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Talk:12 equal temperament

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Should Liu Zhuo's theory of 12-tone equal temperament (which he developed in 604, during China's Sui Dynasty) be mentioned in this article? 173.88.246.138 (talk) 21:04, 17 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I'm new to editing here and don't know how to cite sources, but I am very experienced in the subject of Just Intonation, microtonality, etc. Currently there's a lot of uncited rhetoric in the Just Intonation approximations section, for example (paraphrasing) "Humans consider a difference of around a quarter of a semitone to be in-tune" - which is simply not true. In actuality the Just Noticeable Difference (JND) is around 5-6 cents, meaning we can differentiate between pitches 5 cents apart. Therefore, the 5th harmonic is considerably out of tune in 12-ET; although 12-ET is an economical solution for the 5-limit, it is certainly not a very accurate one. In addition, the article dismisses the importance of 17- and 19-limit intervals, again, without citations. I propose the 17-limit and above sections be deleted entirely, as there is almost no literature that seems to exist the topic whatsoever, and the literature I could find was a passing mention in an analysis of the compositions of Ben Johnston. Without actual scholarly sources on 17-limit and above intervals and their importance to harmony, it's Wikipedia:Original research to claim that they are "not useful for most purposes." I propose we cut the higher-limit section entirely, and make sure to find good, academic sources for the other sections.

Sorry if I'm doing anything wrong by bringing it up here, it's my first edit to the site! Ascendedxen (talk) 00:22, 25 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Ascendedxen: This is exactly the right place to raise your concern. Uncited claims can be flagged like I just did (a bot will come round soon and date them). If no one supplies a reference to back up the claims, after a reasonable time these can be removed. In the meantime feel free to improve the text. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 08:01, 25 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The text states that equal temperament was used throughout the Baroque era. Is that really true? In reading Kyle Gann's stuff, he says that equal temperament wasn't widely used until the 20th century. If Gann is correct, then this article is confusing equal temperament with well temperament systems. Whoever wrote this probably needs to pick up several history books. I'd like to see a clear discussion of the historical development of equal temperament popularity and a clear discussion of how well temperament differs from equal. Relatedly, there's hardly anything in the Well temperament article as well. – ishwar  (speak) 07:54, 4 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]