Exactly right, Bill. Here's another one for ya. Several years ago, the late E. Power Biggs, world-renowned organist, put out an album in which he traveled all over to record 12 versions of J. S. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor on many of the old organs in Europe. The fugue was recorded once; but the most interesting aspect of this was that the pitch was all over the place. There was one example where it was as if the piece was being played in E Minor. Many of those old instruments have been maintained at their original tuning.
I like the fact that the Allen Organs have tuning modes that you can set to help authenticate things more, especially when you're performing pre-Baroque music. I believe some other synths and keyboards have these modes as well. I don't know if you can mess with the master tuning in the soft synths as I haven't had the need to do so. This whole tuning business is very interesting nevertheless.
Mike----- Original Message ----- From: "Bill" <billlist1@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Friday, August 15, 2014 18:10 Subject: [ddots-l] Re: Changing Tuning Reference With Soft Synths to A432 Jay, who knew? What a fascinating post to close out a long week. I'm going to try to find that documentary on Net Flicks. I remember learning in school that A440 was not always 440 and that, until standardization came in, the A used in one town or even one neighborhood could vary a lot from the one used elsewhere. In general, the people who study these things have concluded that the pitch we tune to called A has been gradually rising for centuries. The deliberate move to lower it by 8 cycles per second is really interesting and seems to go against the trend. As someone who has almost perfect pitch or, maybe better to say, pretty good pitch memory, I have even once or twice been distracted by "period" recordings of pieces such as Handel's Messiah on which the players used instruments built around the time that the music had been composed. Turns out that those instruments don't play as well when tuned to the modern A 440 standard. Some smart people worked out that they must have been tuned down from where we have the pitch we call A today. It does alter the character of the music. The Hallelujah chorus is almost in what we would call D-Flat. It seems to me that the music sounds a bit more relaxed. Very interesting stuff indeed.Bill
PLEASE READ THIS FOOTER AT LEAST ONCE! To leave the list, click on the immediately following link: ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe If this link doesn't work then send a message to: ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx and in the Subject line type unsubscribeFor other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the immediately following link:
ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq orsend a message, to ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
and in the Subject line type faq
