Should I tune to equal or just temperament?

For the purposes of this chart, it is assumed that C4 = 261.63 Hz is used for both (this gives A4 = 440 Hz for the equal tempered scale)….Just vs Equal Temperament (and related topics)

Interval	Ratio to Fundamental Just Scale	Ratio to Fundamental Equal Temperament
Major Third	5/4 = 1.2500	1.25992

Is a piano equal tempered?

The equal tempered scale is the common musical scale used at present, used for the tuning of pianos and other instruments of relatively fixed scale. It divides the octave into 12 equal semitones. It is common practice to state musical intervals in cents, where 100¢ is defined as one equal tempered semitone.

Why do pianos use equal temperament?

Modern Pianos are all tuned using a system called “Equal Temperament”. In fact, you can’t use your ear to tune a Piano in equal temperament because our ears don’t hear notes in this manner. Piano tuners use a device and they need to know how much each note needs to be “out of tune” in order to tune a Piano.

How does just intonation differ from equal temperament?

Just intonation requires tuning your instrument for a specific key. With standard equal temperament, you can play further down the neck in another key and not end up with different sound quality intervals between notes.

Is equal temperament the same as well tempered?

Well temperament represented a departure from the various meantone tunings that were used in earlier music. Equal temperament is appropriate for some music of the 20th century, especially atonal music, and music based on the whole tone scale, but not for the works of the 18th and 19th centuries.

What is an unequal temperament?

Definition of unequal temperament : a temperament that keeps pure or nearly pure intonation in some keys and accumulates the dissonances in the little-used keys.

Is equal temperament good?

Equal temperament is appropriate for some music of the 20th century, especially atonal music, and music based on the whole tone scale, but not for the works of the 18th and 19th centuries. Equal temperament, the modern and usually inappropriate system of tuning used in western music, is based on the twelfth root of 2.

Is it impossible to tune a piano?

Well the different pitches produced by the various patterns of sine waves are called harmonics, and musicians can use them to perfectly tune their instruments. But the short version is that it’s mathematically impossible to tune a piano across all keys using harmonics.

Are guitars equal tempered?

Guitars are tuned to ‘equal temperament’. The basic way to understand this is that the 12 musical notes are evenly split up, which allows us to use straight frets on a guitar. This means you need to fret each note and adjust each string to make sure each note rings out perfectly in tune.

Did Beethoven use equal temperament?

UNEQUAL TEMPERAMENT Neither did Mozart nor Beethoven or any of their contemporaries. They used unequal temperaments — also known as, you guessed it, Well-tempered. In the Well-Tempered Clavier, Bach celebrated unequal tempered tuning, not today’s equal tempered tuning.

What is piano temperament?

The term temperament refers to a tuning system that allows intervals to beat instead of tuning pure or “just intervals”. In equal temperament, for instance, a fifth would be tempered by narrowing it slightly, achieved by flattening its upper pitch slightly, or raising its lower pitch slightly.

Why are pianos tuned with equal tempered tuning?

A further peculiarity in piano tuning is the practice of stretching the upper and lower octaves. This refers to progressively sharpening the notes of the upper octaves from a perfect equal tempered scale. The reason for this has to do with what is known as the inharmonicity of ringing strings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iShnwluLx8