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Just (black) major and parallel minor triad, compared to its equal temperament (gray) approximations, within the chromatic circle. Pythagorean tuning has been attributed to both Pythagoras and Eratosthenes by later writers, but may have been analyzed by other early Greeks or other early cultures as well.
In musical tuning, a temperament is a tuning system that slightly compromises the pure intervals of just intonation to meet other requirements. Most modern Western musical instruments are tuned in the equal temperament system. Tempering is the process of altering the size of an interval by making it narrower or wider than pure.
12 tone equal temperament chromatic scale on C, one full octave ascending, notated only with sharps. Play ascending and descending ⓘ. An equal temperament is a musical temperament or tuning system that approximates just intervals by dividing an octave (or other interval) into steps such that the ratio of the frequencies of any adjacent pair of notes is the same.
The term temperament refers to a tuning system that allows intervals to beat instead of tuning pure or "just intervals". In equal temperament, for instance, a fifth would be tempered by narrowing it slightly, achieved by flattening its upper pitch slightly, or raising its lower pitch slightly. Tempering an interval causes it to beat.
Since the average size of the 12 fifths must equal exactly 700 cents (as in equal temperament), the other one must have a size of 700 − 11ε cents, which is about 678.495 cents (the wolf fifth). As shown in the table, the latter interval, although enharmonically equivalent to a fifth, is more properly called a diminished sixth ( d6 ).
A Pythagorean tuning is technically both a type of just intonation and a zero-comma meantone tuning, in which the frequency ratios of the notes are all derived from the number ratio 3:2. Using this approach for example, the 12 notes of the Western chromatic scale would be tuned to the following ratios: 1:1, 256:243, 9:8, 32:27, 81:64, 4:3, 729: ...
Twelve-tone equal temperament (12 TET) is obtained by making all semitones the same size, with each equal to one-twelfth of an octave; i.e. with ratios 12 √ 2 : 1. Relative to Pythagorean tuning , it narrows the perfect fifths by about 2 cents or 1 / 12 th of a Pythagorean comma to give a frequency ratio of 2 7 / 12 : 1 {\displaystyle ...
Comparison between tunings: Pythagorean, equal-tempered, quarter-comma meantone, and others.For each, the common origin is arbitrarily chosen as C. The degrees are arranged in the order or the cycle of fifths; as in each of these tunings except just intonation all fifths are of the same size, the tunings appear as straight lines, the slope indicating the relative tempering with respect to ...