> I experience the same from a string player's perspective. But in my
>>> humble opinion it is a combination of 2 factors. One depends on
>>> harmonics induced in the instrument played, the other is a more
>>> subjective element: often 'sharper' keys tend to play music at a higher
>>> pitch too, which results to brightening of the music played. Maybe
>>> because a lot of written music wanders around the natural scale of the
>>> clef, which goes up 1 full tone per 2 extra sharps (circle of fifths).
>>
>> Don't forget, G# and Fb are NOT the same note.
>
> This is where my lack of formal musical education shows me up - I’m a 
> self-taught amateur guitarist. F# and Gb look and sound the same on the 
> guitar (and on the piano), but it seems that this is because these 
> instruments have been constructed to sound equally bad in all keys.

Well, if you play first string, second fret without any context,
nobody can say whether it's a F# or Gb.
Though, try out to play the attached.
For me F# and Gb feels completely different, _because of the context_.
I'd always name them as written, i.e. F# in the first Gb in the second
example.

In general, it's not only the actual tune of an instrument, but our
brain _interprets_ what it gets, depending on the context, which
includes the (musical) culture we're grown up/educated in.

> Other instruments are constructed and tuned so as to sound good in certain 
> keys and not so good in others, so it’s feasible that an orchestra could 
> sound better playing in sharp keys.
>
> Other mysteries (to me!) may also be explained in a similar way:
>
> Why aren’t trumpets and clarinets made a bit shorter, so that they don’t have 
> to have transposed parts?
>
> Why is the G string on my guitar the one I most commonly check because 
> although it sounds perfectly in tune in the context of a G major chord, it 
> can sound out of tune in other contexts?

Well, if you tuned a perfect octave: G on 6th string, open 3rd string.
It will be nice for g-major, but not in say e-major.
Hence, I'm used to take slightly different tunings depending on the
key of the piece I'm going to play. Ofcourse one has to say the range
of keys used for classical guitar-music is very limited. des-major is
a _very_ rare exception.

Additional the 3rd string of the guitar is problematic because of the
used material in relation to its thickness.
There are a lot of attempts to deal with it by the guitar-constructors.

Cheers,
  Harm

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