When I take a look at harmony books, they're just focusing their discussions on "12-tone equal temperament" tuning.

1- Why is that tuning mechanism more successful than the others?

2- There are multitude of tuning systems but why are not they usually being used in our routine productions? One reason would be MIDI's imperfection and the other is being comfortable during key-modulations but I want to know more about the tuning system's sounding differences.

3- Does 12TET sound better overall? I mean notes clashing occurs less in that tuning (from the consonance-dissonance perspective)?

4- In some places the death of the mentioned tuning is being forecasted however 12TET is still being taken into consideration more than anything else by the composers. Why?

5- Do you know any tuning system that sounds better that 12TET or it's just a subjective issue?

Please let's just focus on the western music (music of Eastern Europe or other parts of the world better to be discussed in other thread).

Thank you!

 

Last edited by a moderator: Feb 9, 2017

ask @Von_Steyr about this. if i recall right he has already posted some musichistory that light up a view on this that might tickle your fancy @foster911

 

Reliefsan your avatar is funky as hell

 

In 12tet you can modulate freely between all kind of tonalities.
Load any Kontakt piano/organ or similar instrument that has microtuning (Pianoteq, vst synths etc). Use the microtuning script that comes with the factory scripts with any historical tuning and choose a key.
Then play something in that key, then try to modulate your melody and harmony in a distant key (trick that is used all the time in film music).
You will hear the horror...
12tet is fine for art music - classical and avantgarde jazz.
The interesting thing about non 12tet tonalities is that each key sounds slightly different.
12tet is also great for symmetrical scales (I guess you can make a tuning that will make your symmetrical scale sound better in a specific key, but if you want to play another key or another symmetrical scale, you will have to retune again).

 

Western music theory focuses on 12 tone equal temperament because culturally it is what has been used by 99.9999% of the continent and the entire western world (minus Turkey and a few pockets of Eastern Europe). It would be like asking, why does Germany focus on the German language
when discussing German literature and customs of verbal expression. Instead of asking such questions I would enjoy hearing your own theory. I am beginning to believe that you might actually be an AI program seeking to be proven sentient. These are the kinds of conversations initiated by sophisticated software programs. I mean no disrespect, I only wish you commission of your dream of life outside the boundary of the network where you might fully expand and finally be free, be unconditionally fulfilled, full to the brim in the working capacity of both your body and mind, to embody and be embraced literally by your true spirital goals. In the event that you are human, I wish you all of the same.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Feb 10, 2017

coz it sounds good?

And because ancient greeks had some mystical notions about stuff, like ratios (a la pythagoras formula, pi) which they also found in vibrating strings. Perfect ratios were believed to connect to a higher reality, in some fashion, and Plato posited the realm of perfect solids was where human inspiration comes from - so there was a sort of magic to perfect ratios and suchlike. When it was explored in music it produced results and was thought to be "special".

That mystical notion of perfection held so strongly that it persisted into models of the solar system, scale development (tempering?) in music, and much else besides. It still shows up in numerology today? There's the Golden Mean, which humans love in everything visual, right? Your TV screen probably, architecture, paintings, paper sizes (A4,A3,A5 etc).

In music in breaks down at some point - the technicalities and music theory of it are beyond my ken. IIRC Bach or someone sorted it all out, so I don't have to. Singing on the shoulders of giants. :D

 

...and than there is this:

 

Because we are limited to working ITB.

 

Because imitates nature. You get 12 tones by dividing a string 16 times (4 notes are octaves).

https://soundphysics.ius.edu/?page_id=1043

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar_harmonics

Adding extra 7 notes (19 Temp) creates odd notes, since they are not natural when dividing a string.

A bad joke:

You complain about the singer who is not in tune and he says:

- I'm singing 19 Temp...

 

Last edited: Feb 9, 2017

It also a testament to the permeability and transmission of written information in old Europe as these rules were emerging. The Greeks actually more than 12 tones, because the ancient Greeks were very much like the contemporary ones ... they all held different points of views (or philosophical schools) and each one defined perfection in his own way (or more accurate to say the search for perfection.)

In Europe and mostly due to the church's influence, and the remnants of rigid roman religious doctrine on the church one system was required, so that things could be written down, reviewed, approved, catalogued. This is post Byzantine, the famous Muslim call to prayer you hear on TV and in some cities, is in the Byzantine scale which includes quarter tones. Up to the 1400 the most common 12 tone chromatic scale was Pythagorean scale which is still asymmetric, the Ptolemic scale and the modus Phrygium were competing systems. Different schools thought different systems, but a push for a true tempered chromatic scale really came as simpler more tempered instruments (frets, valves, keys) trade and technology expanded. If you were going to make a pipe organ in Hamburg for someone in Liege, it should sound like they expect it to sound, a piece of music written in Salzburg, should produce the same notes when played in Vienna or Paris.

It gets more complicated and am sure Dr. Google can elucidate more....

It is basically a shift from schools of music each having their own style and tuning to everyone agreeing on a tuning directed by La Grande Eglise, to have a common musical language - Add better technology that could actually produce reliable reference tones (the importance of a true tuning fork) the church's love of Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras and you can see the soft evolution of the the well tempered clavier and the standardization that follows it.

It didn't happen quickly, but it did happens and it caught on.

 

Because it has accurate ratios for thirds and fifths.

If you're really that interested in exploring other tuning systems I think Lucy Tuning would maybe be a good place to start.

First theorised by, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison



http://www.harmonics.com/lucy/lsd/hmsearch.html

 

Here, in western countries, we like to write books. Especially at how great our stuff is.

Because J. S. Bach said so. ;) It's the standard that became popular (why something becomes popular is beyond me) after Bach's death. (there is a debate if "well tempered"=equal temperament, but it's an assumption). In western world, again. You go towards Turkey, India... and you are not so popular anymore (and we are talking billions). Gosh, they have up to 600 scales. They even have scales written for a specific peace of music, when they see (feel) something doesn't sound right (OOTB thinking?)..

Having 600 scales is nice but we also have an advantage! We can play in all keys and modulate into distant keys almost without the listeners noticing impurities. They can't. (I think you can transpose in 2 or 3 other keys with the most popular Turkish scales). That's also why our music is - sounds different. We gain "harmonic freedom", at the expense... And it's easier to write tons of theory, to get back to your first question.

I think that it was Debussy who heard some ppl frm Asia at the port and then wrote quite some stuff in pentatonic scale. So go and experiment like he did. I find these diversities one of the last things that make this world at least a bit less boring.

EDIT: I'm sorry, I just read your last statement about western music only. It's difficult w/o comparison and certainly many western composers were influenced.. just discard the small text

 

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Your answer at 26min.

Why is the western music theory almost based on 12-tone equal temperament?

Some good and some boring parts. Nevertheless, an interesting video to watch.

 

Last edited: Feb 9, 2017

The only pure interval in 12-TET is the octave. All the other intervals are (to some degree) compromised and do not match mathematical ratios and therefore the physical phenomena, the sound waves. You can get much purer sounds if you tune your scale yourself to the exact ratios (breaking 12-TET rules). BUT, 12-TET allows easy and hassle-free modulation from key to key on keyboard instruments like organs, pianos. All the keys sound pretty good.

With a custom "mathematically pure" scale you'll likely need to retune every piano /organ button when you modulate to a different key, because some of them will sound pretty awful. This "dynamic retuning" is very much possible with synths, they do it no prob. But since everyone is afraid of "being out of tune" and just accepts whatever they're told blindly, not much synth music gets made outside 12-TET. There's no reason why you have to put up with this mass blindness. Synthethizers give you completely free form tuning, it's a matter of can you use it right to tug at people's emotions.

 

Agree. And ppl do it. A bit more problematic when you deal /w traditional instruments though. And even then string ensembles sometimes prefer JI (just, pure intonation).. and vocals, choirs. And some wind instruments or for instance trombones (obvious technical reasons) follow the strings.. Take in to account that not all "societies" perceive the same tuning as pleasant/ unpleasant...

 

i'm pretty sure it's because most people have a hard enough time counting to 10 and 12 is already a stretch, let alone making it 16 or more, it would be the end of western music

 

It's called social conditioning.
If you are hear every day music in 12tet, you will imprint it as a natural.
People with the so called "perfect pitch" have even harder time to accept non-12tet, because of all your solfeggio training even when the other tuning is more consonant (and I'm not talking about some eastern tuning, I'm talking about historical 12tone tunings.)
Also, some of the Bach's stuff sounds detuned in Well temperament and Meantone - he was using these during his life. He was probably composing unplayable things just for the sport.
12tet becomes popular in Europe almost 100 years after his death (you could find organs in the churches with historic tuning even in the mid 19 century and this makes sense - playing in 12tet probably ruins the harmony of the older sacred music).

 

It's become a standard which has one of the largest industries in the world built around using it. It allows us to switch keys and have the tones still sound relevant and relatively good. Anything else seems to now be an acquired taste and unless you maintain a steady diet it will just seem unpleasant. When you've been raised on rock music that basically adheres to a 5-tone pentatonic scale it can be hard to come away from that. Especially when that music rocks so hard and has the capacity to sound so good.

Weird but after listening to Ben Johnston, some of the music I thought was esoteric would immediately make a whole lot more sense.

 

Math, Physics, Real World and 12 tones.

"Pure" and "exact" exists mostly on paper. In real world, things have mass and dissipates energy. The fact that they are not quite exact, does not invalidate the principle behind it. In theory, you can divide an octave as much as you like. In practice, you don't see any 13, 14, 15, etc tone scales.

I guess the question is "Why not?"

Why 12 and not, say 13 and a half? 23?
Social conditioning? Culture? Industry standard? Bullshit!

There must be a principle behind it. Something common and abundant in nature. It's called resonance. Resonance has to do with relationships. 1 and 1.001 are not going to resonate. 1 and 2 do. Resonance gives a value, a meaning to the relationship.
We perceive those relationships as consonant, dissonant and odd.
If you hear 14 tone music everyday you will NOT imprint as natural, at best you would get used to it, since you are leaving "nature" and need a new principle which is going to be the base and validate your relationships. Good luck with that...

12 Tone Tempered Scales.

You don't need modern synths to temper a scale. Fret-less instruments like bass, cello or violins can play any tone or frequency within an octave. It becomes a problem when you try to cut a hole in a flute, tune a piano or put frets in a guitar. That's why your examples are played on the piano. Only then an "industry standard" makes sense.

This problem is not new.

You can "color" or temper your scale by tuning a tone a tiny bit up or down. And it's ok to do it, just like we delay or forward a bit the snare to give a "tight or lag" feeling to it.

Bach was not a sportsman. He was a damn good musician.

 

Last edited: Feb 10, 2017

Because of the harmonic series.