Tuning to Meantone

[cboody]

It is probably best to consider meantone and just intonation as solutions for a single "major scale," or at least for closely related scales (like G and D or perhaps F C G and D). Those tuning solutions are optimized for nice thirds within the diatonic scales. Yeah you can extend the concept to a chromatic situation, but the solutions get less and less useful as you move away from the note upon which you base the tuning. The last part of the previous sentence brings up another issue: You need to select the starting pitch for your meantone instrument. Probably for trad players that would be G or D. If you use C you will already have a less than "as good as it can be" third in one basic chord in G and in two basic chords in D.

 

This is all true, but it comes sort of automatically, due to the fact that meantone tunings make most sense on diatonic instruments. If you have a D/G instrument, you won't be playing anything in C, so taking F or C as your starting pitch wouldn't make any sense, quite apart from the musical genre you'll be playing. And with an Bb/F instrument, you won't be playing with D-G-centric traditionalists, so Bb as your starting pitch won't be an issue. The instrument should simply be "meaned" to its own keys.

 

Agreed, but my understanding, at least at the beginning of the discussion, was that we were discussing EC here. You're spot on with anglos, and could make a good argument for using meantone with them (at least to me!)

 

As to autoharp: I think you are right there too. But, with a chromatic harp the issues still exist. Of course that may be part of the reason most pros play diatonic harps.

[michael sam wild]

I understand the diatonic Irish harp was commonly played in G and tuned acordingly. Am I correct?

[david fabre]

In a parallel existence, I am also an autoharper...

 

Sorry to go off-topic, but I have a few questions about autoharps...

Could someone indicate me a site whereI could find "standard" bar layouts for chromatic and diatonic autoharps ?

I've tried to search by myself but google has not been very useful. It seems that the debate about layouts is at least as active as for concertinas...

 

I'm thinking that it could be a good instrument to teach my kids. At what age do you think one could start learning it ?

[Anglo-Irishman]

In a parallel existence, I am also an autoharper...

It seems that the debate about layouts is at least as active as for concertinas...

 

Infinitely more so!

 

PM me about it. I'll tell you about my custom layout - and about all the layouts I looked at on the way to it!

 

Now back to the firmer ground of concertina layouts ...

 

Cheers,

John

[Smythe Dakota]

Dave Weinstein asks:

 

"How many of the drawbacks to Meantone are mitigated by the fact that the English Concertina actually has 14 notes per octave, instead of 12?"

 

(Sorry, I couldn't get the Quote function to work properly. Maybe the post I responded to is too old.)

 

If you add two notes to the quarter-comma meantone scale -- so that you have, for example, both G# and Ab, and both D# and Eb -- then, of course, you have added two good fifths, Ab-Eb and G#-D#, and two good major thirds, Ab-C and B-D#.

 

But also, to the original wolf fifth G#-Eb, you have added two more, C#-Ab and D#-Bb. This could make for some interesting disharmonics.

 

There is also a new interval, the "wolfishly narrow" fifth, Ab-D#. ("Standard" wolf fifths are wolfishly wide.)

 

I suppose you could also "trill" between G# and Ab (just 42 cents apart), or between D# and Eb (ditto).

 

There are lots of possibilities here, to those who really want to try!

 

Bill Smythe