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A tale of two temperaments

🔗Gene Ward Smith <gwsmith@svpal.org>

5/24/2005 12:34:47 AM

If we take meanpop (31&50) and The Temperament Formerly Known as Huygens
(aka 31&43) then unless we are mucking about with 31 the two standard
temperament vals will differ for a given n. They do not, however, need
to have a different fifth. I decided to check when they did, so that
the two temperaments were tuned differently and could be regarded as
actually distinct. These cases start out 56, 68, 87, 99, 118, 130, ...
. The presence at first of strong temperaments on this list is very
much in evidence. Then the temperaments become very ordinary, though
as one would expect eventually strong temperaments again appear, such
as 311. Eventually, of course, we would reach a point where the fifths
were always different. We first reach a region where we start to find
divisions with two good meantones, such as 612, which has both an
approximate 3/11 and an approximate 2/11 comma meantone, which sets
one up pretty nicely in the meantone department. This would also be a
way of producing rational valued ("JI") meantones.