Tuning a Lyre to the Just Intonation of Antiquity
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- Опубліковано 28 сер 2024
- A demonstration of how to tune my wonderfully hand-made10 string lyre made by Marini Made Harps, to the wonderfully pure just intonation of antiquity...using the world's first iPod 'Just Intonation Ancient Lyre Tuning App'!!
The tuning tones were kindly provided for me by Biblical music expert, John Wheeler and were generated by a program called SCALA.
MP3s of the tuning tones features in this video can be freely downloaded from the following Dropbox link:
www.dropbox.co...
These provide just intonation tunings of all the chromatic notes between middle C and the second E above middle C - so that ANY mode can be tuned to and the resulting temperament in any of the possible ancient musical modes will be (more or less!) just.
Please note - the tuning tones do require a trained ear to fine tune the intervals a little, until the wonderfully transparent quality of musical intervals in just intonation can be heard in all the modes possible on a 10 string lyre tuned with middle C as its bottom note (there is very slight variation to the sound of the other modes, as the pure just intonation tuning only works with middle C as the tonic - although the difference is barely perceptible).
Other just intonation tuning tones with A at 415 and 432 Hz can be freely download from John Wheeler's blog:
musicofthebible...
For more details, please also see my blogs on ancient tuning methods:
ancientlyre.com...
...and my recent blog on the whole knotty issues around the New Age claims about A at 432 Hz:
ancientlyre.com...
To download free sheet music which I have arranged for my 10 string lyre made by Marini Made Harps, please see the following blog:
ancientlyre.com...
Regarding ordering the lyre I am playing, please also visit the Marini Made Harps website:
www.marinimadeh...
Many thanks for watching!
So kind of you to post this. Thank you! I got a little miniature 10 string lyre (Mini Kinnor Harp), and it seems best suited to lower frequencies. I used the app, Pano Tuner, and set “A” to 444.5 Hz in order to tune it to the solfeggio frequency of 396 Hz.
528 was too high, but I really don’t know what I’m doing! 🤪 My “A” does not read 444.5 Hz. Oh well, I’m just so thrilled that I finally have a scale of ascending notes!! 😂 The notes were all over the place when I first got it!
Ahhhh! Gorgeous!!!! Next time I will tune along with you!
This design is BEAUTIFUL.
At some point in the video, just name all the notes you're about to tune to. Even on the description would be nice.
Lmao yes i was saying the same thing every single video is like that when im looking for lyre tunings
Thank you so much Michael! I've just been given a King David's harp by my good friends, and I thought I might as well start somewhere! Love the music! :)
Thank you, sir!
Awesome!
Thanks for sharing Michael, The cleartune app on IOS can be set to just intonation and A=432 if you wish or other frequencies.
Cheers, Michael! I had no idea this app existed. I still think it is important to keep the ears trained and get used to precisely matching pitches when tuning - but this is one awesomely useful app!
***** Just downloaded the app...it looks really funky funky, in it's capacity to enable the fine tuning of just intonation intervals against an objective measurement of specific Hz, a whole range of alternative Baroque mean tempered tunings....and very cool for properly tuning a fiddle!
I tune by ear usually but it's great reference tool for trying tunings, temperaments and for playing with others
Just one thing, it wasn't in Mesopotamia, it was in ancient Thrace (today's Bulgaria) and then the Greeks started to play on and then the rest of the world's nations.
Fifths in just intonation are essentially the same as in 12TET. Unless you're trying to tell me that you tuned those fifths pure to within 2 cents (which I can tell by ear that you didn't), but it's not like it matters anyway because the fifth can be 5 cents out of tune and still beat slowly enough to sound extremely pure. That being said, I can barely stand equal tempered thirds and sixths. And btw I like your performances of Ancient Greek Music.
Teddy, you sound like you know your onions. I have built a 9 string lyre harp for a friend from a photo. I have no idea how to string it as in thickness of strings and notes to tune to. If you can help I would be very grateful. Your description will have to be pretty basic, I have a tuner for my guitar which is variable. I would like to send you a picture of what I've built as it makes Michaels look like a freight pallet! I'm UK london based. Hope to hear from you. Jon.
@@jonwilmot5331 I don't play the lyre but I can give you a bit of information.
I don't know what exact thicknesses will work best for lyre, but I do know that thicker strings can handle more tension, and they have a "darker" sound. "Darker" and "brighter" aren't very useful terms, but they're commonly used by musicians. Another word for "dark" is mellow. What I mean by "darker" is that thicker strings produce less overtones (for more info about harmonics _aka overtones,_ see ua-cam.com/video/XPbLYD9KFAo/v-deo.html). Examples of instruments which have a low presence of harmonics/overtones are the flutes, whistles, and recorders (instruments that produce this type of sound are less common). A more narrow string will produce a "brighter" sound, meaning that there will be a higher presence of overtones/harmonics. Examples of instruments that have a high presence of harmonics are oboe and trumpet. An example of an instrument that falls roughly in between these categories is the clarinet. Also, "brighter" timbres will sound louder. I personally don't have any preferences for any of these.
I'm not sure what scale you'd prefer. For diatonic tunings, I recommend 1/4 comma meantone temperament. If you have a particular set of notes that you have in mind, I can give you a good suggestion on how to tune them. Otherwise I'd probably go for something like G A B C D E F G A.
I got a 10string lyre harp for Christmas, I'm really struggling to find an "all round" tuning, so that I can attempt to play some of Jeremy soule's beautiful pieces.
How do you know what the just intonation of antiquity was like?
Thanks to the writings of ancient Greek mathematicians such as Ptolemny, who expanded on Pythagoreas's discovery of the ratios of pure musical intervals by his experiments with a monochord, to also include the pure whole number ratio of the interval of 3rd etc
Hello where did you get to buy this lyre model??? 🤗/🇧🇷
It is the 'Marini Davidic Harp' handmade in the USA by Marini Made Harps:
www.marinimadeharps.com/davidic.htm
Hi I am just about to purchase this from Marini Harps. I am unsure whether to get it with the levers or not? The price is about double with having them but unsure if they are worth having considering the price. Thanks Luke
The beauty of the lyre, is simplicity - having a limited range, every note matters. Also with sharpening levers, the use of the authentic, pure focused sound of just intonation becomes impossible, since sharpening levers are calibrated in out f phase, never perfectly in tune, modern equal temperament.
This is wonderful. How could one do this with a 7 string lyre?
I broke 4 strings already trying to tune my lyre this way.. can't be done. I think I'm going to have to go an octave or two lower.
Well I know the difference here is intonation and not incrementally sharpening half steps for modes, but same overtightening problem, same solution perhaps: in the case of snapping strings sharpening otherwise whole notes he suggests in "Finding Authentic Tunings for an Ancient Lyre" to transpose not an entire octave but one note, and so if that works for a half step it should work for less (as I'd think the difference between eq temp vs. just int. is?) : "For the Marini Made Davidic Harp, to avoid snapping strings, it is necessary to transpose these tunings from E to D - using the divisive chromatic scale starting on D" an example of string snapping fix for altering incremental half steps sharpening to accommodate different modes
All the hate on the equal temperament. I hate the major 3rd but it's the only note that sounds bad. You get a pure sound for the majority of notes, but there are still some intervals off, and when they are off, they are way worse than just. I'm kind of interesting in getting a just instrument, but the fact of the matter is, it's just impossible to get perfection in this world
No it's not. Using extended just intonation (microtonal) you can produce music in just intonation. It's impossible if you only allow yourself to use 12 notes. Also there are intervals like the 7th, 11th, and 13th harmonics which are far from being well approximated by 12edo. These intervals have their own unique sound that cannot be produced by 12TET. People don't realize that just intonation isn't always just about being in-tune; it's also about creating new sounds.
You're a talented man................... less talk, more playing please!
In this video, I was merely attempting to explain some of my actual secrets of creating 'ancient musical magic' - so that others could also try conjuring it up as well!
Why are you tuning to a tone with vibrato? Also, why use a tone? You can easily tune the intervals by ear or you can compare harmonics.
Regrettably, at the time I made this video, the only just intonation tuning tones I had, were generated by SCALA, which created this annoying vibrato - I now use the Cleartune App 'Pythagorean Just Intonation' tuning - much easier to use and can be set to any specific starting note with 'A' at any specific reference pitch:
ua-cam.com/video/VBLn_viUwjI/v-deo.html
Oh hey maybe you're gonna answer my question here from your last vid I saw! I want to transpose the open string sweeps you do to fretted guitar pattern. The intonation probably gonna fuck me though lol
Sitting here like "really though, that fifth sounds flat to me" (C to G comparison, approx 7:30); is that because my ears lean toward equal intonation since that's my main exposure? I noticed a few years ago I would often have to retune my guitar between songs to be "best sounding" for the part of the neck I was playing on, and I'm confident the neck was set correctly and the harmonics were in.
When I started learning about just and equal temperament, I started to notice that the intervals sounded bad at certain parts of the neck per how it was tuned, even though the thing read in tune with a tuner and I was confident in the set up.
I figured that the notes and neck positions I was using needed the strings to be adjusted occasionally; because I could tune the guitar so a nice 1st position G major chord would sound beautiful and resolved with all those open strings, but adding notes from higher up the fretboard would see them sounding either sharp or flat, depending on the harmony.
Sorry to wax lyrical.
So I'm about halfway through and thinking that this thing is going to be tuned to all consecutive natual notes up to the second E, and that kind of solves my "what is the tonality of that open string sweep" question, if so. Any accidentals will just point at another key, but it's clear that it is not tuned in 4ths or 5ths.
Thanks for this brief but fun adventure into intonation and harmonic relationships.
Great way to spend a Friday afternoon :)
I guess I got suddenly interested because the harmony that sounded off to me was a fifth. I mean, that's the most stable of all the shit, I should definitely know how to settle a fifth into place with open strings. It just locks and becomes literally "perfect". My question then is; are my ears fucked, was your lyre out of tune at first when you got up to tuning the G, and I should watch another 15 seconds and wait for you to fix it, or is the fifth interval of just intonation slightly flat of the fifth of equal intonation?
Did they only switch to equal so you could have sound across multiple colors and registers without conflict? What does that mean for ensembles verses instruments that span two or three octaves?
This is so interesting >:(
"that D in the A, I love that sound!" I'm dying
This whole thing makes me realize something I never even vaguely considered before; I always thought I had an "ugly" sense of hand placement on guitar, in that I would grab chords whole handedly and squeeze them into the neck, or in other hand positions, bend parts of the chord slightly up to feel like I was playing it right.
I think I've been compensating for intonation on an instrument designed for equal temperament, and perceiving it as WHY AM I SO AWKwARD WITH MY HANDS?!
Or something. Idk, a lot is making sense to me in terms of tuning struggles right now. I disagree with my tuner every fucking time and have to constantly adjust to compensate for playing position.
That's a boggle.
Sincerely wondering, asking very sincerely, do you love Jesus? He loves you deeply. God bless you
I respect everybody's sincere religious beliefs, but whether or not I have any of my own is my business, not anybody else's and if I did or did not have any specific religious beliefs, they have nothing to do with my musical projects - which are all works of historically or mythologically inspired aesthetic fiction, not facts relating to any of my actual beliefs. Hope this answers your questions.
@@MichaelLevyMusic I will pray for you. Jesus Loves you. He wrote a book about you that is in heaven, about a good prosperous life he wants to give you, if you will surrender to His love and let your own idea of life go. You see, if we try to hold on to our own ideas of what life should be, we will perish, but if we surrender to the will of God, we will have eternal life in Heaven with the Father. I love you and God loves you most of all. He died for you. He bore your sins on the cross. And then was raised from the dead, for you. No one can have eternal life without going through Jesus. And what Jesus gave to us on the cross is the only way to have a relationship with the Father again. I am not religious. Believing in Jesus is not about being in a religious institution. It is about having a relationship with the Father, which heals our souls and gives us true Life, everlasting. God is Love. Anyone else who says otherwise is lying. The enemy of our souls wants us to believe that God is anything less than Pure Love. Lies are meant to kill, steal, and destroy. But Jesus came to give us Life and to destroy the works of the enemy of our souls. God Bless you in the name of Jesus! Amen
"I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades". Revelation 1:18
No offence dude, but why didn't you tune the lyre BEFORE you played those beautiful compositions? I nearly stopped watching after that annoying iphone sound was put in the camera. But anyway, gold job making this stuff public. Just intonation can be tuned pretty easily by ear, and it's good to train yourself that way. Thanks,
Because the whole purpose of this video, was to 'share the magic', by actually demonstrating how to get into the geometrically pure just tuning I use to play these compositions!
Yes tune it before and tell us what they are yawnnnnnnnnnzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz