Conversation

QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID

)

@QiaochuYuan

Oct 11, 2020

whoa 🤔

QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID

)

@QiaochuYuan

Oct 11, 2020

pythagoras: aha! musical harmony is governed by the ratios of small integers! how beautiful. how glorious. i will make this fact the centerpiece of my entire worldview whoever invented equal temperament: lol what if we just used powers of uhhh the twelfth root of two instead

Emily

@the_aiju

Oct 11, 2020

hey want to find out even more crazy shit pianos shouldn’t be tuned to integer ratios because of dispersion the harmonics of the deeper notes will slightly misalign with the higher notes creating dissonance

Emily

@the_aiju

Oct 11, 2020

anyway twelfth root of two isn’t arbitrary, if you play around with the numbers it gives you most of the harmonics in a decent enough approximation

QC (in Berlin 7/29-??? w/ COVID

)

@QiaochuYuan

Replying to

@the_aiju

i know i know, i actually worked this out in my most popular stackexchange answer ever, still not satisfied thouh is it really “decent enough” is the question are we being robbed of better music out of convenience 🤔

7:55 PM · Oct 11, 2020Twitter for iPad

Replying to

i am really unhappy with the state of music so idk yes probably

Emily

@the_aiju

Oct 11, 2020

“hey any nice music” “ok we have like classical, which has a lot of genius but also was socially and technologically constrained” “then you have like electronic music where you can never tell if the sound driver crashed and you’re just listening to the sound buffer looping”

Show replies

Replying to

and

if "better music" means more resonant intervals yes, probably, but i think the flexibility that we gain is totally worth it.

@jacobcollier

seems to disagree tho

Replying to

and

broke: equal temperament woke: owning one piano for each key

Replying to

and

What's "better" though? Equal temperament allows notes to be interpreted as belonging to different keys. By slightly fuzzing the harmonic ratios, you get harmonic "puns" which allow for chord progressions. And, subjectively, I enjoy chord progressions.

Fabrizio Romano Genovese

Replying to

and

Considering that Bach made equal temperamente popular, and that he wrote the most glorious music ever witnessed, I highly doubt we are being "robbed" of better music. ...That is, if you value harmony/counterpoint over tone purity, which I personally do.