The Trouble with 12 Tone Equal Temperament

[@AdamNeely]

The lick :22. Also, this was absolutely amazing man!

[@casperleerink4031]

Haha this video is so good, and this comment makes it even better

[@The_SOB_II]

lick purists who don't play music much (like me) thing that the 6th/7th notes being different is important maybe

[@undergroundindy]

@Adam Neely haha I love to imagine that Kayhan Kalhor is sneakily adding in The Lick to his music

[@EricssonB]

Adam, it was your video I watched like two years ago that first showed me not-equal temperament tunings. I think it was, anyways. ...are there any options for guitars to try these without buying a new fretboard? Seems that guitar is very equal-temp designed.

[@BigDaddyWes]

Hater's will say it's autotune.

[@AlexBallMusic]

"12 different pitches, all of which he thinks of as some kind of E" Sounds like me trying to sing.

[@hermask815]

Alex Ball i can do that too, imagine me trying "one note Samba" without ever hitting the note on the sheet.

[@jornprenger7926]

Alex you are a God, how can you insult God

[@goodcyrus]

There is a lot of inaccurate information in this video, David. Almost all Middle Eastern modes are cousins of the Medieval/Liturgical modes. I have 2 videos on the topic. Look up Persian and Greek modes. Bayati is just Phrygian with a raised 2nd degree, Bayati in E : E F+ G A B (B-) C D E. In fact your image at 7:28" shows that Sikah, Bayati and Rast are all modes of the same scale, Your 3 lines are the shifted versions of each other. And These were just a few of the issues. There are no 12 versions of Ek, as the interval between C and Ek should have been measured and not just the pitch of the Ek. There are a lot of different C-D intervals in the history of Western music as well. There is more variability in the C to D interval than C to Ek. The interval between D to F+ is 340 cents in Persian music plus minus 4 or 5 cents! and closer to 150 cents in Arabic and Turkish music as they intentionally tried to temper the scales for modulation after a conference in Cairo 90 yrs ago or so.

[@dunehaggar772]

😂

[@boptillyouflop]

@@goodcyrus To be honest, Western musicians don't really understand modes anyways... It all ends up being just major or minor with extra sharps or flats (especially once you lay down the harmony). In particular, the Sikah/Huzam kind of mode makes no sense whatsoever from a Western music kind of perspective.

[@0davyjones0]

The Central African concept of different octaves tuned differently on the same instrument is beyond amazing. Thank you so much!

[@zehragulay2894]

as someone who is born and living in Turkey I am having hard time telling that microtunes are "out of tune" they are just nostalgic

[@electric7487]

Doesn't Turkish music theory nowadays use 53 notes per octave?

[@StephenAntKneeBk5]

Lost tunings feels like lost languages. The concept of "grayness" is also used by Alan Belkin to refer to music that's "gone wrong" in some way, often relating to the harmony. I thought this video was going to cover a similar topic, but pleased it was all about tuning. The section on Kora and other African turning systems was particularly interesting to me. Thank you David Bruce.

[@jimi2k7]

"Lost tunings feels like lost languages" Wow man this blow my mind...

[@alex_evstyugov]

This video is so good I've watched it several times by now and I have no intent of stopping. I've also sent it straight to all my Iranian friends (I'm not Iranian at all, and frankly I couldn't relate less, but that's the whole point, innit). So far they've all been commenting back how exceptionally well-put-together it is. No surprises there. Thank you, Bruce. (Edit: sorry, David, of course. You can tell just how agitated I am. It's just that privately I always call you "that Bruce composer guy" all the time. Sorry again.)

[@AquilaLupus9]

I mean. Bruce sounds more badass. There's Bruce Wayne and Bruce Lee. Bruce is a badass name. King David vs Goliath is good too. But I still prefer Bruce. Because the Bruce's of the world kick ass.

[@3Slippers]

Just some thoughts on intonation and tuning; speaking as a professional violinist, the notion of an equal temperament is only a very rudimentary approximation of what is in-tune. I switch between playing in terms of the blend and over/under-tones produced, especially with open strings (a clear example of how radical this actually is is playing an A string first position B in-tune with an open D and then switching to play the open E with this previously in-tune B) playing chords that blend nicely (that lower major 3rd as an example), expressive melodic intonation with notes pushing and pulling to important tones in a key and pushing to new keys and colouring things expressively be that sharper or flatter. We vibrate pitches expressively, to varying degrees, constantly. We slide around. We listen to the bass to place our notes with context, often avoiding open strings to do this. In an orchestral setting, you need a great deal of varying vibrato and pitches for it to sound nice. If you just record yourself playing with your intonation and vibrato 20 times to try to make a section it sounds very strange. With my composer hat on for a sec, I'm fascinated by expressive and meaningful use of freely (even if painfully expressively slowly) sliding pitch.

[@clearlight808]

Awesome video. Loved it. People need to talk about this stuff more. The influence on the industrial revolution on and mass production really "fiinished off" a lot of regional tuning systems. You hear a lot about the 440 vs 432 hertz "conspiracy" but rarely about the more obvious 12 tet "conspiracy whose hegemony has made most of the world use a single truning system.

[@electric7487]

Throughout my life, I was only ever exposed to 12-TET. I was never even told that other tunings existed, so I never thought of notes as anything other than fixed frequencies of 440 Hz times 2 raised to the power of some whole number multiple of 12. Or 24. I had developed "perfect pitch" and deluded myself into thinking that it was some kind of superpower. Come late 2022, and I finally got back into classical music on my own, during which I learned about the history of tuning in Western music. It was here that I discovered tunings such as 19-TET and 31-TET which are the modern equivalents of historical 1/3-comma and 1/4-comma meantone, and since then, microtonality and xenharmony have become my main interests within music as a whole. Since then, I've fundamentally changed the way I think about music. I've also become increasingly disdainful towards how the terminology and concepts that most people are taught are specific to 12-TET, especially how there's no mention whatsoever that they're specific to 12-TET. People are being "locked in" to one tuning and they don't even get to know about alternatives.

[@element4element4]

Woaaahh, clicked on a video by one of favorite youtube music channels and it starts with Kayhan Kalhor, a Kurdish musician from the region I am from. Wish I could double subscribe.

[@1hotday1]

Love this! I realised that marimbas from Africa were tuned differently a few years ago. I would listen to one group from Africa then another and the relationship between pitches seemed to follow some kind of rule. To me, at the time, I just thought of the tuning as pentatonic and getting sharper as it went up. I remember thinking it couldn't be a coincidence that the tunings followed some kind of pattern. Any way, it's awesome to have what you learned here. When you said string players can attest that leading tones are sharper etc. That made me drift off to Blues guitar. The Blues uses tones in the cracks, too. Skip James recordings show us that singing can also be in the cracks. Peace and love brother David!

[@Studio-62]

I was in Baku Azerbaijan a few years ago and got to hear some really outstanding local musicians and singers. It took me several days to understand what was happening but eventually it was clear the traditional music was based on divisions of 6. The harmonies were much deeper and I learned about the Mugam tradition and the various modes. I purchased an old book in Russian which explained those modes and also purchased a Tar, the national instrument for approximately $100, and also a Balaban, a double-reed flute with a dark rich sound. I also listened to the radio and found rich and diverse mixtures of western jazz and pop mixed with the traditional music. One day I was listening and the radio played Herbie Hancocks "Hang Up Your Hang Ups" which gives an idea of where things were coming from. I also saw several excellent live jazz performances. Before I left I was gifted a Def which is a kind of hand drum used to accompany Muhammad's singers, who improvise on classical Azeri poetry.

[@ZapataCarratala]

Being an active member of the early music community I am glad the topic of tuning is being brought up in this fantastic channel!. The input from other cultures is a welcome and illuminating one but, as you briefly mention at the end, only looking at our western musical tradition we already see the issue. As a harpsichord player, I can say that one of the most appealing acoustic features of the instrument over modern keyboards (with equal temperament) is the common practice to use baroque temperaments on them, which tend to have much more accurate thirds and sixths in central keys. These intervals are the "souls" of triad chords and their inversions; one easily sees that they have served as the foundation of the emotional language of western tonal music for the most of modern history. Until I learnt about temperaments (when I had to tune my own harpsichord) I couldn't really tell why some pieces sounded so much richer and exciting on the harpsichord versus on the piano. As much as I love the piano, my favourite instrument of the western classical tradition by far, I think that it is a little tragedy that they are commonly tuned to equal temperament. I highly recommend the book "How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony: And Why You Should Care" by Ross Duffin on this topic, it reads lightly and it gives a very good overview of the history of western temperaments. I feel this reference adds nicely to the points being raised in your video, David. Thanks for the amazing job on your channel!

[@AnHebrewChild]

As a fanatic for Renaissance & baroque music, I really appreciate what you wrote. It would take years of listening to quality HIP before my brain began to understand why my ears were drawn to certain recordings much more than others. A lot of this, turns out, would have to do with specialized tunings specific to composition & instrument. "Why do I LOVE that sound so much ___? What IS that going on there?" I'm still on the very front end of figuring this all out, but what a fun journey of discovery. On that note, I'll be picking up the book you brought up. This isn't the first time someone has recommended it, so I think it's time I finally read it. Have you heard of the YT channel, "Early Music Sources"? Wonderfully researched & nicely-produced content. They have a vid series on historical tunings / temperaments which I think you'd very much enjoy. Be blessed

[@michaelbalyeat4354]

This is amazing! The xylophone tuning towards the end blew my mind, keep up the good content!

[@MrTrumpetalex1848]

It seems to me, that in recent years more and more musicians from the western music tradition have started to incorporate other tuning systems into their music. For example Imbrahim Maalouf, who brought the arabic tradition and Jazz together (I recommend his Album Kalthoum). The great Jacob Collier experiments just intonation among other thing, I suppose. Hard to wrap the head around all the amazing things that he's doing. And then there is the unfortunately lesser known Philipp Gerschlauer, who has developed a system to play 128 notes per ocatve on the alto saxophone. He released an album in 2017 (with Jack DeJohnette on drums!). If you're interested in microtonal music, be sure to check that out! So with this possibly increasing interest in other tuning methods also in the west, maybe at some point in the not too distant future the musicians from other cultures won't feel the necessity to adjust their tuning to equal temperament.

[@ascendedalchemist2551]

My favorite microtonalist is brendan byrnes and my favorite microtonal tuning system is 22equal divisions of the octave

[@cihant5438]

That last point about multiple instruments is key. The amount of opportunities for polyphony available in Turkish or Arabic music is limited. It is harder to have multiple instruments play different things, let alone an entire orchestra if you are playing music based on maqam. This can probably be overcome with some ingeniuity, but it is really not in the tradition. When I listened to Ben Johnston's string quartets, I realized that it is possible to somehow use microtonal tunings with multiple instruments. It does require some nontrivial musical genius (like Johnston) to do it, though.

[@vahagnvardanyan]

I wish that Chebotarian's book on Aram Khachaturian's counterpoint were translated. There are many ways to introduce counterpoint to Eastern music. I would say the typical one is to start a countermelody on the ripercussa of the scale, that is in a distictively different division of the measure.

[@vahagnvardanyan]

There is one big difficulty that arises with counterpoint in Middle Eastern music. It is meter. It is very difficult to compose a counterpoint to a melody not knowing when it is going to end beforehand.

[@mintegral1719]

It's not quite as cool as using "real" instruments, but technology makes it very possible to play microtonal music along with other people! Just a few weeks ago I told my bandmate "ok, I'm gonna break your brain for a minute", tuned both our MIDI keyboards to 17edo, and told him to sit down and just experiment. I played chords and followed along with whatever he was doing. This was his first ever experience with microtonal music, and he had a blast-- and played some stuff that sounded pretty awesome, as well!

[@mr88cet]

Very interesting: I was not aware that Central Africa has tunings much like Indonesian-Gamelans’ “Slendro” (approximately 5TET) and “Pelog” (approximately 7TET)! Thanks, Bruce.

[@electric7487]

Isn't Pelog approximately 9-TET?

[@mr88cet]

@@electric7487, I don’t claim to be a super-expert on gamelan music, but I’m pretty sure it’s 7.

[@electric7487]

@@mr88cet Most sources I've read online say that Pelog can be approximated by a 7-note subset of 9TET instead of 7TET. And in both Slendro and Pelog, octaves are often stretched.

[@mr88cet]

@@electric7487, probably worthwhile looking it up in the Xenharmonic Wiki (KZbin probably won’t let me post the URL).

[@DJPastaYaY]

Very interesting video about different tuning systems! I think it is always fascinating to hear how non 12 tone equal temperament tuning systems sound like.

[@JonasViatte]

This is the best video on music I have seen on KZbin! I hope that the music world opens up more to different microtonal tunings.

[@heron6462]

I've had a similar experience, but on a much smaller scale (pun not intended), to your Iranian friend. I keep my harpsichord tuned to Young's temperament. A few years ago I took part (as a flautist) in a performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto no. 3. The piano was in equal temperament, of course, and I found it excruciating at first to hear all those wide thirds. I tried to bribe the tuner (who also tunes my piano to Young's temperament) £50 to secretly put the concert hall's Bösendorfer into Young's. Unfortunately he refused.

[@Hecatonicosachoron]

Yeah, Valotti is my favourite.

[@akf2000]

😀😀😀 bribing a tuner

[@rosiefay7283]

Bit difficult to find an unequal compromise temperament in which both c minor and E major sound good.

[@InventorZahran]

I have the opposite experience: my brain is so used to hearing equal-tempered thirds that the narrower justly tuned thirds sound "out of tune" to me.

[@vidursury]

Great video! You made such a good point. You really are a great musician, and with such a fine, diverse understanding. I love watching your videos, they're so insightful. Being interested in international music, I know of the following, some of which you discussed in the video (since you asked viewers what they know about....sorry if this is too long): 1. Quarter tone systems - Arabic (Near Eastern, Mediterranean African) - 24 tone somewhat equal temperament, Iranian (Persian, Azeri) - maybe 17 tone temperament (was used during the Sassanian dynasty), Turkish - 53 tone temperament (9 commas = whole tone), and Silk Route (Uzbek, Northern Tajik) should also probably be among these but I can't make out a difference from 12 TET. Talking of octave inequivalence, that applies to these systems, where tetrachords, smaller than octaves, are more basic and strung together to make modes, which may not exactly be of octave length. 2. The inland northern half of Africa has many specific pentatonic tunings that are microtonal, called 'pure' by a certain master musician. Edit: Actually pentatonic quarter tone scales! Quarter tones quite similar to Mediterranean North Africa above. 3. Senegambia (from where the Kora you discussed is) has 7 tone (unequal?) tunings used in modal harmony. 4. The Malay Archipelago has some number of tunings, among which Malaysian - Sumatran non - Gamelan styles sound almost like equal temperament to me, and 5 tone tunings, that you discussed, among Java and I think even Sulawesi and South Philippines, as used in Gamelan and even otherwise. 5. Northeastern Asia (China, Korea, Japan) used to have 12 tone tunings (established in Ancient China, called Shi Er Lu) possibly different from 12 tone equal temperament, but now since some centuries the temperament has been more equalized, especially in China, officially. 6. Continental Southeast Asia has 7 tone temperament tunings, which I think, are at least theoretically equal. 7. South Asia, extending up to Southern Afghanistan has an interesting case, where what was probably older 22 tone temperament, doesn't seem to have been clearly maintained. Equal temperament is quite widespread now, and I think only a few keen Indian classical musicians can even tell apart microtones. 8. Lower half of Africa (Tropical Africa), as you mentioned, has various 5 and 7 tone tunings, whose divergence from 12 TET sounds less obvious to me, particularly since music of this region mostly uses harmonic tonality. Many Southern African systems use musical bows and the scalar material is more or less like the overtones of the musical bows (very similar to just intonation) 9. Turkmenistan and Southern Tajikistan are separate and interesting exceptional cases. Though they lie close to the quarter tone systemic regions, their tunings are definitely not quarter tone based, but still visibly microtonal. In fact I'd say that music from here is quite different from those other regions even otherwise. It seems like not much investigation has been done on this, but to me, seems to be a different kind of 12 tone temperament. Since pop music worldwide tends to have some kinds of Western influences (which is also why I think non - Western pop musicians combining such different tunings and still being coherent is impressive), I feel that classical music styles of different parts of the world, which tend to be most structured, are most likely to maintain more ancient tunings. My opinion on the usage of 12 TET in most Western music is that, rather than ensemble playing being the reason, harmony and equality between keys would be possibly more significant - especially with the orchestrational factor of blending among instruments that combine to form a single harmony. This sort of blending and interlocking is general not a feature (sometimes even undesirable!) of many other old international styles of ensemble music - there the instruments are only in tune with each other, often not equal between keys. I'm particularly saying this because many of the West and East Asian regions for example feature ensemble playing significantly (eg. classical chamber ensembles of these regions), and then all instruments are consistent in tune, and of course, harmony isn't used, all of these feature melodic, modal tonality in a heterophonic texture. Also I think that using more than around 12 tones in an octave along with proper harmony may be kind of messy, which is probably why most of such music is experimental. In the case of Senegambia and Lower Africa, since harmony is used, it is generally harder for me to tell tunings apart from 12 TET. Particularly for quarter tone systems, since the number of overall tones is more than 12, I think merging that with harmony would be very hard, although as such different tunings in non harmonic tonal systems might not be really adaptable to harmony anyway. And in the end, there are also tunings of broadly pitched instruments, like most drums, and these also vary worldwide but are consistent within certain regions, as I found out recently :D Although I hope that these other tubing systems don't go extinct, nevertheless, I'd say that the proliferation of 12 tone equal temperament has been highly beneficial for worldwide cross communication. Again, wonderful video as always!

[@fastfred321]

WTF? A bit too much time in your hands!

[@Majromax]

Regarding the xylophone tunings of central Africa and Java, what are the overtone series from the traditional instruments? Western music cares about dividing the octave in large part because our traditional instruments (strings, woodwinds) have fairly clean overtone series. But the instrument shown at 10:40 has fairly thick-looking bars, and the sound decays quickly after the instrument is struck. In that case, the natural harmony for the first overtone might not be the octave. If my uninformed supposition is correct, it could go a way towards explaining why the traditional tuning schemes place less emphasis on the octave as a fundamental unit of pitch division.

[@chethelesser]

Overtone series are pretty much the same for every instrument within the given laws of physics and atmosphere of the planet we happen to inhabit. "Western music cares about dividing the octave" not because of the instruments, but because it was difficult to play in ensembles while different instruments were tuned justly to different fundamentals thus creating dissonance while playing the same note.

[@Majromax]

> Overtone series are pretty much the same for every instrument within the given laws of physics and atmosphere of the planet we happen to inhabit. Yes, but I'm wondering about non-idealities. Pianos are tuned with a Railsback curve because of inharmonicity due to string thickness/stiffness, and as a result the octave on a piano is ever so slightly sharp. The instruments depicted here seem to be non-ideal, hence my speculation. It may be that one of our classic tunings (say a Pythagorean tuning) would result in noticeable dissonance with these instruments, even when playing with itself rather than as part of an ensemble.

[@uglytattoo]

@@chethelesser The overtone series for a note on a given instrument isn't the same thing as the harmonic series for a given pitch. Strings (and presumably, thick xylophone bars) have inharmonicity as Majromax said, tuning Caribbean steel drums involves tuning the overtones as well, and ordinary metal bells have inharmonic overtones. Or take this video as an example: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rGWofauBgLloiNk The overtones on this rubber "drumskin" is 1, 1.92, 2.64 and 2.76 times the base frequency.

[@uglytattoo]

@@Majromax Have you heard of "Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale" by William Sethares? It's a book about how the timbre of an instrument relates to what intervals played on it sound consonant or dissonant. I haven't read it yet, but from what I know about it, it seems sort of like you're talking about the same kind of thing. If anything, take a listen to the sound samples on the web page, they're really interesting. sethares.engr.wisc.edu/ttss.html

[@Soarin_Altiss]

I was a part of my University's gamelan Ensemble, and it was actually very important that the tunings between instruments were offset enough to allow a shimmering texture.

[@Bigandrewm]

There's a small tradition in the U.S. coming from Harry Partch and, competely separately, the early microtonalists including Terry Riley and La Monte Young, of tuning to pure intervals but incorporating much higher harmonics into the harmonic language than people typically see. Riley's "The Harp Of New Albion" is a great example of re-tuning a piano and taking advantage of the resulting unequal relationship between keys. Also, when the strings in a piano harp are tuned to resonate more strongly with each other, the sound just becomes ridiculously rich. I'm also a big fan of the string quartets of Ben Johnston, who is a student of Partch's.

[@00blodyhell00]

This kind of music is not just limited to the U.S, it is an increasingly 'common' part of European music too.

[@thimkthimk]

Ben Johnston has a "Suite for Microtonal Piano" as well. Didn't know he was a student of Partch! kzbin.info/www/bejne/rKi0qXafa9WGe80

[@Bigandrewm]

Yup! Other massive works for piano specifically with this idea in mind that I know of are La Monte Young's Well-Tuned Piano, Michael Harrison's Revelation, and Kyle Gann's Hyperchromatica. Although, that last one is not for traditional piano, but is for 3 Disklaviers.

[@furmanarrangements]

Another Ben Johnston fan checking in here! I wonder if the new Dorico update is flexible enough to render demos of some of his scores...

[@Bigandrewm]

@@furmanarrangements I use Dorico. Yes it is. I think that some people are a bit skeptical of it's limitations compared to Johnston notation, but IMHO the limitations aren't a big deal. A fairly common approach is to set the custom tonality to 1200EDO and just set pitches according to cent deviations, and to add accidentals as you need them. Dorico only recognizes one accidental per note, so (for example) if you want both a -A and a --A, you will need to create one accidental for '-' and another for '--'. I don't think that's really much of a hassle, because once you create a 'compound' accidental, it's there and you don't have to recreate it. And there won't really be *that* many unless you're doing some really funky modulations like in Johnston's String Quartet No. 7.

[@akf2000]

man that kora piece is so beautiful

[@isakhungnes4416]

Am I the only one finding the hardino tuning more beautiful than regular tuning?

[@Lugodu87]

I think it sounds so good because it's different, refreshing to hear but still close enough to our scales that we're not lost

[@JazzGuitarScrapbook]

No

[@Noelciaaa]

Yes!! Truly it sounds so perfect right away! There's no turning back, now equal temperament will sound off forever haha

[@stein0niets]

Yes it does sounds beautiful in its context. But so those the one with the higher 2nd. I will not have my guitar re-fretted to it any day soonXD

[@ambroisevalet]

good luck making music out of it

[@brandonbulls2365]

You started with the clip of the gamelan players, but never explained that tuning system and how it relates to their instrumentation. I'd love to hear you're take on the tuning of gamelan.

[@kaktotak8267]

Gamelan is a fascinating type of music. Complex, tightly organized, yet immediately understandable.

[@MNolanMillar]

I very briefly played in my university's gamelan orchestra. It was a lot of fun, and it was amazing being enveloped by the sounds when everyone was playing. We played, if I recall correctly, the more sedate Javanese style, but I really like the Balinese style with its frequent changes in intensity.

[@victoreijkhout6146]

See the part at the end where he relates music from central Africa and Java. While he says "xylophone", the article at 10:55 clearly says "Gamelan".

[@boptillyouflop]

There are two gamelan tuning systems: Pelog, and Slendro. Slendro is equipentatonic (ex: notes are spaced 245-262-228-240-230 cents on Son of Lion's Slendro set). Pelog is a pentatonic scale that alternates close notes and wide gaps (ex: the 1-2-3-5-6-1 notes are spaced 170-145-402-113-375 cents on the Pelog set). Pelog sets have the additional "4" and "7" notes to allow for playing transposed versions (playing 4-5-6-1-2-4 gives you 127-113-375-170-420 cents, 5-6-7-2-3-5 gives you 113-175-370-145-402 cents).

[@The_SOB_II]

@@kaktotak8267 TBH I don't immediately understand it, but I still think it's cool

[@jakko123rock]

I'd be interested to hear you analyze Harry Partch and his tuning system. Good stuff!

[@simonrodriguez4685]

I recently listened to some pieces for Partch's instruments from different composers, awesome stuff.

[@Animal.broadcast2024]

Great video on an often overlooked subject!

[@markusnyman4768]

My favorite European tuning system is, I think, from the early or mid 15th century. It's pure fifths all the way, but you put the wolf between the notes B and F#. The sharp notes were usually used mainly for thirds (in relation to the bass), and the interval B-F# was a rare beast as sharp keys were not used. What you get, is a pythagorean tuning, but with a number of delightfully pure major thirds (sharps were used for leading tones).

[@doot1176]

2:44 reminds me of how when I started to play a second instrument it used to take me a minute to switch between them (alto sax and bass clarinet, witch are very similar, but are both transposition instruments) because I had to remember that in the lowest octave they play different, but now I hardly have to think when I switch, other than scales sometimes.

[@dabeamer42]

When I was at Michigan State University in the late 70's, the music school's resident piano tuner (Owen Jorgensen) put on a tour-de-force concert one night, with at least 7 (perhaps 9?) pianos on the stage, all tuned differently. A short piece was played on each to illustrate something of its temperament. This was at the very beginning of the period instrument bandwagon, with its historically-correct tunings. The highlight of the evening was the premiere of a piece written for him by the head of the composition department (James Niblock, if I recall). Jorgensen called it "seven and five" tuning. The seven white notes of the piano were tuned in an equidistant fashion (from each other), and the five black keys similarly equidistant from each other. But the tunings of the white and black notes didn't have anything to do with the other color, except to follow one rule: as one went up a "chromatic" scale on the keyboard, going from a white to black note (or vice-versa) the up/down "direction" was never violated -- that is, going from say, F to F# could not go DOWN in pitch. Some of the adjacent-note intervals were vanishingly small, only a handful of cents. I don't recall Jorgensen mentioning anything about those equidistant tunings in your video; my recollection is that he came up with this tuning merely as an intellectual exercise. I also don't recall getting anything from the evening other than a bit of a chin-scratch, and something to talk to the other theory nerds about.

[@AbdulazizShabakouh]

Iranian, Arabic or Turkish or Ozbaki etc. we all use the same Makams, but we can differentiate each one by ear. our Kuwaiti Rast theoretically is the same but while performing you can tell who is who or from where! in Iran they deal with the intervals according to their own style, the same goes to Egyptians or Kuwaitis. that's why he could perform so many pitches on E. (different regions) imagine that we can transpose these Makams on any pitch on the 12 tone, some times we transpose every scale or Makam according to a micro tone (1/4 tone). you're great thank you!

[@stein0niets]

12:00 love it it really sounds much better that way. there is a Sikah-Hijaz maqam that's an in-between version of a Double Harmonic scale 1 3 1 2 1 3 1 and a Sikah (tetrachord) type 1,5 2 1,5 2 1,5 2 1,5. So there is also 3 types of intervals, four smaller then a semi-and-a-quarter tone, two bigger then a whole tone and one aprox. a whole tone. By the way there is also the concept of all the pitches not being fixed and moving (most of the time) inflections, within Carnatic and North Indian music. Thanks very much for sharing the name of the composing software will have to check it out since my focus is very much on non standard tuning latetly.

[@gpeddino]

This video deserves some kind of award.

[@amitavabanerjea1]

A similar analysis in terms of frequency ratios would be even more interesting as consonance between notes is based on the resonance of their audible overtones.

[@EmptyKingdoms]

Even common practice period (western) music was tuned to 5-limit temperaments, sometimes with more than 12 pitch classes, sometimes with only 12. Hearing a meantone harpsichord is much different to a 12-edo one.

[@THEBIASEDCOMPOSER]

Love it! Thank you. Nothing is out of tune for me. Not that I do not hear that the notes are different, but my ears want to hear different tunings. Thanks again.

[@kassemir]

Very enlightening video. I feel like the conditioning of equal temperament is very strong, and does indeed make it hard to perceive the nuances of other tuning systems. It's like your brain almost adjusts it for you, like using a hammer to fit in puzzle pieces where they don't actually belong. I know I felt like this a few times through this. I do however, also, think that knowing your shortcomings and conditioning is step 1 towards broadening your horizons musically. So yeah, again, great video, good stuff :)

[@whatabouttheearth]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/amLKY5mJjr9nicU

[@TheApostleofRock]

I had no idea how much i would lovee this video until you showed the word tuning. I'm now 1:50 in and assuming that I'm going to love every second from here on out

[@2li678]

My first fiddle teacher's wife was an ethnomusicologist who did her dissertation field work in indigenous Kuna communities in Panama. I remember her saying that their panpipes are equiheptatonic (though she used the phrase "divided into seven equally spaced notes").

[@shaun2133]

Great concise video. I first got into this subject as a kid when I read about Harry Partch (whose music I really don't understand but he's fun to read about). I re-fretted an electric guitar and made it 19 tet although I haven't written much on it. I have stuck with 12 tet for what I like to write, perhaps I'm too lazy and vested in 12 to venture outside of it for creative purposes. I do enjoy and listen to music written outside of 12 and equal divisions. I hope many of these non-western divisions are brought back into practice not just for traditional music but also as a color template for western popular music as well.

[@sultanvoices]

Thank you David for this video, as I was delighted to find the maqam featured. I primarily play the oud (electrified and processed through the computer) as well as the synthesiser and guitar (usually in a more fluid and experimental context), and I find the maqam's 'environment' to be its own diverse and rich world, which has deeply influenced my approach to other instruments. Of note is the strong relationship between these modes and vocal performance, usually as a way of realising a text (i.e. poetry) in an extemporaneous way, modulating from maqam to maqam to elevate tension, create a narrative, or come to resolution. A great historical example of the dynamic relationship between Western art music tradition and the very diverse approaches to art music in the Arab world (Egypt, the Levant, Iraq, etc.) can be found in the fascinating Cairo Congress of Arab Music in 1932 (modern classical enthusiasts would find it interesting that Béla Bartók was in attendance). As always, thank you for the inspiring and informative content!

[@SorenAraujo]

You Sir, are awesome. Thank you for routinely blowing my mind!

[@frequencymanipulator]

A fantabulous video. You are now in my reference database, congratulations.

[@jimi2k7]

Millions of thanks for this, really appreciate your work, saludos desde barcelona

[@Tylervrooman]

Keeping company and entertained/ edcuated during quarentine!! Super grateful.

[@pontification7891]

In the Byzantine Chant tradition we have both systems coexisting next to each other. We use our modern day descendants of what are the ancient Greek modes. Doric - for example - is still rendered and sung in its "soft diatonic" way (and not hard, which corresponds to ET). definition: a ET full tone interval (ex. from C to D on the piano) would be cutup in 12 microtones the soft-diatonic Doric mode starting from D would be rendered like this: D to E would be 10 microtones, so it sounds a little bit darker. (the ET would have 12) E to F is 8 microtones, rendering F in its familiar ET place. F to G is 12 - standard ET G to A is also 12 - standard ET but A to B is again 10 microtones, mimicking in what is called "tetrachord relationship" the distance of D to E in a 10 microtones interval; this B would sound a bit darker/bluesier if you will B to C is 8 microtones, placing C in it's familiar ET place, and C to D is again 12 microtones, rendering the higher D in it's perfect octave as we know it

[@gabrielmorton7030]

This is a great video on this subject. Sometimes when listening to music that doesn't fit into equal temperament, other people have criticized it as being "out of tune" and I've tried to explain that tuning is so arbitrary and cultural, but you've articulated it better than I, and provided so many interesting examples.

[@unkobold]

I really enjoy this way of exploring the colours of tunings !

[@LesterBrunt]

To me it is more about our relation as a culture with things that are deemed 'imperfect' that is highlighted by equal temperament. We are obsessed with things being in or out of tune. We are constantly conditioned to think that any sound that is not within the allowed margin of error around 12ET is incorrect, wrong and not allowed. But why? If I take 2 sine waves and just start putting in random frequencies it all sounds cool to me. To me it is like saying a color is wrong, sure some might not be your favorite or suited for a particular context but you can't say it is a wrong color, that would be ridiculous. Imagine seeing a color green that is a couple digits off the 'correct' color code for 'pure' green and turning your head away while grimacing. And yet we do that all the time with sounds, just a few cents off the 'perfect' temperament and it is 'out of tune' and most people won't be able to tolerate it for even a few seconds. What exactly is the big deal? It is just sound, why is it so important that it must be cleansed of imperfection?

[@robinampipparampil]

Thank you very much David Bruce. This is one of your best videos so far. Congratulations! great video.

[@JohannesWiberg]

Man David, that was the most insightful, respectful and tempered (no pun) take on various tunings that I have heard. The emphasis on other tunings not being "imprecise" or "inferior" is so important - without losing track and calling all tunings interchangeable - equal temperament is not the standard by accident (unlike, say, English as the standard international language). One would wish for a balance where this standardization wouldn't necessarily force other tunings into obscurity. But I guess that is the downside to globalization.

[@gwalla]

Fascinating stuff! I'd been under the impression that Arabic music was literally 24-tone-equal, so the bit on the various flavors of E was eye- and ear-opening. And the part on the construction of the xylophone scales was really interesting. I wonder what the reason for the constraints are? You might want to look into Turkish music, which is very different from the Arabic. They divide each whole tone into 9 koma, for a theoretically 53-tone-equal tuning (though they only use a subset). They use Western notation for the most part, but with some added accidentals. And for kicks you might check out the Warped Canon Page, which has MIDI files of Pachelbel's Canon in D retuned in a huge array of tunings, including historical meantones and well-temperaments, various kinds of just intonation, all sorts of equal divisions of the octave, and some theoretical novelties like Bohlen-Pierce. The results range from sweet (it's surprising how pleasant 1/7-comma meantone with 1/7-comma stretched octaves sounds) to slightly "off" to weird but recognizable to wholly alien.

[@johnathanbulled4846]

Probably a bit late to the comments but Sethares's work on relating harmony to timbre it is rly fascinating and a nice culture-independent approach to analyzing harmony and tuning. Would love to see a video about it at some point.

[@kimmy_future4265]

I'm late to the party here but great video! i think it's also a good example of the effects of racism, imperialism and colonialism by western countries, not just on the people and environment but also the music and arts. For example, the indigenous folk changing their tuning system for their own original instruments to match that of western systems. Western thinking is so rigid and is often seen as the be all, end all of music and anything that deviates is just seen as bad and inferior when honestly it's just as developed as ours, even if it's not a solid, written in stone kind of thing. Anyway I thought the rain forest analogy is spot on for this!

[@mirceagogoncea]

Amazing!! The Central African xylophone part was the most interesting thing I've heard in a long time. As more time passes, I become more and more convinced ethnomusicology is the most interesting part of the study of music :D

[@francesschaefer]

Fantastic and brilliant! Giving specifics to concepts only aware of in a most general sense!

[@composer7325]

Brilliant.The way you use sheet music in your videos is so good.Thank you.

[@spacemissing]

Great to see Toumani Diabate here! I discovered him many years ago and was amazed and delighted by his first album. In recent months I encountered a "musician" who insisted that there were only 12 notes, no matter what kind of music they were used for. I knew better and tried to explain to him that different scales exist, but he didn't get the idea.

[@nazaninqaumi4243]

It is very interesting to learn about different types of music and the differences that tuning can bring to the music and to our ears. As someone who has listened to different countries music it is fascinating to learn about the differences and the similarities of the music world. It also reminded me of the rich Afghan instrument Rubab and do tar which is unique and would love to hear from you

[@apedestrian3899]

THIS is the video I've been looking for, for YEARS. Great intro to understanding different tunings with examples. Now I can properly show friends and family why the music I often listen to sounds "off".

[@Aleph_Null_Audio]

This has inspired me to finish my "Suite for Graduated Mixing Bowls". Five mixing bowls would be enough for melodic gesture, but each performance will have a different tuning as each set of mixing bowls will be tuned a little different.

[@dannyjesse3655]

Something ive started to notice is that guitar intonation and tuning is very unique to the individual. It's sort of like they all have their own version of what in tune is for them but because guitars are always a trade off it gives each player their own "thing". All guitarists do this to some degree but for me personally, i constantly adjust the intonation of the notes with my fretting hand in conjunction with picking velocity to get the result im looking for and I always tune by ear based on what i need to do. When Im playing im not thinking about "changing the pitch" as much as "this note will need to be 'brighter'" or this chord will need to "blend in" (tends to be closer to "just intonation"). I suppose my idea of "in tune" is "as close as i can get the note to the frequency it needs to be for what im trying to express"; which is sometimes "out of tune" (flatter thirds in rock music, slightly brighter #9s in blues, flatter b9s for darker sounds). For one friend of mine its "everything is green when i hit the open string" and im a bit envious of that because they get this huge, rich and 'consistent' sound. But its a little different for everyone.

[@mohammadsalehi7196]

In iranian traditional Music they use something almost similar to modes called "Dastgah" "دستگاه". In which they tune some degrees almost a forth step lower which is called "koron" "کرن" and some degrees almost a forth higher which is called "sori" سری" This way the song feeling depends a lot on the Dastgah we choose to play in ( way more than classical music). And there books that explain which Dastgah gives which feeling.

[@zivauri]

Brilliant!! Thanks for keeping music alive!!!

[@s90210h]

Tuning is why I was so enamoured by Spectralism when I first found out about it. Thanks for doing this video!

[@spinnis]

The thing is that equal temperament tunings are able to switch keys and retain the same intervals, while they change if its not equal temperament. My favorite tuning system is 19 equal temperament, because it has better tuned 3rds and 5ths that are closer to the simple ratios they are based on, it has major and minor but also supermajor and subminor, and it just adds more flavour. 12 tone equal temperament music can also be translated well to 19 tone by using subset of 19 tone.

[@keegimujaltold1454]

what are supermajor and subminor?

[@Currywurst4444]

My problem with 19 equal temperament is that the major 2nd is very out of tune so any melody is either also out of tune or needs large jumps.

[@electric7487]

@@keegimujaltold1454 A subminor third, for example, is between a major second and a minor third. A neutral third is halfway between a minor and major third. A supermajor third is between a major third and a perfect fourth.

[@joaouadmusic1787]

Awesome video as usual! I'm not quite sure but there's a theory about "quarter tones" in arabic music saying that the closer the country is to the equator, the lover the quarter tone interval (used by the majority of the locals) tends to be. a good comparison can be done on the difference between Turkish quarter tones and Egyptian.

[@mohammadsalehi7196]

Wow ! I'm an Iranian and I had no idea that you listen to Keyhan Kalhor. Impressing! Love your videos! I would love if you spent more time on the compositions you get and give us a closer look.

[@DBruce]

I worked with Kayhan on my piece for Silk Road Ensemble, and also used one of his melodies (with his permission!) in my piece for children 'Prince Zal and the Simorgh'. He's a wonderful player and soul!

[@mohammadsalehi7196]

Wow. I'm so glad to hear that. Also Zal and the Simorgh is a wonderful story by iranian poet Abolghasem Ferdowsi.

[@Arsamshamcy]

Great :) I've been following David Bruce for about a year now and knew about his affection for Persian Culture/Music mostly due to "Prince Zal" and his general tendency toward World Music. But this video's opening surprised me as well.

[@antonyrobinson1215]

Didn't know this. I just saw Kayhan last week in London and then this 4 year old post pops up. Coincidence?

[@Herfinnur]

I don't understand what is or was wrong with me, but I never thought any of these alternative scales sounded out of tune, or that notes outside of the twelve-tone scale necessarily sounded out of place. Quite the opposite: I was almost in my twenties before I clued in on what other western people deem to be in or out of tune. Only then did I start hearing how horribly out of tune some popular singers are. But I can snap out of that judgement quite fast if I need to, and I'm not at all tone-deaf; I work as an opera singer to day and I can distinguish quite well between the ways individual notes need to be adjusted in sung phrases if the tonality changes mid way through a classical piece. I wonder if there are other western people, especially musicians, who have had the same experience. A contemporary, non-classical example to check out, Bruce: Laney Staley's (Alice In Chains) melodies and harmonies. Reviewers always said he sung out of tune or just consistently sharp, but I disagree: select and fairly consistently the same notes are sharp, and it sounds bloody divine! I should add, though, that never had the foresight to actually do a note-by-not analysis of this

[@whatabouttheearth]

'Shame in Me' by Alice in Chains is awesome kzbin.info/www/bejne/amLKY5mJjr9nicU

[@elamiri858]

What a well-researched and informative video! You answered lots of my questions. I myself play both classical music and traditional Iranian music, and when i first started playing traditional music i had a really hard time getting the notes right because it just sounded out of tune to my classically-trained ears. But now both sound fine. And honestly, i don't find the tunings mentioned here that odd, i recognize that they sound different from equal temperament but they don't sound unpleasant or anything :)

[@OscarMSmithMusic]

Love the mention of Balinese gamelan! You should definitely have mention the pengumbang/pengisep paired tuning system, it's very fascinating. Also Selonding and Gong Luang tunings are out of this world - they preserve a much older tuning style that was borrowed from Java in the 14th century, but is now not often heard in Java. Also, the most common kind of tuning in Bali (Pelog Selisir) has the same concept of narrow, medium, and wide intervals but includes ~100c intervals, semitones; so you get hemi-tonic pentatonic scales!

[@makucevich]

Thanks for the cool video. Another alternate tuning is the Bohlen-Pierce tuning. Charles Carpenter had an album out called "Frog ala Pesche" that used it exclusively. The scale is further "out of tune" with equal temperament tuning than the examples here but has an exotic in tune-ness about it.

[@MarkIreland_carrierband]

I heared it was the spread of the piano accordion that killed of many exotic tuning systems

[@ex_orpheus1166]

There is a piano sample library for Native Instruments Kontakt called Galaxy which allows various alternative tunings. Among them listed is 'Pythagorean', which is essentially tuning in pure fifths.

[@jamesabber7891]

I recently became aware of music in other tunings than the usual 12 EDO we hear in almost all western music, and it opened up an entirely new world of music to me. There are so many harmonics and chords that cannot be expressed in 12 EDO. Most of all I like 22 EDO. This is also an equal temperament tuning, but the octave is divided into 22 tunes, instead of the 12 tunes we are used to. I'm still struggling to fully understand 22 EDO, but I like the challenge, and like the new harmonics possible. For example I hear two different kinds of minor chords in 22 EDO, where I only know of one in 12 EDO.

[@electric7487]

I've been playing music since I was 4, and I picked things up fairly quickly. I also gained what most people call "perfect pitch" from a young age. But my "ability" to identify notes without a reference combined with me having only ever been exposed to 12-TET for most of my life resulted in me thinking of notes as absolute frequencies and intervals as fixed mathematical constants, which I was able to get away with for most of my life. While I am classically trained, in mid-to-late 2021 I started getting into singing, and my gateway into singing was actually contemporary worship. The very simple, strictly diatonic nature of most CWM was a big culture shock to me, but I was still thinking in terms of 12 firmly placed pitches in each octave. However, late last year, I got back into classical music and discovered historical tunings (in particular, meantone tunings flatter than 12-TET and unequal well temperaments) and their modern equivalents, during which I realised that approaching music from a purely absolute perspective was completely wrong. After listening to much music in 31-TET, 19-TET, and a piece played in 43-TET, I personally think that CWM's simplicity and strictly diatonic nature lends itself perfectly to flatter-than-12 meantone tunings, and I can already see many non-classical songs (in particular, pop and CWM) sounding much better in 31-TET instead of 12-TET. I have some songs in 19-TET and 31-TET in my music collection, and I've showed them to a lot of my friends. I also love to blow their minds when I tell them how B and C♭, F♯ and G♭, or C♯ and D♭ can be different pitches, and how this distinction can actually be very useful in many cases. Want a darker sound? Use D♯ minor. Want a brighter sound? Use E♭ minor.

[@thestrictlynoparking]

Hi, one or comments, firstly many thanks for the video. I have taken slide guitar lessons with Michael Messer and it is common to have the slide play away from the fret position - this creates interest in the piece. Also the bending of strings to find notes inbeween the norm is common place. On a different point I have just acquired a double tracking effects pedal that enables two notes at different tunings to be added to the basic note. This creates a full and varying texture - the pedal is no constant in its double tracking, it varies during a single note! Finally, and on a different point the latest strobe guitar tuner I have bought has a sweetening facility which changes the open string tuning to try and bring the guitar more into tune up the neck. This is done as a normal guitar does not hold tuning up the neck by design. David

[@JuanPedroSouza]

Great video! I was amazed by the intervallic richness of differently tuned Central African instruments.

[@austinhernandez2716]

I studied music in college and learned barely anything about our tuning system and others except for at the end of music theory 4 but that's it. I was interested in it but had to learn about it on my own and discussing it with my teacher during my private lessons.

[@cabiria0]

Turkish/Ottoman Classical Music? Gorgeous yet unexplored by Western musicians...

[@davidmlee3573]

DBC This is a really good effort. Please, continue. One issue I would like you to pursue is how the tuning is done. My sense is that most music is tuned with the overtones of a string. Yet, gamelan (and related music) has different tuning with an ear to the overtones of metal, the gong. I would not be surprised if the tuning in Central Africa relates to the overtones of a drum.

[@ValkyRiver]

I am a microtonalist. I love 19, 31, and 53 divisions of the octave.

[@claye_l463]

Shoutout to the vulfpack

[@RedHair651]

To be honest I definitely hear the "acceptable" equipentatonic scale you demonstrated as more pleasant than the first one, and the example of two instruments being turned differently just works. I won't pretend like I understand how it works or that I could replicate it, but I totally does imo.

[@scottalbers5405]

I love your videos. They really are outstanding.

[@annemiekeknowles5945]

I love the challenge you pose to my ear! I use GarageBand app and my favourite scales are the Klezmer and “Japanese” scales. But, you’ve opened me up to so many new scales. Thank you for waking me up!

[@montego2]

Fascinating topic. I like the rain forest analogy. I suppose nowadays we have a mixed blessing in the widespread and relatively easy access to all sorts of music. On the one hand, there's the wonder and delight of so many interesting species of music. On the other hand, there's the danger of losing some of them from the increasing spread of others.

[@RichardASalisbury1]

Thanks, David! I'm glad I subscribed; I've learned valuable things from each of your videos I've listened to so far. I love this one; my sense of my own ear is that it adapts instantly, though maybe my experience is too limited for me to really have a handle on the differences I think I hear. But certainly I'm open, and this openness must have started when I was in my late teens and early 20s, when I first came to love jazz and soon, in Berkeley (Calif.), heard Ravi Shankar, Ali Akhbar Khan, and some Japanese music. Then at age 26 I spent two months in Java (and another 3 weeks age 29), and heard much gamelan music, which I quickly came to love. The only time I recall being baffled by a tuning that was not equal temperament was when I first heard Britten's "Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings": the final horn note in the instrumental intro, a pure harmonic, sounded way off to me, and on one hand I thought the horn player had "blown" it yet on the other hand figured the performers and engineers involved must have known what they were doing. A few years later I heard a different performance with the same audible "problem," decided Britten must have intended it, and soon after read the explanation.

[@cyrusfontaine2598]

Incredible stuff! I love hearing music that's very different from what's familiar and still feeling that it's "musical". In a sense it's really grounding!

[@ScottGlasgowMusic]

You missed Haba or other classical composer who experimented into synth micro-tuning (Stockhausen, Sabotnick or Pierre Henry). Synths have so many great detuned and not scalular tuning. I remember doing a film score many years ago working with an Zhonghu player, who just did not tune to equal temperament, I embraced the untuned feel as what it should be instead of digitally tuning it. It is sometime the magic of what these instruments do that make that sound unique. Check out Luzzaschi micotuned harpsichord from the 16th c. It is an amazement to behold.

[@liamlenihan1328]

Fascinating video. Not a musician or player but find all of these videos very interesting, even as a non-specialist listener.

[@circles79]

nice vid. Curious that harmonics, unequal temperaments, and Just Intonation were not mentioned.. Also, people often assume that 'western music' has long used the equal tempered scale, when in reality, it only came to standard use in the Romantic Era. Bach didn't write in equal temperament contrary to popular belief.

[@circles79]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/haa8ooCLm750a5I

[@AmandaKaymusic]

Beautiful musical example choices. A clear and intricate explanation. Thank you.

[@metasaman]

I'm in the beginning stages of learning music theory. And even though some might consider this as an adanvced topic, I find it crucial to know the limitations I'm imposing myself on :)

[@васялактош-и5ь]

THIS IS THE MOST AMAZING VIDEO IVE EVER WATCHED ABOUT MUSIC!

[@jeremyjones6945]

Really interesting video - thank you for all the effort you put in.

[@marconachenius]

you should check out transcriptions of traditional persian music. they divide the octave into 24 quater tones. they include quater sharps/flats in the key signature.

[@OnlyARide]

I've always been more interested in "neotunings," ie recently discovered/calculated/theorized. The Carlos Alpha/Beta/Gamme scales, the Bohlen-Pierce scale, all the various higher divisions of the octave, and so on. So it's great to get some inspiration once in a while from the other side of things, tradition tunings which at the very least you KNOW sounded good to somebody else already!

[@AlexiLaiho227]

woah, i had no idea dorico had that functionality! in addition to free meter, it's amazing they managed to cram such incredibly progressive and unorthodox/non-western concepts into an app that is effectively created for the purpose of allowing western musicians to write music in a western/orthodox format

[@BensRightBrain]

I’ve been working on a tuning system in which I bought a tuned piano then let it sit for 12 years unaltered. It’s made it’s way into a spicy tuning system!