Re: Sound on Sound review of Notion 4
Posted: Tue Apr 23, 2013 6:33 pm
Beautifully written condensation of a very large subject, melonsoda!
Best wishes,
Thorrild
Best wishes,
Thorrild
melonsoda wrote:@surfwhammy: the two keyboards of a harpsichord is to create dynamics, the upper manual is usually only with one register (8') while the lower manual can have one or two registers (8' or 8'+ 4' or coupled with the above 8'+8'+4'). With a split-key harpsichord the black keys are split (horizontally, otherwise you'd need tiny fingers!) to have both a chromatic (C-C# = 4 comma) and a diatonic semitone (C-Db = 5 comma).
melonsoda wrote:It is true, most baroque violins like the ones of Stradivari got new necks in around 1830. That's not because the old necks were not perfect, it's just that the style of playing changed. The older necks were a bit thicker and less angled, resulting in a shorter string length. That was perfect for holding the violin without resting your chin on it (the thicker neck ideal to shift positions), however after about 1825 holding the violin between chin and shoulder became the standard and some adjustments had to be made. Also that changed the sound of course, but not as much as the change to metal strings in the 1930ies. By the way, the bows were constantly changed from around 1600 to 1910. Nowadays we play Bach, Beethoven & Co. very often on period instruments (that is instruments exactly built in the style of the time the piece was written). It doesn't have anything to do with being a "purist", it's just fun and inspiring to discover how "the old ones" played their instruments, how different they sound with gut strings instead of metal strings.
melonsoda wrote:About temperament, that is longer story – not enough time to write here… I worked as a piano and organ (+all sorts of harpsichords) tuner for quite some time and well, it's much more complicated than just equal, well temp. and just intonation. To make it short, there is no "true temperament", at least not for our music (that is if you have chords with thirds and fifths), one will always have to make compromises because of the Pythagorean and the syntonic comma. 12 pure fifths don't give the same pitch as 7 pure octaves, and 3 pure thirds don't give a pure octave. Even "just" intonation isn't just. That's physics, and in equal temperament the compromise is not to have any pure intervals, except the octave. Some are better than others, the fifth for example is nearly pure but the major thirds are 14 cent to high… Not nice sounding, and of course, if you can just move your finger a bit to make it better (like if you are a violinist) or sing a bit lower then you do it. Having # and b therefore helps a lot to intonate well.
melonsoda wrote:Regarding fretted necks, well that's an old story (older than the piano), even Galileo Galilei's father Vincenzo wrote about it, there were double frets (little wooden frets, called tastini) for lutes in the 16th century. The frets on this Stratocaster however look quite crudely done. Anyway, at least here you can see that the G# is a bit lowered, so it will sound nicely in an E major chord, but you can't use it for an f minor chord, because that requires Ab. This problem could be solved using double frets, but even that wouldn't be "true", one only could make sort of a mean tone tuning. String diameter is a topic of course, but in practical life much less of a problem than the frets or inharmonicity. Of course, always depending on what style you play; for heavy metal, you would tune the fifths and octaves pure (Phytagorean tuning) so the distortion (overdrive, etc.) for power-chords are smoother. I've even seen some metal bands that managed to do pure thirds with two guitars, which sounds cool with distortion.
melonsoda wrote:Anyway, all that doesn't matter much to our topic: For whatever you use Notion – it makes use of standard music notation and since it does it should do it the correct way.
of, relating to, or being notes that are written differently (as A flat and G sharp) but sound the same in the tempered scale
In modern musical notation and tuning, an enharmonic equivalent is a note, interval, or key signature that is equivalent to some other note, interval, or key signature but "spelled", or named differently. Thus, the enharmonic spelling of a written note, interval, or chord is an alternative way to write that note, interval, or chord. For example, in twelve-tone equal temperament (the currently predominant system of musical tuning in Western music), the notes C♯ and D♭ are enharmonic (or enharmonically equivalent) notes. Namely, they are the same key on a keyboard, and thus they are identical in pitch, although they have different names and different role in harmony and chord progressions.