A week ago I tuned my piano to Bill Bremmer’s EBVT III, but with slight offset corrections (as discussed HERE). I actually used the original EBVT for about five months last year, but switched to the Lehman temperament for the past seven months out of curiosity — I wanted to hear what music sounded like in what is purported to be the temperament used by Bach.
The piano sounded darker after the change to EBVT III. This was expected because EBVT III is a milder form of Well temperament than the Lehman, even milder than the original EBVT. But now that my ears have adjusted to the tonal changes, I have decided that I will stick with the EBVT III for a while.
I had a couple of issues with the Lehman temperament. Some keys were rather too ’spicy’ for my taste. Some dissonant intervals were bordering on the offensive. And in general the piano sounded tended to sound out-of-tune fairly quickly as the tuning drifted due to changes in temperature and humidity.
The EBVT III temperament, on the other hand reduces ‘colour’ differences between keys, but yet has enough key colour to avoid the every-key-sounds-the-same characteristic of Equal temperament. The piano also sounds more in tune with itself, and tuning drift is less objectionable than with the Lehman temperament.
