The archive
100 pieces on how music is built and how it is written down — with playable examples, tables you can check, and no filler.
♮ intro · ♯♯ intermediate · ♯♯♯♯ advanced — like key signatures, more marks means more to hold in mind
Tuning & Temperament
Pythagorean tuning builds every interval from pure 3:2 fifths. Here is the seven-note scale it produces, its whole tones and semitones in cents, and the wolf fifth it leaves behind.
Tuning & Temperament
A cent is one hundredth of an equal-tempered semitone. Here is the formula, what the common intervals measure in cents, and what a tuner is showing you.
Tuning & Temperament
Twelve equal semitones solve the problem pure intervals create. The cost is small in fifths, large in thirds, and paid by every fixed-pitch instrument.
Tuning & Temperament
Pure intervals come from small whole-number ratios, and beating is what stops them sounding pure. What just intonation gives, and what it cannot fix.
Tuning & Temperament
Quarter-comma meantone, the wolf fifth and the well temperaments in between: what keyboard tuning did to each key before equal temperament settled the argument.
The ebook
The site's working library as a structured ebook: intervals, keys, harmony, counterpoint, rhythm, form, tuning, orchestration and the history behind them.
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