Tuning systems

Tuning systems and european colonialism in Africa.

“…In choral competitions where many of these pieces of music are sung by African choirs, Western trained adjudicators often blame the choirs saying that they are singing out-of-tune, 3 a likely outcome of an inadequate theorization of tuning systems in mainstream Western music education. As Leady and Corey (2013) write in their entry on “Tuning Systems” in Grove Music Online : “The potential of the human voice in expanded intonation has scarcely begun to be explored in the West.” If one listens to a voice carefully, it seldom commits to temperament, ceding its power to inflections in the words and in the register (tessitura) of the voice instead.…”

“…The almost universal acceptance of the 12-tone equal temperament system in the middle of the 19th century (Leady & Corey, 2013) was Sine Wave Frequency Oscillation for Whole 5th Using Just Intonation 1 Harmonic frequency is scientifically measured in cents, and "tuning" a piano requires widening the intervals in certain ranges up to 60 cents, which is substantial. a result of the expansion of industries in instrument-making as a commercial enterprise, the increasing mobility of performing musicians in Europe, as well as mass migrations to territories in the Americas, Africa, Asia, etc., which required approaches to be replicable and standardized.…”

“…It is not surprising, therefore, that when Western composers began to rebel against the equal temperament in the middle of the 20th century, they turned to the ancient Greeks for alternative approaches to tuning (Leady & Corey, 2013). Reasons for growing interest in tuning systems were manifold: (a) the liberation movements in Africa and other parts of the world recentered ways of seeing the world that were from the global south, a validation spearheaded by intellectuals from the global south themselves as they began to occupy space in the lands of their former colonial masters; (b) growing interest in historical performance practice (i.e., the Early Music movement), which was happening in Europe, saw many musicians digging up old instruments in the museums, in order to play the music of Bach, and earlier European composers (Mhlambi, 2018); (c) electronic innovations at radio broadcasting institutions and university physics & music departments across the world also stimulated interest in alternative tuning systems; (d) as the discipline of acoustical engineering grew, it became possible to measure music cents (the scientific measurement of frequency) with preciseness through electronic computation.…”

“…These systems involved minor compromises of intervals, which meant they worked well for certain keys, but were not easy for other keys, especially for keyboard instruments (and their fixed pitch). Leady & Corey (2013) have argued that the ancients were far more adept at microtonal pitch differences than are musicians using equal temperament.…”

“…The almost universal acceptance of the 12-tone equal temperament system in the middle of the 19th century (Leady & Corey, 2013) was a result of the expansion of industries in instrument-making as a commercial enterprise, the increasing mobility of performing musicians in Europe, as well as mass migrations to territories in the Americas, Africa, Asia, etc., which required approaches to be replicable and standardized.…”