Quarter-comma Meantone Tuning In quarter-comma meantone temperament the just major third is divided into two equal whole tones. One of the first rigorous mathematical descriptions of quarter-comma meantone comes from the 16th-century music theorist and organist Francisco de Salinas. Scala files are a commonly used standard for defining scales and temperaments, and a number of common and historical tunings are already included with your installation. Alt-tuner is a midi effect for your Digital Audio Workstation, very powerful.

The following is a list of intervals of extended meantone temperament.These intervals constitute the standard vocabulary of intervals for the Western common practice era.

In quarter-comma meantone, and any kind of meantone temperament tuning system that tempers the fifth to a size smaller than 700 cents, the comma is a diminished second, which can be equivalently defined as the difference between: minor second and augmented unison (also known as diatonic and chromatic semitones), or; As meantone temperaments are often described by what fraction of the syntonic comma is used to alter the perfect fifths, schismatic temperaments are often described by what fraction of the schisma is used to alter the perfect fifths (thus quarter-comma meantone … If the chromatic semitone is two-thirds of the size of the diatonic semitone, i.e.

I recounted that I'd found it useful for checking concertina tuning, and that some concertina players have gone for quarter comma meantone rather than equal temperament, so that if he were intending to offer some temperaments, that would be a potentially useful one.

You can sweep the whole spectrum of meantone (1/3 comma, 2/7 comma, 1/4 comma, 1/5 comma, 1/11 comma = 12-ET, 0 comma = pythagorean) and you can even do this with a foot pedal as you are playing, via midi learn. In that capacity, players will probably do so without knowledge of a quarter-comma meantone or …

What they do. The fifths are made smaller and the fourths larger by a quarter of a syntonic comma.

This forces some tampering with the fifths and fourths. For other instruments (winds, strings), players learn to make tuning adjustments as needed in whatever context. Quarter-comma meantone quickly became the most common exemplar of meantone temperament after it was first proposed in the 16th century, but it was also far from the only one proposed or used. The resulting twelve-tone system closely approximates to the historically important 1/3 comma meantone. 12-tone scales tuned in just intonation typically define three or four kinds of semitones. For instruments that have fixed tunings (like piano), yeah, it's impractical. A lute tuned in mean-tone temperament sounds a lot better. In mean-tone temperament, all thirds are pure, which gives a wonderfully warm, sonorous sound when playing chords. It also does well-temperament, any kind. Other systems of mean-tone temperament do not tune the 11 fifths a quarter comma too small, but for example one sixth comma (Silbermann) or two seventh (Zarlino 1558). In quarter-comma meantone, seven of them are diatonic, and 117.1 cents wide, while the other five are chromatic, and 76.0 cents wide; they differ by the lesser diesis of ratio 128:125 or 41.1 cents.

Scala Files and tuning. A friend is porting Flutini, the real time tuning analyser, to iPod. The ARIA Player uses Scala files (SCL) to achieve many scales and temperaments.