Tuning Systems

I don't know ... on-the-fly non-equal temperament re-tuning sounds like a cure without a disease to me.  The whole reason for well- and equal temperament was to allow one to modulate from any one key center to any other key center and avoid harmonic train wrecks otherwise.  I was born with absolute pitch and grew up hearing the equal temperament system.  Yes, there are errors in tuning, such as striking an interval of a fourth between G3 and Middle C4, one should hear the common overtone of G5 undulate three times in five seconds (or 0.6 Hz).  It's true that good brass players, good singers and good string players are able to "tune" the overtones on the fly.  How many keyboardists and classically trained pianists can tell accurately Pythagorean tuning from Valloti tuning, or Just Intonation in C versus Just Intonation in F, or where the comma is.  Not meaning to sound narrow minded, but I would suggest people learn how to sharpen their playing skills over putting up a smoke screen about tuning.

Cheers,

Joe

I'm fine with equal temperament (ET) for the most part, but Pythagorean tuning works better for early music with a lot of fifths, for example (since the fifths are purer in Pythagorean tuning than in ET, except for one fifth of twelve that is lowered a Pythagorean comma). Also, the third in ET is far too wide (although you can grow to get used to it), which is why many singers and string players use just intonation, since they are not constrained by fixed tunings and intervals as the piano.

So, using just intonation (JI), for example, works very well in one key - you get more acoustically pure intervals in that key than you get with ET. Wendy Carlos' idea was to tune in JI on an electronic instrument and change the fundamental as you go along modulating between keys; this should be easy enough to do with Pianoteq, and it could be an interesting alternative to ET. As I said, ET is fine, it works well, but it's not the end of the story. A good solution in many ways, but not a perfect solution, the fifths are slightly narrow and the thirds pretty wide.

Sorry, but I'm just second to say that though I also got a perfect pitch I care less about tuning at all. If it is somewhat reasonable in tune than it is Ok. My playing abilities worry me so much more. Also I have nothing against other people doing their research in any area including the tuning techniques. ET got it's very strong reasons for self existence. From what I heard the Entropy Tuning techniques seems to be quite promising this days.

I have nothing to add here, really, except that I was impressed that PTQ seems to be quite willing to make accommodations for installing alternative tuning systems, and I suspect you can find exactly what you're looking for as a "scala" file to upload. What comes prepackaged with the software, including meantone (useful for the old keyboards) and a couple of historic "well" (as opposed to "Equal") temperament systems is enough for me; I just go by whether the scale has a sweeter quality or not ... obviously I don't have absolute pitch. I do sometimes choose "well tempered" on the older pianos. But I get the impression that if you get into the weeds with the scala uploading, which is pretty well explained in detail in the documentation, you can pretty much do whatever you want.