Musical Temperament

Article URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Well-Tuned_Piano Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32373226 Points: 1 # Comments: 0

Abstract From the mid-third century b.c.e., Chinese experts used the manipulation of sound as a technology to synchronize society with the cosmos. In the Western Han, the polymath Jing Fang 京房 (78–37 b.c.e.) detected an acoustical problem, known in the West as the Pythagorean comma, in the musical system. In the Chinese system, the comma is characterized by a minute but audible discrepancy, a gap between two…

I am committed to teaching my New School music theory students something about the history of tuning in Western European music. I don't expect them to retain any details or do any math, I jus…

Bach's most influential pedagogical work turns 300 this year. But what's so "well-tempered" about this clavier, and what's a "clavier," anyway?

Article URL: https://www.ingenia.org.uk/ingenia/issue-12/the-engineering-of-the-concert-grand-piano Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34269942 Points: 1 # Comments: 0

Each black key on the piano has two different names. Why? If the posts on r/musictheory are any indication, this is a persistent point of confusion, especially when music theory teachers get all pe…

Ever had that musical crisis where you realise there are only 12 notes in music, and only so many combinations to use them? That crisis that nothing is original anymore and everything you have written has already been written? Yeah we all get that at some point. It goes away when you learn that there […]

The division of the chromatic scale in $7$ natural notes (white keys in a piano) and $5$ accidental ones (black) seems a bit arbitrary to me. Apparently, adjacent notes in a piano (including white...

Article URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Sebastian_Bach Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34757937 Points: 3 # Comments: 0