There has been at least one discussion on the various ways to ‘temper’ a scale, and sad to say I didn’t get it all straightened out in my head. I ask that everyone have patience with me and work through the lesson again.
It is my understanding that there are three basic methods of ‘tempering’ a scale, that is getting the notes of a scale to go through a full octave, and that the most common is ‘even’ tempering. ‘Just’ tempering has been mentioned on the board, and I know that Bach wrote pieces intended for a ‘well’ tempered clavier.
Anyone care to explain this for the lay-whistler (actually, I sit when I whistle, or stand)?
Further, I’m very interested in getting my hands on D whistles tempered other than what I’m used to. As of right now I don’t want to purchase them, just hear them for myself. Of course, if someone were so skilled as to take a handful of cheapies and mess with them to adjust them to the different temperings, I would be happy to buy the whistles for them to work on (Gens, probably) and discuss remuneration for the work.
A lot of whistles (especially Generations) can be adjusted with breath pressure as you play. As we play whistle, we tend to automatically tune to what we are used to or who we are playing with usually even tempered tuning. Find some old recordings of Irish musicians (fiddles in particular) using “old” tuning and play along with them.
Steve, thanks for that link. That’s about the clearest description of any that people have posted here.
I discovered the problem when tuning a harp. I play lap dulcimer and always tuned one string to a tuning fork, then the other two to harmonics (I tune either DAD or DGD, so one first harmonic and one second harmonic do the trick). So I tried to tune a 36-string harp using all harmonics once. What a mess! I spent an hour doing seven notes, then when I checked whether the last notes would lead back to the first ones, it was all off. I finally did the math, and found exactly what the beginning of this article says. About a quarter-step off. So another hour tuning to a pitchpipe (which I hate doing).