RE: classifying tunings (or not!)

>It would be interesting to see how people think that tunings should be
>classified (or not!). It would also be interested to know, how people that
>include tunings as part of their teachings introduce them (and subdivide
>them).

This is how I would structure a 15-week course on tunings, meeting twice a
week, with musical examples along the way. The course would be "hands on"
with monochords and scalatrons for all.

1. Introduce the octave as an acoustical phenomenon
2. Introduce the 3-limit consonances and Pythagorean tunings
3. Pythagorean tunings as applied to pentatonic scales: Chinese Music
4. 7-ET representations of pentatonic scales allowing modulational freedom:
Thai music
5. Pythagorean tunings as applied to the heptatonic scale: Organum
6. Discuss the pythagorean comma; introduce 12-ET representations of the
heptatonic scale
7. Non-just non-equal-tempered scales: African and much other music
8. Introduce the 5-limit consonances
9. Schismatic tuning of late middle ages and medieval Arabic tuning as
Pythagorean approximations to the 5-limit
10. Just intonation: Indian music (I've heard some santoor music where the
intonation is very clearly just 5-limit).
11. Discuss the syntonic comma; introduce meantone temperament: Renaissance
music
12. Equal-tempered versions of meantone -- 31, 19, is 12 good enough?
13. Circulating temperaments/well temperament: Bach and "key colors"
14. 12-TET becomes standard :( , Arabic music measured and played in
"quarter-tones"
15. Equal tempered versions of just intonation: 53, 34, maybe compare
22-equal with 22 sruti of Indian music to show how JI structures are
preserved
16. Atonality, set theory, Balzano and 20-TET and other numerological
constructs.
17. Introduce the 7-limit consonances
18. Augmented sixth chords as meantone approximations to the 7-limit
19. Introduce the 9- and 11-limit consonances in JI: Partch, Johnston, etc.
20. Equal-tempered representations of higher consonances: Huygens, Fokker,
and 31; Herf, Sims and 72, proposals of 41-tone and 171-tone equal
temperaments
21. Inharmonic timbres, tunings to go with them: Gamelan music, modern
explorations
22. Non-octave scales in history and modern non-octave tunings such as
Pierce's 13 per 3:1
23-30. Creative ensemble projects


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