Scale Tuning System - Kurzweil KA-90 Owner's Manual

KURZWEIl_KA-90_Manual_003_151105.pdf 31 2015-11-06 10:29:58
A tuning system is the system used to define which tones, or pitches, to use when playing music. In other words, it
is the choice of number and spacing of frequency values used. The equal temperament (has only one tuning
method, and is suitable for keyboard) is the common musical scale used at present, used for the tuning of pianos
and other instruments of relatively fixed scale. One of the advantages of the equal tempered scale is that it is the
same in any musical "key", so that compositions may be freely transposed up or down without changing the
musical intervals. Especially for piano, equal temperament is widely used and taken for granted. But people used
several other scales to compose and perform before adopting the equal temperament. This piano has been
equipped with 6 scale tuning systems, you can select one to reappearing its matched chord of the melody at that
time.
Characteristics of Different Scale Tuning Systems
Pythagorean
The Pythagorean tuning, named after the ancient mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras, is based on a stack
of intervals called perfect fifths. It is particularly well suited to music which treats fifths as consonances, and thirds
as dissonances.
Pure Major & Pure Minor
In music, just intonation (sometimes abbreviated as JI) or pure intonation is any musical tuning in which the
frequencies of notes are related by ratios of small whole numbers. Any interval tuned in this way is called a pure
or just interval. And the major scale which consisted of just intonations especially for this triad chords: Root, Third,
Fifth are sounded extremely harmony. The just intonation must be the most natural temperament.
Meantone
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The Meantone System is a musical temperament which is close to just intonation. Used to tuning pipe organ in
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16th century Europe. These musical scales which based on the Pythagorean System, minus quarter of common
comma for once, are extremely approaching just intonation. So, use this system to create musical scales are
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sound beautiful and pure, just like a perfect triad chord.
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MY Werckmeister
The Werkmeister was named after Andreas Werckmeister, and this scale was created as an improvement on the
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Pythagorean scale. This tuning collapse comma maxima, created by Pythagorean, into four perfect fifths, the rest
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fifths still remain their Pythagorean scale characteristics. Werkmeister Tuning can tune scale from harmonic to
melodic by increasing tone number, making each tonality sound distinct, this is the important gist for classicists
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and romanticism tonality music to name the tone name.
Kirnberger
Kirnberger temperament is an irregular temperament developed in the second half of the 18th century by Johann
Kirnberger and regarded as an improved version of Meantone temperament. It makes possible to switch different
tunes freely when performing.
Twelve-tone equal temperament
In twelve-tone equal temperament, which divides the octave into 12 equal parts, the width of a semitone , i.e. the
frequency ratio of the interval between two adjacent notes, is the twelfth root of two. There is minute difference of
the same amount between each two intervals.

Scale Tuning System

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