Shamisen three" or "lowered third" refers to tuning the shamisen to honchoshi and lowering the 3rd string (the string with the highest pitch) down a whole step, so that now the instrument is tuned in fourths, e.g. D, G, C. Instead of having a set tuning, such as on a guitar (i.e. E, A, D, G, B, E) or a violin (i.e. G, D, A, E), the shamisen is tuned according to the register of the singer, or simply to the liking of the player. The shamisen player can tune the shamisen to whatever register desired, so long as the above
The Well-Tuned Piano octaves, with nine notes extending the bass of the piano. Young describes the pitches of his tuning as being, "derived from various partials of the overtone series of an inferred low fundamental E-flat reference ten octaves below the lowest E-flat on the Bösendorfer Imperial". Although it might seem that Young is giving a nod to Bach's "The Well-Tempered Clavier" with his title "The Well-Tuned Piano", musical tuning and musical temperament are two very different things. Temperament actually involves the deliberate mistuning of pitches to make the overall octave more or less usable in various different tones. In "The Well-Tuned Piano",