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.

About musical tuning

• What is microtonal music?

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

• Why use microtonality?

• 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.
  • Golden tunings are one type of metallic MOS, along with silver tunings, bronze tunings and others.

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.

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

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

• I am more interested in the way regular temperament theory looked before 2010, rather than the direction it has taken since 2020. Is there a wiki that preserves that?
  • Yes. You can find that at the Legacy Xenharmonic Wiki.

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?

• Where can I find this wiki's notability guidelines?

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

• What are user space pages and main space pages?
  • User space pages are pages titled "User:YourUsername/Topic". For example "User:JohnDoe/Major scale".
  • Main space pages are pages without any prefix. For example "Major scale".

• How do I create a user page?
  • Search "User:YourUsername/ThePageTitleYouWant" in the search bar (e.g. "User:JohnDoe/The arrowroot biscuit scale".
  • It will then say "There is currently no text in this page. You can search for this page title in other pages, search the related logs, or create this page."
  • Click "create this page" and then you will be taken to an editing window to create the user page.

• How can I sign my name on a talk page? How can I make my replies indented to the right?

• How can I add an inline citation or note?
  • Put <ref>The contents of the note</ref> at the place you want the little superscript number to appear.
  • Place <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.

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

• I have a question about formatting or wikitext that isn't answered here. Is there an instruction manual somewhere where I can find it?
  • The answer is probably contained within the page Help:Editing.

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)