Regular temperament is any tempered system of musical tuning such that each frequency ratio is obtainable as a product of powers of a finite number of generators, or generating frequency ratios. The classic example of a regular temperament is meantone temperament, where the generating intervals are usually given in terms of a slightly flattened fifth and the octave.
The best-known example of a linear temperaments is meantone, but others include the schismatic temperament of Hermann von Helmholtz and miracle temperament.
Read more about Regular Temperament: Mathematical Description
Famous quotes containing the words regular and/or temperament:
“He hung out of the window a long while looking up and down the street. The world’s second metropolis. In the brick houses and the dingy lamplight and the voices of a group of boys kidding and quarreling on the steps of a house opposite, in the regular firm tread of a policeman, he felt a marching like soldiers, like a sidewheeler going up the Hudson under the Palisades, like an election parade, through long streets towards something tall white full of colonnades and stately. Metropolis.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“These philosophers dwell on the inevitability and unchangeableness of laws, on the power of temperament and constitution, the three goon, or qualities, and the circumstances, or birth and affinity. The end is an immense consolation; eternal absorption in Brahma.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)