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Music, mathematics, philosophy and tuning:

Harmonic theory pages 

by Brian Capleton 

 

viols.co.uk home piano pages home contact six myths theory pages about

 

 

 

See also, on piano tuning

 

The Theory Home Page

 

on falseness and paradigms for the nature of piano tuning

 

the art of piano tuning

 

why are pianos tuned to Equal Temperament

and what is it?

 

what makes a piano string vibrate ?

 

six myths about piano tuning

 

what is the theory of piano tuning ?

 

the place of piano tuning theory

 

 

 

for piano tuners

 

The piano tuner-technicians' area

 

 

See also, on music and mathematics

 

The Theory Home Page

 

musical intervals

 

music, mathematics and philosophy

 

background to the musical scale

 

the Chord of Nature

 

the unnatural scale

 

natural correspondence and esoteric symbolism

 

the Circle of Pythagoras or -

the Great Circle of Fifths

 

pitch deceptions

 

on music, mathematics and tuning

 

on scales, tone, pitch (and piano tuning)

with interactive media

 

Piano tuning - the essential idea

Brian Capleton PhD

 

Updated 27th May 2007

© copyright Brian Capleton 2006, 2007

 

Page 5    go to page 1 here

 

Like an outdated piece of software, this old theory now has a new "plug-in". It's called inharmonicity. The problem is that the new "plug-in" is still plugged into the old theory.

 

The situation remains that no one will ever understand what the master tuner really does, and how master tuning is achieved, simply by studying the nineteenth-century theory of beating, even with its new "plug-in" plugged in !

 

The problem with the theory of beating, as it is invariably presented, it that it is woefully inadequate to describe what really goes on in sound recipes, especially in piano notes and intervals, and this still remains the case when inharmonicity is plugged in.

 

The theory is also frequently presented as though it is just a prescription for getting notes to "the right pitch", completely ignoring the importance of tone in its own right, and completely ignoring the reality of what pitch actually is.

 

So what does the master tuner do?

 

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