EQUAL temperament vs JUST intonation (PURE tuning)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ธ.ค. 2018
- Equal temperament vs pure intonation.
Chords are played through a simple sine wave with the standard 440hz tuning.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_t...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_in... - เพลง
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I have many years of experience in music production and sound design and I can clearly head the difference
For chording, just tempered is more pleasing to my ear…but for melodic work, equal tempered scales are sweeter.
That is why Howard Levy played Golden Melody harps - they are the only harmonicas that have an equal tempered scale. Hence, the name.
I can’t so much as “hear” a difference as I can FEEL a difference. Equal temperament has a “waa-waa-waa-waa” type of reverb while pure temperament it mostly goes away, or at least slows way down in frequency. When music can affect your mood or convey emotion, it stands to reason that small tuning changes can make a big difference
One "pulsates" the other is smooth. This is what I heard, anyway.
@@1SmokedTurkey1 Never thought of it that way OR heard of that saying, but it makes perfect sense, literally. That's why it's perceived as "gentler" or whatever word of choice, because of the lack of unnaturally exagerrated, strict harmonic beating between voices.
That's because of the phase cancellation. Since the ratios between the notes are not perfect and are a bit off, their "peaks" cannot be aligned
@@1SmokedTurkey1 agree equal temperament you can hear the oscillation more
The interference patterns created with equal or pythagorean temperament themselves create oscillating frequencies that resonate with different types of brain waves such as delta and theta waves. These are also known as binaural beats and have a pretty decent amount of study done on them. They aren't magic like a lot of the woo woo people might have you think, but I believe that it has a lot to do with the conveying of emotion. This is also why many doctors prefer classical music during surgery, the music makes it easier for the Dr to get in a resonate gamma wave feedback loop(approximately 35hz) which is achieved through temperament and counterpoint. Since 35hz would be barely if at all audible, the interference patterns create this frequency.
I wish I had not learned this. Ignorance was bliss 😭
Super interesting
For most of my youth (80s), I'd tune my guitars harmonically, and it was never right. I was always fighting with it thinking I was doing something wrong. I did not know about temperaments. Once I learned, it kinda broke my brain that music has this sorta flaw.
cmon, ET still sounds good! artistic use of detune is super common. what's cool is when you start with just intonation and very carefully control the detune to get really wonky but still coherent interference patterns ;)
Not sure You really learned anything.
@@Geopholus what do you mean?
I genuinely like the sound of the equal tempered chords better in this video because it sounds almost like vibrato, like the chords are singing
I can hear the differences. It is more difficult to pick up with strings, I presume because the overtone series of strings is more complex. In some ways the complexity of the overtone series absorbs some of the temperament effects. Very interesting video. Thanks.
I think that the sample that was used in the video wasn't perfect for this demonstration. It had some slight vibrato.
As a sidenote, violin players can adjust the intonations between the notes, because the violin doesn't have frets. They can play different versions of the same note in the same piece of music, depending on the harmonic context. That's why string sections sounds a lot smoother.
These are also not perfect tests as he is prob using synth patches which may not be perfect.
Add to that the fact that tuning a guitar, for example, is imperfect and the frequency of the strings drift a tiny bit as they vibrate
i actually found it easier to hear the difference in the string part. same thing with just intonated piano, i can easily hear the lack of that small clash.
It's more difficult to hear with the strings because of the chorusing. Basically in a string section they are slightly out of tune with one another. Sounds more creamy. So you don't hear the perfect harmony as clearly as perfect because some of the sound is actually off pitch and not perfect.
thanks so much, especially for the strings, with pure temperament can produce more integral sound like every frequency is on each other in very harmonic way. With equal temperament, you can hear "waa-waa-waa" especially in second part(G Major) in the middle frequency. Now I can understand why top orchestras are amazing probably the conductor and musicians need to know this well in mind, and do the adjustments from equal-temperament-setting instruments.
In the Just intonation of the strings, you can hear a slight "vocal"
This is very helpful and clear, many thanks 🙏
It's easy to hear the difference side by side. Just tuning is super stable. I honestly prefer equal temperament. I like the vibration as it sounds more musical to me. Just intonation sounds too plain and machine like. It lacks life.
Like chorus?
The sinewaves in this video are so sterile and basic that the discord in equal temperment actually sounds better. This is not the case with an actual instrument that has timbre and the just intonated chords sound fuller.
You just called something thats pure "lacking life". Backwards thinking...
@@cramax4871 Who cares about what's pure. We're humans and evolved to interpret or bend the natural world to our tastes and needs. There's plenty of natural plants that are toxic or even lethal to eat, but we can selectively breed it to make it tasty and safe to eat. Also, we evolved out of the natural world so what we do is by default "natural". It's not like we are an invasive alien race from a different galaxy. Earth made us what we are.
@@cramax4871 The concept of “purity” is overvalued. Have you ever had “pure” water, with no minerals in it? It tastes awful.
In this section at 1:44 there is a mistake. The chords are C major and F major (not G major).
Equal temperament has those beating effect.
Very annoying. Not natural
Wrong. They both have the beating effect. In the D Major just intonation has even stronger beating. The difference is the distance of the pulsations: variable with each chord in Just, regular in Equal.
@@aleab3472 Oh, didn't notice this. But anyway just intonation is better for instruments with narrow spectrum.
@@aleab3472 So... the beating of Just Intonation is "dynamic" in comparison...?
@@aleab3472 uh...no
the Dmajor was played tuned to C intonation, so its beating effect was worse - if you play Bmajor or Db while tuned to C intonation it would be even worse.
C intonation or pure will have no beating effect ONLY if the instrument is perfectly tuned and stays perfectly tuned, like a pipe organ or a trumpet - if the octave above C is 1 Hz off then a full c chord will beat at 1 Hz. That is part of the problem with intonation, it has to be perfect, down to a fraction of 1Hz.
This was awesome!!!
Now, do the same experiment with 53-tone equal temperament and just intonation.
Sounds like the difference between an organ's high and low chorus speeds
the lower the tone, the easier it is to spot the tremor in the equal chords while the pure chords sounds more even
The last combo was very interesting.
In practical use I love the sound of imperfection that comes with acoustic instruments played by humans.
The unequal chord sounds of tune to me (understandably) yet , with the string sound, it sounds kinda cool.
i can hear the difference because of the 14 cent difference between the equal tempered major third and the JI 5/4 major third.
Just-intoned major thirds sound "too flat" to me because my ears are so accustomed to hearing equal-tempered thirds.
I can tell one of the frequencies in equal temperament is a little too high. Pretty much the same besides that and the obvious volume vibrato effect
Interesting comparison!
yeah, a little bit.
G Major sine wave, for instance, sounds a little sharp to me in JI.
Thx! Last example shows it well that it is important to take care that all synths / plugins are tuned to same system and double checked to be what is wanted.
I just made one track with _just tuning_ using f# as root. I composed that thing like couple weeks and even recorded and uploaded it soundcloud... but decided later that its way too unfinished and kept finalizing it.
In THAT phase I noticed that DAMN! One of the sounds was not having microtuning capability "turned on". In Yamaha SY77 microtuning presets are chosen from patch level, while editing sounds. Can't change whole machine to use certain MT preset like with Kurzweils.
Or even that way like older Yamaha models, TX81Z and DX11 which I also have, and where those can be set from _performance_ settings and thus affecting all sounds at the same time.
[They] really have tried to make it difficult to start using better and healthier tuning systems! IIIuminati fu ck er s!
it's just not as common yet lol
pitch drift is why we abandoned it.
good thing the illuminati is nice enough to let us post videos on the internet about it 😂🙄
"Healthier" tunings? Illuminati? People really will make any justification for their personal preferences somehow being objectively superior.
The major and minor thirds make the real difference between the two.
Idk if it counts but I get a slight headache when intonation plays
In just intonation almost we can’t hear the beats, but in well temperament the beats are very clear. And they are clearer in the strings. 🌹🌺
Do you think this is an advantage, I felt the beats, pain my ears, But with a whole orchastra of Just intonation, playing the right music, what you d hear was in relation to your distance from the band, and that at so.e places the dissonance would make people sick, so you had to be on the move, And I believe this is the major reason for equitemperment, then the gutair came along...
“well temperament”
@@ryanb1874"a whole orchastra of Just intonation, playing the right music" Yes, this is the point. They play a C-Major-chord for quite a while. Then they make a pause, then F-Major. The "right music" is just we could hear in the video to give an example for Just intonation.
Compositions are made quite different. There are melodies, simultaniously, Intonation is Pythagorean. This is different to chords.
@@ryanb1874 Nothing is really in tune. Especially not an orchestra. Some instruments go sharp and some go flat as they heat up and the humidity changes. A good singer is usually within a semi-tone of correct, and that's about the best you can hope for without some kind of auto tune or pitch correction that will make it sound lifeless. Microtones and dissonance is how a really good singer conveys emotion; if you "pitch correct" it just sounds expressionless and robotic. What you sacrifice for the vain pursuit of perfection is not worth it. You can't transpose or change key; not without stopping the orchestra and retuning all the instruments; so if you go with C-major, then that's it; you're stuck in C-major.
This difference is stark to me, I can’t believe people are questioning if there is a difference. I’m wondering if the differences have been exaggerated on purpose or if this is the reality of the differences
this is just a bad example
There's less dissonance in the pure tones as well as a microtonal offset that i can make out.
You would have to tune each chord in just intonation for the D to sound good.
Very interesting. I have a small criticism though:
The point about strings being in just temperament is so that the instrument itself resonates better (since the other strings get hit passively aswell). I don't think this effect is captured here with the electronic instruments. That might be, why there is almost no audible difference with strings.. Maybe I'm just deaf though or maybe it really doesn't make a big difference.. still.. I think it's more different than it is displayed here
Pure tone, especially in the strings portion, tended to sound just a bit flat actually. I'm sure with pure tuning one of the notes is slightly flatter compared to equal tuning.
I also figured putting actual instruments to each type of tuning would properly show the differences, since sine waves/chords will of course sound obviously different in just intonation, but when you get harmonics into the mix, equal tuning will sound better because it's how we've adapted music to be so tuning doesn't have to change when changing keys.
Equal one is slightly shaky.
As soon as the chorus effect is applied, tuning loses its meaning.
Don't think there's an added chorus effect. When you play something slightly out of tune, it often ends up sounding like a chorus effect. Many synths utilize this, where you can slightly detune two doubling sounds, to get a chorus-like effect
Does not apply to keyboards
are overtones using just intonation?
In a "just" world everything could be tuned in Just Intonation, but I'm a tuner and "just " too accustomed to Equal Temperament.
In just intonation you can only play in certain key signatures. Otherwise it sounds yucky
@@ryanjackson5245 No, you’re referring to the mean tone and related historic temperaments characteristic of the 18th Century.
@@kwixotic in the 18th century they didn't use Just intonation? So when was it used?
Ideally you could have a square of notes with just intonation on one axis and equal temperament on the other so you can do flawless key changes.
@@matteosacchiero9808 Before the 18th century.
Second play through made it much more obvious, Equal had more overtones. and Just was more restricted to the tone. Really pierces the ear drum with each rendition. Nailing down the TE Tuner setting. At least the above is how my ears heard it. I can match any note with my voice at some obtainable octave or group of notes (just can't name them with a tuner) and I have an odd constant occurrence of waking up with music going in my head and during the day, sometime I have to search the lyrics if they come with the orchestration to see who it is. Would be odd but it happens with no notes to trigger it. Interesting but weird.
This looks like the video game Scramble.
처음 C Major 아날로그 전화기 벨소리? 수화기 들었을때 나는 소리
Innotation sounds kinda like a minor chord compared to equal temperment
Especially the G Major. That sounded off and minor in just intonation.
NO BEATS 🗣🗣🗣🗣‼‼‼‼
NO WAVES ‼‼‼‼‼‼🔥🔥🔥🔥
skibidi gyatt
I hear a small difference: just intonation seems a little bit lower than equal temperament.
some very late observations in some cases, the pure seems to be muted. in others, the pure sounds 'muddy'; like a buzz, not harmonic. in others, (1:08) the pure causes an unacceptable amount of 'wow'. equal aint perfect, but it's better than just.
Is it possible to automatically adjust the volume of the equal tempered intervals so that it stays at the same volume?
It's not about volume, it's about different frequencies. Some vst has the option to switch from equal to pure, many instruments of the kontakt suite have this option for example.
@@francescomarangoniproducer I know it's not volume entirely, I'm a violinist, but I think it would be interesting to hear what it would sound like if the noise cancellation caused by overlapping-non perfect sound waves was corrected for by adjusting the volume. You could theoretically get dissonant intervals without that "beating" noise that they produce.
It's because the frequencies are not exact ratios so there are some times when the "sounds waves" equal each other and cancel.
@@jakegearhart What you mean is normalization. If you use the RMS signal of each sound and make them equal, you can have a fair comparison as you want. You can do that with DAW software and a few free plugins.
Yes, it is possible. You could simply put a limiter on the sound so that, say, only 0.5db comes through the speakers at all times.
I kind of prefer equal temperament. just intonation sounds basic and mechanic. equal temperament has a default dissonance that makes music a little bit edgy
Dissonance is reality anyway. A singer will be in the right semitone, but they will only "snap to the lines" if there is pitch correction. A really good singer will be off by some microtone and use it to convey feeling. Some instruments go flat and some go sharp as they warm up and get humid from use.
It's truly impossible to judge Just vs Equal application from only these examples. It all depends on context, what instrument, and also whether it's purely electronic music; Electro musicians here - please don't judge this for "Music" or even talk in such a finalized way - there's more to music than your laptops. People who say Just is boring, may be absolutely correct when talking about these boring, soft tones here. They need something obviously, I think this video is meant to demonstrate the beating of Equal not to present a contrast to judge. On a loud, electric guitar with the treble cranked up for example, Equal can set one's eardrums on fire... or a keyboard set to "pipe organ". If you can set the keyboard to Just Int, the same pipe organ is totally bearable - even the F chord if it's in C. So it depends.
For some reason i feel the tet one is more consonant, pure triads sound kinda alien to me
It is because your brain is used to hearing equal tempered chords, so it becomes centralized to it.
@@scorafent yes, but what about the overtone series itself, which is dissonant past the first overtones (bearing in mind that the volume of the other ones is not negligible)? I would argue that we are necessarily accustomed to dissonance, just by hearing any note on its own. So, in a way, the familiar dissonance of equal temperament is reminiscent of the dissonance inherent to the overtones series, and I reckon our brain even enjoys reconciling the dissonance. Also, consider the perspective of binaural beats. . another reconciliation done by the brain. Slight dissonance is perhaps food for thought for the brain, so might actually be beneficial - just like salt on a dish. . ? depends on people's perspective also, and the particular context and instrument, naturally
@@razvansaftescu76 I will still say that I am not wrong because we are not born to being used to listening to dissonances. Listening to the tempered intervals more often made us feel more used to it because if you listen to 5/4 for a long time instead of 12EDO major thirds, it sounds terribly sharp
@@scorafent you are cerrainly right on that point. Still, I feel there is more to it, hence my previous comment.
Btw I didn't care about the lower overtones until I visualised their amplitude (volume) in a DAW - definitely not negligible ; if the overtone series was pure, ok, why not aim for purity and just intonation. But, to me it looks like imperfection is a feature of the system, so not sth to avoid.
@@razvansaftescu76 as we go higher, the less effective the relationships get I guess. Dissonant and consonant isn't just like 2 black and white sides, but more like a spectrum
Play an F sharp major from just intonation tuned from C and tell me how nice you think it’s sounds then
@George Woolley This may sound as a stupid question but I'm a beginner. What does "tuned from C" mean please? In the video he says at 1:01 D Major (scale tuned to C) , what does that mean ? Thank you
@Bhigr Bond Thank you for the reply :)
To elaborate, just intonation tunes the notes to their perfect ratios (ex, octave is 1:2, fifth is 3:2, etc). But the ratios then obviously depend on the root note, because a ratio of 4:3 from C to G is different than D to A. However, equal tempermant takes the perfect octave ratio and then splits the frequencies into 12 equally distant notes, so it works in all keys at once.
@@twinicebear775 Thank you for this even more helpful follow-up. So equal temperament is a compromise to have all keys be usable with one tuning. In just intonation you would have to re-tune for each key right?
For an instrument like a piano, exactly. Orchestral players (especially strings) tune using a variety of tuning methods when playing. For strings, most will use pythagorean tuning for melodies and scale passages as it has high leading tones and large whole steps that add to expression and better differentiate between major and minor modes. However, pythagorean tuning is very bad for chords including sixths and thirds, so in that case, string players tune to just intonation for thirds and sixths.
Someone asked about the volume, it is not matter of volume, they call it (Beats) in physics. Many thanks for this video.
Beats are just oscillations in volume.
@@jakegearhart Beats occur when two notes that differ slightly in frequency are played simultaneously. Number of beats per second is the numerical difference in frequencies of those 2 notes; for example, if two notes of frequencies 440 Hz and 442 Hz are played together, 2 beats per second can be heard.
@@tvoommen4688 Yes, and those beats are oscillations in volume created by sound waves overlapping and cancelling each other or increasing each other.
it’s mostly in the third
It’s ALL in the thirds. Especially the E-G minor third of the Cmaj chord.
@@oqsy yeah
Vibrations and echos more or less long/short.
Equal had WAY more bear frequencies than Just.
And that's kind of weird, huh?!
"Pure" intotantion is like singing without any vibrato...
Should be G maj and C maj instead of C maj and G maj (1:40).
it's way easier to hear it you distort. even as someone who composes with both just intonation and equal temperaments, I can't hear the difference at any point in this video because of the lack of distortion. distortion makes the virtual subharmonic into a real subharmonic, which makes the difference very very obvious because the just intonation version only creates a small in-tune subharmonic, whereas the equal temperament version creates potentially several.
could u explain a lil more?
You should probably play them together and put one of them out of phase…
per me è uguale
200
Totally hey....
With just these simple chords the just intonation sounds better, but equal temperament is supposed to be the pragmatic solution to make chords work consistently, Maybe the whole universe is slightly out of whack because of sin and therefore things cannot line up perfectly. No perfect 360 day year either.
This is such pseudoscientific nonsense.
@@angelmendez-rivera351 No it just a simple observation that things are very close but don't quite line up. I didn't realize you understood all the mysteries of the universe.
@@jeffstarrunner1 "Maybe the whole universe is slightly out of whack because of sin, and therefore things cannot line up perfectly" does not strike me as an observation, and I doubt very few people would consider it one. As for the 360-day year, you are getting your history backwards. 360 was chosen as a highly divisible approximation of 365, not the other way around. As far as mathematics are concerned, there is nothing perfect or special about 360. So, as I said, this is pseudoscientific nonsense. If you insist on calling it an "observation," then I must conclude you do not understand what observation is.
@@jeffstarrunner1 Regarding equal temperament and just intonation: the reason behind why we have equal temperament has historically nothing to do with just intonation not "lining up." First of all, it is not even true that just intonation "does not line up." The issue is that 12-DO scales cannot handle comma pump and acute intervals well without special care. But there is nothing wrong with chords in just intonation: Ottoman music, and Turkish music, both make it work. In fact, septimal just intonation is completely equivalent to 53-EDO, which is an equal temperament. Second of all, here in the West, just intonation was replaced not with equal temperament, but with meantone temperament. Meantone temperament was then soon replaced by well-temperament, which stuck around until the 20th century. Chords work consistently in well-temperament (arguably better than in equal temperament), and the move to equal temperament was purely an issue of labor and economy. Equal temperament is just much easier to tune and much cheaper for instruments like the organ and piano than well temperaments. In fact, today, there are very few tuners that are willing to get hired to tune an instrument to a well-temperament, and those that do get hired charge a much higher commission than your average tuner. This was true in the 20th century as well, though to a less extreme extent. Another reason musicians switched to equal temperament, aside from the tuning difficulties, is because atonal music started becoming more and more popular, and well-temperaments are not suited for that type of music. Polytonal music is also easier to compose in equal temperament than in well temperament. Besides, singing became more important in the music industry, and singing to equal temperament is regarded to be easier than singing to various different well temperaments.
@@angelmendez-rivera351 The solar year is 365 and the lunar year 355, it's not so crazy to think of them sinking up perfectly at 360. It's called a theory, I'm sorry your upset that someone could wonder about something. The frequency of visible light also about doubles just like the frequencies in a full octave of music, but not exactly... Sure it could be coincidence but you don't know that any more then I do.
It's very interesting that, in the equitemperment tuning, 12 th root of 2 I guess, that you see on the scope the giant teeth, with varying heights, probably some fraction of what the just intonation ratios are, Eric Dollard stuff, And it seems, when they played the cords, it left a , stuck pain in the ears, but the straight up Gangster Pythagorean just i tonation DIDNT. I hope everyone else heard this, Now to convince the worship band at chuch, Fat Chance right??
Pythagorean tuning is NOT the same as Just (or "pure") intonation. The first comes from tuning P5s on top of one another, while the second takes the ratios of the harmonic series. Also, most importantly, M3s are out of tune in Pythagorean tuning, so the chords in this video wouldn't be pleasant sounding if they were in Pythagorean tuning.
@@ItaliansShredsBetter so do the wolf fifths pop up in Pythagorean tuning, and is this a relic from the past with no use today, just useless?
@@ItaliansShredsBetter what's the ratios, of the harmonic series, is that a 3 note chord ?
@@ryanb1874 Pythagorean tuning was not abandoned because of the wolf fifth, or at least not solely because of that. At a certain point in history (don't remember when) musicians started to prefer harmony using thirds which in Pythagorean tuning are out of tune. So they changed tuning, and after further changes in music composition we arrived to 12TET which we are using today. Althpugh 12TET isn't as harmonious as "Just" or "pure" intonation, it approximates those ratios in a pretty good way. Furthermore, you can play 12TET in every possible key.
The fundamental jist ratios are 3:2 for 5th, 4:3 for 4ths and 5:4 for 3rds.
@@ItaliansShredsBetter so what is just intonation, I don't understand yet.
I mean, ET isnt so much different to Just. Just is maybe slightly flatter and warmer compared to the clean straightforward ET
Honestly, I prefer equal temp because it's easier to separate the notes of the chord. The chords with pure intonation kind of sound like a dial tone to me and just becomes homogeneous.
It sounds like a dial tone because there is nothing musical whatsoever about these examples. They are dead sound. Just sounds like a dial tone, Equal sounds like an annoying dial tone (IMO). It would be foolish to write off one or the other completely, as they both already have their functions deeply ingrained in different parts of western music. High up notes generally sound much better when they're justly tuned, even when the bass or mid range chords are in Equal. That's why good guitarists bend the high notes to that "sweat spot" during solos and (good) singers in choirs often automatically make adJUSTments (sorry, couldn't resist) when they are not in the same range as accompanying equal tempered instruments, or acapella. But without Equal Temperament we couldn't change keys so much... the pros and cons could go and on, but I think it's just better to look at them as practical do's and don't for different situations.
@@FlanaFugue That is not true. There are many ways of using just intonation where you can change keys without any comma pump, and these are very common in non-Western music: for example, Chinese music, Ottoman music, or Turkish music. Also, well-temperament can replace just intonation and allow for key changes, without making every step size equal. Equal temperament is just an extreme version of well-temperament, but it is not necessarily the best version of well-temperament, as many musicians have pointed out throughout the times. The primary reason equal temperament became more popular is because tuners do not have to put in as much effort to tune instruments to equal. It has nothing to do with how musical it is or is not.
@@angelmendez-rivera351 Sorry if I was unclear (I may edit that comment soon if I have time), but I'm not sure which part of what I said isn't true.
@@FlanaFugue You said without equal temperaments, we cannot change keys. As I explained in my comment, this is false. Please read it carefully before you reply.
@@angelmendez-rivera351 "Please it carefully before you reply." I didn't say "we cannot change keys." I said we "couldn't change keys so much," meaning "as much as with equal temperament and using western instruments" (which IS actually true). Also, I was really re-iterating typical arguments people have against Just Intonation - which may have been confusing, which is why I said I may edit my original comment for clarity. But just for the record: I am a big fan of Just Intonation and prefer it whenever possible.
I can hear the beats in both examples because I'm using beats headphones
Are you calling a bloody synthesiser STRINGS?
Buddy, nothing… I repeat, NOTHING in the real physical world is as perfect as pure sine\synth wave.
Therefore all that miniscule "beating" is irrelevant when we tune to the Equal Temperament.
pure tone sounds more flat to me lol
on the c major one
Now play giant steps with your just intonation and hear how horrible harmonic complexity sounds without a tempered system.
It's a moot point - Equal Temperament was designed to allow for any key changes; Giant Steps is the ultimate key change. It would sound horrible, because that's not what it's meant for, just like in a number of instances Equal Temperament would sound (equally) horrible.
No. I can easily make just intonation work with key changes using non-Western instruments and musical techniques. Just intonation is actually equivalent to 53-EDO. A justly intonated version of 53-EDO just replaced 31 of the 53 steps of size 2^(1/53) with the Pythagorean comma (3^12/2^19), and the other 22 steps with the syntonic comma (81/80). The combination of these to form 53 steps only differ from an octave (2) by less than 0.4 cents, which is 5 times smaller than a schisma, which is about 4 times smaller than the smallest audible pitch interval for humans, and a schisma is actually defined as exactly the difference between a Pythagorean comma and a syntonic comma. As such, every justly intonated Ptolemic interval can be played with a 53-step scale where all the steps are effectively the same size, without any possible comma pumps. Even septimal intervals are well-approximated by 53-EDO, with the largest difference being about 6 cents. The best part is, you can play a 12-step chromatic scale as you would in the West just fine by treating it as a subscale of this rationalized and just modification of 53-EDO, as long as you modify the way you stack intervals together for harmony and chords. It makes the rules a bit more complicated, but if you are willing to put up with it, you can achieve any key change you want, or play across any number of octaves you want, without worrying about comma pump or making the instrument sound horribly out of tune. This has been well-known since the 1600s, too, and it is a system widely used for Turkish music, Ottoman music, and even Chinese music. This is not the terrible, complicated ordeal everyone in the modern West says it is. To me, this just tells me that music theorists in the West are not as well-acquainted with the mathematical theory of scales and tuning systems as they should be. Since the only thing taught in modern music theory courses is how to create harmony, people are not understanding the mathematics of just intonation nearly as well as they think they do.
I am not at all sure what these graphs are purporting to show. "so called" C major is supposed to be what a c major chord ? consisting of what notes? Why does it sound like a low pass square wave dial tone single note ,,, certainly not a fully voiced triad? Yes there would be some beating of a major triad in equal temperament, but it certainly would not sound as bad or look as bad as Your demonstration if played on a typical musical instrument. Even those supposedly natural strings, graph exaggerate the beating, and sound like synthesized strings very strident. and too toothy to be real, plus the graph that has no calibration as to the vertical increments seems to exaggerate the effect.
Just intonation sounds fake and artificial
the equal temperement is literally artificial and just intonation is what you do when you sing alone without an instrument. every overtone series of a sound is "just intonation", so curb your fake and artificial.
Atomeqho the movement in the tempered version is due to bad tuning, causing the chord to wiggle. this may be wanted in some cases but if it was so nice to have that we would deliberately detune our instruments even more, which we don't do because it sounds awful. you can always add vibrato to your just intonation to make it more vivid.
@@toniokettner4821but the overtones series is not consonant past the first overtones anyway, although they are not insignificant in terms of volume; which kind of means that we are accustomed to dissonance, just by hearing any note on its own.
Having just intonation makes it less dissonant, but is it really better for the ear? Why not reduce the dissonance of the overtones series then. . ? I bet some people would like it, and some would not. It's just a matter of perspective. But saying that just intonation sounds fake and artificial is perfectly acceptable. right?
I guess all string players are now fake because we use just intonation and Pythagorean tuning
@@razvansaftescu76 *but the overtone series is not consonant past the first overtones anyway,...*
This is false, and not supported by any evidence. Up until about the 17th harmonic, you can hear quite a bit of consonance.
*which kind of means that we are accustomed to dissonance, just by hearing any note on its own.*
No one can detect dissonance from hearing individual noted, unless the person has perfect pitch, but I am sure neither you nor I have perfect pitch. Consonance and dissonance have to do with pitch intervals, rather than individual notes. Justly intonated intervals are more consonant than intervals from an equal tempered tuning in most contexts, provided the instrument in question is functional. However, just intonation sounds alienating to Western people because they are accustomed to 12-EDO. This has nothing to do with consonance or dissonance, it just has to do with the fact that, regardless of objective, measurable quality, people tend to be averse to things they are not familiar with. Hypothetically speaking, your mom may be a terrible cook, objectively speaking, and it could be that everyone besides you is aware of this. But because your mom's cooking is so familiar and nostalgic to you, regardless of it being of poor quality within this hypothetical (I emphasize the word "hypothetical" here, I am not saying your mom is actually a terrible cook), you are almost always going to prefer it over the masterful cooking of the best chef in the world. This may be true of your siblings as well, but it would be false of everyone else, because everyone else would not be affected by the nostalgia and familiarity factor, and would be to assess things more objectively. The same happens with music. A piece of music, no matter how well-performed and well-composed it is, if it belongs to a genre of music that the listener is unfamiliar with and cannot put their finger on, it is far more likely than not that they will simply be averse, or at best, indifferent, to the piece of music, while they are far more likely to appreciate a piece of music that hits much closer to home for them, even if it is not well-performed or well-complsed. This is true for everyone, musician and non-musician alike. It has nothing to do with consonance and dissonance. And before you ask me "how is that different from consonance and dissonance?" let me just say "I like that sound" is different from consonance, and "This sounds out of tune" is very different from dissonance. A well-made piece of music can contain healthy amounts of both consonance and dissonance. Also, consonance and dissonance are entirely context dependent.
*Having just intonation makes it less dissonant, but is it really better for the ear?*
What is "better for the ear" supposed to mean? Unless the volume of the music is more than a hundred decibels, listening to any amount of dissonance is not going to result in your ears being injured.
*Why not reduce the dissonance of the overtone series then?*
The overtone series is nowhere as dissonant as you claim it is.
*But saying just intonation sounds fake and artificial is perfectly acceptable, right?*
No, it is not, because it is objectively, factually inaccurate. The reason this video in particular sounds fake and artificial is because all the tones are coming from a synthesizer that lacks timbre. Anything that comes from a synthesizer lacking timbre will sound artificial and fake regardless of tuning system. Do you know why? Because synthesizers are artificial. Try this on a harp, and tell me if there is still a reasonable perspective in which anyone can say it sounds fake or artificial. To be clear, you may not like the sound, and I am not saying you have to like it. But saying "I do not like this" and "It sounds artificial" are VERY different things. Those are two completely different sentences, with completely different meanings. I hope you know that.
Just intonation is boring. It's like listening to an electrical room.
It's just perfect, thus beautiful
It isn't lol. The problem is the synthesizer here, which lacks timbre. All tones sound like dial tone, regardless of frequency.
Every piano is out of tune now.
Sorry bro but Just Intonation is too perfect! I don't like it!
Pure intonation sounds surprisingly bad. I expected it to sound sweet, but it's just unpleasant, bleak, lifeless.
Well, this is a flat imprecise synthesizer throwing empty tones at you, rather than trying to play a musical piece. Of course it sounds bad. If this were a musical instrument with timbre, it would be a different story.