Why It's Impossible to Tune a Piano

minutephysics · 4.1M views · 2015-09-17 · 4:20

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Overview

A minutephysics video explaining why a piano cannot be perfectly tuned, comparing equal temperament with just intonation and the math of harmonics.

On Hacker News

Commenters link it as a quick, clear explanation of why twelve notes only approximate simple ratios.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2015–2026

Topics

Music theory, synthesis & production Everyday physics & science demos Recreational & visual math

What people said

voting749227383 · 2021-07 · Recommendation
I can help with a couple of these. 12 notes is a kludge, because powers of 2^(1/12) well approximate simple ratios. These simple ratios (such as 3:2) sound good. I like this video for explanation: [VIDEO] Also, the reason that the letters are in the wrong order is that we're playing the wrong scale. The monks who invented the scale usually sang in A-minor (so we use the first letter for that scale). Nowadays, we use the major scale, which has the same spacing between notes, but in a different order. It just so happens that C-major has the same notes as A-minor, so that's why we count from C. A great channel for this is Michael New, he explains everything very clearly: [LINK] Music, much like language, has a lot of technical debt.
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ramanan · 2019-03 · Recommendation
minutephysics had a nice video about the mathematics that go behind piano tuning too. "Why It's Impossible to Tune a Piano" [VIDEO]
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ramanan · 2015-11 · Recommendation
A related video on the numbers behind piano music, on why it is mathematically impossible to perfectly tune a piano : [VIDEO]
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Sources

Video by minutephysics, played through YouTube.

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