Young

(Originally posted in March, 2010) In the previous blog entry, I mentioned that you can characterize those temperament systems as either harmonic systems or melodic systems.  The Pythagorean tuning is suited for monophonic lines because of the sharper mediants and leading tones, and thus it is a typical example of a melodic system.  Not great at all for playing harmonies it is though.  On the other hand, the mean-tone has just intonation major 3rds for harmonic purity; because of low mediants and leading tones, its melodic contours often suffer, but it is a harmonically pleasing temperament.  The biggest problem of mean-tone is, because of the fact that twelve of those […]