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Music, mathematics, philosophy and tuning:

Harmonic theory pages 

by Brian Capleton 

 

viols.co.uk home piano pages home contact six myths theory pages about

 

 

 

See also, on piano tuning

 

The Theory Home Page

 

on falseness and paradigms for the nature of piano tuning

 

the art of piano tuning

 

why are pianos tuned to Equal Temperament

and what is it?

 

what makes a piano string vibrate ?

 

six myths about piano tuning

 

what is the theory of piano tuning ?

 

the place of piano tuning theory

 

 

 

for piano tuners

 

The piano tuner-technicians' area

 

 

See also, on music and mathematics

 

The Theory Home Page

 

musical intervals

 

music, mathematics and philosophy

 

background to the musical scale

 

the Chord of Nature

 

the unnatural scale

 

natural correspondence and esoteric symbolism

 

the Circle of Pythagoras or -

the Great Circle of Fifths

 

pitch deceptions

 

on music, mathematics and tuning

 

on scales, tone, pitch (and piano tuning)

with interactive media

 

Piano tuning - the essential idea

Brian Capleton PhD

 

Updated 27th May 2007

© copyright Brian Capleton 2006, 2007

 

Page 3    go to page 1 here

 

The ingredients in a sound therefore affect both pitch and tone, simultaneously.  

 

When you play two musical notes together, you create a musical interval. The sound of a musical interval also has its own recipe. The recipe provides the input for the ear to hear "two notes played together", and it also provides the input that the ear and brain interprets as tone.

 

You might think that the recipe for the musical interval is just the recipes for each of its two notes, added together. In fact, in piano intervals, this is not always the case. The reason is that the sound you hear from a piano comes mostly from the soundboard. When both notes are played together, the soundboard can vibrate in new ways, that it cannot do for either of the two notes individually.

 

A musical interval has its own recipe and its tone. Its tone is not always simply the same as the tones of the two individual notes, added together.

 

 

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