2023-08-08 10:27:20
Hello Christophe, dear listeners of France Musique.
How to tune a musical instrument by ear?
For some musicians this is an acquired gesture, but for others it is necessary to use the tuner, a device that indicates whether the note is right, or too high or too low. Yet Bach or Mozart in their time did not have an electronic device to tune their harpsichord. In addition, tuning is a gesture that mobilizes hearing, whereas often, with current digital applications, the musician is content to tune his instrument by seeing the green signal appear on the screen, without soliciting his auditory faculties. .
It is from these questions that I began to explore the notion of interval, that is to say the relationship, or the distance, between two musical notes. To judge if the note that we realize is correct, it will be necessary to really listen to it in its relativity with another note.
In the context of tuning a musical instrument, the musical temperament is the set of aesthetic choices in the definition of the pitches of the notes. For fixed-tone instruments (such as the harpsichord or the organ), it is a question of finding a solution which combines, in the most satisfactory way and according to the context, the “playability” on the instrument, the possible possibility of modulating, as well as the possibility of keeping or not keeping as many pure intervals as possible, “without shocking the ear”. There are many temperaments, depending on the historical and geographical context, the theoreticians, the musical repertoire…
As my research progressed, I discovered a fascinating world, made up of both phenomena that I call ‘objectified’ (such as vibration, beats) and others that cannot be measured such as than the artist’s intimate appreciation of sound ‘color’.
Let’s make an example: how do you perceive this sentence?
– Musical extract / Prelude, Couperin –
My research consists in studying both the quality of intervals according to the context, and the impact of intonation in their perception. In this example I have tuned my harpsichord to the Marpurg temperament, where F sharp is lower than what we are used to hearing in equal temperament. With this chord the initial melodic descent may bring out a feeling of greater sorrow; nevertheless, when we arrive on the cadence, the phrase seems to resolve itself in a more radiant way because the third is pure, that is to say without beats, very pleasant to the ear!
But, before studying the impact of the perception of intervals in a musical piece, we must first learn how to make the notes. To help musicians tune their instruments and perceive the diversity of intervals, I designed and produced the TemperApp application in collaboration with a team of researchers and musicians. This application allows, among other things, to generate the beats emitted by an interval. Indeed, with the exception of pure intervals, tempered intervals produce beats that are a valuable tool for tuning the instrument.
TemperApp’s mission is to make the musician autonomous (to the point of no longer needing the device) by consolidating his confidence in the perception of accuracy. This through the enhancement of tuning by ear, in an approach mobilizing active listening to intervals in their diversity. The musician is thus at the center of an event: he experiences the qualitative potential of the note in a musical discourse, through knowledge of the different tempered systems. He thus appropriates sound material, structures his perception and develops his own representation of sound tastes, thus contributing to developing his artistic awareness.
Find all the information of the TemperApp application
1691490801
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