Charles 𝄢 HutchinsJun 22, 2017
https://algonoise.social/attachment/2969 I'm reading _How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care) _. I'm only 35 pages in. It's readable and does a fair job explaining how tuning systems work. Oddly, it seems to be aimed at non-musicians. It's also, like all books on tuning, slightly reactionary. Although it's much less ranty than Harry Partch.

Here's an experiment you can try at home: Use MIDI to send a major third to your sine tone generator. The first time I tried this, I thought my synthesiser was broken.

Computer/electronic music is not actually limited by the constraints of trying to get a keyboard to sound right, and yet we often use #12TET (keyboard tuning) without thinking about it.  What's your preferred approach to #tuning?

#JI #ET #JustIntonation #EqualTemprerament #Meantone #xenharmonic #microtone
Show threadRatttz (RABiD)Jul 26, 2017

@celesteh 12TET is kind of necessary for the music I write and enjoy to actually...function.

In all seriousness, you should probably interrogate the author's intentions here, because the wandering key centers of, say, John Coltrane, are simply not possible in antiquated tuning systems.

Show threadCharles 𝄢 HutchinsJul 26, 2017
@ratttz This is also what I assumed before I started reading the book. I'm not at all sure of this any more. Especially since players lip notes up and down all the time for reasons of harmony. 12TET was invented ages ago, but not in common use, even in pianos, until the 20th century. For wind instruments, the adjustments required for 19th C temperament systems would not interfere with jazz key changes.
Coltrane certainly knew if he was playing an A sharp or a B flat and could adjust accordingly
Show threadRatttz (RABiD)

@celesteh I'm still skeptical, especially since a lot of jazz harmony is carried by the piano and not the sax, and, frankly, a music tradition premised on total enharmonicity is fundamentally different from one with (limited) microtonality.

For what it's worth, I dig microtonal traditions, but they're also Not Mine.

Jul 27, 2017 at 3:04amTusky
Show threadCharles 𝄢 HutchinsJul 27, 2017
@ratttz It would be nice if pianos had split black keys, but since they don't, this does require some compromise.

Historic temperaments are not microtonal, they just treat sharps and flats as different notes. FWIW, when I was an undergraduate in the late 1990s, I was told that spelling of these notes did matter, especially for violinists fingerings, which, again, does suggest ET is not entirely as universal as advertised.