Equal temperament vs instrument harmonics in music

[Laughner]

It's so cool to hear of these. So if today's processor speeds were applied, there is no reason not to have every chord sound as good on a keyboard as it does on a string quartet or sung by barbershoppers or a cappela groups. I'd buy one.

 

[BWV]

It's so cool to hear of these. So if today's processor speeds were applied, there is no reason not to have every chord sound as good on a keyboard as it does on a string

Don’t see how that would work for traditional classical music - the processor would need to keep track of the key and harmonic context - for example a Gr A6 chord in C major is different than a G#7 chord in C# minor, but the keys on a piano are the same.

 

[pbuk]

Don’t see how that would work for traditional classical music

Or for any music. For instance imagine the intro. to Pinball Wizard with microtonal adjustments to the F# drone bass note.

Edit: it's tempting to demonstrate it, but it's also bedtime here.

 

[Svein]

Don’t see how that would work for traditional classical music - the processor would need to keep track of the key and harmonic context - for example a Gr A6 chord in C major is different than a G#7 chord in C# minor, but the keys on a piano are the same.

Well, I do not know that classical music will suffer too much - I have analyzed and transcribed a lot of jazz music (mainly "big band") and a lot of the harmonies there sound terrible in any kind of temperament. Examples: Cmaj7 when the arranger adds the octave, Cmi9 when the arranger drops the 9 down one octave etc.

 

[Algr]

Don’t see how that would work for traditional classical music - the processor would need to keep track of the key and harmonic context - for example a Gr A6 chord in C major is different than a G#7 chord in C# minor, but the keys on a piano are the same.

The composer/transcriber would have to choose which version of the chord is intended each time. A tune using both versions of the chord in different contexts could highlight something that can't be done in equal temperament.

 

[pbuk]

The composer/transcriber would have to choose which version of the chord is intended each time.

The recent posts are in response to this, where the keyboard is supposed to replace a composer.

So if today's processor speeds were applied, there is no reason not to have every chord sound as good on a keyboard as it does on a string

 

[Herman Trivilino]

The fundamental frequencies of the notes are separated by a factor of 2^(1/12),

They have a ratio of $2^{\frac{1}{12}}$.

 

[Algr]

The recent posts are in response to this, where the keyboard is supposed to replace a composer.

But it started with my comparison to 19-tet, which does not involve the keyboard making choices about what notes are intended:

I wonder if instead of trying to use 19-tet or other strange solutions, one could deal with the wolf interval by programming synths to change from one tuning to another as soon as the problematic chord was about to be played. What would we call that? Super-Pythagorean tuning?

If the keyboard were retuning based on what notes were being played at the time, it could easily get stuck in a situation where it had to retune a note that was already playing. That could be a secondary issue behind this:

By the way, a Norwegian composer (Eivind Groven) had special organ made that analyzed the chords and changed the just temperament base to match the chords. Since it was built using electromechanical relays, you could not play very fast on it, but it was an interesting experiment for its time.