***** tuning

[chicabass]

Have you found that the more you have needed to develop your sense of pitch and tuning (for instance playing an untempered instrument), the more poorly-tuned or out of tune things irritate you?

Is it odd to not want to listen to some things, because you feel that if you become accustomed to listening to them, you will 'inherit' a gammy sense of pitch?


chicabass/K`

[Josh Ryan]

It is odd. I do not believe you can destroy your ability to tune anything by listening to out of tune things.


To not want to listen becasue it sounds like garbage, (being out of tune and all) is really quite normal OTOH.

[Aaron Saunders]

I remember reading a story about a guy who had perfect pitch, but found himself constantly being irritated by things being even *slightly* out of tune, so...he ruined his perfect pitch. IIRC, it involved filing down a tuning fork so that it was no longer A=440 and constantly drilling that pitch.

However, you won't inherit a gammy sense of pitch because people aren't playing in tune. It's pretty regular to not want to listen to/play with people who have terrible intonation. Personally, if it's bad enough, it causes me physical discomfort -- kind of like nails on a chalkboard for other people, I suppose.

[Sam Sherry]

Originally Posted by chicabass

Have you found that the more you have needed to develop your sense of pitch . . . the more poorly-tuned or out of tune things irritate you?

Actually the opposite. Radio plays nothing but pitch-corrected vocals and it annoys me to no end. Y'know, you're driving down the road and there's Serge Tankian from System of A Down bellowing at the top of his lungs, "Why do they always send the poor?" and every note is spot on . . . baloney! I'd rather hear people doin' it for real and missing!

Which, I suppose, is why I am an Inadvertent Microtonalist . . .

[Bruce Lindfield]

There was an intresting point about this, made in a TV documentary I saw about Just and Equal Temperament.

So Japanese Classical music uses Just Temperament - but most Japanese people have now been exposed to so much "Western" music with Equal Tempered keyboards etc. - that their own musical heritage now sounds out of tune and dissonant to them...

[WalterBush]

I know a couple of guys locally who play both western-style music and arabic music, which sounds out of tune to the western-trained ear. They seem to bounce back and forth between the two just fine. One man's "out of tune" is another culture's entire harmonic structure.

[Bruce Lindfield]

I also saw a Jazz group where they had a special guest, who was a Palestinian singer who sang micro tone intervals and traded solos with the band leader, who played clarinet - bending the notes to 'echo' these scales!

[anonymous0726]

I think that you can take advantage of the situation to strengthen your own 'center' of pitch. If your ears are strong enough you can play perfectly in tune and make the piano sound as screwed up as it is.

Still working on this myself

But, I've already noticed that since I've been working on this that when I get with an instrument that's really in tune that it's really easy for me to be right in tune with it. And also that the poor, beat pianos that I have to play with a lot sound more and more Kurdish as my ears get stronger...

[arto alho]

After five years of playing regularly without piano in our octet ( which has 5 horns ), I noticed that I had developed a very special ear for playing in tune with the horns. Adding the piano screwed my ear up for a while, but I´m slowly getting used to it.
Haven´t noticed that with any other setups, and I´ve played a lot in different bands that have both piano and guitar and varying number of blowers. Only the octet sounded strange with piano first. Must be an ear thang.

R2

[hdiddy]

Originally Posted by ISHOTTHESHERRY

Which, I suppose, is why I am an Inadvertent Microtonalist . . .

I kept thinking about your title while listening to a recording of a rehearsal. Cept that I'm more of a macrotonalist.

Hopefully one of these days... I'll have a recording worthy of sharing. Not now tho... yikes!