Frequently asked questions

See also: Pedagogy questions

Whether they are frequent or one-of-a-kind, all questions are welcome here. When listing questions, list broad, general questions higher and niche, more specific questions lower. Answer each question on a separate page, linked to by the question.

Answered questions

About musical tuning

• What is microtonal music?

• Why microtonality? (And why does anyone care about microtonal music?)

• What are some different kinds of tuning systems that exist?

• How do I decode those strange looking comma names?

• What does “golden” refer to in “golden meantone”, “golden flattone”, etc?
  • Rank-2 temperaments (of which meantone and flattone are two among many) generate MOS scales with two step sizes, large and small.
  • Depending on what generator you use for the temperament, you can make the ratio between large:small different. For example you can have 3:1 meantone, 2:1 meantone, 3:2 meantone, etc. and the same goes for any other rank-2 temperament.
  • If the ratio between the step sizes is the golden ratio, then the tuning is a golden tuning, such as “golden meantone”, “golden flattone” or similar.

About the wiki

• There's so much to read. Where do I start?
  • The page Xen concepts for beginners is the best place to start.
  • After that, check out General Theory for a list of foundational pages about musical tuning.

• Where can I find a glossary of musical tuning terms and jargon?

• What are this wiki's strengths and weaknesses? (How does it compare to other resources?)

• What is this wiki's copyright/intellectual property policy?

About editing the wiki

• I'm a new editor, what is everything I can do to help?

• Where can I find this wiki's style guide?

• Recent changes is too crowded, how do I see what's actually important?

• I discovered a new temperament, how should I name it?

• How can I add an inline citation or note?
  • Use “<ref>The contents of the note</ref>” at the place you want the little superscript number to appear.
    • Use “< /references>” at the place you want the list of references to appear. (If you do not specify this, it will default to the very bottom of the page.)
  • If you want to cite the same reference multiple times, give it a name e.g. “<ref name="Bob et al.">The contents of the note</ref>” the first time you use it.
    • Then every subsequent time you can just use <ref name="Bob et al." /> without all the rest.

Unanswered questions

Todo: answer questions

• How do I actually use a rank-3 temperament? (Please make a step-by-step guide of how to go from the 3 generators at the start, to a Scala file that works with Scale Workshop at the end? Every step of the way, explain like I’m five?)

in the mean time until this question is answered, see: Rank-3 temperament

• Who is who in microtonality?

in the mean time until this question is answered, see: Category:People

• Why do microtonal musicians argue so much? (And do they argue more than people in other fields of research?)

• What is all this new terminology good for anyway?

(You are encouraged to add more questions here)