Good God! Richard, I can't imagine trying to play in those 
circumstances! I have a hard enough time dealing with being in a rock 
band where all the pitched instruments are pretty much fixed intonation. 
(except voice of course).

Which reminds me of another curious phenomenon -- has anyone else 
noticed apparent pitch changing as a function of volume? I can hear as 
much as a quarter-tone shift when we go from a loud part to a quiet part 
-- it's vivid at the time, but nonexistent on tapes of the event (which 
of course are listened to at much lower volume). But the tape does 
reveal that I'm singing hopelessly sharp on the loud sections, by trying 
to match the upward shift I hear! This happens to me all the time, 
though I'm slowly learning to compensate. Am I just crazy?

regards,

PW

(snip)
>As a flute player, I have to deal with this problem any time I play in 
an
>orchestra. As I will often be playing the highest note in the wind 
section, any
>deviation from good tuning will have a devastating effect on the 
harmoniousness
>of the whole section. A group of expert players will be continually
>'negotiating' tuning amonst themselves to reduce beats and inharmonic 
resultant
>tones to a minimum, the ultimate determinant generally being the bass 
note - but
>less so if that note is not the root of the chord. There has been 
little
>research into exactly how this is managed, but I feel that knowledge of 
the
>primary principles of harmony is crucial - we learn to hear what the 
harmonic
>root note is, of any chord we are playing, whether at the top, the 
bass, or in
>the middle, and negotiate tuning towards that note. Needless to say, 
equal
>temperament has little to offer here - we create new mean-tone tunings
>on-the-fly, as it were.
(snip)
>Richard Dobson


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