 | Musical tuning: Encyclopedia II - Musical tuning - Comparisons and controversies between tunings
Musical tuning - Comparisons and controversies between tunings
All musical tuning have advantages and disadvantages. Twelve tone equal temperament is the standard and most usual tuning system used in western music today because it gives the advantage of modulation to any key without dramatically going out of tune, as all keys are equally and slightly out of tune. However, just intonation provides the advantage of being entirely in tune, with at least some, and possible a great deal, loss in ease of modulation. Referring to 12-tet the composer Terry Riley, who has written music for both tuning systems, has been quoted as saying "Western music is fast because it's not in tune". Twelve tone equal temperament also, currently, has an advantage over just intonation in that most musicians will have instruments that can only play in equal temperament, since these are readily available. Other tuning systems have other advantages and disadvantages and are chosen for these qualities. It must be realized however, that just as many people who play music today in equal temperament without having heard of it, many musicians throughout the world and the past used just intonation without "knowing" it.
The octave (or even other intervals, such as the so-called tritave, or twelfth) can advantageously be divided into a number of equal steps different from twelve. Popular choices for such an equal temperament include 19, 22, 31, 53 and 72 parts to an octave, each of these and the many other choices possible have their own distinct characteristics.
Non-equal and non-just tunings also provide advantages. For instance, William Sethares shows that the tunings of Balinese gamelans are related to the inharmonic spectra or timbre of their metallophones and the harmonic spectra of stringed instruments such as the rebab, just as just intonation and twelve tone equal temperament are related to the spectra or timbre of harmonic instruments alone.
Some instruments, such as the violin, don't limit the musician to particular pitches, allowing to choose the tuning system "on the fly". Many performers on such instruments adjust the notes to be more in tune than the equal temperament system allows, perhaps even without realizing it.
Other related archivesArab music, Balinese, Bohlen-Pierce scale, Chinese musicology, Equal temperament, Harry Partch, Indonesian, Just intonation, Lucy tuning, LucyTuning, MIDI, Mathematics of musical scales, Meantone temperament, Microtonal music, Mikha'il Mishaqah, Musical theory, Pelog, Persian, Physics of music, Pi, Psychoacoustics, Pythagorean tuning, Quarter tone scale, Slendro, Stretched tuning, Terry Riley, Turkish, Well temperament, Wendy Carlos, Xenharmonic, al-Farabi, cents, chromatic scale, composer, electric piano, equal temperament, frequencies, frequency, gamelan, gamelans, harmonic, harmonic series (music), heptatonic, inharmonic, intervals, just intonation, keyboard instruments, logarithmically, major seconds, maqamat, metallophones, minor, music, neutral, octave, perfect fifth, piano, pitches, psychoacoustic, regular temperament, syntonic comma, timbre, tines, tones, tritave, tuning, twelfth root of two, violin, whole numbers, wolf interval
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Comparisons and controversies between tunings", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
