19 Tone Equal Temperament

Some of you may remember a post that I did a little while ago on temperaments, titled an illustration of the non-existence of God. If you haven’t read it then read it now, because this post might not make much sense without it. Since then, I have heard much more of the problems of temperaments, especially from David Howard of the University of York at the Institute of Acoustics Musical Acoustics Group (bit of a mouthful that) one day meeting in June. I then heard more from Graham Hair, Nick Bailey, Alex South and Bill Evans at the Galpin Society conference in July, specifically on 19 tone equal temperament.

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An illustration of the non-existence of God

Somehow this blog has got sidelined for a while, which is sad. Being unemployed is getting me down and I am tending to not do any of the things that I should.

However, that changes today, with this post. I was slightly hesitant about writing about this topic, because this knowledge caused a bit of a musical crisis for me earlier this year and I wouldn’t want to wish that on anyone. However, under the assumption that what you don’t know hurts you more than what you do know, the time has come to talk about temperaments.