@Kajok: it may be worth contacting the author of Scala (Manuel Op de Coul, coul@huygens-fokker.org ) to see if the Dimitrov tuning can be included in a future update of the Scala Archive. Just a thought!

OK, thank you! It's done.

thanks for sharing - good to see the concert as well as seeing the behind-scenes with the Broadwood. I do love how your pianos sound (the restrung Broadwood is a treat) and hats off to each of the artists for their enriching performances and to you for continued enthusiastic hosting and enlightening videos.

To @Kajok, fantastic, thank you!

The Dimitrov tuning you supplied is exceptional to me. Very much appreciate it. Sings in ways I love and has more clear bell in certain ways I also love

@_DJ_ - cheers! and thank you also - the year 1911 may have been a better topic for the Don MacLean song, occurs that this date signifies something apt inre 'the day the music died' (not to take anything from the song) - that PDF at truetemperament.com is the one I allude to above, must have kept a link but lost it. The other PDF is super too. Thanks so much!

@chasmanian - hope you're as happy as me with your results in tuning Pianoteq - I really enjoy the period between the late 1700s thru mid-late 1800s personally, where some of the 'sweetening' gets kind of more, I don't know, 'human' to me. I love that composers were working with and idealising aspects of some pretty 'pushed' settings but for me, a kinder truth lies between the betweens, maybe in a fractal sense it relates to the physical spiral shape of our inner ear. Like 3.333recurring.. it's something the most powerful supercomputers can spend decades calculating but.. 3.333 recurring is 'close'

@dazric - yeah that's such a fascinating thing, to ask those who have synaesthesia about! I bet some A/B playback of music in various tunings would turn up extremely interesting results (settings for the experiment would need to be pretty organised).

@Kramster1 - I loved the Ensoniq I had - they made some unsung but important advances. I liked their sampling in the early keyboards, as olde tech as it is today. They made sampling of instrument sounds with what may have been a first, in multi aspects (front and back end of signal - treating attack and tails as two separate blended items, which may form a lot of my inspirations in multi-tracking) - they were pretty hot engineers IMO.

@aWc - cool to read the excitement in your post It's a magical thing when you get to a point where you begin to grok something of the differences in the expressions boosted by some tunings. I'm still feeling like I've not gone far from basecamp and there's a long way to the summit yet. All so fascinating.

Echoing DJs sentiment, that its really cool to see more people remembering 'the music' used to have this whole extra universe of nuanced options attached. So great to have such ease in accelerating our learning with this software. But I also imagine a lot of piano tuners might not love the idea of all these old tunings (and new variants) showing up and creating all these new fussy taskmasters, when for a lot of them just doing an equal job is repeatable, quicker and customer expects it

This has been linked a lot from the forum even recently - but it's such an exceptionally good resource, I'm inclined to link again whenever it's relevant.. it's a zip file (unzip anywhere you like) of thousands of tuning variants from antiquity to current microtonal oddities and lovelies. (scroll to bottom of page for the link to the zip - I don't link directly as old-school 'Netizen courtesy to the Huygens Fokker website and owners). There's not a need to install the other software to use the library of files but this is a good website for learning how to edit scala files and their software may be ideal for that.

Just open the unzipped folder, and drag a file onto the Pianoteq interface to hear how it sounds - and also it's instructive to open Pianoteq's advanced tuning section to see how the tunings look and so easy to tweak things without needing other software unless you maybe want to save out your own tunings as scala files - although again.

You can open each tuning file (filename.scl) in a simple text editor, and save out your own tunings by altering them - or starting from scratch with a little observation of the form. To think you can just drag your new file into Pianoteq and Bob's your proverbial uncle. The authors of these files sometimes leave interesting notes in the text like:

! neidhardt1.scl
!
Neidhardt I temperament (1724)                                                 
12
!
94.13500
196.09000
296.09000
392.18000
4/3
592.18000
698.04500
796.09000
894.13500
16/9
1092.18000
2/1

Opening the 1790 J. Schantz Pianoteq recording preset (set to recently learned of 438 diapason - thank you again Philippe!), and playing good MIDI file performance of good ol' Moonlight Sonata 1 by J.S. Beethoven gives me goose bumps. He may have often played a Schantz tuned like this before the time he wrote Moonlight sonatas in 1801?, and to me, I get a real sense of this being a profound 'moment', to be able to hear what it might have been quite like to walk into a room where he sits playing either his or another's similar piano in that style.. you can hear how all the notes play so well here - but then, he may have used a later tuning also... but it works for me without more research for a better fit. (for reverb I like the IR file Berliner Hall Quad run in Pianoteq, with mix at minus5.8 and envelope at minus54.2 dB/s, no or extremely small pre-delay - maybe also relax damper settings a small click for the strings to ring a tad more - I like that on a lot of the era piano presets). Transportative to say the absolute least. More than any time before in my life, I can feel very close to what it would be like standing next to his piano as he plays. Thinking about that is head-spinning really. I love recordings of it by great pianists of course - but this is quite a different 'virtual' experience if you will.

I like to think that it's not so much about what tuning a musician is using 'today' but what tunings they used 'growing up' in their works which also communicate so much in a perhaps more overarching way, if not in a more obscure sense - it still is viable as a data point, myself being case in point. I know that no future music historians would know what hit 'em if they ever had to say "Ah yes, obviously used a 417 diapason and a variant of Hummel with.. etc." - they'd be incredibly uninformed and only partly correct - thus history is like an old magnetic tape storage device up to this point, only containing lossy data.. we all must guess, assume and hopefully assumptions make at least for good inspiration.

That above Neidhardt tuning seems nicely illustrative of the colouration mentioned, compared to equal tunings - it pleads, entirely lays out the emotional landscape from total abandonment of hope through to "ah, if only!", moments of joy etc.. it almost outright cries, downright comforts and also purely rages more IMO - the high single note sections make more sense to me with this tuning than equal, where it can sound 'remedial' rather than sublime

I'd love to load and compare others - suggestions would be cool!

[EDIT to add] BTW to nicely display how bizarre our ears can be, try loading in another recent earwig fav, Schubert Impromptu Opus 90 n.3 in G flat Maj.. and see how long you last before wanting to find the tuning Schubert was composing for You can't miss how different the effect of different tunings are - and lastly on that, it also clearly defines why equal tuning does have logical grip on the notion of 'one tuning for all music'.. although it kind of loses some deep things on retrospective collective works, the 'user' need not enter this labyrinthine world of tunings unless they, like some of us really love this stuff because it's really super interesting.

I've spent awkward amounts of time on sampling many of the tunings in the archive over years - but it's probably a lot simpler to try well known ones and work from there (for musicological survey) and then go wide for the occasional zinger. Many tunings are possibly very specific to a certain artists intent on other instruments than piano, incl. electronica.

I like Hummel and Hummel2 in that list and make some adjustments (having taken about 3 years on it only to engineer it back to a few small adjustments) - mainly because I feel with a per piano tweak, I can find a 'sense' that this is where I want to compose from/for. There's enough of the unequal and hints of the more 'modern' temperaments but for me, it works with so much music and on so many pianos (and diapason adjusted as well to really 'fit it'). But it's a whole universe of possibilities. I love the idea that my tweaking may end up being 'the' golden tuning or Holy Grael but hehe.. fools errand perhaps, although so far I'm kind of hooked on it - and it may sound wrong to others - I'm yet to give it a field test.

I think that if those music luminaries of past centuries had Pianoteq to work with, the accelerated pace on this subject may have meant that we may not have ended up with standard equal and MIDI as our contemporary 'control' across orchestras/devices/makers/etc. MIDI made it easy to mass produce modern instruments, and the public ear was ever trained to it for more than a hundred years really.

But if it was just as trivial to tune, test, re-tune, re-test etc.. maybe some other 'magic' consumer-grade tuning to win them all would have supplanted equal/MIDI. Not saying I hate equal, or MIDI (it's my musical birth place) but - man.. when you realise how much there is to understand and learn there is good argument for the musical establishment (loosely put) to rethink the subject, esp. where young students are concerned. I'm happy to learn this late-ish in life but I do wish I had Pianoteq back when I started - it makes learning/testing/enjoying and playing with these tunings so easy.

Perhaps the future of it really powerfully returning to musicians' conscious efforts begins roughly now with new tools like Pianoteq.. would be nice to come back to planet earth in a few hundred years time to see what the kids are up to.

Hello,

I have one ET to propose also:

! Dimitrov.scl
!
Latchezar Dimitrov 2020 Moyen half tone equal temperament
12
!
100.27124
200.54248
300.81373
401.08497
501.35622
601.62746
701.94696
802.16995
902.44119
1002.7123
1102.9836
1203.2548

This is an equal one, but more near to just position of all intervals(better than 12ET classic!

Cheers

@_DJ_ - cheers! and thank you also - the year 1911 may have been a better topic for the Don MacLean song, occurs that this date signifies something apt inre 'the day the music died' (not to take anything from the song) - that PDF at truetemperament.com is the one I allude to above, must have kept a link but lost it. The other PDF is super too. Thanks so much!

@chasmanian - hope you're as happy as me with your results in tuning Pianoteq - I really enjoy the period between the late 1700s thru mid-late 1800s personally, where some of the 'sweetening' gets kind of more, I don't know, 'human' to me. I love that composers were working with and idealising aspects of some pretty 'pushed' settings but for me, a kinder truth lies between the betweens, maybe in a fractal sense it relates to the physical spiral shape of our inner ear. Like 3.333recurring.. it's something the most powerful supercomputers can spend decades calculating but.. 3.333 recurring is 'close'

@dazric - yeah that's such a fascinating thing, to ask those who have synaesthesia about! I bet some A/B playback of music in various tunings would turn up extremely interesting results (settings for the experiment would need to be pretty organised).

@Kramster1 - I loved the Ensoniq I had - they made some unsung but important advances. I liked their sampling in the early keyboards, as olde tech as it is today. They made sampling of instrument sounds with what may have been a first, in multi aspects (front and back end of signal - treating attack and tails as two separate blended items, which may form a lot of my inspirations in multi-tracking) - they were pretty hot engineers IMO.

@aWc - cool to read the excitement in your post It's a magical thing when you get to a point where you begin to grok something of the differences in the expressions boosted by some tunings. I'm still feeling like I've not gone far from basecamp and there's a long way to the summit yet. All so fascinating.

Echoing DJs sentiment, that its really cool to see more people remembering 'the music' used to have this whole extra universe of nuanced options attached. So great to have such ease in accelerating our learning with this software. But I also imagine a lot of piano tuners might not love the idea of all these old tunings (and new variants) showing up and creating all these new fussy taskmasters, when for a lot of them just doing an equal job is repeatable, quicker and customer expects it

This has been linked a lot from the forum even recently - but it's such an exceptionally good resource, I'm inclined to link again whenever it's relevant.. it's a zip file (unzip anywhere you like) of thousands of tuning variants from antiquity to current microtonal oddities and lovelies. (scroll to bottom of page for the link to the zip - I don't link directly as old-school 'Netizen courtesy to the Huygens Fokker website and owners). There's not a need to install the other software to use the library of files but this is a good website for learning how to edit scala files and their software may be ideal for that.

Just open the unzipped folder, and drag a file onto the Pianoteq interface to hear how it sounds - and also it's instructive to open Pianoteq's advanced tuning section to see how the tunings look and so easy to tweak things without needing other software unless you maybe want to save out your own tunings as scala files - although again.

You can open each tuning file (filename.scl) in a simple text editor, and save out your own tunings by altering them - or starting from scratch with a little observation of the form. To think you can just drag your new file into Pianoteq and Bob's your proverbial uncle. The authors of these files sometimes leave interesting notes in the text like:

! neidhardt1.scl
!
Neidhardt I temperament (1724)                                                 
12
!
94.13500
196.09000
296.09000
392.18000
4/3
592.18000
698.04500
796.09000
894.13500
16/9
1092.18000
2/1

Opening the 1790 J. Schantz Pianoteq recording preset (set to recently learned of 438 diapason - thank you again Philippe!), and playing good MIDI file performance of good ol' Moonlight Sonata 1 by J.S. Beethoven gives me goose bumps. He may have often played a Schantz tuned like this before the time he wrote Moonlight sonatas in 1801?, and to me, I get a real sense of this being a profound 'moment', to be able to hear what it might have been quite like to walk into a room where he sits playing either his or another's similar piano in that style.. you can hear how all the notes play so well here - but then, he may have used a later tuning also... but it works for me without more research for a better fit. (for reverb I like the IR file Berliner Hall Quad run in Pianoteq, with mix at minus5.8 and envelope at minus54.2 dB/s, no or extremely small pre-delay - maybe also relax damper settings a small click for the strings to ring a tad more - I like that on a lot of the era piano presets). Transportative to say the absolute least. More than any time before in my life, I can feel very close to what it would be like standing next to his piano as he plays. Thinking about that is head-spinning really. I love recordings of it by great pianists of course - but this is quite a different 'virtual' experience if you will.

I like to think that it's not so much about what tuning a musician is using 'today' but what tunings they used 'growing up' in their works which also communicate so much in a perhaps more overarching way, if not in a more obscure sense - it still is viable as a data point, myself being case in point. I know that no future music historians would know what hit 'em if they ever had to say "Ah yes, obviously used a 417 diapason and a variant of Hummel with.. etc." - they'd be incredibly uninformed and only partly correct - thus history is like an old magnetic tape storage device up to this point, only containing lossy data.. we all must guess, assume and hopefully assumptions make at least for good inspiration.

That above Neidhardt tuning seems nicely illustrative of the colouration mentioned, compared to equal tunings - it pleads, entirely lays out the emotional landscape from total abandonment of hope through to "ah, if only!", moments of joy etc.. it almost outright cries, downright comforts and also purely rages more IMO - the high single note sections make more sense to me with this tuning than equal, where it can sound 'remedial' rather than sublime

I'd love to load and compare others - suggestions would be cool!

[EDIT to add] BTW to nicely display how bizarre our ears can be, try loading in another recent earwig fav, Schubert Impromptu Opus 90 n.3 in G flat Maj.. and see how long you last before wanting to find the tuning Schubert was composing for You can't miss how different the effect of different tunings are - and lastly on that, it also clearly defines why equal tuning does have logical grip on the notion of 'one tuning for all music'.. although it kind of loses some deep things on retrospective collective works, the 'user' need not enter this labyrinthine world of tunings unless they, like some of us really love this stuff because it's really super interesting.

I've spent awkward amounts of time on sampling many of the tunings in the archive over years - but it's probably a lot simpler to try well known ones and work from there (for musicological survey) and then go wide for the occasional zinger. Many tunings are possibly very specific to a certain artists intent on other instruments than piano, incl. electronica.

I like Hummel and Hummel2 in that list and make some adjustments (having taken about 3 years on it only to engineer it back to a few small adjustments) - mainly because I feel with a per piano tweak, I can find a 'sense' that this is where I want to compose from/for. There's enough of the unequal and hints of the more 'modern' temperaments but for me, it works with so much music and on so many pianos (and diapason adjusted as well to really 'fit it'). But it's a whole universe of possibilities. I love the idea that my tweaking may end up being 'the' golden tuning or Holy Grael but hehe.. fools errand perhaps, although so far I'm kind of hooked on it - and it may sound wrong to others - I'm yet to give it a field test.

I think that if those music luminaries of past centuries had Pianoteq to work with, the accelerated pace on this subject may have meant that we may not have ended up with standard equal and MIDI as our contemporary 'control' across orchestras/devices/makers/etc. MIDI made it easy to mass produce modern instruments, and the public ear was ever trained to it for more than a hundred years really.

But if it was just as trivial to tune, test, re-tune, re-test etc.. maybe some other 'magic' consumer-grade tuning to win them all would have supplanted equal/MIDI. Not saying I hate equal, or MIDI (it's my musical birth place) but - man.. when you realise how much there is to understand and learn there is good argument for the musical establishment (loosely put) to rethink the subject, esp. where young students are concerned. I'm happy to learn this late-ish in life but I do wish I had Pianoteq back when I started - it makes learning/testing/enjoying and playing with these tunings so easy.

Perhaps the future of it really powerfully returning to musicians' conscious efforts begins roughly now with new tools like Pianoteq.. would be nice to come back to planet earth in a few hundred years time to see what the kids are up to.

Hello,

I have one ET to propose also:

! Dimitrov.scl
!
Latchezar Dimitrov 2020 Moyen half tone equal temperament
12
!
100.27124
200.54248
300.81373
401.08497
501.35622
601.62746
701.94696
802.16995
902.44119
1002.7123
1102.9836
1203.2548

This is an equal one, but more near to just position of all intervals(better than 12ET classic!

Cheers

An interesting instrument in the Hammerwood Collection is a 1869 Broadwood Cottage grand - here recently restrung and taking advantage of recording two items before a retuning for deliberate effect
https://youtu.be/8t7l5OQKz2Y

Broadwoods were known to be concerned about evenness of tone and I believe that that shines through here. This instrument was tuned to Kirnberger III

https://youtu.be/nLlrPZjiSBg
gives more details about the instrument.

Best wishes

David P

I would please, appreciate any replies to this too,
as I was wondering the same thing.
thank you for starting this thread aWc.

I played around with tunings a little in PT and also with
Soniccouture the Hammersmith (its a Steinway D).
and also read a little about tunings.
wow there is an incredible amount to learn about that!!!

Hello,
I am a violinist but I like a lot to try new temperaments with Pianoteq.

I propose you to check this temperament simply load this scala file to Pianoteq:

! Dimitrov.scl
!
Latchezar Dimitrov 2020 Moyen half tone equal temperament
12
!
100.27124
200.54248
300.81373
401.08497
501.35622
601.62746
701.94696
802.16995
902.44119
1002.7123
1102.9836
1203.2548

You can use Notepad to paste these data and to save the scala file *.scl

Have fun

Did you know that you can change the key centre of any tuning using the + - buttons next to 'C3' in the Keyboard mapping section of the Advanced Tuning window? It's a feature that I discovered fairly recently (prompted by a query from aWc, if I remember correctly). And I very much agree with you regarding the exciting possibilities opened up by alternative tunings in the field of contemporary music. I often explore alternative tunings (not just the historical ones, but also Arabic scales and microtonal tunings) for improvisation.

I didn't know that. I guess the idea follows naturally from the possibility.

Steven Brown wrote:

What I meant by "on the fly" is the ability to retune the instrument to another temperament at the press of a button or the click of a mouse, a task that can take hours on an acoustic piano.

Did you know that you can change the key centre of any tuning using the + - buttons next to 'C3' in the Keyboard mapping section of the Advanced Tuning window? It's a feature that I discovered fairly recently (prompted by a query from aWc, if I remember correctly). And I very much agree with you regarding the exciting possibilities opened up by alternative tunings in the field of contemporary music. I often explore alternative tunings (not just the historical ones, but also Arabic scales and microtonal tunings) for improvisation.

I am aware of that function (as per an earlier thread). I have not measured how long it takes for the change to occur from that menu....What I have in mind, is a real time or near real time command that you could send from your midi controller, without having to dive into a menu. As I have suggested a few times, it could  simply  use one of the piano pedals, or even could be assigned to some unused keys (at the very top or very bottom of the keyboard). I don't believe that this is possible in the current Pianoteq version. Maybe I should make it an official feature request   The idea is for the performer to quickly switch temperaments or key center from a temperament in the middle of a performance.

So even with the fixed unequal temperaments useful transposition was and is possible.

In Kellner / Kirnberger III family temperaments F# Ab B C# are the strained keys whilst C D (nearly) F G Bb are the purer keys and Eb and E and A are the transition keys quite near to the excitement of their Equal Temperament equivalents. So generally transposition is possible without a great deal of damage.

Best wishes

David P

What I meant by "on the fly" is the ability to retune the instrument to another temperament at the press of a button or the click of a mouse, a task that can take hours on an acoustic piano.

Did you know that you can change the key centre of any tuning using the + - buttons next to 'C3' in the Keyboard mapping section of the Advanced Tuning window? It's a feature that I discovered fairly recently (prompted by a query from aWc, if I remember correctly). And I very much agree with you regarding the exciting possibilities opened up by alternative tunings in the field of contemporary music. I often explore alternative tunings (not just the historical ones, but also Arabic scales and microtonal tunings) for improvisation.

Changing temperament on the fly isn't therefore a concept that has much musical meaning. Composers did change tonality on the fly - by changing key, and actually referred to as tonality in Italian.

What I meant by "on the fly" is the ability to retune the instrument to another temperament at the press of a button or the click of a mouse, a task that can take hours on an acoustic piano.

Non-equal temperaments give different keys their own distinctive colors, but the composer of music for piano has also to consider the pitch of the key in which to play the melody and to voice the harmony. It would give the composer more latitude to be able to chose any color for any key. That can be made possible by deriving from a well temperament a series of twelve temperaments based on the twelve diatonic scales. If the original temperament is designed, by the adjustment of intervals, to produce the most consonance in the key of C, and the most dissonance in the key of F#, a tritone higher, that same temperament could be adapted to produce the same consonance in the key of E, and the most dissonance in the key of Bb, a tritone higher, but at different pitches. The composer is then free to chose any key for the desired pitch and chord voicings, and any of the twelve derived temperaments for the desired key color. The idea might have been regarded as impractical when applied to acoustic pianos, but it can easily be applied to electronic pianos. A temperament such a Werckmeister could be programmed to be available as "Werckmeister C", "Werckmeister E," "Werckmeister Ab", etc. I am not suggesting this in order to play classical compositions in temperaments for which they were not intended. I am suggesting it as a way to give modern composers of music for piano more latitude.

I hate to think I'm missing something by degrees - but I think the below might be my best reasoning on that idea. Thinking / typing.

I don't think of transposing temperament as wrong entirely as a device - but the effect will be such that it renders classical music very differently, and therefore would likely not hold much currency in that wide sense, but may be very happily mused over and accepted in the realm of modern music where, although 'no rules' applies, those showing interesting progress in their works might attract interesting associates and fans etc.

For myself, the convention of transposing a temperament (by MIDI controller or a pedal/levers) would mostly be for intermittently pulling in some kind of sweetening or opposite wolf intervals for interesting effects where not expected - or mimicking other devices associated with steel guitars, or bending notes and chords etc. - contrivance and convenience and inre modern music I compose.

It would be fantastic to learn how to play a piece once, then click transpose the temperament down a few semitones - play the same thing with the same shapes on the same keys - saving the struggle of learning to transpose the notes.. that's the great shortcut I can see as the dangling carrot But.. alas..

Given how physics enters into the equation (like light emanating from the prism, at fixed frequencies) sound vibrates - and we hear notes and chords conspiring from triads which create "beats" harmony etc.. these physical waves can't be transposed.. just their intended effects if you kind of follow.

It's kind of interesting to consider all the current options we have to experiment though with Pianoteq - and what we can pick over from this.

Let's say we are using a well temperament set a different diapason in Pianoteq, so that the tuning is a semitone lower..

Result may be even less beating in home keys and strength of some wolf intervals might be lessened. (similar, relating to less inharmonicity when making string length longer)..

Alternatively, if the diapason is set differently and the same tuning scheme is now a semitone above A at 440..

Result may be more beating, a quicker dive into wolf territory and maye less sanctum afforded by the home keys (similar, relating to more inharmonicity by making strings shorter). This could go on until the dogs can't hear it and beyond - like infrared visibility it disappears to us - goes from us to infinity - taking with it, all it's meaning above a certain pitch. Tenor, Baritone - there's a physical as well as psychological and/or emotional difference to the effects of each, even if singing the same tune at the same pitch - if there's this whole octave of natural diff going on, one seems to cruise, the other may seem to have to really stretch - and the strains on the vocal chords (vibration) tells us, "there's stress here" to make that note happen, not comfort - it intones a part narrative in that way. That's why a musical director will cast accordingly - when possible to fill the choir (unless, you know, there's no choir in the production - bad joke) In any case, we wouldn't hear the difference between C maj and F min at diapason of 40440.

Our ears are capable of hearing the frequency range we hear only.. so in a way the whole idea of a common diapason (let's just say today's typical is A at 440kHz) is reasonable - but with each physical piano going back in history, people may have personal tastes, or the orchestras of certain places preferred or demanded certain standards etc. We have MIDI standard these days - for better and worse too in some ways (mostly humanistic reasoning attached for my way of thinking of that - but others won't mind or care for that).

That's the sweet spot or zone though, somewhere in the range of historical diapasons and today's 440. Most things will sound fine to us on a range (in Pianoteq try them all with different pianos - and also some "stretching" and "physical rebuild" - let your ears tell you what's happening). When we transpose quite a bit more than a just a semitone or three, definitely most people will understand unmistakably, that things will sound either too deep or too chip-monk.

So, although, if in theory, we can transpose in toto the whole set of chords and tones up or down as many semitones or micro-tonally as we want, the universe has something to say about this matter also damn you physics!

In the end, it might not be exactly like a slide rule thing.. because with each step up or down, the beatings change too. Therefore, it's almost as irrelevant (in a classical musical sense with historical devices bargained in) as just arbitrarily renaming all the notes

This might give reason to it:

Tuning 18th-century Well Temperament at the Piano, part 2 of 2

Incidentally, just watched one of David's videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JF3YzTG7lU) of Helen York playing that Bechstein (1885) and amazingly, lucked out by clicking through to that one above in the sidebar.. the tuner explains quite nicely how he tunes with temperament in mind.

I enjoy hearing his descriptors as he explains the beating in intervals. Nothing new I'm sure, to a lot of people who have tuned their own pianos - but the video makes for easy understanding.

Summing up - nothing against the idea, I love it (and the experiments dating back in history) - already do very personal things with odd tunings for modern music, piano and other inc. synthetic - but there's no physical way to make the same beatings happen in the same way (you're not my real dad, universe!) - so although, similar effects will occur, they will be different if tuning from A at 392 (I like that diapason for some older fortepianos).. but tune at 440 and it's a different 'feel' entirely, even though theoretical spacings are still "heard" because, obviously it's transposing somewhat - but it will be immutably different. Doesn't mean to translate as 'wrong' but maybe too different to carry literally the same meanings at least on a chord by chord basis.

If anything it's like the guitar analogy above, where I play the same chord shapes on higher frets - different triads used determine if the chord will sound sweeter or more like home.. (think typical student day one C chord on guitar, compared to student day on E chord shape).. you can use the C chord shaper (harder to do so) to play an E - or other chords all over the frets - and I can tune the guitar down semitones or up etc. - but..

it's physics which determines that the actual vibrations we hear are "what they say to us" - then we get to that notion of classical composers wallowing in the darkness of F min or allowing the light to shine in around C or E.. maybe that also makes understanding the notion of renaming notes as being the bit that would theoretically change by transposing temperament - thus only kind of spinning wheels, if trying to do it with affect to classical historical reasons.

Not to suggest "don't bother - there's no reason" - some modern composers are finding things which may have been impossible before recording equipment and reproducible sounds and sampling. Not all of it enjoyable to everyone, or arguably also without as deep a narrative as some might find from the world of classical music and beyond - but all valid, fun and fascinating.

If anyone would like to 'sanity check' any of that, I'd love to know if any is misguided. Fascinating stuff to me, all of it.