Untempered Vs. Tempered

I’ve been listening to yesterday’s chord progression showing off the b7. I think it offers an excellent opportunity to hear the difference between equal temperament and just intonation. Equal temperament works by implying or evoking a note rather than playing it exactly. There are dozens of singable notes per octave; ET represents them all with just…

The Minor Seventh

The farther we get from the center, the less consonant the notes are, when played against the tonic. Consonance is a whole subject. It’s generally spoken of as though it could be plotted on a scale, from consonance to dissonance. I think this is a big mistake. Consonance has more than one dimension. Trying to…

The Minor Third

Here’s an interesting and perhaps misunderstood note. It’s a compound move on the lattice: down a third and up a fifth. Or up a fifth and down a third, it doesn’t matter what order. So the ratio is 3/5, or 6/5, octave reduced. The note is the minor third. I call it b3. It lives a…

Reciprocal Thirds

There are four basic moves available on the lattice of fifths and thirds. They are: Up a fifth (x3) Down a fifth (÷3) Up a major third (x5) Down a major third (÷5) Each of these moves has its own harmonic flavor, and they can be combined to create new flavors. The major scale only…

The Major Scale

The notes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7, clustered at the center of the lattice, constitute a major scale. This tuning uses the smallest ratios (the ones with the lowest numbers) available for each position in the scale. It goes back at least to Ptolemy in the 100’s AD. I find it visually…

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Names

Musical nomenclature has been cobbled together over the centuries like a medieval city. Different systems leave their imprint in convention, later developments try to be compatible with accepted names, and the whole thing ends up confusing and contradictory. Take enharmonic equivalents, for example. G# and Ab are the same note on the piano, the black…

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Mixed Messages

The harmonic lattice can be divided into four quadrants. Northeast is pure overtonal energy. All these notes are reached by multiplication alone. Powers of 3 and 5 are in the numerators, and the denominators are all powers of 2. Southwest is pure reciprocal energy. You get there by dividing. All the 3’s and 5’s are…

The Major Seventh

The notes get more exotic as you move outward from the center. The ninth is quite consonant, but not nearly as consonant as the fifth. (Consonance and dissonance are descriptions of feelings; they are part of the flavor of an interval, and I don’t think the last word has been written on them yet. I’ll be…

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Compound Notes

Multiplying the tonic by 2, 3 and 5 creates the octave, fifth and third respectively. The ear hears these intervals very well. We can easily sing them. Each one has a feel, a sort of harmonic flavor, that makes a fifth a fifth and a third a third. It turns out that the ear can…