Just intonation vs equal temperament chart

1. What is the difference between just intonation and equal temperament?
2. Is equal temperament out of tune?
3. What is wrong with just intonation?
4. How many cents off is equal temperament?

What is the difference between just intonation and equal temperament?

Just intonation requires tuning your instrument for a specific key. With standard equal temperament, you can play further down the neck in another key and not end up with different sound quality intervals between notes.

Is equal temperament out of tune?

One of those tunings was already known to the ancients: equal temperament. Here the poison is distributed equally through the system: The distance between each interval is mathematically the same, so each interval is equally in, and slightly out of, tune.

What is wrong with just intonation?

Just intonation is extremely impractical for instruments that play chords (guitar or piano), or any instrument with fixed pitches which cannot bend, such as vibraphone or marimba. How many keys do you want in an octave on your keyboard? In the Baroque period, 12-tone equal temperament had not yet been invented.

How many cents off is equal temperament?

In equal temperament, each semitone is measured at 100 cents (1 cent = 1/1,200 octave); measuring by frequency (vibrational cycles per second), each semitone step increases in frequency by a factor of the 12th root of 2, or about 1.059.