Temperament

Hey guys,

I've lurked around here before, and now I'm back listening again; mainly
because of a project in Music History that I've got. I decided to do my
term paper on temperament: from Pythagorean (just) to mean-tone to
equal. I know there are probably other steps in the evolution of
temperament, and I'm not quite sure exactly what mean-ton temperament
is. I'm also planning to create MIDI files of intervals tuned to the
different temperaments, as well as a whole tune in different
temperaments if I can manage it (or use one of the ingenious retuning
programs one of the people on this list wrote to make it). Can I get
any help regarding sites to visit, books to read, and general
information in the history of temperament and its evolution? I would be
thoroughly grateful for any assistance I could get from those more
knowledgeable about it than me.

-Brad Beyenhof
Music Theory major

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--- In tuning@y..., "Brad Beyenhof" <tenorhead@y...> wrote:

Can I get
> any help regarding sites to visit, books to read, and general
> information in the history of temperament and its evolution?

I'd recommend "Tuning and Temperament", by Barbour.

Margo's Pythagorean overview at
<http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/harmony/pyth.html> covers a lot of the
early history, and does include meantone. You can use my Midiconv
(<http://x31eq.com/software.htm>) to retune MIDI files if it
works on your system, and also Scala
<http://www.tiac.net/users/xen/scala/> which does most things.

Graham

--- In tuning@y..., "Brad Beyenhof" <tenorhead@y...> wrote:
> Hey guys,
>
> I've lurked around here before, and now I'm back listening again;
mainly
> because of a project in Music History that I've got. I decided to
do my
> term paper on temperament: from Pythagorean (just) to mean-tone to
> equal. I know there are probably other steps in the evolution of
> temperament, and I'm not quite sure exactly what mean-ton
temperament
> is.

Hi Brad,

It's time for you to learn meantone temperament like it's the back of
your hand. Please study the following webpages:

http://home.earthlink.net/~kgann/histune.html
http://pages.globetrotter.net/roule/temper.htm
http://www.hlalapansi.demon.co.uk/Acoustics/MusicMaths/MusicMaths.html

Please come back to us if you have any questions, and to learn
more . . . there were many examples of keyboards tuned to meantone
with more than 12, and as many as 31, tones per octave, for example.