How to Tune 1/4-Comma Meantone Temperament by Ear

[@harpsichord]

What questions do you have about tuning meantone (or other) temperament? Let me know with a comment below!

[@bryanmellado2874]

I think I need some more insights on octave tuning, because in piano, it’s a whole world. How do you settle so easily on harpsichord? Or is it the temperament?

[@harpsichord]

@@bryanmellado2874 This is actually a very interesting question! Not having piano tuning experience myself, I didn't know that octave tuning on the piano was a complex issue! In terms of what I was taught for harpsichord tuning, I think it is directly related to the temperament: since the 4ths and 5ths (and 3rds, too, of course) will be of quite different sizes in different temperaments, I was taught to simply find an octave that works well (i.e. sounds "good") with both the 4th and 5th above the pitch. If the temperament has been set well before tuning all the octaves up and down, then it should be relatively easy to set the octaves by making sure that both the 4th and the 5th are the right size and sound "pleasing" for the temperament you're in. Does that answer your question? Let me know if you'd like more clarity and I'll try to provide it!

[@bryanmellado2874]

@@harpsichord I think in some term it does and in other term it doesn’t. The tuning deviation from et and meantone appear to be very different. I’ll do my research too.

[@martinh1277]

How long does it take to tune a harpsichord in Meantone? If you have tuned your harpsichord in Meantone, how long will it last until you think you should tune it again? Can you give the same information about Vallotti?

[@macbird-lt8de]

My question is are you sure that an app is better than your ear? I mean maybe it takes things too literally and is missing something that we not yet described.

[@icaroraulcostaolord4642]

There's an app on Google Play Store named "gstrings". I added Quarter-Comma Meantone as a custom temperament (putting the cent variation): A=-10,30 A#=6,80 B=-17,10 C=0,00 C#=24,00 D=6,80 D#=10,30 E=-13,70 F=3,40 F#=-20,50 G=-3,40 G#=-27,40 This app automatically change the A 440 to A 437,39 (-10,30c obviously) so if you want to keep A 440, just add 10,30c in the option "Orchestra tuning".

[@austin7]

Early music is so much more accessible with your videos. Your channel is truly a blessing thank you!

[@harpsichord]

Thank you so much! That means so much to me!

[@bryanmellado2874]

Fascinating. I tune pianos and had to start listening to all those intervals in equal temperament to check. It’s very hard work but it’s worth it. Especially with historical temperaments where you have different characteristics for different chords. Nice

[@mcginnundersscore]

why yes I do find myself wanting to learn how to tune 1/4 comma meantone by ear. Thanks!

[@nervousharpist]

I was tuning my harp with 1/4 comma meantone by accident for months and thought my pitch pedals were out of whack, because Id tune a Bb, but it wouldnt become an in tune B or B# when changing pedal, and the Bb in B# position didnt sound anything like my actual C string. It was the same for other strings and the 6 other pedals. Comparing octaves also sounded strange. So I paid for a regulation, but as soon as he finished and left and $200 later, I tuned up, and it was still weird. THEN today I used a different tuning app, it sounded fine, and thought... huh thats weird... checked my original tuner app settings and it had changed to 1/4 comma, from equal temperament!! 5 months iof playing out of tune because we tune to Cb and then put the pedals back in natural. depending on how you've tuned in Cb, the pedals will move by a semi tone in each notch, but the temperament wasnt equal so they were all over the place!!! Mystery solved. I didnt know what 1/4 comma temperament was before today. Thank you for your temperament videos! Now to text my teacher and give her a good laugh.

[@josephbodindeboismortier6903]

Best meantone tuning video on KZbin!

[@harpsichord]

Thank you! So glad you like it!

[@ryanlafollette4819]

I recently purchased a piano and learned to tune equal temperament by ear. I'm really fascinated by Renaissance music and wanted to tune my piano to quarter-comma meantone to better suit the music I'm playing, and this video is exactly what I needed. Thanks!

[@harpsichord]

Wonderful! I'm so glad this video will be helpful for you!

[@ryanlafollette4819]

@@harpsichord I finally managed to set the temperament and it's sounding good so far. Thanks again for the useful information!

[@matheuscoura444]

So helpful! Thank you :)

[@andrewcamacho4092]

Very interesting. I can now hear how impure thirds are on the piano. In this temperament there is a "wolf" from E flat to G sharp. In other temperaments are there more "wolfs"?

[@locutuspicard1]

Always interesting to study how different performers temper their instruments and go about doing so. Also, I wanted to point out that the reason a lot of people tune downward first, then up, is because the bigger, longer bass strings change the tension on the instrument more than the top strings. Therefore, if you tune from the middle down first, you're less likely to destabilize the rest of the instrument when tuning the top later. I won't swear by the validity of this, but it does seem to work for me. It may also be that it matters far less on a virginal than it does on a French double.

[@photojlemj6768]

Thanks, this helped me!

[@YavorArseniev]

Thank you very much for the fantastic as always video! Guess I'm about to find out how good my ears are and what a meantone tuned hammered dulcimer sounds like 😁

[@harpsichord]

Haha, awesome!

[@cristobalvicentemartinez8437]

Thankyou, Alice

[@gilad1arnon]

Fantastic explanation! Question: does the G# mean there is no agreable fminor chord (containing the very sharp "a flats")?

[@hiw9528]

How can you do the physical movement so exactly? I mean how you avoid to do too big movements while tuning? I play a rather big hammer dulcimer and have this problem. Not the problem of hearing but of the exact minimalistic movement.

[@dellalmcdonald]

Thank you for your videos. They’re very informative and clear. When you say to check the intervals with your Cleartune app when you’re tuning, can you explain how to do that? Can’t quite see your iPad. Are you checking individual notes or is there some way to check an interval? Thanks in advance!

[@harpsichord]

Thanks so much for your kind words and for your question! Sorry that was unclear in the video-yes, I mean to check the notes individually with the app since it can’t “listen” to more than one note at a time. Hope that helps! :)

[@dellalmcdonald]

Thank you very much!

[@pianistganga]

what is the best temprament tunning for harmonium?

[@amitmarkel]

Cool video, thanks for uploading! Question - is the instrument action able to shift right or left? Noticed two gaps and parts apart from the cyan ones

[@harpsichord]

Thanks for your question! The keyboard on my harpsichord doesn't actually shift right or left at all, and I'm not quite sure why there are those gaps, actually (especially the large one to the right of the keyboard). Many harpsichords built today do have shifting keyboards, however, which allow them to transpose by a half-step (or even more) by shifting which strings are plucked by which keys. That's not true on virginals (like my harpsichord), though, because the jack aren't parallel to the keyboard, so if the keys shifted over the jacks and strings would collide. Hopefully that makes sense, but let me know if you have any more questions!

[@karenarnett5167]

Trying to learn some tuning methods - though I'm not a keyboardist I am interested in this topic. Should I have Cleartune set at just intonation in order to check the fourths and fifths as being slightly off pure? Or Pythagorean? Or do you just set your tuner on 1/4 comma meantone and see if your intervals line up with Cleartune?

[@philiprobinson7332]

Hi. When you check the pitch with Clear Tune, how far is 2 beats per second on the dial? Thanks

[@alankramer8734]

I’m new to tuning. Does “wide” mean we sharpen the top note and/or flatten the bottom note? Narrow vice-versa? Thanks

[@harpsichord]

Thanks for the question! It depends on whether the interval is "wide" (i.e. too wide) or if it needs to be wider (i.e. its too narrow). So if an interval is "too wide," that means that either the top note is too sharp or the bottom note is too flat. In a tuning situation, you will have already tuned one of the notes in your interval, so if the interval is too wide that means the note you're tuning is too sharp if it's ABOVE the other note, or too flat if it's BELOW the other note. The opposite will be true for intervals that are "too narrow." An interval is too narrow when the note you're tuning is FLAT if its above the other note, or SHARP if it's below the other note. Hopefully that makes sense and isn't more confusing! Let me know!

[@alankramer8734]

@@harpsichord Thank you! So if I had a perfect 4th c'-f' and the c' was my note in tune and I wanted to make the c'-f' 4th narrowed at say 2 beats a second, I'd need to slightly flatten the f'? Conversely, making the c'-f' wide I'd sharpen the f'?

[@alankramer8734]

@@harpsichord Perfect! Thanks so much!

[@harpsichord]

@@alankramer8734 Yes, this is correct!

[@alankramer8734]

@@harpsichord Fantastic teaching! Maybe another step by step video for 1/6 comma to build off of the 1/4 comma? Or a more sophisticated temp like Valotti? Now that I got this wide and narrow situation worked out.

[@RitaPas]

isn't that a spinet? How could I "practise" tuning if I haven't an historical keyboard to tune? Could I use a guitar, for instance, to learn to count beats?

[@ArturoEscorza]

You can tune a modern piano... you can tune a virtual instrument (VSTi) and, no, you can't tune a guitar like that, because guitars with their frets, have equal half steps.

[@Lucius_Chiaraviglio]

@@ArturoEscorza . . . Unless you have one of these guitars: www.youtube.com/@microtonalguitar

[@RitaPas]

Dear @Alice, it looks the Bitcount company, who made Cleartune, has no more a web site. Do you know anything about that?

[@harpsichord]

I didn't know anything about that, so thank you for letting me know! Good to have that information!

[@rko2016]

hey, i had a thought, i was wondering, you start by tuning your F to the 440A, you do this because it's a third right? if the goal of this meantone is to get pure thirds, why bother tuning fifths, then tuning them down by a vague amount by ear, why don't you just keep making pure thirds? shouldn't that create the same effect with less steps?

[@Lucius_Chiaraviglio]

You will run out of notes in the set of 12 and hit a wolf interval before you get to all the notes you need, because tuning in thirds skips by four intervals of fifth (whoever came up with this haywire nomenclature anyway). Going up: C ==> E ==> G♯ ==>B♯ (this is already past the wolf interval, and since we're not in 12 tone equal temperament, B♯ is not the same as C). Going down: C ==> A♭ (this is already past the wolf interval). Either way, if you try to tune the third pure through the wolf interval, you end up moving the wolf and detuning another note. And either way, you have missed some notes. And actually, no matter what, you are going to run out of notes if you tune only by thirds, because of the skipping ahead, combined with the fact that meantone in general makes a helix of fifths instead of a closed circle of fifths (the fifths being needed to specify those in-between notes that you miss with just thirds). The exceptions are at specific values: If you flatten the fifths by 1/12 Pythagorean comma = approximately 10/107 syntonic comma, you close the helix into a circle at 12 notes, for 12 equal divisions of the octave (12EDO). Likewise, if you flatten the fifths by 1/31 of the comma 617673396283947/562949953421312 (the 31 note equivalent of the Pythagorean comma), you get 31EDO, which is close to but not exactly the same as quarter-comma meantone (actually more like 20/83-comma), and then you could tune by almost-but-not-quite pure (actually slightly sharp) thirds all the way around. (Note that it is possible to find videos on KZbin of playing a harpsichord that has 19 notes per octave, and even a few videos of ones that have 31 notes per octave -- in the former case, they have flat/sharp keys split into 2 keys and add a flat/sharp key between each of B/C and E/F, and in the latter case they split all of these flat/sharp keys again, including the ones added between B/C and E/F. You can also find a few videos of harpsichords with some in-between number of flats/sharps.)

[@rko2016]

@@Lucius_Chiaraviglio wow thanks for the thoughtful and thourough reply

[@Lucius_Chiaraviglio]

@@rko2016 I'll also add that 1/3-comma meantone is almost exactly the same as as 19 equal divisions of the octave (19EDO), and it makes minor thirds (not major thirds) pure. So you can actually go all the way around the circle of minor thirds on a harpsichord having 19 notes per octave, tuning them pure, and the accumulated error will be too small to notice (I calculate 0.938 cents, but it is so small that errors from rounding to 3 or fewer digits after the decimal point are actually significant, so I made sure to run all the digits I could through the calculation). If you do the analogous thing and tune a 31 note per octave harpsichord with major thirds pure all the way around the circle of major thirds,, the error will be 6.069 cents, which gets you a dog (more of a puppy) fifth of 702.647 cents (compare to Pythagorean true 3/2 fifth = 701.955 cents) that only stands out because of the contrast between it and the quarter-comma meantone fifth of 696.578 cents. Edit: The above isn't as simple as it sounds, because of the skipping nature of tuning by major thirds, meaning that more than one of them will span the wolf/dog spot, so you would still have to do some tuning by fifths.

[@endezeichengrimm]

Cleartune is not on the Google play store.

[@mrlucasa223]

Mean tone temperaments sound better than equal temperament in my opinion 😅