Talk:Equal temperament

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Equal temperament article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
Sign your posts by typing four tildes (~~~~).
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · NYT · WP Library

Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3

WikiProject Music theory

(Rated C-class, High-importance)

	Music portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Music theory, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of music theory, theory terminology, music theorists, and musical analysis on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.
C	This article has been rated as C-Class on the project's quality scale.
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Daily pageviews of this article

Archives

1, 2, 3

Sections older than 365 days may be automatically archived by .

Apparent error in Regular Diatonic Tunings section[edit]

I know very little about this subject, but there seems to be an error HERE. A word, perhaps "steps", seems to be missing after "The diatonic tuning in twelve equal...". Lou Sander (talk) 15:00, 1 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Good catch! This is an informal usage, so I've added a note to the lead section to note the informal abbreviation twelve equal for twelve-tone equal temperament. yoyo (talk) 02:46, 18 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Separate article for 12-TET[edit]

I don't see why 12-TET, which, along with various tweaks designed to make certain intervals sound better, has been used almost exclusively by the Western world over the past millennium or so, should only be covered in a section of a larger article while relatively obscure temperaments, such as 15-TET, 23-TET, and 41-TET, get their own articles. 12-TET is certainty more notable than those tunings and has more content devoted to it on this article than those articles are long. I therefore propose that this article's content about 12-TET (the third section and most of the first section) be moved to a separate article and be replaced with a short summary of 12-TET with a link to the main article. Care to differ or discuss with me? The N^th User 02:14, 13 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

22-EDO[edit]

The section § Various Western equal temperaments needs to mention the 22 equal temperament, which:

provides good approximations to some 5-limit, 7-limit and 11-limit just intonation ratios (better than 12-EDO does);
represents the syntonic comma by a single step; and thus
provides two versions of diatonic notes (differing by a single step) for different harmonies in the same key.

yoyo (talk) 02:09, 18 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"9 equal temperament" listed at Redirects for discussion[edit]

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect 9 equal temperament. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 August 1#9 equal temperament until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. 1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 14:23, 1 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"10 equal temperament" listed at Redirects for discussion[edit]

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect 10 equal temperament. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 August 1#10 equal temperament until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. 1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 14:25, 1 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Arabic Maqam Music vs. 24 EDO[edit]

It's worth noting that use of ostensibly 24-TET in Arabic music is simply a notational convention, but that the music as played and performed is very much not EDO in any sense. This article gives a false impression that Arabic music uses a 24 EDO system whereas in fact it actually uses a microtonal system where so-called "quarter-tones" are represented using using half-sharps & half-flats, but only as a notational convention.

To call this 24-TET is a confusion; just because the notational system uses 24 tones for convenience doesn't mean that the music itself is in any sense equal tempered. For comparison, Thomas Tallis (for example) used the western 12 notes system to notate his music, but we wouldn't say that he used 12TET just because of the fact that his notational system usualyl used 12 notes (in actuality of course the performance practice at that time would be to use something approximating a meantone temperament, which a subset of 31TET represents far closer than 12TET).

I haven't updated the article because I don't have time right now to find a reliable source to cite for this and rewrite the relevant section to a high enough standard, so I thought I'd leave this here as a comment, I hope it's helpful.

Re: how this is handled in other wikipedia articles (something to draw from perhaps) the article Arabic Maqam correctly outlines this distinction, as does the subsection Quarter tone#Quarter-tone_scale, but the former gives no source, and the latter one which I have no access to. The article at Arab tone system is contradictory, the rest of the article seeming to disagree with its opening line about 50 cents. It could do with a rewrite, or possibly merging into Arabic Maqam.

In summary then, there is much confusion and contradiction on this subject on wikipedia. The article for quarter tone could probably do with a rewrite too, to more clearly disambiguate from the mathematical "quarter tone" as in 24EDO's +/-50 cents vs. the much more common use of quarter tone to indicate a quarter of a tone in any context regardless of temperament (or lack thereof), but that's another issue (i.e. much as how a semitone is only 100 cents in 12TET, a quarter tone is a much much broader term than the narrow (and rare) context of 24TET. Sometimes the article makes this clear, other times it conflates them.)

--Tomatoswoop (talk) 19:35, 20 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Would someone please clean up this mess of an article[edit]

This good person could begin by removing all irrelevant or utterly false details about other systems. Chinese music is based on semitones, as is 12ET. It generally uses the 'circle of fifths' method of tuning. Comments about Balinese Pelog and Slendro are also completely false.

An explanation of why the Chinese did not use 12ET, after having invented it, would be worthy of inclusion.Luo Shanlian (talk) 09:18, 1 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comparison with JI[edit]

The original comparison with just intervals that I found here used various 17 and 19-limit intervals for comparison, which I feel is a bit silly, since both historically and in common usage, 12 equal is popular for being a decent compromise at representing 5-limit intervals while not having too many notes. 12 equal doesn't represent nearly enough of the intervals you'd want to do justice to 17 or 19 limit harmony, so making those comparisons is a bit strange.

I changed the table so that it lists the just intervals that are most likely to be the intention behind a given interval in 12 equal in 5-limit harmony. For the tritone, I went with 64/45 because that is the interval between the (5/4) major third and (4/3)^2 = 16/9 minor seventh in a (justly tuned) dominant seventh chord, perhaps the most common application of the tritone. It would also be possible to make an argument for comparing the tritone against 7/5, which is a simpler ratio and thus more relevant to the interactions between low harmonics, but 12 equal does not approximate that ratio as well, and a similar argument about not having good enough approximations to enough other 7-limit intervals applies. People writing music in 12 equal usually appreciate the strong tension created by dominant seventh chords and don't usually regard them as a best attempt at a stable 4:5:6:7 harmonic seventh chord, so that interpretation would be a bit strange.

Cgibbard (talk) 01:10, 10 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Search This Blog

anhduc wiki 4