reply to daniel white

your reactions seem to be largely a product of white/european music-cultural norms. if you had grown up in certain parts of thailand or the gambia, you would probably prefer the "other side of just" examples to either the just or the 12-equal examples, since these would come closer to the musical intervals of your "native tongue".

take a good solid week to become acclimated to the music of a culture with a significantly different tuning system -- modern arabic music would be a good example -- and don't listen to any western music at all during that week. now try your experiment again. i guarantee your reactions will be radically different!

after years listening to and playing around with enough tuning systems, the character of each begins to become known to you, above and beyond any notions of "in-tune" and "out-of-tune" that may have been ingrained in you in the past. i've played some with 26-equal -- a tuning that is on "the other side of just" in many respects -- and found it has a wonderful quasi-renaissance, quasi-thai, yet unique sound.

one facet of tuning that one will always appreciate is justness of intonation or lack thereof. justness may strike you as "sweet" or it may strike you as "dull and lifeless" but either way, you'll know it when you hear it. moreover, the just intervals define points of minimum confusion as to what the implied root or fundamental of the harmony is -- so if you dislike justness but like clear harmony, you'll probably end up happiest with tunings that deviate moderately, but not too greatly, from just intonation intervals.

of course, if you never start along this path of "opening your ears", you will never have a chance to re-program your mind's categorical perception (a well-studied psychological phenomenon also important in language and the perception of foreign/regional "accents") to hear anything other than "12-equal right, anything else wrong". and you will be missing out on the weird and wonderful worlds of experience that many on this list have been exploring . . .

no biggie . . . just my 1.9537 cents . . .

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Daniel--might your experiment be akin to a person hating the taste of
coconut. By further extrapolating that others must equally hate the taste of
coconut, one could falsely conclude that others must feel similarly. In
contradistinction, there has long been a history of people preferring just
intonation intervals over equal tempered intervals. I'm not sure this kind
of internal test is the kind to base a universal assumption.

As you find coconut tasty (which I do not) then please feel free to gorge on
it (metaphorically speaking). Maybe I'm putting the topic into the realm of
tolerance for difference. Regarding just intervals, I do suggest that you
use rich acoustic intervals to hear the best examples of just intervals, as
opposed to sine waves. The advice given by another (unnamed) writer to
emerge yourself into Arabic music is an excellent one. That is precisely
what I did. Go for Oum Kalthoum and try to pick out the quartertones. They
are so organically integral to the music that all notes are fully legitimate
as scale (or maqam) tones.

Good luck in your research.

best, Johnny Reinhard
Director, AFMM