W. hether you sing, play the cello, oboe, or bagpipes, you’ve probably had one of those days (or weeks or months) where you became obsessed with intonation.. Where you carefully tuned every chord, calibrated every last note with a tuner, and worked diligently with a drone. Straying away into foreign keys (i.e. The concert pitch was often set by the town church bell (so I hear). In order for a chord to be fully in tune, it must be tuned to the harmonics. and 7th. Cool names for some cool and important concepts. This was quite suitable for much of the harmonic practice until then ( See: Quartal harmony ), but in the Renaissance, musicians wished to make much more use of Tertian harmony . Nonetheless, Pythagorean and Ptolemaic tuning held sway well into the 13th and 14th centuries. If you play it along with your root note, it will coincide in perfect clear harmony. The existance of two scale tunings raises debate as to which is the best tuning to use for a melody line. A Note on Equal Temperament VS Pythagorean Temperament. At that time the French Academie at Notre Dame still held that only perfect fifths could be used to construct a scale; the 3 in its ratio 3/2 represented the Holy Trinity and was thus sacrosanct. Meaning, all the intervals or adjacent notes are spaced evenly from each other in order for all the octaves to sound the same. The best you can do is compromise between the two, and you will never develop an ear or feel for advanced intonation techniques on the fiddle. If so, then rather than the thirds being a difference of 13-14 cents (when compared to equal tempered thirds)... meantone thirds would be less of a difference; ie. Equal temperament became the standard in about 1939 simply because it made playing in all major and minor keys more bearable than other temperaments. If you look at Renaissance music, key signatures are simple. Pythagorean vs Just Tuning. This brings us to the discussion of commas. More specifically, it is a form of just intonation based on the numbers 3 and 9. You cannot alternate between Pythagorean and just intonation when you play with them. The Pythagorean, Didymic/Syntonic Comma and the Great Diesis. 5. th. Rarely was music written with more than two sharps or flats. Back to top. And maybe even found yourself getting sucked down the Pythagorean vs. just tuning rabbit hole. You've … In fact, Pythagorean tuning is described in the medieval sources as being based on four numbers: 12:9:8:6. That is what just intonation is – tuning to the (mostly the first 8) harmonics of the Root, 3. rd. Examples of temperaments used over the years include Pythagorean, mean-tone, well temperament, just intonation, and equal temperament. Thus we get just or ideally blending fifths (3:2), fourths (4:3), major seconds (9:8), and minor sevenths (16:9). We have to keep in mind that our universal tuning system is based on 12-tone Equal Temperament. THIS is a fundamental component of barbershop and other a cappella harmony styles. Scale degree In 1482 the Spanish theorist Bartolomeo Ramos de Pareja introduced just intonation, a system in which the major third is calculated by the ratio of 5:4, and other intervals are arrived at by using the Pythagorean ratios of the octave, fifth and fourth. allows all harmonies to be in tune. What we call the perfect fifth interval, 7 semitones, is a 3:2 frequency ratio. lots of sharps and flats), wreaked tonal havoc. Pythagorean tuning was a system of just intonation that tuned every note in a scale from a progression of pure perfect fifths. The thirds would end up closer to just intonation, but they wouldn't be quite pure pythagorean thirds. In true Pythagorean temperament, this would not be the case. Temperament must be determined before a concert pitch can be set. Does this sound right? The central point of Just Intonation and Pythagorean tuning lies in the the tuning of that major third. JUST intonation. Just intonation is Pythagorean intervals, expressed as ratios. Most musicians stuck with Pythagorean tuning or Just intonation. Just Intonation The answer is determined by the way the notes are used, or the harmony that is put to, or implied by, the melody.