In music, just intonation or pure intonation is the tuning of musical intervals as (small) whole number ratios of frequencies. Any interval tuned in this way is called a just interval. Just intervals and chords are aggregates of harmonic series partials and may be seen as sharing a (lower) implied fundamental. For example, a tone with a frequency of 300 Hz and another with a frequency of 200 Hz are both multiples of 100 Hz. Their interval is, therefore, an aggregate of the second and third partials of the harmonic series of an implied fundamental frequency 100 Hz.
In music, there are two common meanings for tuning:
The chromatic scale is a musical scale with twelve pitches, each a semitone above or below its adjacent pitches. As a result, in 12-tone equal temperament, the chromatic scale covers all 12 of the available pitches. Thus, there is only one chromatic scale.
In music, sharp, dièse, or diesis means higher in pitch. More specifically, in musical notation, sharp means "higher in pitch by one semitone ". Sharp is the opposite of flat, which is a lowering of pitch.
In music, flat or bemolle means "lower in pitch". Flat is the opposite of sharp, which is a raising of pitch. In musical notation, flat means "lower in pitch by one semitone ", notated using the symbol ♭ which is derived from a stylised lowercase "b".
For instance, the music below has a key signature with three flats and the note, D♭, has a flat accidental.
Benjamin Burwell Johnston, Jr. is an American contemporary music composer using just intonation. He has been called "one of the foremost composers of microtonal music" by Philip Bush (1997) and "one of the best non-famous composers this country has to offer" by John Rockwell (1990).
The cent is a logarithmic unit of measure used for musical intervals. Twelve-tone equal temperament divides the octave into 12 semitones of 100 cents each. Typically, cents are used to express small intervals, or to compare the sizes of comparable intervals in different tuning systems, and in fact the interval of one cent is too small to be heard between successive notes.
John Schneider is an American classical guitarist. He performs in just intonation and well-temperament, including Pythagorean tuning, including works by Lou Harrison, LaMonte Young, John Cage, and Harry Partch. He often arranges pieces for guitar and other instruments such as harp or percussion.
In linguistics, prosody is concerned with those elements of speech that are not individual phonetic segments but are properties of syllables and larger units of speech. These are linguistic functions such as intonation, tone, stress, and rhythm. Prosody may reflect various features of the speaker or the utterance: the emotional state of the speaker; the form of the utterance ; the presence of irony or sarcasm; emphasis, contrast, and focus; or other elements of language that may not be encoded by grammar or by choice of vocabulary.
Pitch correction is an electronic effects unit or audio software that changes the intonation of an audio signal so that all pitches will be notes from the equally tempered system. Pitch correction devices do this without affecting other aspects of its sound. Pitch correction first detects the pitch of an audio signal, then calculates the desired change and modifies the audio signal accordingly. The widest use of pitch corrector devices is in Western popular music on vocal lines.
Michael Harrison is an American contemporary classical music composer and pianist living in New York City. He was awarded a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship. Harrison occupies a unique niche as an artist who has bridged the European musical traditions with those of North Indian classical music, forging an entirely new approach to composition through tunings and methodologies that employ and extend the ancient concept of "just intonation". The quality of his work and personal vision has earned him the label of, in the words of composer Philip Glass, a "maverick, outside composer".
In music, an electronic tuner is a device that detects and displays the pitch of musical notes played on a musical instrument. "Pitch" is the highness or lowness of a musical note, which is typically measured in Hertz. Simple tuners indicate—typically with an analog needle-dial, LEDs, or an LCD screen—whether a pitch is lower, higher, or equal to the desired pitch. In the 2010s, software applications can turn a smartphone, tablet, or personal computer into a tuner. More complex and expensive tuners indicate pitch more precisely. Tuners vary in size from units that fit in a pocket to 19" rack-mount units. Instrument technicians and piano tuners typically use more expensive, accurate tuners.
Music theory has no axiomatic foundation in modern mathematics, yet the basis of musical sound can be described mathematically and exhibits "a remarkable array of number properties". Elements of music such as its form, rhythm and metre, the pitches of its notes and the tempo of its pulse can be related to the measurement of time and frequency, offering ready analogies in geometry.
In musical tuning, a temperament is a tuning system that slightly compromises the pure intervals of just intonation to meet other requirements. Most modern Western musical instruments are tuned in the equal temperament system. "Tempering is the process of altering the size of an interval by making it narrower or wider than pure. A temperament is any plan that describes the adjustments to the sizes of some or all of the twelve fifth intervals in the circle of fifths so that they accommodate pure octaves and produce certain sizes of major thirds." Temperament is especially important for keyboard instruments, which typically allow a player to play only the pitches assigned to the various keys, and lack any way to alter pitch of a note in performance. Historically, the use of just intonation, Pythagorean tuning and meantone temperament meant that such instruments could sound "in tune" in one key, or some keys, but would then have more dissonance in other keys.
In music, a Catalan shawm is one of two varieties of shawm, an oboe-like woodwind musical instrument played in Catalonia in northeastern Spain.
The New York State School Music Association (NYSSMA) is the New York affiliate of National Association for Music Education. NYSSMA is a professional organization that evaluates student musicians in New York state from elementary school to high school. Each spring, thousands of students register through their school music programs to attend NYSSMA Evaluation Festivals where they are adjudicated. These festivals take place at local middle and high schools, as well as state colleges and state universities within the fifteen NYSSMA zones, each of which covers an area in New York State. Usually, county high schools take turns to host the festival every few years.
Tonality flux is Harry Partch's term for the kinds of subtle harmonic changes that can occur in a microtonal context from notes moving from one chord to another by tiny increments of voice leading. For instance, within a major third G-B, there can be a minor third G to B, such that in moving from one to the other each line shifts less than a half-step. Within a just intonation scale, this could be represented by
Wolfgang von Schweinitz is a German composer of classical music and an academic teacher.
