Just Intonation

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Comment by John Oliver on August 17, 2009 at 3:10am

I've never understood how the notion of "perfect pitch" came about. How can memorizing the inadequacies of equal temperment be considered a laudable thing? I've always hated tonal music on the piano; romantic and late romantic music started to sound acceptable; then when I heard serial music on the piano I began to hear something wonderful for the instrument! But since I started writing microtonal music, I find it very hard to put up with out of tune 3rds (and 7ths).

Comment by Andrew Violette on December 28, 2008 at 6:50pm

Just intonation sounds beautiful on the piano or harpsichord but almost impossible to achieve on string instruments. At least out of tune just intonation sounds fairly interesting.

Comment by Randy Gibson on December 19, 2008 at 2:04pm

I was never able to hear the thirds in my ear training classes - then when i started studying Just it all made sense - Equal 3rds do suck!

Comment by XLR on December 18, 2008 at 8:55am

Yep... 12 tone ET. I've always found the M3 especially harsh. I remember as a little kid tuning a pair of guitar strings so a major 3rd fretted on them was beautifully in tune (just int), then being frustrated when it threw out other intervals between various strings. When I figured out why it was happening it was a major discovery, heh.

Comment by Carlo Serafini on December 18, 2008 at 3:51am

Are you talking about major 3rds of 12tET (400 cents)?
:-)

Comment by XLR on December 17, 2008 at 10:34pm

All I can say is that tempered major 3rds suck.

Comment by Carlo Serafini on December 11, 2008 at 6:34pm

I just posted on my blog a JI piece called Carlos Glass 1 featuring 'dynamic modulation'
you can check it out here:
http://www.seraph.it/blog_files/category-music.html