For more than three decades I have been building and tuning organs in many different temperaments, and I feel like I understand the concept pretty well. I have never seen a better presentation of the subject than this wonderful video, which I will share over and over. Thank you for everything you do!
@@m-hayek1985 Well...for the same reason that C# is not equivalent to Db and so on. A friend of mine once said that he believes that temperaments are proof that God has a sense of humor.
@@m-hayek1985 Welcome to the wonderful world of temperaments! Actually B# and C are considerably farther apart than 0.00001. This is a truly fascinating field, and worth learning about. There are many excellent videos about temperaments (and keep in mind that only keyboard and fretted instruments like guitars that need to be tempered, since their pitches are fixed), such as the one above! Here is a dramatic display of the differences between sub-semitones: ruclips.net/video/7GhAuZH6phs/видео.html Down the rabbit hole we go!
@@m-hayek1985 B# according to the circle of fifths has the same frequency as C times (3/2) to the power 12. That is almost the same, but not quite, as going up 7 octaves, which gives you the original frequency times 2 to the power 7.
I'm a Piano Tuner & Technician. This is by far the best basic explanation of Temperament that I've seen. I learn so much on your channel! It might be helpful to note that to "temper" a tuning is the same word that we use when we speak of "tempered steel" - which is bent, folded, and hammered until it is the appropriate strength and quality. Pretty much the same with keyboard tunings.
Your visual for the "comma" is now well-temper ... er ... -understood. Now, I am going to geek out over the maths involved in this "comma", which I imagine will take me to the world of logs, powers, and Calculus! Thank you, Elam!!!
Beautifully explained. That's why in the 'Blues' we sit on a b3 & b7 . Not "out of tune", it creates the tension required in the style. We HEAR it. Now we know why. Thanks.
I imagine your 28th question might have been "why some temperaments are called meantone ? Does it mean (ha ha) that not all tones are equal in some temperaments ?" Yes indeed, you may find some 9/8 tones and 10/9 tones sometimes (the product is equal to 5/4 = pure third). Meantones are a whole family in which tones are all equal (thus taking a "mean" value). He could have said a few words about that IMHO, because the name "meantone" doesn't come from nowhere !
Molto bene, nonostante non conosca l'inglese, pure correndo dietro ai sottotitoli, ho finalmente capito cosa si intenda per "giro delle quinte"!... È molto ben detto poi che una tendenza al sistema equabile ha sempre accompagnato i metodi di accordatura dal seicento al settecento!!...Questo dovrebbe essere spiegato anche chi si picca di suonare Mozart e compagni in mesotonico!! Grazie! E ancora complimenti!
17:00 The concept of dark side (remote keys in the cycle of fifth) and bright side (neighbouring notes in the cycle of fifth) using th picture of outer sky and the earth is briliant
I love your subtle jokes, guys! I'm laughing so hard at them! And all that embedded in a very informative and intelligently presented subject. Keep up the great work!
This is honestly the best video I've ever watched. Thank you for making a concept that I was finding unbelievably difficult to understand so simple. I can't thank you enough.
I keep watching these videos over and over again not only because they're are oustandingly good, but also because I am obsessively interested in the topic and it's always good to review some details. I personally love the 1/6 comma temperaments, especially Silbermann and I wish I could find a way to tune my guitars into it. Thank you for making all these videos! It's enormously fulfilling to watch them!
Thanks for the refresher (all in once place!). I bought a harpsichord yesterday and was just going to go tune it and was wondering what system I was going to use!!!! True story!
I heard it said that if you really want to understand something then you must go to the origins of the subject matter. I like how through you tell about this. The simplicity of a deeper more sophisticated subject. I have a keen ear to discern questions you reveled right away! I had to learn about the harmonic series in brass techniques class back in music school. This goes further and is better detailed to help one appreciate this history much more so! I think you've opened a channel to challenge the dormancy of my fascination of the physics of pitch and harmony! Excellently done!🎼🎶🎵🎭🤗🤔🧩👍❤️❗
Interesting- l am a professional piano tuner time served in Germany and l learnt about all of this over 30 yrs ago - as you said this is only a very short summary of the tuning temperaments used. I enjoyed your video
I've been a singer my whole life, been a classical guitarist half my life, and a classical pianist less than a quarter of my life, and I had NEVER even heard of the WORD temperament. This is such a weird concept to me how deep in my musical journey I discovered this. I only learned about it after looking at the instruction manual of my digital piano last night and seeing it gave the option to change ”temperament”. Hence I simply had to know what the heck it was! Thank you for this great video!
I've been playing guitar for about 20 years, and started playing the keyboard about 5 years ago. I had a bad habit of tuning my guitar over a chord. I would, for example, strum a G chord and then, with my right hand, reach over and tune the pegs. My musical friend, however, would always tune the strings to each other, not to a chord. It didn't take me long to realize that this is best: everything sounds ever so slightly out of tune as opposed to one key being in tune and the others being unplayable. Now, before I play, I make sure to make the open strings sound agreeable together, and this makes all they keys sound acceptable.
William Egert It’s interesting to me that if I tune a guitar in lute tuning (the G string in F#) by ear, I have a harder time making some of the chords sound in tune - that third-fret A either sounds bad with the D string, or the second-fret E on the D string sounds bad with the B string.
The real value in these videos is that they can reveal the need for preserving the knowledge of the oldest masterpieces we have complete knowlegde for to avoid the injury to progress caused by the lack of continuity in the histories of European musics.
Potasmic I believed he has been mentioned at least several times. I remember they mentioned he used keyboard tablature sometimes when he ran out of room on scores. That video was from a while ago now, I believe.
Wow. I've been looking into different temperaments and intonations and having trouble sorting through all the information out there. This video is by far the best I've found, and I feel like I understand temperaments much more clearly with the outstanding visuals and apothegmatic presentation. Fantastic stuff
Thank you so much! My first thought was "finally! I have found the right place to learn the missing part of my music education." I did click "like" and I did click "Subscribe." I will also share your channel with others.
Thank you for bringing much clarity to a complex subject! Fascinating! This subject is still being dealt with today,with so many musicians from different cultures collaborating.
You're right about tuning for the specific piece. I'm sure that was done all the time. I have a 17th c-style virginal, with only one course of strings. It's very easy (like a minute) to reset an interval or two to match the piece.
Froberger wrote ricercares in F# minor and C# minor in the 1650s. Looking briefly at the score of the F# minor ricercare, you could probably get away with retuning 3 D#s, 2 A#s and 2 E#s. Froberger was being experimental, but was he interested in exotic keys for their own sake, or was he thinking of temperaments that could modulate better?
Thanks for the excellent video! "without tuning machines it is in fact very hard to tune 12 fifth that are each smaller than pure by exactly a 12th of a comma". Actually that is the way we tune our harp and I would say if you have enough experience it sounds better than when tuned with a tuning machine. But of course it depends on what you call exact ;-) The trick is that you need to know the degree of how "spicy" the fifth is, but once you have the "feeling for that" it is not that difficult, plus you have the possibility to countercheck in-between with enharmonic pitches, but then the mechanic of the harp has to be very accurate to not mislead you. And as the mechanic over Time becomes less accurate, we need to get our pedal harps serviced from time to time.
Love your videos, but this is a pet peeve of mine with music theory videos I see all the time: when comparing sounds and intervals people play one, then talk a bit, then play the other. It's so much harder to compare them and hear the difference with discussion in between and not hearing them back to back. It seems like everyone makes their videos this way, so you're definitely not alone in this. It would just be much easier to hear the difference if there was no break between playing notes / intervals being compared.
Absolutely fascinating (and quite informative)! Thanks so much. I wish my college courses (40 years ago) had explored this topic more than they did. Clearly, I'm going to have to spend more time reading about this topic. Thanks so very much!
Really fascinating, and the musical examples you pick illustrate your points brilliantly. There's an interesting run-down of how folk musicians approach/use this at the Fiddle Channel - 'the use of non tempered notes or scales in traditional music' (traditional musicians probably work in a way more similar to the original 'early' musicians than do classical musician of today - and since the conservatoire style of musical education took over). Other musics - e.g. Turkish - use different notes (from the equal-temperament scale), which create special 'atmosphere' - after all, we musicians are just trying, with the resources we have (voices, bits of wood/metal/gut/plastic/carbon-fibre, musical experience) to communicate a special feeling (happy/sad/exciting/impressive/magic etc.) to our audience/selves/co-musicians.
RE: foot note 9, if you go justst one step beyond the 31 pitch gamut, you arrive at a nearly perfectly tuned 5th. I believe it was Vincentino who noticed and tried to exploit this, but I do tend to get my 16th century Italian theorists mixed up at 3:30 am
Thank you for this very interesting and clear episode as always :) I would like to add that when you say at 4'58 "no temperament or tuning has "survived" from older times", it may be interesting to precise that this is applicable only to western classical music : a diversity of ways of tuning and temperaments still exists in many classical and popular musical traditions worldwide, including Europe. (In France we have acces to some recordings of traditionnal folk music from the 70/80 where the musicians used scales composed of microtonal intervals that can sound very harsh for our mordern ears :'))
Bach, Capriccio über die Abreise des geliebten Bruders, BWV 992. You need a harpsichord in meantone. Then you can hear the friends weeping, the wolf, and later you can hear the galloping of a horse. See Couperin, the pieces in an extreme key, and compare the titles.
This is a very nicely made video explaining the need for temperament, together with animation and audio, which makes it easy to understand to a wide audience. Students of music should take note that the historical overview is outdated - and very much incorrect from the beginning of European music up until the 16th century and maybe also beyond. There was a difference between scholastic theory and musical practice, which scholars of the 20th century did not recognize, as well as many sources on practical temperament not properly interpreted (or not interpreted at all). Pythagorean mathematics of music (including Pythagorean temperament, or "tuning", however you wish to call it) was a scholastic exercise which university students had to learn in order to get an advanced degree. However, it did not describe practice. There is only evidence it was used by one person, on a clavichord in the 15th century, mostly likely a conscious attempt to learn about classical (quadrivium) theory. Many organetto players are using Pythagorean temperament today, which is certainly interesting for those who are looking for new sounds, but they have probably re-invented something which was not used for the purpose. Practical temperaments (i.e. non-Pythagorean) were being used on organs probably from the beginning of the flourishing of the organ, and demonstrably by the 1200s. At the Orgelpark in Amsterdam, the 15th century style Dutch replica organ has been tuned approximately in one of the old temperaments of the medieval and Renaissance eras. In this era, as well as for some organs in later eras, the tempering needed to achieve "sweet" thirds was concentrated on a small number of heavily tempered fifths usually only used in minor, leaving others purer favoring major keys. A sample of one of these older styled temperaments can be heard here: ruclips.net/video/FOjEDGLC0n4/видео.html.
Great video, thanks a lot! I would suggest additional ideas (maybe you already treat them in other videos, I'm still discovering them!): 1) giving more sample with organ 2) explaining the incredible discovery of polyphony with perfect chords that leads to perfect harmonic superposition with very simple mathematics (starting with 5th+4th=8ve 3/2*4/3=2 that leads to Pythagorian tuning/medieval polyphony and continuing with 3rdM+3rdm=5th and 3rdm+3rdM=5th that lead to pure intonation and renaissance music and more...) 3) speaking about the meantone 1/3 and the unbelievable harpsichord with 19 notes per 8ve that can play any tonalities with that temperament 4) speaking about combination tone and their importance in tuning, temperaments (and in music!)
There were advanced enough mathematics at the time (at least from the Era of Enlightment) to know and approximate accurately enough the twelvth root of two, and with use of a monochord find the exact pitches (for a human ear) of equal temperament. Great video, thanks!
Approximations to equal temperaments (in the sense that all fifths are slightly out of tune) was known as early as Aristarchus (in Greece) and He Chengtian (in China). Mathematical description, however, came much later. When Zhu Zaiyu developed the theory in 1584 (although nearly nobody noticed his works), he had to divide the work into three steps to find a suitable geometric interpretation: squaring a rectangle 1 by 2 to find “the rate for tritone” (square root of 2), then squaring another to find “the rate for minor third” (fourth root), and finally cubing a cuboid to find “the rate for semitone” (12th root).
I'm fortunate for having a digital piano (Casio PX-560) with a temperament feature. It's very interesting adjusting the temperament to a particular music (like using the Werckmeister in Beethoven sonatas, adjusted specifically to the sonata tone). It sounds so nice that returning to the equal temperament feels wrong and blurred. It's a problem without solution.
You guys are just great! You put that much effort into details - it's just a pleasure to watch this video, and listen to it. Many thanks for sharing this huge work for free. It's an art, explaining difficult things simply. I just couldn't happen not to understand!
Thank you for this! I'm currently writing my bachelor's essay about meantone temperament so this video came fittingly :-) Edit: btw. my essay subject was very much inspired by your last video about temperaments
I'm not a musician, but I have been studying some aspects of music theory, such as intervals, temperaments, and tunings. This is by far the best and most in depth explanation I have come across. I learned quite a bit here. It seems to me that the tuning or temperament used in various points in history is related to or reflective of the kind of music being played at that time. Tuning or temperament changes when music changes.
Very nice video Elam! To clarify for others, there are two different commas here. When the video talks about meantone, e.g. quarter comma meantone, it's talking about the syntonic comma 81/80. But when it talks about well temperaments, e.g. one-sixth comma for Valotti, that's the pythagorean comma (3^12)/(2^19). The pythagorean comma is explained at 2:41. The syntonic comma is the difference between the pythagorean and pure thirds, shown at 6:38.
An neat little fact I've noticed recently is that 11 Pythagorean commas is almost exactly equal to 12 syntonic commas. The difference between these, (524288/531441)^11 * (81/80)^12, is known as Kirnberger's Atom, an error of only 0.01536 cents or 1 in 112703.
Mozart told his English pupil in Vienna Thomas Atwood (on a page from his student notebook K. 505a dated 5 August 1785) that ‘NB stringed & Wind instruments (along with the human voice) do not always have to adhere to equal or well-temperaments and make distinctions between A-flat & G-sharp for example; this nowadays is only needful with klaviers (i.e. keyboard instruments such as harpsichords, organs or fortepianos) whose intervals must always be equal to 1/12 of any Octave...’ It would have been very helpful for us moderns if Atwood wrote down M.’s exact words (which in August 1785 had started out in Italian for his lessons with Attwood and later moved into broken English which often included crude jokes (‘you are an Ass’) M. would write all over Attwood’s initial attempts at the harmonic exercises that M. set for his homework-6 day’s a week at 3:00 sharp !
Thanks so much. This is extremely well done and incredibly helpful. I’m reading Harmonic Experience by W.A. Mathieu and your video just brings many aspects together. Excellent work.
The video popped up as a YT suggestion to me and I am glad I watched it as it is excellent and easy to follow. I particularly like the graphics you use. Thanks.
I understand the rationale behind meantone temperaments to be, that it's more important to preserve the purity of 3rds than P5ths because there is more audible beating (because the notes are closer together), especially because organs were the main reference for what's ideal, i.e. sustainable chords. I believe 1/6th comma meantone was settled on by the mid C18th (in Germany) as the best compromise for all instruments except the keyboard(?) but there's no obvious audible difference between 1/4 comma & 1/6 comma 3rds. It's notable that 1/6 comma meantone corresponds to a 55 point equal division of the octave. There was no mention of double-fretted string instruments or split-key keyboards for meantone tunings. For 12 key keyboards, irregular temperaments were supposedly quicker to tune than equal temperament because some of the 5ths were pure, so there was no need to count beats for those. Irregular temperaments also provide 'key characteristics' that were exploited by composers. Perhaps the introduction of cast iron framed pianos (and so increased string tension) made equal temperament more practical and the tone of later pianos compensated for the indiscrepancy ...especially since inharmonic overtones are part of what gives the piano its slightly bell-like tone due to high string tension stretching harmonics. I mean, don't piano tuners compare the 2nd partial to the octave above because it is noticeably stretched? The slightly inharmonic partials and rich tone of a modern piano might make equal temperament less obvious than it was on the harpsichord or fortepiano.
For more than three decades I have been building and tuning organs in many different temperaments, and I feel like I understand the concept pretty well. I have never seen a better presentation of the subject than this wonderful video, which I will share over and over. Thank you for everything you do!
Christopher Bono why is B# not equivalent to C?
@@m-hayek1985 Well...for the same reason that C# is not equivalent to Db and so on. A friend of mine once said that he believes that temperaments are proof that God has a sense of humor.
Christopher Bono I actually did not know that C# is not equivalent to Db. So if I understand correctly, calling B# a C is like calling 0.99999 a 1?
@@m-hayek1985 Welcome to the wonderful world of temperaments! Actually B# and C are considerably farther apart than 0.00001. This is a truly fascinating field, and worth learning about. There are many excellent videos about temperaments (and keep in mind that only keyboard and fretted instruments like guitars that need to be tempered, since their pitches are fixed), such as the one above! Here is a dramatic display of the differences between sub-semitones: ruclips.net/video/7GhAuZH6phs/видео.html
Down the rabbit hole we go!
@@m-hayek1985 B# according to the circle of fifths has the same frequency as C times (3/2) to the power 12.
That is almost the same, but not quite, as going up 7 octaves, which gives you the original frequency times 2 to the power 7.
I'm a Piano Tuner & Technician. This is by far the best basic explanation of Temperament that I've seen. I learn so much on your channel!
It might be helpful to note that to "temper" a tuning is the same word that we use when we speak of "tempered steel" - which is bent, folded, and hammered until it is the appropriate strength and quality. Pretty much the same with keyboard tunings.
Indeed. In Dutch temperen means to make something less expressive or pronounced or.....to adjust something.
One of the best videos since my RUclips experience for the past 15 years.
This is by far the best presentation of temperament I've ever seen -- well done!
agreed. Superb and easy to follow, though very complex. These guys are the best.
@@fredhoupt4078 And they're funny, too!
Best discussion on this topic ever. In my house we call equal temperament twelfth comma.
Man i'm italian, and
your Italian pronunciation is perfect
Your visual for the "comma" is now well-temper ... er ... -understood. Now, I am going to geek out over the maths involved in this "comma", which I imagine will take me to the world of logs, powers, and Calculus!
Thank you, Elam!!!
Beautifully explained. That's why in the 'Blues' we sit on a b3 & b7 . Not "out of tune", it creates the tension required in the style. We HEAR it. Now we know why. Thanks.
Thank you for giving the audio examples so we could hear the differences. Very helpful!!!!
The Motion Graphics effects are stunning! A pedagogical gem. Brilliant guys!
This is a brilliant video that answered at least twenty-seven questions I had about tuning and temperament! Keep it up 🙏🙏🙏
Look up the book “How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony” by Ross Duffin. He’s a professor at my alma mater.
0
I imagine your 28th question might have been "why some temperaments are called meantone ? Does it mean (ha ha) that not all tones are equal in some temperaments ?"
Yes indeed, you may find some 9/8 tones and 10/9 tones sometimes (the product is equal to 5/4 = pure third).
Meantones are a whole family in which tones are all equal (thus taking a "mean" value).
He could have said a few words about that IMHO, because the name "meantone" doesn't come from nowhere !
1y
Im a piano Tuner and Im very thakfully for my teacher for know this perfect tunning since my first tunning, its a great video, thank you very much
Finally I found an easy and clear explanation of the Pythagorean comma and the equal temperament. A million thanks!
Molto bene, nonostante non conosca l'inglese, pure correndo dietro ai sottotitoli, ho finalmente capito cosa si intenda per "giro delle quinte"!...
È molto ben detto poi che una tendenza al sistema equabile ha sempre accompagnato i metodi di accordatura dal seicento al settecento!!...Questo dovrebbe essere spiegato anche chi si picca di suonare Mozart e compagni in mesotonico!!
Grazie! E ancora complimenti!
17:00
The concept of dark side (remote keys in the cycle of fifth) and bright side (neighbouring notes in the cycle of fifth) using th picture of outer sky and the earth is briliant
Looks to me like two paintings of Hieronymus Bosch combined. :)
Excellent video. Rarely have I seen this subject approached with such clarity.
Superb video, clear and educational. I watched it with my students at the Versailles Conservatory when I gave them a course on the history of tuning.
An astonishing effort. A labour of love merged with the highly scientific perception to musicology. looking impatiently to hear more. Thank
I love your subtle jokes, guys! I'm laughing so hard at them! And all that embedded in a very informative and intelligently presented subject. Keep up the great work!
As a teacher of AP music theory for many years, this video is a priceless addition to curriculum. Bravo. Love your other videos as well.
This is honestly the best video I've ever watched. Thank you for making a concept that I was finding unbelievably difficult to understand so simple. I can't thank you enough.
I keep watching these videos over and over again not only because they're are oustandingly good, but also because I am obsessively interested in the topic and it's always good to review some details. I personally love the 1/6 comma temperaments, especially Silbermann and I wish I could find a way to tune my guitars into it. Thank you for making all these videos! It's enormously fulfilling to watch them!
This must be one of the finest channels in the yt galaxy. Thank you so much for all this!
Please be sure: it is!
Thanks for the refresher (all in once place!). I bought a harpsichord yesterday and was just going to go tune it and was wondering what system I was going to use!!!! True story!
This is a clear explanation of temperaments! Thanks!
this is an incredible video. The quality is so so so good
I heard it said that if you really want to understand something then you must go to the origins of the subject matter. I like how through you tell about this. The simplicity of a deeper more sophisticated subject. I have a keen ear to discern questions you reveled right away! I had to learn about the harmonic series in brass techniques class back in music school. This goes further and is better detailed to help one appreciate this history much more so! I think you've opened a channel to challenge the dormancy of my fascination of the physics of pitch and harmony! Excellently done!🎼🎶🎵🎭🤗🤔🧩👍❤️❗
Interesting- l am a professional piano tuner time served in Germany and l learnt about all of this over 30 yrs ago - as you said this is only a very short summary of the tuning temperaments used. I enjoyed your video
I've been a singer my whole life, been a classical guitarist half my life, and a classical pianist less than a quarter of my life, and I had NEVER even heard of the WORD temperament. This is such a weird concept to me how deep in my musical journey I discovered this. I only learned about it after looking at the instruction manual of my digital piano last night and seeing it gave the option to change ”temperament”. Hence I simply had to know what the heck it was! Thank you for this great video!
This channel is awesome.
OMG Rick😯😯
Its so good mate
I've been playing guitar for about 20 years, and started playing the keyboard about 5 years ago. I had a bad habit of tuning my guitar over a chord. I would, for example, strum a G chord and then, with my right hand, reach over and tune the pegs. My musical friend, however, would always tune the strings to each other, not to a chord. It didn't take me long to realize that this is best: everything sounds ever so slightly out of tune as opposed to one key being in tune and the others being unplayable. Now, before I play, I make sure to make the open strings sound agreeable together, and this makes all they keys sound acceptable.
William Egert It’s interesting to me that if I tune a guitar in lute tuning (the G string in F#) by ear, I have a harder time making some of the chords sound in tune - that third-fret A either sounds bad with the D string, or the second-fret E on the D string sounds bad with the B string.
@@MarkHoemmen That is interesting. That is a tuning I have yet to try!
The real value in these videos is that they can reveal the need for preserving the knowledge of the oldest masterpieces we have complete knowlegde for to avoid the injury to progress caused by the lack of continuity in the histories of European musics.
Enjoyable, clear, well understandable presentation! Thanks!
These videos are so clear, so informative, well structured and funny!
Thank you, you saved me from a presentation I have next week. Good work
that coffee sip at the end was so worth it. gonna get some coffee now, and think about temperaments. gracias!!
Is this possibly the first time the channel ever mentioned Bach?!!! I’ve been here since forever and I’m sure this is first, haha.
Potasmic I believed he has been mentioned at least several times. I remember they mentioned he used keyboard tablature sometimes when he ran out of room on scores. That video was from a while ago now, I believe.
Martin Eslava ah i remember that being mentioned too! So it seems I’m wrong, he was mentioned before
Martin Eslava 14:49 in this Video ruclips.net/video/nl1m7bOoI7I/видео.html
Bach who?
Exceptional video. Clear speech, enough information but not too much. Succinct and yet very descriptive.
Wunderbar!
Wow. I've been looking into different temperaments and intonations and having trouble sorting through all the information out there. This video is by far the best I've found, and I feel like I understand temperaments much more clearly with the outstanding visuals and apothegmatic presentation. Fantastic stuff
You'll have to check out their videos about pure tuning and comma drift and all that goodness.
This is incredibly good! I have heard this in performances, but never learned the "guts" of it! THANKS!
Thank you so much! My first thought was "finally! I have found the right place to learn the missing part of my music education." I did click "like" and I did click "Subscribe." I will also share your channel with others.
Elam, a great episode as always. Thanks to you and Johannes.
Again, another extremely interesting, well-made episode. I don't regret my patreonship!
Thank you for bringing much clarity to a complex subject! Fascinating! This subject is still being dealt with today,with so many musicians from different cultures collaborating.
This is amazing. Thanks a lot! Cheers from Argentina.
You're right about tuning for the specific piece. I'm sure that was done all the time. I have a 17th c-style virginal, with only one course of strings. It's very easy (like a minute) to reset an interval or two to match the piece.
Froberger wrote ricercares in F# minor and C# minor in the 1650s. Looking briefly at the score of the F# minor ricercare, you could probably get away with retuning 3 D#s, 2 A#s and 2 E#s. Froberger was being experimental, but was he interested in exotic keys for their own sake, or was he thinking of temperaments that could modulate better?
Thanks for the excellent video! "without tuning machines it is in fact very hard to tune 12 fifth that are each smaller than pure by exactly a 12th of a comma". Actually that is the way we tune our harp and I would say if you have enough experience it sounds better than when tuned with a tuning machine. But of course it depends on what you call exact ;-) The trick is that you need to know the degree of how "spicy" the fifth is, but once you have the "feeling for that" it is not that difficult, plus you have the possibility to countercheck in-between with enharmonic pitches, but then the mechanic of the harp has to be very accurate to not mislead you. And as the mechanic over Time becomes less accurate, we need to get our pedal harps serviced from time to time.
This is pure education guys, great video!
enlightening as always!
Thank you so much for this excellent explanative video!
Love your videos, but this is a pet peeve of mine with music theory videos I see all the time: when comparing sounds and intervals people play one, then talk a bit, then play the other. It's so much harder to compare them and hear the difference with discussion in between and not hearing them back to back. It seems like everyone makes their videos this way, so you're definitely not alone in this. It would just be much easier to hear the difference if there was no break between playing notes / intervals being compared.
Absolutely fascinating (and quite informative)! Thanks so much. I wish my college courses (40 years ago) had explored this topic more than they did. Clearly, I'm going to have to spend more time reading about this topic. Thanks so very much!
Fry dm
Free
Pm
W... Was that a 17th-century licc? 10:32
The Noble Licc as we call it O_-
Ah, the good old licke!
The technical term is the Cantus Liccus
I HADN'T NOTICED.
I'M IN SHOCK
Really fascinating, and the musical examples you pick illustrate your points brilliantly. There's an interesting run-down of how folk musicians approach/use this at the Fiddle Channel - 'the use of non tempered notes or scales in traditional music' (traditional musicians probably work in a way more similar to the original 'early' musicians than do classical musician of today - and since the conservatoire style of musical education took over). Other musics - e.g. Turkish - use different notes (from the equal-temperament scale), which create special 'atmosphere' - after all, we musicians are just trying, with the resources we have (voices, bits of wood/metal/gut/plastic/carbon-fibre, musical experience) to communicate a special feeling (happy/sad/exciting/impressive/magic etc.) to our audience/selves/co-musicians.
RE: foot note 9, if you go justst one step beyond the 31 pitch gamut, you arrive at a nearly perfectly tuned 5th. I believe it was Vincentino who noticed and tried to exploit this, but I do tend to get my 16th century Italian theorists mixed up at 3:30 am
Thank you for this very interesting and clear episode as always :) I would like to add that when you say at 4'58 "no temperament or tuning has "survived" from older times", it may be interesting to precise that this is applicable only to western classical music : a diversity of ways of tuning and temperaments still exists in many classical and popular musical traditions worldwide, including Europe.
(In France we have acces to some recordings of traditionnal folk music from the 70/80 where the musicians used scales composed of microtonal intervals that can sound very harsh for our mordern ears :'))
oopooooooo
Awesome, clear, entertaining presentation. Like for equality, for the 12-tone equal temperament, the imperfect, yet optimal tuning
At last, an explanation of this complicated matter that I finally can understand! Exceptionally well done visuals and narration. Thanks!
Good video, i'll restate someone's comment. Best video I have seen on temperment. Visually superb.
Would be interesting ot hear some pieces that exploit "bitter" keys for expressive purposes.
John Moraitis has a couple of fantastic videos on that very topic!
Agreed
Bach, Capriccio über die Abreise des geliebten Bruders, BWV 992. You need a harpsichord in meantone. Then you can hear the friends weeping, the wolf, and later you can hear the galloping of a horse.
See Couperin, the pieces in an extreme key, and compare the titles.
First piece that pops to mind: "Farewell" Symphony ( Haydn No. 45 / F♯ minor
@@martinh1277 thank you :)
This is a treasure! Thank you!
This is a very nicely made video explaining the need for temperament, together with animation and audio, which makes it easy to understand to a wide audience.
Students of music should take note that the historical overview is outdated - and very much incorrect from the beginning of European music up until the 16th century and maybe also beyond. There was a difference between scholastic theory and musical practice, which scholars of the 20th century did not recognize, as well as many sources on practical temperament not properly interpreted (or not interpreted at all).
Pythagorean mathematics of music (including Pythagorean temperament, or "tuning", however you wish to call it) was a scholastic exercise which university students had to learn in order to get an advanced degree. However, it did not describe practice. There is only evidence it was used by one person, on a clavichord in the 15th century, mostly likely a conscious attempt to learn about classical (quadrivium) theory. Many organetto players are using Pythagorean temperament today, which is certainly interesting for those who are looking for new sounds, but they have probably re-invented something which was not used for the purpose. Practical temperaments (i.e. non-Pythagorean) were being used on organs probably from the beginning of the flourishing of the organ, and demonstrably by the 1200s.
At the Orgelpark in Amsterdam, the 15th century style Dutch replica organ has been tuned approximately in one of the old temperaments of the medieval and Renaissance eras. In this era, as well as for some organs in later eras, the tempering needed to achieve "sweet" thirds was concentrated on a small number of heavily tempered fifths usually only used in minor, leaving others purer favoring major keys. A sample of one of these older styled temperaments can be heard here: ruclips.net/video/FOjEDGLC0n4/видео.html.
Great video, thanks a lot!
I would suggest additional ideas (maybe you already treat them in other videos, I'm still discovering them!):
1) giving more sample with organ
2) explaining the incredible discovery of polyphony with perfect chords that leads to perfect harmonic superposition with very simple mathematics (starting with 5th+4th=8ve 3/2*4/3=2 that leads to Pythagorian tuning/medieval polyphony and continuing with 3rdM+3rdm=5th and 3rdm+3rdM=5th that lead to pure intonation and renaissance music and more...)
3) speaking about the meantone 1/3 and the unbelievable harpsichord with 19 notes per 8ve that can play any tonalities with that temperament
4) speaking about combination tone and their importance in tuning, temperaments (and in music!)
Here is an example of the harpsichord I mentioned in 3):
www.christopherstembridge.org/cromatico.htm
There were advanced enough mathematics at the time (at least from the Era of Enlightment) to know and approximate accurately enough the twelvth root of two, and with use of a monochord find the exact pitches (for a human ear) of equal temperament. Great video, thanks!
Approximations to equal temperaments (in the sense that all fifths are slightly out of tune) was known as early as Aristarchus (in Greece) and He Chengtian (in China). Mathematical description, however, came much later. When Zhu Zaiyu developed the theory in 1584 (although nearly nobody noticed his works), he had to divide the work into three steps to find a suitable geometric interpretation: squaring a rectangle 1 by 2 to find “the rate for tritone” (square root of 2), then squaring another to find “the rate for minor third” (fourth root), and finally cubing a cuboid to find “the rate for semitone” (12th root).
I'm fortunate for having a digital piano (Casio PX-560) with a temperament feature. It's very interesting adjusting the temperament to a particular music (like using the Werckmeister in Beethoven sonatas, adjusted specifically to the sonata tone). It sounds so nice that returning to the equal temperament feels wrong and blurred. It's a problem without solution.
Great video- amazing, valuable subject. Tone and pitch are inextricably wed, in my modest musical world. Thanks
Excellent explanation of the temperaments. Thank you!
You guys are just great! You put that much effort into details - it's just a pleasure to watch this video, and listen to it. Many thanks for sharing this huge work for free. It's an art, explaining difficult things simply. I just couldn't happen not to understand!
Excellent video! Bravo!!
Thank you for this! I'm currently writing my bachelor's essay about meantone temperament so this video came fittingly :-)
Edit: btw. my essay subject was very much inspired by your last video about temperaments
Fantastic vid!
I'm not a musician, but I have been studying some aspects of music theory, such as intervals, temperaments, and tunings. This is by far the best and most in depth explanation I have come across. I learned quite a bit here.
It seems to me that the tuning or temperament used in various points in history is related to or reflective of the kind of music being played at that time. Tuning or temperament changes when music changes.
There was less evolution in actuality than the video suggests (the sources of scholarship he used were a little outdated)
Certainly one of the best videos explaining temperaments, helped a lot!
Very nice video Elam! To clarify for others, there are two different commas here. When the video talks about meantone, e.g. quarter comma meantone, it's talking about the syntonic comma 81/80. But when it talks about well temperaments, e.g. one-sixth comma for Valotti, that's the pythagorean comma (3^12)/(2^19). The pythagorean comma is explained at 2:41. The syntonic comma is the difference between the pythagorean and pure thirds, shown at 6:38.
Thank you! We wrote about it in footnotes, you can have a look.
An neat little fact I've noticed recently is that 11 Pythagorean commas is almost exactly equal to 12 syntonic commas. The difference between these, (524288/531441)^11 * (81/80)^12, is known as Kirnberger's Atom, an error of only 0.01536 cents or 1 in 112703.
Amazing as aways, congratulations!
This is exactly what I've been looking for. I hope I didn't put the kibosh on it by saying that. Great graphics!
Crystal clear. I love this channel!
THANK YOU for one of the best explanations of temperament that I have come across I will surely share this with my students.
This is probabably one of the most valuable video in unvaluable channel!
Best explaination on RUclips. Thanks and great work.
סרטון נהדר. תודה על ההסברים ועל האימג'ים, עשיתם עבודה טובה!
ALL temperaments are Beautiful
Very interesting! Thank you!
Mozart told his English pupil in Vienna Thomas Atwood (on a page from his student notebook K. 505a dated 5 August 1785) that ‘NB stringed & Wind instruments (along with the human voice) do not always have to adhere to equal or well-temperaments and make distinctions between A-flat & G-sharp for example; this nowadays is only needful with klaviers (i.e. keyboard instruments such as harpsichords, organs or fortepianos) whose intervals must always be equal to 1/12 of any Octave...’ It would have been very helpful for us moderns if Atwood wrote down M.’s exact words (which in August 1785 had started out in Italian for his lessons with Attwood and later moved into broken English which often included crude jokes (‘you are an Ass’) M. would write all over Attwood’s initial attempts at the harmonic exercises that M. set for his homework-6 day’s a week at 3:00 sharp !
That was crazy enlightening. Suddenly a lot of things in music makes more sense.
Thanks so much. This is extremely well done and incredibly helpful. I’m reading Harmonic Experience by W.A. Mathieu and your video just brings many aspects together. Excellent work.
Thanks for the enlightenment!
Super interesting! Thanks!
Great work. Thanks
The visualizations are the best I've seen on this subject! Great video.
By buying a spinet to complement my transistor organ, I really stepped into a journey.... Thanks for this guidance.
Oh! I love this subject and these sounds. thanks for explaining it so well within the time of my short attention span.
Thank you for your amazing video! Very well explained ! Perfect work for real! Love from France !
All my life, I have wondered about this. Thank you so much
Thank you so much for this wonderful video; I'm sure also my students will love it!
The excellent visuals really help the understanding of this complicated topic.
The video popped up as a YT suggestion to me and I am glad I watched it as it is excellent and easy to follow. I particularly like the graphics you use. Thanks.
I understand the rationale behind meantone temperaments to be, that it's more important to preserve the purity of 3rds than P5ths because there is more audible beating (because the notes are closer together), especially because organs were the main reference for what's ideal, i.e. sustainable chords. I believe 1/6th comma meantone was settled on by the mid C18th (in Germany) as the best compromise for all instruments except the keyboard(?) but there's no obvious audible difference between 1/4 comma & 1/6 comma 3rds. It's notable that 1/6 comma meantone corresponds to a 55 point equal division of the octave. There was no mention of double-fretted string instruments or split-key keyboards for meantone tunings. For 12 key keyboards, irregular temperaments were supposedly quicker to tune than equal temperament because some of the 5ths were pure, so there was no need to count beats for those. Irregular temperaments also provide 'key characteristics' that were exploited by composers. Perhaps the introduction of cast iron framed pianos (and so increased string tension) made equal temperament more practical and the tone of later pianos compensated for the indiscrepancy ...especially since inharmonic overtones are part of what gives the piano its slightly bell-like tone due to high string tension stretching harmonics. I mean, don't piano tuners compare the 2nd partial to the octave above because it is noticeably stretched? The slightly inharmonic partials and rich tone of a modern piano might make equal temperament less obvious than it was on the harpsichord or fortepiano.
Brilliant and compelling exposition! Thank you!
Pure gold! thanks!