3 ms·
I think you need some info in the start of the article about why 12tet was invented, what problems it was solving and how it fails. Like - In Bachs day you'd ha
by klik99 2y ago
I think you need some info in the start of the article about why 12tet was invented, what problems it was solving and how it fails. Like - In Bachs day you'd have to retune the instrument if you changed key signatures and you could only modulate a few steps away before the ratios sounded really bad. So 12TET opens up the possibilities to modulate far away from your original and requires less retuning, at the cost of adding various amounts of dissonance to intervals. I always find it interesting that each key signature in 12TET has a unique sound (Like CMaj vs EMaj) due to inconsistent ratios in perfect fifths, etc, and that "offness" is not necessarily a bad thing. You could also mention what most people think "microtonal" is (adding extra notes in between half steps) and why just intonation is different.
IMO music is all about the balance of the harmonic/expected and dissonant/unexpected at various timescales. The experience of Just Intonation is interesting because at first it sounds wrong due to us expecting 12TET but once you recalibrate your expectations it sounds more pure and harmonic, like how choirs or string quartets slip into simpler ratios instead of sticking exactly to 12TET.
I think with some more context/succinct summary at the beginning (which is REALLY HARD to write about for a general audience) the rest of the article would be more clear for people not steeped in music theory. A way I simplify it for others is by framing it all as simple ratios vs more complicated ratios, and how harmony is a kind of alchemy in mixing those ratios together in the right amounts.
- banana-lambda 2y ago> each key signature in 12TET has a unique sound (Like CMaj vs EMaj) due to inconsistent ratios in perfect fifths I thought this wasn't true in 12TET, because in that case a perfect fifth interval is always a ratio of the twelfth root of two to power seven, or almost 3/2, no matter the starting point, C or E.
- klik99 2y agoSorry, that was an incorrect thing I was taught and I never checked it... The ratio of a perfect fifth in 12TET is always 1.498307, not exactly 1.5, but it's close enough to 3/2. The deviation from "simple ratios" is more or less depending on the interval (P5(3/2): -0.001692923, M3(5/4): 0.00992105, m3(6/5): -0.010792885).