[Bell Historians] Harrison's tuning

[Charles Lucy]

Thank you for your email Bill;

I appreciate what you are saying, nevertheless, from past experience  
with John Harrison's ideas,

I am convinced that his writings on bell manufacturing and design  
merit closer examination.

I have yet to be clear about your differences of "pitch and frequency".

Agreed; chosen tuning systems are subjective and influenced by  
fashion, although it seems to me that the beat frequencies may hold  
the "key" to some of  the apparent paradoxes.

I have been in contact with a number of people who are interested in  
Taylor's and will be looking at the practicalities over the next few  
days.

I look forward to exchanging ideas with you in the near future.

best wishes

On 20 Sep 2009, at 17:04, oakcroft13 wrote:

> Charles Lucy:
>
> > the perfect opportunity to retune all the major Western bells to  
> John Harrison's specs, using his methods of course
>
> I have been meaning to send a reply to your previous messages for a  
> few weeks but have been busy on other things :-(. I won't post a  
> detailed response here - established list members will roll their  
> eyes and say 'not again'! - but will send you a private message with  
> a detailed response. In summary:
> * in bells, unlike almost all other musical instruments, the higher  
> partials cannot be used to provide clues as to correct tuning of  
> fundamentals
> * as a result, pitch judgement in bells (e.g. the answer to the  
> question 'are these bells exactly in tune with each other') is to  
> some extent a cultural rather than a scientific question - our  
> choice of preferred temperament is a question of taste
> * there is a very important distinction to be drawn between pitch  
> (the note assigned by our aural system) and frequency (what we  
> measure with instruments)
> * due to the unusual upper partial structure in bells, there can be  
> a major discrepancy between pitch and frequency (25 or 50 cents)  
> that far exceeds any differences in frequency due to temperament
> * experiments have shown that this discrepancy between pitch and  
> frequency provides a good numerical explanation for stretch tuning.
>
> It's a tragedy about Taylors. Let's hope for a good outcome for all  
> their staff.
>
> Bill H
>
>
> 

Charles Lucy
lucy at yma_pzn9IW-aKKGGgmOAtlJGIF94odpbTdPRB7fRcG_rN9dOboya1BW2FHhNYpN6OUIkgca53g.yahoo.invalid

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