Talk:31 equal temperament

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This article is part of the WikiProject Tunings, Temperaments, and Scales to improve Wikipedia's articles related to musical tunings, temperaments, and scales.

Contents 1 Add a sentence or two 2 External links to music 2.1 Original to 31-et 2.2 31 equal arrangements 3 Clarity

[edit] Add a sentence or two

If someone would add a sentence or two answering the following, I'd be grateful:

• Will this help me tune my guitar?
• Will this help a professional piano tuner do his/her ordinary work?
• Is this important to the understanding of psychoaccoustics?
• Is this primarily of academic or theoretical interest?
• Is this mostly of interest to listeners and composers of unconventional music?

Thanks, Barry Nostradamus Sher ( —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 151.202.47.131 (talk • contribs) 07:03, 2 January 2006 (UTC) )

I'll answer them here and you can incorporate them into the article as you see fit:

• It will not help you tune your guitar unless you rip off all the frets and put many more on.
• It will not help a piano tuner unless he/she is tuning a piano with 31 keys to the octave (which is possible but I've never seen one).
• It is not particularly important to psychoacoustics in general because it is one specific tuning system.
• For some people it is only of theoretical interest, but others actually build instruments to play it and use it as a practical system.
• Unconventional is a slightly POV word, but yes, I think music in 31-EDO would be considered "unconventional" by most standards. =P —Keenan Pepper 07:55, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External links to music

Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tunings, Temperaments, and Scales#External links to music. —Keenan Pepper 19:46, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

The following examples need to be replaced with links to HTML files describing them, or migrated to the wikipedia Commons. - Rainwarrior 04:51, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Original to 31-et

• The Liberation of Gabrovo, Harold Fortuin, excerpt, mp3 file
• The beat-generation march, Joel Mandelbaum, midi file
• Clash by Night: Prelude, by Aaron Krister Johnson, ogg file
• Clash by Night: Waiting for Jerry, by Aaron Krister Johnson, ogg file
• Clash by Night: Shuffle, by Aaron Krister Johnson, ogg file

[edit] 31 equal arrangements

• Impromptu in C# minor, op 28 no 3, Hugo Reinhold, midi file
• String quartet no 3, op 67, first movement, Brahms, midi file
• String quartet no 3, op 67, second movement, Brahms, midi file
• Prelude to Tristan und Isolde, Wagner, mp3 file

[edit] Clarity

What the hell does this mean? :

The single most important fact about 31-et is that it equates to the unison, or tempers out, the syntonic comma of 81/80. It is therefore a meantone temperament. It also tempers the 5-limit intervals 393216/390625, known as the Würschmidt comma after music theorist José Würschmidt, and 2109375/2097152, known as the semicomma.

More significantly, perhaps, it tempers out 126/125, the septimal semicomma or starling comma. Because it tempers out both 81/80 and 126/125, it supports septimal meantone temperament. It also tempers out 1029/1024, the gamelan residue, and 1728/1715, the Orwell comma. Consequently it supports a wide variety of linear temperaments.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.102.186.234 (talk • contribs) 08:05, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree that it's pretty confusing. I don't even know what the Würschmidt comma or semicomma is, or what significance they have, or the gamelan residue and Orwell comma. However, I will attempt to explain, and we should probably also amend the article:

Some people like to classify temperaments based on the commas they "temper out"; which means that using this kind of tuning, a particular disagreement between two intervals that would be constructed with just intonation, called a comma, is eliminated by modifying each of those intervals slightly so that they line up. Interestingly, temperaments that have "tempered out" similar commas often have an easier time of converting music from one to the other, which is why it was written that this temperament might "support" other temperaments.

Now, the article doesn't do anything to explain this. Musical temperament explains it only a little. This kind of information is rather obscure (of the handfull of people that actuall play with temperaments, how many of them are interested in comma-compatibility? and how many of them would come to wikipedia for that information?). I'm not sure if it really belongs in the article. - Rainwarrior 17:04, 22 November 2006 (UTC)