In Bach's time there were two tuning fundamentals, one for the choir and another for the orchestra, known repectively as "Chorton" and "Kammerton" (choir tone and chamber tone). If you care to visit bach-digital.de you will find many (most?) of Bach's existing scores in their ori...
Hi Hugh, Yup! You've now got it and all you've written about thirds and fifths etc. is quite correct. Of course, with fixed pitch instruments like piano and organ but also with most woodwind and brass and the dreaded accordion and harp we are stuck with the tuning faults of E.T. Most people accomoda...
Thanks for the reference Hugh. It's interesting, at least it is to me, that it was probably only later in the 20th century that we actually started using E.T. When an academic started testing Broadwood pianos, that were supposed to be in Equal Temperament, he found that they were not. They were clos...
Ever wondered why we tune our keyboard instruments the way we do? What exactly does a piano tuner do? Eh? Why would I do that? Hasn't it always been this way? No, not by a long chalk. To explore this we need to go back many, many centuries. To Pythagoras to be precise who, we understand, discovered ...
Like your granddaughter, I learned to play the oboe by understanding what combinations of holes to open or to close with a note on a score. That seems like a hundred years ago, but is actually only fifty! I didn't persevere, and now wish I had, but I'd like to play the keyboard a bit now I'm retired...
"Shortest amount of time possible" Hmmm! That could still be a long time. Steinberg (it seems) is still having trouble getting their drivers working with Win10, from what I've heard. I greatly respect the developers who work at this operating system interface level and particularly those i...
I take a similar view to Tony. In my experience there are usually loads of bugs in the first release of ALL operating systems I've ever touched. (I worked for more than 30 years in the computer industry, 20 of which were for a major UK manufacturer of mainframes and PCs.) Before 'jumping in' I would...
Hi Brian, Octal is the maximum number of combinations using just three binary digits. 000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, 111. nought to seven. Early computers had 6 bit characters rather than eight bit bytes. With eight bit bytes we halve them for a 'nybble' then we use hexadecimal to count to 16. I...
Ever wondered why we tune our keyboard instruments the way we do? What exactly does a piano tuner do? Eh? Why would I do that? Hasn't it always been this way? No, not by a long chalk. To explore this we need to go back many, many centuries. To Pythagoras to be precise who, we understand, discovered ...
Hi Tony, Brian and John, Well, it's normal. I suppose a career devoted to programming in machine code and assembler, then on to data communications protocol analysis and reprogramming has really warped my mind. I have to admit that not many people understood me in the computer industry either. I sup...
Hi Tony, We were both 'composing' at the same time it seems. Absolutely, NOT equal temperament, Tony. But that was what was thought originally. Bach knew of equal temperament and disliked it we have discovered from existing documents from the time. It is very, very difficult to tune ET by ear accura...
Hi Brian, Far travelled? Perhaps. There was a period in my life of about 18 months where I had a contract with InMarSat (a satellite launching company which was recently in the news over its tracking of flight MH370). I wrote a couple of courses for them about their latest (at the time) technology a...
Ah! Yes, WAM. You've forced me to admit that I too have a great love of young Wolfgang. :wink: Some years ago, whilst on a trip to Sydney to deliver some training, I was lucky enough to discover that there was a performance of the Magic Flute at the Opera House, and bought a good ticket at an amazin...
A more diverse palate? Maybe! My parents told me that I started enjoying Bach when I was about ten. I imagine that's not entirely normal! Oh, well. They had a recording on a ten inch LP of two of the Brandenburg Concertos which I'd play and play, apparently. That and the Rachmaninov second and the G...
Wotcher Brian and Mike, (you really can drop the SysEx, it's something I got lumbered with many, many moons ago!) It was my first first hand experience of baroque instruments. Horns without keys but with 'crooks' to tune them to different keys, trumpets that look more like a trombone but without a s...
Yep! Last Saturday we went (wife and I) to the local (for me) concert in St. Matthew church, Northampton of the Bach B minor Mass. The primary reason (for me) was that the orchestra was using original 18th Century instruments or copies or them. e.g violins have gut strings, not metal. Wooden flutes,...
The Beeb have definitely shot themselves in the foot over this one. Part of his attraction was his complete disregard for what was PC! That's what often made him so funny. I do believe that many people watched the programme deliberately looking for something to take offence with. I wonder if the oth...
Fascinating stuff, and rather like a viola da gamba in tone. I often wonder, when making this, why he didn't go for split keys so that he could have played sharps properly sharp and flats correctly flat. I imagine that might have made the mechanism overly complex though. ;-) How too is it tuned I wo...
... it is however very sensitive to excessively high gain. As a bit of an audio techie, I experimented with several wav to mp3 compressors a while back. The key thing to note when doing a conversion is that all converters I tried seem to push the volume UP on occasion. This means that if your wav f...
I learned today on the radio that he not only played Stranger on the Shore but wrote it too, for a BBC series for young people! I remember loving it when it came out. It never paled as so many do.
Ah! 1961. What a good year that was for music as I recall.
Interesting article. I seem to recall that Walter Carlos (as he/she was then) used multi-tracking to create his hit LP 'Switched On Bach' back in the sixties. Of course working with the monophonic Moog Modular and creating polyphonic baroque music would have been impossible without the technique. He...
I know looks can be deceptive, but I asked myself the question I always do "would you buy a used car from this man?" I'll leave you to guess the answer.
Hiya Mike, Yea, I've had a few of these since I returned to the UK. If I have the time, I keep them talking for as long as possible and ask 'dumb' questions and lead them on as much as possible. It's when they get to the bit about calling the Microsoft Support desk to sort out the errors on a premiu...
You might try looking at drummers' stools or 'thrones' as they're often called. They usually need to be dismantled for travelling and, I dare say, are built to take a pounding! ;) Konig and Meyer usually have a wide range of offerings of many things and you might be able to get one direct from Amazo...