Are the two the same? Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. As regards intonation and temperment they are different enough to have been almost forgotten.
Basically it’s about just intonation and equal temperment as methods to acheive scale intervals in music making.
The basic story involves the fact that before the 17th century or so, when the need to be able to modulate between different keys came into being, most musicical instrument were tuned using just intonation which means they were tuned to a specific key and basically sounded crap if you tried to play them in another key. The reason for this is that the intervals between a root note and it’s octave were dependant on fractions. Well not fractions so much as whole number relationships.
These relationships were arrived at by trial and error and when measured came out to be numerical. But those relationships or intervals change slightly when you decide to use any of those notes between the root and octave as a new root, or key centre, it starts to sound wrong.
Now this all might sound rather silly but I had occasion to play with a pianist years ago, the piano is the main advocate of equal temperment, and was told by this pianist that I was playing out of tune. The thing is that guitarists tend to compensate away from equal temperment by kinda tuning to specific keys then allowing small stretches here and there to bring the notes into just intonation evn with the fact that guitar frets are put together in equal temperment. Pianists and keyboard players can’t do this so their ear is taught to accept the notes they hear, from the keyboard, as the right ones. They are if you only understand equal temperment. One of the best instances I know of is listening to songs in Am or E that have brass in them and the brass often sounds off. Thats because the brass is tuned to Bb and that shows up when the guitarists do their stuff in Am or E. The brass always sounds a little flat.
Kinda interesting stuff and even though its a bit less than a slight nigle muscally I think it’s an interesting metaphor in the growth of civilisation, western anyways. Wikipedia has some interesting articles on it and the only people outside of piano tuners who will know what your talking about are mathematicians.
Now add to this the simple fact that sound through air moves faster or slower depending on the air pressure and that our ears don’t really compensate for this then we have the simple fact added in that even tuning consistently is a rather difficult and imprecise art.
Recently I watched a neil young and crazy horse video by Jim Jara something or other, and they had ceded in a modern version of “like a hurricane” with a version twenty years older and I happened to be playing along with it while this occurred. I had to retune because it was about an 1/8 or so out. Then I was surprised later on when in the extras the boys were talking about it and mentioned they were amazed that the two versions were in tune. I’m like what? Are they just joking to cover an obvious discrepancy or are they telling their own literal truth? The videos called “The Year of the Horse”
Amps
I went and bought a bunch of IC amps yesterday after seeing a friends little pignose and having someone else wanting an amp for their own Vit S use. I’ve been thinking about something I can make that’ll add art and convenience together to sell on trade me and ebay to keep the engine of my yearnings supplied with the oils of commerce. So I think I’ll make some little amps that are powered by adapters. Maybe even have a psuedo busking cum tiny venue thing without allusions to practice, as it were, amps. Mic inputs, dynamic and piezo, high impedance, guitars, and a little mixer and effects loop all put together in a hand made box and sold as an artwork.
Might work or it might just be another stupid way of making something that does the job intended really well but takes far too much time and effort and just becomes too expensive. I think the idea will be to lift its aesthetic above the mundane that fills music shops and even above boutique market by making it sing with art.
KInda like this I suppose
I love the idea of being able to sell something that has ten dollars worth of IC’s in it for 300-500.00 bucks.