Quarter-comma Meantone with split sharps
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- Опубліковано 5 вер 2024
- Recorded on the 1565 Antegnati Organ in Santa Barbara, Mantua. A short video showing the split sharps in action. iPhone recording, so the sound isn't the best.
Beyond the remarkable archicembalo videos ( / @johanneskellercembalo ) there don't seem to be videos showing 'normal' split sharps and their function. They're confusing to play at first and then rather addictive!
In meantone temperament the black notes are disposed C#-Eb-F#-G#-Bb; providing keys for D# and Ab (which are added at the back) allows a larger number of tonalities to be used. Other organs additionally provide a split key for A#. The closer to equal the temperament becomes, the less need there is for split sharps as one key can function enharmonically for both the sharp and flat.
Sounds like my choir only they have no idea they're doing it
lol, then TEACH them, help them.
Naturally gifted at singing in the cracks, then
@@squiggly_lines all the time! My choir has a big turn over every year, so the first semester is always rough. They really start to pull it together in March!
LMAO
Ouch...
I think playing with split sharps like that would drive me nuts!
aalready drove me nuts see ya
_Listening_ to it for longer than the duration of this video would ddrive me nuts.
I think I would enjoy it. Not about to start hacking up organs to make one to play like that though.
Listen to sevish it crazy
I think it would be a small extra learning effort over learning to play sheet music in the first place. Just got to get familiar with which half of the key is what (g-sharp or a-flat etc). But yeah when improvising i agree that it will be another thing.
Nintendo Labos are getting pretty crazy
i snorted
exactly what i thought before clicking on the video
I legit thought this was a new labo set b4 clicking
hahaha made me think twice, thanks for this
I love the mechanical noises the keyboard makes to be honest
A listener out in the hall, or in the nave of the church, would not hear the keyboard action sounds.... Probably wouldn't even hear it just a few more feet away from where the iPhone was positioned taking the video.
More stops would help cover the sound, but the mechanical noises are very much a part of the overall sound and charm of the instrument, for example ua-cam.com/video/5kAN2e5VyBQ/v-deo.html
of course, for some organists, including me, playing on electrical keyboard doesn´t just have that charm of feeling mechanical keys under fingers... I absolutely love it as well!
Though it's a shame keyboards have to be so loud in order to sound truthful.
@@julianolima3500 Keyboard just doesn´t have that sound of wind blowing through pipes.
Im playing (as I would say) the smallest organ here, in Nitra.... One manual, no pedal.. Here are registers:
Bourdon 8´ (same thing as Gedackt 8´)
Flauta traversa 4´ (soft flute traverse)
Principál 4´
Mixtúra 2´x2
Thats it.. certainly, for a small church for maybe 180 people (saying as we´re allowed to do mass for just half of church capacity) it is enough, but I would be glad, when local organist will end reconstruction of organ in another church we will maybe add something like 4´ soft stringy, just lovely Salicional :)
That is it... he learned himself to play, he learned organology, he deconstructed 2manual+P organ, fixed old pipes, bought some new, something was removed, something was added and he is now playing an instrument he rebuild by himself... he is also maintaining his little organ here, where Im starting to play as well... Just think about it for a second, what is the cost of this plus few more registers and Subbass in pedal... that is just interest of the church.... In village next to us, they have reconstructed organ... Why? Because pastor and people wanted.... They had separate moneybox for organ reconstruction every Sunday mass.. it is tradition, to give optional money for running the church to pay electricity, flowers, etc... But they collected enough money throughout few years to renovate, they just decilined to destroy historic piece of art
Just listened to it twice: First time it sounded like badly-tuned nonsense, second time it made me feel things I didn't know existed.
U r now gay for organs
I’ve heard these “badly tuned” tones before in some edm genres that use synth, and I’ve got to say.. it’s one of the coolest melodies I’ve heard
Well, they do have some nice pipes for sure
this is like the aural equivalent of seeing a new color
Idk I can’t see the organ player’s aura
This analogy nicely implies that 12-TET is extremely limited and limiting. Pitches outside of 12-TET with A tuned to 440 Hz are only like seeing a “new” color if you assume the entire world to consist of only 12 colors. But of course there are as many pitches as there are colors: infinitely many.
and that new color makes me bleed from the eyes
@@sebastiansimon7557 so so true, it’s a colour between, we’ve definitely seen it maybe just not noticed it
@@bilzebor8457 Oh, you poor thing… 😧
I clicked on this video like "ooh, interesting", as if I knew what the title even meant. I know nothing about music. I have no idead what I'm looking at here.
@@ChristovanRensburg thanks for explaining, that makes sense to me now!
Lmao I’m a trained musician and I didn’t know what the title meant
@@iliyajavadian wow dude no need to be a dick. I play cello, never heard of split sharps. I guess they’re self explanatory but music theory is huge. There’s shit I’ve never heard of nor am ever gonna hear. Same goes for you. You can’t possibly learn everything, but you will learn things all the time through unexpected means.
How is there toxic people even on videos like these
Quarter tones
Imagine how many times your fingers would slip on the wrong half of the sharp.
Both together would be crunchy
@@dielaughing73 i do love a good crunchy chord
The modulations were kinda interesting with the quartertones tbh
tbh yeah
and to be quite frank, i concur
Those are not quarter tones though. Quarter tones arise from dividing notes finer than in half steps. The intervals here between the black keys and the neighbouring white keys are still half steps, or minor seconds, but of slightly different size. The interval between the two black keys is a diminished second (which in equal temperament would be enharmonically equivalent to unison), and also not a quarter tone.
Maybe you're thinking about quarter tones because of "quarter-comma" in the title. This describes that the fifths in that tuning are 1/4 of a syntonic comma smaller. No interval on this manual represents a quarter tone (i. e. a 24th of an octave). I haven't done the math and don't have the ear for it, but I'm fairly sure also none of the intervals come close to a quarter tone.
@@gehirndoper hmm interesting, thanks for the reply
@@gehirndoper theyre closer to an "8th tone" its roughy 25 cents
A cool relic of the days of meantone temperment. In so many ways, we lost so much potential for musical expression when we moved away from this system.
look up sevish for some wacky stuff in this direction
This system is available. Software synthesizers allow practically whichever tuning. Dividing an octave into 31 equal parts approximates well this temperament. Look up “31EDO tuning”.
Strange how it sounds bad to a developed ear used to equal temperament🤔
doesn't it sound bad to everyone ?
@@valentinbonnarde9345 lol no
I'm an arab and learned music from a western style. It did sound bad but also not actually bad when i listened to it again since a lot of middle eastern maqams use microtunal stuff and whatnot... it is just... i don't fucking know how to feel about it
@@rottenpotato4399 interesting
@@valentinbonnarde9345 no. If you don't have a developed ear to hear such minute adjustments (ie you aren't a musician/musically inclined) it would sound fine.
It's already a half-step sharper than A=440, so this whole thing is throwing me off, haha. But it's amazing they came up with this in the 1500s.
There were some amazing instruments that extending this idea, for example ua-cam.com/video/0akGtDPVRxk/v-deo.html
There were some keyboards with 33 notes in a scale. It was because it pre-dated widespread equal-temperament by about 150 years, and instrument-makers/musicians were playing around with mean and just intonation, trying to find the right way of expressing tonality.
So that's what it was! I played along with my midi and it was a half step off and it drove me nuts because I didn't know why. Thanks!
They didn't came up with this in 1500s, it already existed for thousands of years in eastern music, middle east to be exact.
can you explain a little more? i’d really like to know what’s going on here
That's where historical descriptions of different flavors of keys come from. Today all keys sound the same. Also when playing music from that time period you have to look for the original manusicripts where they alternated between sharps and flats because they really meant different tones. Modern transcriptions of those pieces usually stick to either sharps or flats throughout the piece for easier readability.
Waw that is so interesting, do you have exemples of “modernized” pieces with their original version so we can hear the difference and compare?
@@fabiorchestra I would say, within this niche corner of keyboard music, no. In meantone the chromatic notes are fixed (because of their tuning) as C#, Eb, F#, G# and Bb so you wouldn't normally see other accidentals. When you do that can imply retuning (you could retune your Ebs to D#s on the harpsichord), possibly an instrument with split sharps like here, or a different temperament (tuning system) which is more forgiving of different accidentals. The earlier the music, the less likely the last option is
@@fabiorchestra Unfortunately, I do not.
Ab major sounds more relaxed than a typical major key, F# major sounds nostalgic, and G major sounds waaay happier than a typical major key. Maybe its just in my head, I don’t know.
@@yarlodek5842 as a country music player, G major is such a boring key. use D for a happy key. consider A or E instead, perhaps Db or Eb.
I wanna hear somebody play some really stank gospel rnb chords on that thing
Yes please
It was really interesting to hear how after adjusting to the just temperament the B leading note to Cmaj at 1:13 sounds so flat. As a professional string player it's nice to see a keyboard instrument explore the same 'corrected' pitches that have us pulling our hairs out in chamber rehearsal
string musicians are trained to play pythagorean intonation where sharps are higher pitched than the nearest flat, whereas meantone systems have it reversed. the diatonic semitone here is quite wider than you're used to, more like 16 : 15
This is the first I'd heard of such a thing. First time I listened to it I thought "well, that's bizarre, but cool", second time I listened to it I thought "we really need to bring back meantone", third time I was like "I want to compose a song using an organ like this someday".
this is nuts
You get used to it. Then equal-tempered thirds sound awful (they are!).
No, this is an organ
@@nickly1032 No, this is Patrick
That’s what she said
To get to the other side
I am a violinist and I wasted so much air trying to explain to my piano-playing friends that D sharp and E flat are different and no, I'm not pulling their leg. Now I'm going to show this video when it comes up.
Antonina Khramova
In equal temperament D# and Eb are the same. But not in other tuning systems etc.
I have a perfect pitch, and now I FINALLY understand! Always felt the tension, like "the same note" was slightly different in different keys... Somehow totally missed this in a decade of musical education
This is cool and proves that meantone is the way music was meant to sound, equal may make things convenient but at the cost of the richness and fullness of sound. This is beautiful.
Bruh.
The chromatic scale was a bit awkward to my ears, but when the modulations started, it was-
it was mind blowing. It really gave the chords color!
Equal temperament has ruined key color and made music much more boring as a whole. I prefer Lehman/Bach 1722 temperament, followed by Kellner, and there are others which yield a usable keyboard in all keys without deviating so much from natural harmony that it all sounds boring. Look at some of the stuff here ua-cam.com/users/latribe and here ua-cam.com/users/thebpl and you'll get even more mindblown. Do know that latribe is a Kellner proponent, and thebpl is actually Bradley Lehman, and oddly they don't like each other that much, but I think both of them will show you things you'll enjoy. Example of Lehman/Bach ua-cam.com/video/dfGB87XALNo/v-deo.html , example of a custom Kellner he calls "High Definition" ua-cam.com/video/ADVOIAhqMAI/v-deo.html Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back. :)
@@edifyguy Das Wohltemperierte Klavier played on Bach/Lehmah is much better than equal temperament, each key has its own distinct color and Bach utilized it.
It's amazing how different the D# and Eb sound. We're all so used to equal temperament where everything is fudged a bit that it's easy to forget how other systems work.
Fun Fact, in Arab music we have a thing called half flat, which is represented by a flat but in the opposite side, so we have scales that have intervals of 3/4. Just wanted to tell all of you music lovers a fun fact!
Try 53 equal temperament!
@@ValkyRiver that's mostly turkish
@@scottjampa8308 Yes, Turkish music does use 53TET. It is also remarkably 5-limit just intonation.
Am I the only who thinks it sounds awesome? Imagine how many and emotions and possibilities it would open
Фантастически красивое звучание и регистровка. Это первое, что приходит в голову. Специально читал коменты, чтоб найти кто первый об этом напишет.
@Shallex Dear Shallex. Please use “google translate”)))
@@VolodiaLukianov us mobile users can’t copy paste your comment
@Shallex The sounding and the registration are fantastically beautiful. It's the first thing that comes to my mind. I've been reading the comments on purpose to find out who'd write about it first.
That's what Volodia Lukyanov wrote!
@@KilometersVI The sounding and the registration are fantastically beautiful. It's the first thing that comes to my mind. I've been reading the comments on purpose to find out who'd write about it first.
That's what Volodia Lukyanov wrote!
1:23 sounds like a train
Non-tempered trains is a good band name
back then they just call it Just Train
Yea its because its very similar to the Leslie RS3L and Nathan K5HLB.
@@bun-bun5623 Damn how do you know that much about both music theory and trains
@@vargasmartin7143 This is my main account. I've been around trains since I was four and I've been a musician ever since I was eight. My dad made me play piano then in middle school, I started playing brass, strings, and percussion.
That's what a video should be! No ad reads, no useless talking, just the individual principal of interest being demonstrated and then using it in a full and entertaining demonstration for exactly the amount of time necessary to demonstrate.
At each moment in the video I found myself asking for exactly what came next and was fully satisfied by the end. Thanks for keeping youtube pure
"I hate people getting paid for their work and i want them to entertain me for free" is what you mean.
Not all talking in UA-cam videos is useless. I'd be interested to see a more detailed breakdown of this instrument and I don't mind someone reading an ad (at no cost to me) so that they can get paid and continue producing content
woah friends! I guess I shouldn't be surprised but that's not what I mean at all! I was just trying to thank the guy for having a cool video! I'm not saying people shouldn't make money here and I certainly accept that other people have differing opinions to me. But to come and imply that my comment is a statement of hate, I find rather unnecessarily inflammatory. As well I agree that not all talking is useless, that is also not what I meant. I was referring to useless talking, like The Wadsworth Constant kinda stuff.
Besides, what if the guy isn't trying to make money, not everything in life has to be about the revenue, I mean _he_ made the video. I just stumbled upon a video that fit _my_ expectations and hopes for _my_ desired content and wanted to congratulate the creator for having done such a good job appealing to _my_ tastes. Please don't turn this into a shouting match or extrapolate any more from my comment than that. Hope y'all have a good day.
Thanks!
@@verybarebones This is a problem I see with people everywhere ever since the pandemic. People forget how to talk to people without picking a fight, nowadays the average person is so argumentative that I can say "I like pancakes" and you'll say "so, what you're saying is you hate waffles".
By themselves, the notes are out of tune or "wrong". When you integrate them into the correct musical key, you find that they are actually in tune, with every note exactly where they need to be.
i didnt really see the functionality of this until you demostrated its use for modulation and now im sold, pretty cool
I love it! I tune my harpsichord to quarter comma meantone. I wish I had extra keys to split it!! I just learned to enjoy the horrendous 4 as I call it. (Db, Ab, B, F# major chords)
I tortured my poor piano tech into doing the same about 15 years ago. C major sounded amazing, and it was all downhill from there!
Why do you consider those 4 chords in particular horrendous?
@@motox2416 the octave doesn’t divide equally so historically, they made everything in tune and shoved all the out of tune in 1 interval known as the comma or wolf. In quarter comma it divides the out of tune between 4 intervals so those 4 keys end up egregious to our equal temperament ears. And truthfully, even to their ears given that the literature typically avoids all of those keys.
@@motox2416 Without [more] split sharps they basically all sound like the chord at 0:49!
@@TomBassettComposer It's not quite like that. In "classic" quarter-comma meantone the "comma"* is the discrepancy that needs to be spread out (i.e. tempered) across the octave to creates usable scales and chords. The process of tempering can and does engender other discrepancies. In meantone temperaments the accumulated error is *all* shoveled into one interval, typically between G# and Eb--not a fifth at all, being far too *wide*. This is the infamous "wolf", so called because of its howling dissonance. Any triad that straddles the wolf cannot be used.
(See also a much longer comment, which I have just posted above.)
I was reading about this "How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony and Why You Should Care" and it's so interesting to actually hear it!
Yes, good book!
Reminds me of the quarter tones in Middle Eastern music...hard for the Westerner to hear at first.
ngl those quarter-tone modulations are so fluid.
Those are not quarter tones
This is so wonderfully beautiful. Thank you for this video!
I've heard about meantone temperament before but never heard it before. It sounds......really cool. Imagine, this is what people heard in church 500 years ago.
It sounds more in tune and when one thinks about it, during regular mass there's not much need for adventurous musical experiments. The ability to play in any key wasn't that important.
@@baze3SC That's true, it sounds more natural. In all honesty, I think the fact that there are so many more notes to work with allows with more adventurous musical experiments than modern day even temperament.
I'm not a musical expert, I'll admit, so this is just conjecture on my part.
@@baze3SCI mean(tone), even meantone's more dissonant side of chords sounds good to me, same for JI
Mark my words, this video will get at least 100k views by the end of this year
I was right!!!
Maybe 1 million views? By the end of the year?
Over 200k by the end of the week! Crazy!
The predicament of tuning is this: Purely harmonic intervals are RATIOS of frequencies, for example an octave is 2/1, a fifth 3/2, a major third 5/4.
But the ear hears relative pitch in a geometric (or "logarithmic") ratio, where similar sounding intervals have the same ratio to each other. Therefore if we are to divide the octave (ratio of 2:1) into any number of EQUAL-SOUNDING intervals they must be based on a root of 2 that can be multiplied by itself over and over to evenly climb the octave to the top note. In conventional Western 12 note tuning the smallest interval therefore has an upper note pitch that is the 12th root of 2 times the lower note's pitch.
But the 12th root of is an irrational number (not a fraction), and every power of a root of two is also irrational (except for 2 itself), meaning that NO interval within an octave in ANY tuning system can express a perfectly harmonious interval. For example, a major third in 12-note tuning is "1/3 of an octave" (4 half steps out of 12 = 4/12 = 1/3) or a proportion of the cube root of 2 (about 1.26).
But the perfectly harmonious major third is a ratio of 5/4 or 1.2, smaller than the cube root of 2, making the evenly-tuned major third too "wide" (the top note sounds sharp relative to the bottom note).
"Wouldn't it be nice to have an extra key that's a little flatter to get closer to that perfect 5/4 interval.....". That extra key will sound weird played in a scale series but it makes for a sweet major third with the lower note. The choice of the additional keys here is to sweeten the major third in their corresponding keys (B and E).
Musicians playing fixed tuned instruments can go their whole lives not realizing this out of tune-ness. But the first time you hear it is it like losing your aural virginity, and you can never un-hear it.
This is incredibly haunting and I wish I never seen this
those modulations are mind blowing
I didn’t even know a sharp and flat can have different sounds, like d# and eb.. This is crazy lol.
Look up on UA-cam “why it’s impossible to tune a piano”. This keyboard fixes that problem. (And i expect some dumbass to comment that this is an organ, not a piano; To be ahead of that: They use the same tuning system).
@@Engineer9736 That didn't help me. I didn't really understand most of that, he talked extremely fast, and he never mentioned sharps or flats. I've heard this stuff vaguely referenced many times before but I still have no idea at all how "A sharp" and "B flat" could possibly mean different things, and I've never been able to find a book, web page, or video that went into enough detail, and slowly and carefully enough and with enough examples, for me to have any idea at all about it, despite spending a lot of time searching for it.
Look up - "The Lesser Diesis". It's on UA-cam and explains why we had to force some pitches a bit to get our octaves to work.
@@Xezlec So basically, in a simple way, A# and Bb are the same note, just with different names, used in accordance to the given context. Most of modern music is divided into twelve notes. And from within these twelve notes, 7-note scales are most commonly used (for example the major and minor scales), and the 'rule' for these 7-note scales is that every alphabet from A to G must be used once. This is what causes the difference in use of sharps and flats. For example, in the D major scale, the notes are D-E-F#-G-A-B-C#, notice how here we have to use F# and C# instead of Gb and Db or else the letters G and D would be used twice. For another example, The F major scale is F-G-A-Bb-C-D-E; if we were to use A# instead of Bb, then the letter A would be used twice.
The keyboard in this video however uses 14 notes instead of 12 notes. This is what allows it to separate the 'same' note like D# and Eb into two different notes, and the difference in frequency between these notes is less than notes in a normal 12 note keyboard, which causes that 'weird' sound.
@@Xezlec Long comment here but hope it helps you and others who might wonder.
1st basic concept to understand: any sound in nature is not formed of a single frequency, but of an infinity of different frequencies above a fundamental pitch. Notes produced by most musical instruments are harmonic, meaning they consist of a loud fundamental frequency but also of all integral multiples of that frequency, that are softer and softer the higher they are: an A at 220Hz contains overtones at 440Hz (A), 660Hz (E), 880Hz (A), 1100Hz(C#), 1320Hz(E), etc, to infinity. When two or more notes are played at the same time, the closer the match between their shared harmonics, the more in-tune they are perceived.
As you can see above, our A at 220 Hz contains an E a twelfth above it, and a C# above that. When you play an A major chord, the C# and E you play will interact with the C# and E that are contained within the A itself.
The problem is that harmonics do not exactly add up in a way that allows all notes to be in tune with each other. For example, an octave is a 2:1 ratio. A perfect fifth is a 3:2 ratio. You can do the math yourself: let's say you start on a note that is 20Hz. Multiply that frequency by the ratio 2:1 seven times to get the same note 7 octaves higher, that gives 2560Hz. Now instead, tune twelve pure perfect fifths above your original note, and you should get to that same note 7 octaves higher. 20Hz multiplied by 3:2 twelve times equals.....2595HZ. Instead of arriving to the same note, you arrived to a different note that is about 23.5 cents sharper. Similarly, if you tune four perfect fifths (3:2 ration) in a row, you should arrive at a major third, but in fact you arrive at a very different note than if you had tuned that major third harmonically pure (5:4 ratio) to the first note. About 21.5 cents sharper.
Those differences are called commas (the first with octaves vs fifths and second with major third vs fifths aren't exactly the same but are practically equivalent). Now in order for all notes to be usable, you need to spread that comma over the notes, and you achieve that by "tempering" the fifths. Historically there has been many ways of doing so (you could have certain fifths absolutely pure, usually the ones between the most used notes like C to G, and certain fifths more tempered, usually the ones between "black" keys like G# to D#, for example). Modern pianos are tuned in equal temperament, where the comma is divided exactly equally between every fifth, so that they are all narrow by 1/12 of a comma (about 2 cents each). The difference being spread equally, everything is equally in/out of tune. This system favours good fifths, as it has fifths that are nearly pure. But the thirds are still quite bad (a major third C-E on a piano is about 14 cents too wide). In the 16th and 17th centuries, they favoured good thirds instead, and the most common tuning system for keyboard instruments was ¼-comma meantone. In this system, each fifth is narrow by ¼ of a comma, and so fifths are not quite in tune (noticeably, but still good enough to not be disturbing). By compromising on the fifths like that, they achieved absolutely pure major thirds and quite good minor thirds.
One of the particularities of that system is that enharmonics are not equivalent. Say you start tuning on an A, and you go up the circle of fifths, tuning each fifth ¼ comma narrow. As you get further and further from A on the # side of the circle, each note will be lower and lower compared to what they would be in equal temperament. You'll have an E that is about 3 cents flatter, a B that is 6 cents flatter, an F# that is 10 cents flatter, a C# that is 14 cents flat (and thus a pure major third above A), a G# that is 17 cents flat, a D# that is 20.5 cents flat. Now if you start back at A and go down the circle of fifths instead, tuning each fifth ¼ comma narrow, as you get further from A on the "flat" side of the circle, each note will be higher than in equal temperament. D will be about 3 cents high, G 6 cents, C 10 cents, F 14 cents (a pure major third below A), Bb 17 cents, Eb 20.5 cents, Ab 24 cents....wait.... But we just said G# was 17 cents flat, and now Ab is 24 cents sharp? Yup! That means that in this tuning system, G# and Ab are not only not the same note, but are about 41 cents apart from each other. That is almost a quarter tone! You'll notice that Eb (20.5 cents sharp) and D# (20.5 cents flat) also end up 41 cents apart. The same would be true of every enharmonic if we kept going and wanted more split keys. The circle never closes, at some point you'd start comparing unaltered notes to double sharps or double flats. Some instruments exploring this were actually built in the 17th century, including some with 31 keys per octave instead of the usual 12.
Note that even when playing "in equal temperament", only the piano/keyboard instruments are truly tempered. Melodic instruments will adjust their intonation on the fly to make the chords sound in tune (most importantly playing quite low when playing the major third and quite high when playing the minor third). That means any given note can be played differently depending on the harmonic context. The ¼ comma meantone system is interesting in that you do not need to make these adjustments on the fly; they are built into the tuning system. A G is always the same pitch whether it's the root of a G chord or the third of E minor or the third of Eb major. The trade-off is having less good fifths, and a keyboard that doesn't cover all the possible notes. That second trade-off makes it unsuitable to tonal music where the ability to modulate and play every accidental is important, but was not really a problem at the time because music was modal and not tonal. It's not that the tuning is limiting, it's just that music is different, with different requirements. In tonal music, we use 12 keys but only 2 modes, in the modal music of the time, they used (essentially) only 2 keys but 12 different modes
My eyes see, but my ears do not comprehend. Amazing!
Wow, the tempered scale is such a nice invention
Jacob Collier has entered the chat
😂👏
i was hoping someone would comment this
Was looking to see if anyone has made this comment so I could make it myself
I was Looking for Jacob Collier's name in comment too , love you guys!
It was at this very moment that I knew just how geeky I am about music
I got so excited when I saw those beautiful shots of the instrument
Man that instrument looks fun to play!!
Here’s why this sounds good: The half sharps build additional tension and a STRONG need for a resolve. That uncomfortable, out of tune wavering of a 7th chord makes people feel restless, so the transition into a perfectly in tune major chord sounds satisfying and smooth.
Nope. It’s not about notes slightly out of tune which create additional tension, but the exact opposite. In equal temperament all intervals except 1st and 8th are slightly out of tune to allow modulations to other tonalities, but the half steps allow some tonalities to have intervals closer to (or perfectly matching) the right proportion from harmonic partials. Today we have equal temperament, in the past they had other solutions like this one.
For example, natural 3rd (from harmonic partials) is narrower than the equal temperament one. If you want to play a Eb major chord on that organ you should use the Eb black note (the bottom part) because it’s closer to G, thus the resulting 3rd major is closer to the natural one and creates less beats (see 1:20) ; if you want to play a B major chord you use the D# black note (the upper part) because it’s the closer one to B (0:52). Basically D# and Eb are two different notes with 2 different keys
@@leoinmyrealm6030 Nerd. Let me have my moment.
@@bfordsmusic9405 😅❤️
Feels so right in the “modulations” portion of the video
That’s how I sing 😔
I mean then, you're singing perfectly in tune so props to u
Thats how you "should" sing accapella
Absolutely works! Such richness in sound and mood from those half sharps. Learned something new today.
I have perfect pitch and this is driving me crazy...
Also, idk to what frequency that organ is tuned to, but i hear everything a quarter tone higher. For example when he played C, i heard the pitch of C#.
Yes, A = 466HZ instead of 440.
@@Marunius okay that makes sense
Oof im glad i dont have perfect pitch, sounds like pain
Lol same I have perfect pitch as well
A half tone higher.
Awesome! And so wonderful sound... I would be happy to play such an instrument.
This is honestly really cool. You could do some very suspenseful harmonic minor stuff with that.
It actually sounds really good
If you want to hear this organ aside from strange modulations, this album is wonderful ua-cam.com/video/cw_7fDEbaO0/v-deo.html. The tremulant effect on the first track is actually two principal registers with one deliberately detuned to the first.
I greatly appreciate all your views and comments. Please be aware that as a teacher I share my videos with pupils so comments that are not child friendly will be removed.
Sounds quite good, although apparently nobody commented on that video until linked from here.
@@Lucius_Chiaraviglio Well I'm glad it's linked so we can enjoy it now. :)
What a wonderful instrument.
Arabic music: *laughs in quarter tones*
1:21 I NEVER WOULD'VE THOUGHT THAT FEELING COULD GET THROW IN THE AIR
Imagine whipping out megalovania on that in the middle of Sunday service
Those modulations were so smooth!
Magnificent!
Thanks John!
You know it's good when the video shows you an old piano as the thumbnail and the title is weird af
My hearing isn’t used to these notes so my toes actually curled up cause I got so uncomfortable haha
This was super interesting. Lets you thinking our conventional music is out of tune
I only tune to mean tunings. Mostly because I am a mean person myself, when I hear that comma drift I giddy up faster than a digital Triumph Rocket III Roadster supplemented with an good old speedhack. I only play in keys that don't fit well to my particular tuning. B major in Quarter-comma meantone? Who don't want that? The eye of the beholder or rather the ear... is the controller. Equal temperament I don't need that stuff when my bad temperament arises from the depths.
Somebody stop this madman! :^)
Didn’t understand a single word. But I loved every part.
Great video, this is genius! I'm surprised this hasn't become more commonplace, not just on keyboards, but any instrument, including guitars.
Superb video. Thank's for the post.
And the rockets red glare as all of that went STRAIGHT OVER my head!
Thanks so much for this!
I read a lot of comments about out of tunes half keys adding some flavor. I agree that those are interesting considerations, but I just want to remind you that the purpose of those half steps was, since they still had not equal temperament, to play the more “in tune” possible (so the exact opposite).
For example, natural 3rd (from harmonic partials) is narrower than the equal temperament one. In this organ if you want to play Eb major you press the Eb half part (the bottom one) because it’s closer to G, thus in tune (1:20), but if you want to play B major you press the D# half part (the upper one) because it’s closer to B (0:52). Technically you could also divide in half every white key, but the corresponding tonalities were unusual at the time so none really cared (also it would have been a mess to play).
N.b Honestly I don’t get why at 1:24 he presses Ab (bottom half) [EDIT: I’m wrong: check 0:32] to play E major, still the chord sounds quite good, if anyone knows more about I’d be glad to learn something.
Oh, thank you really much!
If you check out 0:32 you'll see that G# is the front of the key and Ab is the back (whereas Eb is the front and D# the back). That's because the black notes in meantone are fixed as C#, Eb, F#, G# and Bb so when you add the alternate note it goes behind. Confusing!
I really like that tune, the split sharps and their “out of tune” sense just sounds cool!
Would be nice to implement that in modern keyboards, it's actually pretty good design.
Ngl this hurts my brain more than those picardi 3rds
sounds great with the right chords for each variation flat or sharp
Everyone shall knows the pain of playing any fretless instrument.
This is more of a "fretted instrument", tuned to 1/4 comma meantone
UA-cam is recommending me my personal heaven, thank you UA-cam!
I tune my harpsichord in meantone, but just for fun, once in a while using Pythagorean tuning (not much modulation there).
Oh dear, Pythagoras gives such horrible 3rds doesn't it! Good for Medieval music though
The keyboard hits give the sound such a nice attacky texture make it sound older and more organic
That chromatic scale sounded like everyone in my high school choir just not getting it.
i love how bright the chords sound
Excellent video :)
UA-cam recommends the most interesting things...
This threw my pitches off lmao. Idk why hut i thought, when i heard a B, it was a C.
maybe you are hearing an overtone?
That’s exactly what you heard, this organ is tuned up in pitch. So any note is actually a semi tone higher (B is actually C and so on)
Been mentioned in other comments, but A=466Hz I believe, not 440 as we’re used to in most western music nowadays.
Interesting possibilities for modern music . . . .
1:17 I want to break free !
my jaw dropped at those modulations. what a wacky organ 🤯
Listening to that at full volume, I think you'd see God whether you were a believer or not.
Teaches you to be careful about your mind playing tricks on you ;)
Excellent! It would take me forever to learn an instrument like this.
I don’t like those extra sharps
All I hear is “AUGHHHH IT’S OUT OF TUNEEEEEE”
Close your eyes, it helps
@@GettinJiggyWithGenghis oh wow you're right
@@azzazelynn988 honestly it’s been a few days and I still don’t understand why it helps
It's more in tune than 12TET
my mind couldn’t comprehend the title nor the thumbnail
0:44
Text: "B Major"
Audio: "F Major"
🤔
No, that’s B. B, D and F
It's a I-V-I cadence in E major. So the first chord is E, then the B with different 3rds then back to E. The organ is pitched at 466 which is why you think you hear F major
Whaoh... I did not expect to see the creator here. Thank you for the detailed explanation!
1:06 That quarter tone fit so well there for some reason
There are no quarter tones here. It's 1/4 comme meantone.
*King Gizzard And The Lizzard Wizzard enters the chat”
Warning: LONG. The comments on this video demonstrate just how much confusion people experience when encountering meantone temperament for the first time. It’s prompted me to write the following short essay, which I hope may sort out some of the confusion. I want particularly to explore with the concept of the *syntonic comma* and how meantone temperament derives from it. This will eventually lead us to the whys and wherefores of the unusual keyboard we listen to here.
In "classic" quarter-comma meantone the "comma"* is the discrepancy between four consecutive pure fifths and a pure major third. If you tune C-G-D-A-E with each fifth absolutely pure (701.95 cents**) the E that you come out on will be very sharp. Called a "Pythagorean" major third it is patently dissonant: 21.5 cents higher than a pure, beatless major third (386 cents). Those 21.5 cents are called the "syntonic comma" and this is what must be redistributed among the tempered intervals to get the game to come out.
So, you start out by tuning a pure, beatless major third, C-E (for example). You then "temper" the 4 fifths within it (see above), tuning each of them flat of pure by 21.5/4 = 5.38 cents. So there's your "quarter-comma" setup. Then you proceed to tune 7 more tempered fifths and this results in 11 tempered fifths, which beat, and 11 *pure* major thirds. You also end up with whole tones that are all acoustically equal, unlike the major and minor whole tones of the old "Pythagorean" tuning from the Middle Ages. These averaged or "mean" whole tones are the source of this temperament's name.
However, meantone does have two different sizes of semitone, and the difference is quite marked, 41 cents. In the demonstration above we hear it quite clearly, even disconcertingly as he passes from D# to Eb and again from G# to Ab. This makes enharmonic equivalents impossible. So a C# cannot serve as a Db, nor a Bb as an A#, and so forth. That being so, we begin to see that we cannot possibly have the 24 major and minor keys of the Common Practice period--not on a keyboard with 12 notes to the octave.
AND, what about that last fifth? The answer is, the accumulated error from the additional tempering is *all* shoveled into one interval, typically between G# and Eb--not a fifth at all, being too *wide* by 1¾ comma (37.6 cents). This interval is the infamous *wolf*, so called because of its howling dissonance. Any triad that straddles the wolf cannot be used. This, along with the absence of enharmonic accidentals, greatly restricts the number of keys you can play in. In fact, in classic meantone the only major keys available to to us are Bb , F, C , G , D , A; the only minor ones G , D , A.
Even the B major triad can't be used because there's no D#, only an Eb--so what becomes of the key of E? We must do without it. The same goes for the key of Eb, for there is no Ab for its subdominant, only a G#. Unless, that is, we can find some way to shoehorn those two missing notes into your keyboard--and this is exactly what we find has been done here.
Sub-semitones like these could be found on organs and harpsichords throughout the 16th and 17th century--and sometimes more sub-semitones were added: A Db to the C# key, and an A# to Bb. But the instruments that had them were meant for professional musicians who understood the musical principles involved, had the technique to play them, and not least had patrons willing to pay for such refinements. The fact is, despite what we tend to see as its limitations, meantone sounds glorious in the so-called good keys and people did everything they could to hang onto it. Once pure thirds work their way into the ear, it's hard to live without them. How more so must it have been for our ancestors, who had grown up with those wonderful sounds as the norm.
_________________________
*The word *comma* just means a pitch difference smaller than a semitone. Many sorts of commas have been posited by theorists. Some, like the syntonic comma and the Pythagorean comma (the difference between 12 pure fifths and 7 octaves), are acoustically derived. Others are arbitrary and need not concern us here.)
**A cent is 1/100 of an equal-tempered semitone. Hence there are 1200 cents to an octave. The cent is simply a unit of convenience, which allows us to use simple arithmetic for acoustical comparisons.
Yes, good explanation, but it is somewhat misleading to say the tuning limits the number of keys and illustrating that with major and minor keys. The reality is the concept of keys and major and minor as we know it did not exist yet! Meantone tuning, especially with 2 split keys, covers the notes needed by the system of modes in use at the time.
@@LeTromboniste0 Quite so, as far as the Renaissance is concerned. But anachronism is the price one sometimes must pay for intelligibility. Let's admit, a description in terms of modes and mutating hexachords would have been pretty opaque to my readers, saving your grace, of course.
So I must deny your charge of misleading people. Moreover, we are to consider that meantone persisted well into the Common Practice period--right into the 19th century when it came to tuning organs. So it is indeed permissible--no, proper!--to speak of the keys that could be used, or not.
@@jameslouder right, it's true that organs in meantone still existed and were problematic later on.
Just to clarify, I didn't mean you should present the explanation from the point of view of modes and hexachords with a heavy plunge in unfamiliar territory. I just encourage people to avoid emphasizing the inability of meantone keyboard to play in lots of keys, because without providing context, this invariably reinforces the impression that earlier tunings are inherently inferior and that equal temperament was an improvement, rather than merely a different tuning systems with different advantages for a different musical language.
@@LeTromboniste0 If that's your point, then I couldn't agree more. Folks today need to understand that musicians stuck with meantonefor almost three centuries because they *liked* it. I spent my whole career as a organbuilder preaching the gospel of unequal temperaments to skeptical organists, and I did it by stressing how much more interesting even a very mild one makes the music. And so, you have moved me to append the following to my original post.
"The fact is, despite what we tend to see as its limitations, meantone sounds glorious in the so-called good keys and people did everything they could to hang onto it. Once pure thirds work their way into the ear, it's hard to live without them. How more so must it have been for our ancestors, who had grown up with those wonderful sounds as the norm."
People: oh thats pretty
Me who got used to the standart chromatic scale over the years: uhhh this sounds badly out of tune
you mean the 12 equal temperament? but yes i agree with you it sounds extremely sharp 💀
Ahahah how relatable liked and subscribed
This was standard back then
Thanks for the brilliant demo.
Does having these split sharps make every key usable?
It gives you more keys but not all. Specifically, the triads which you gain with these keys are B major/G# minor and Ab major/F minor. Normal meantime has 8 pure 3rds; here you have 10.
19 and 31 equal temperament are very close to these meantone tunings, and do support every key.
Having the triads gives you access to more keys, but meantone is quite limited in the keys you can play in the first place. The biggest problem is that the V chord in minor is a sort of modal mixture from the relative major which contains three more sharps. That's why a keyboard tuned to meantone can't even play in E minor, because it lacks a D# for the B major chord. However, an advantage is that the wolf fifth can entirely be avoided with the extra notes.
You have to keep in mind that in that time, that didn't really matter, they didn't need more keys. They might have only used two keys, essentially (with a B flat on the signature or without the B flat), but they used 12 modes (whereas in tonal music we use 12 keys but only 2 modes). Accidentals that go further than D# or Ab were extremely rare and remote.
MIND BLOWN
"titanic flute" came to my mind when I heard those sharps
my equal tempered ears are saying no but my brain is saying yes 😔 i live for this
why.
are my ears useless?
i dont get it.
is the machine old and not as 'sharp as it used to be ?
those dont really feel like real notes at all.
why ?
i guess the generic answer is combinations harmonize better occasionally?
It's to do with tuning. In equal temperament the octave is divided equally and so G# and Ab sound the same. Meantone temperament (as here) divides the octave unequally to obtain purer major 3rds (more in tune), i.e. you have fewer tonalities but they're more in tune. Splitting accidental keys was a way of keeping the pure tuning and accessing more tonalities. Historical tuning is both fascinating and complicated!
@@simonrlloyd .... Some people (mostly some piano players?) have become so accustomed to the 'compromises' of 12-TET, so as to sometimes hear even just-intonation harmony stuff as being 'wrong'... In any case, their ears have somehow ignored and accepted the inaccuracies of harmony with 12-TET.... Then again, a lot of people (even some musicians) have no idea about the difference between just intonation and 12-TET (let alone other systems like 1/4-comma meantone.. after all, it is a bit difficult, and largely arkane).
Rob Card you are only used to 12-tone equal temperament with A=440Hz as a reference pitch. If you listen to other tuning systems you will develop an ear for them, just as you develop tastes for foreign foods by exposing yourself to them over time.
@@simonrlloyd fascinating... complicated... and completely unnecessary, because it (1) makes the organ harder to play and (2) sounds awful.
@@johnw2026 and now you're basically proving Kenni's point haha. You perceive it as sounding "afwul" while it is actually more correct. Our ears have just been conditioned to the equal temperament tuning. As for your first point, if this makes the organ harder to play, then any instrument without frets or buttons has to deal with that when playing solo or in ensemble. Perceiving correct intonation while playing such an instrument can sometimes be a lot different than playing in tune relative to a piano.
So, I wouldn't call it completely unnecessary, more a thing from the past from which we can actually learn a lot. Many old pieces being performed today have less strong "emotions" (tension, release) due to the generalized equal distance between intervals. Not trying to bash your opinion, just sharing mine :)
I believe in modern music, in a chromatic scale, e.g., C, C♯, D, D♯, E, F, F♯, G, G♯, A, A♯, B, C, each note has a frequency of the previous note times the 12th root of 2. So, wherever you start, 12 chromatic steps later you’re an octave higher, in other words on a note (with the same designation) with a frequency exactly twice the frequency you started from. So why is there some problem with everything supposedly being slightly out of tune? It seems to me this “even temperament” solves whatever problem there used to be.
The only problem is that you can't quite physically tune every string of a piano, for example, to have EXACTLY the pitch the above description specifies. But it seems to me, that as a system, as an ideal, it's perfect. And if you transpose a piece of music higher or lower, or into another key, it's going to sound different, but it's not going to be suddenly out of tune.
Equal temperament, which you describe, is indeed how the piano is normally tuned. Every semitone is conveniently equidistant but it means that the only interval that's purely in tune is the octave. Every other interval is out of tune by varying degrees. Major 3rds, for example, are noticeably wider than pure. You might find this video helps explain: ua-cam.com/video/1Hqm0dYKUx4/v-deo.html