Re: how much do you care about your music being in strict equal temperment keys?

["Nic Roozeboom" <nicroozeboom@gmail.com>]

Equal temperament - isn't that the one with commitment issues?

My personal (but possibly not very unique) take on equal temperament vs other tunings is largely governed by
context. Keys, pianos, harpsichord, etc: yes, well-tempered - that's
how we're used to hearing them. Human vocal harmonies however can tend
to sound contrived, unnatural or dishonest when they are obviously
well-tempered (depending on which intervals are involved). I think the same goes for violin as the harmony tends to
be sparse, and our ears like to seek out those "perfect ratio" sounding
intervals you can feel in your gut. Guitars are not well-tempered at all - imitating guitar on a
well-tempered tuning synth is an easy way to start off on the wrong
foot as far as sounding guitar-y is concerned. In ensemble context
(putting all of these instruments with different temperament together)
I have no objection to mixing all of these for a wonderfully
heterogeneous and ambiguous final result ;-)

Best,
Nic

On 2/21/07, Douglas Baldwin <coyotelk@optonline.net> wrote:

Yo Margie baby, you're spinning some serious threads here. I predict posts
will be branching off these topics (equal temperment and compositional
process)  for a month, easy.

-- 
Nic Roozeboom

http://www.fractal-continuum.com
http://www.myspace.com/fractalcontinuum
http://www.myspace.com/nicroozeboom
http://www.cdbaby.com/fractal
http://fractal.bebo.com/