Quarter-Comma Meantone (Part 3)

Last time I explained the tuning system shown above. But I didn’t say why it’s called ‘quarter-comma meantone’.

Today I’ll finally tell you what a ‘quarter comma’ is. Not only will this shed new light on this particular tuning system, it’ll prepare you for understanding other meantone temperaments, like ‘1/3-comma’, ‘1/6-comma’ and so on.

As for the word ‘meantone’, that requires a whole other explanation. But one thing at a time!

We’ve already seen that there’s a conflict built deep into t...