Recently I submitted a somewhat arbitrary comment about playing the piano in order to hear beats, responded to privately. I never responded. There are many ways musical experience can help us to hear the string vibrate, or beat, more accurately.
When I purchased a top of the line ETD, I received with it something renamed a Cyberfork. Though provided to calibrate my newest toy to a precise A440, it is actually a quartz metronome. The first thing I learned to do when learning to tune was a contiguous thirds temperament; the first thing I ever used a metronome to do was to set a tempo when playing a piano, and to play with a consistent one. It certainly was different. A contiguous thirds temperament can be used for any octave in the mid-range if we think about the 3 thirds less like a specific amount of Beats Per Second, less like a 5:4 partial, and more like the difference between Presto, Andante, and Largo, which are things that primarily are musically understood by playing an instrument. In this way, hearing beats is high art, not hard science. Starting low in the midrange is easier. What is sought, even by interpreting a work originally written with a particular number within those tempo markings by the composer due to disparities in acoustics and instruments needs to be understood by the general meaning of the tempo marking; sometimes we walk fast, sometimes we walk slow, and frequently this is determined by our mood at the moment we play Andante. Determining BPS is something like that we can do better with a strong understanding of tempos; we can make it a form of expression if we understand it well enough, as we can Allegro. And fortunately for our piano players out there, our literature is the most generous in solo form and the most demanding in requiring an understanding of pacing in tempo. We do it for other instruments all the time in chamber music. Or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, or the person you are collaborating with.
Pacing is part of aural tuning in general. An instrument and a room can dictate our pace of tuning. How loud or quiet the room or instrument is, how big or small the room or instrument is, both the pace that we tune, and beat rates, are affected by this. Having experience in music can make all the difference, or admittedly, for those who never learn to tune aurally, none.
Rhythm is part of making music, and is not to be distinguished from hearing the vibration of the 5:4 partial. One of Dad's students was a percussion major, and went on to graduate school making a living off of tuning for dealers in the area. A strong sense of rhythm assists in hearing beats. The piano, guitar, many instruments can be defined in terms of rhythm instruments, in some settings and functions more than others. Simply understanding the rhythmic aspect of an instrument can help one to hear beats.
In music theory classes, the piano player is envied most of all. Piano is a lesson in music theory more than any other solo or chamber music instrument. There is a sense of finality in music theory that directs us to characteristics of piano tuning; counterpoint as a form of composition directs us to tuning in proscribing parallel movement in fourths, fifths, and octaves, while prescribing it for thirds and sixths, much like the movement of well-tempering to equal-tempering in the Baroque; modulation in Sonata form sometimes directs us to relationships between tonic, sub-dominant, and dominant, or the relationship in the heptatonic scale between Ionian and Aeolian, which might be favored in historical temperaments. Returning to Tonic in a Recapitulation from the Exposition can help us to understand the importance of octaves. The slattern third of the Renaissance musical imagination avoided with religious fervor directs us to so favor perfect intervals in the West; modulation to thirds was almost forbidden. It certainly sounds sexier pure. The cadence, be it the timeless 2-5-1 cadence in Jazz, the Authentic Cadence, or the declining Plagal cadence, the harmonic part for the final common Amen of the Hymn tradition of church music, all these direct us to musical characteristics that create the sense of inevitability and conclusiveness in Western harmony at the foundation of which is the way we tune the roots of these chord changes to one another. What gives the sus chord, the suspended fourth, when not resolving to a dominant seventh chord, "a floating quality," as the jazz theorist Mark Levine claimed? Is it really that it does not resolve? Is it not, rather, the width of the fourth? Pianists specifically get a huge head start in understanding these principles, which are directly related to tuning.
Memorization of literature also is a process that prepares us for the task of aural tuning. It is a slow, methodical, process, learned and achieved by repetition. It takes us a step closer to the discipline and focus it takes to aural tune. This is for the soloist, most the responsibility of the pianists also, and singers. Preparing literature is much like the task of learning to aural tune. It starts slow, sometimes, very slow, and requires a tenacity that few are born with. But memorization, is closer to meditation, as with aural tuning. I've often heard ETD users admit, I just don't have the energy to concentrate that much. One can use an ETD much more distractedly. Hearing beats takes constant fixation upon sound. Will anyone dare to question the fact that to aural tune, you must be more involved in the process? It is also amazing to discover in the process of attempting to train people with this kind of discipline to aural tune, how hard it proves to be for the same people.
It is difficult to determine whether or not music theory shaped the way we tune, or if tuning shaped our music theory. Tuning in general certainly cannot be understood completely by just analyzing the physics of acoustics in a piano string.
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Benjamin Sloane
Cincinnati OH
513-257-8480
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Original Message:
Sent: 09-08-2016 00:09
From: Benjamin Sloane
Subject: hearing beats?
Play
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Benjamin Sloane
Cincinnati OH
513-257-8480
Original Message:
Sent: 08-26-2016 10:51
From: Tom Cowell
Subject: hearing beats?
Hello everyone,......................... I am in the process of trying to learn how to tune. Can anyone give me any advice on how to hear beats?
Is there anything out there with recorded samples that compare pure to non pure tone?
Thanks Tom