An easy introduction to tuning

Common in music pedagogy is pentatonic improvisation, as on the black keys
of a piano. I find that the choice of Pythagorean vs. Zarlinan (meantone)
tuning for the pentatonic scale has a profound effect on the result. I first
experienced this using an organ timbre and the two sounded so different that
I was convinced that the timbre, not the tuning, was being changed (I was
wrong). There is no way to decide which sounds better for a random
pentatonic improvisation, but the difference is striking, and the difference
in the resulting compositional choices is likely to prove striking as well.
Therefore I think this might just be the best way to introduce newcomers to
the issues of tuning.


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