Temperament Talk

[Jeff Stickney]

List,
	I just got done giving a talk to a 2nd year music theory class at UM about
temperaments and tuning.  During the mind-wandering phase of  a tuning
earlier this week (would that have been the whole time??), I was thinking
about the talk and came up with an analogy that seemed to work well this
morning.  The analogy is this:  Equal temperament is like Dairy Queen ice
cream - it all tastes the same, and you can mix it with any flavor of
topping (i.e. key or musical style) and it still tastes good.
Unequal/historical temperaments are like going to Baskin Robins - there are
a lot of flavors to try, but you have to be more careful which flavor
(temperament) you use with which topping (key, musical style).  However, the
results can be mouth-watering.
	Anyway, you get the idea.  No new breakthroughs on what it all means, just
another way to approach the topic with "non-temperament heads".

Jeff Stickney, RPT
University of Montana
jpstickney@montanadsl.net