Temperament families and clans
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This is a beginner page. It is written to allow new readers to learn about the basics of the topic easily. The corresponding expert page for this topic is Subgroup temperament families, relationships, and genes. |
Temperament families and clans are ways to organize regular temperaments. Two temperaments are in the same clan if there is some subgroup in which both temperaments temper out the same single comma, which defines the clan. Each clan has a parent temperament, which is the temperament in the given subgroup in which precisely that comma is tempered out; this implies all temperaments in a clan must be of the same rank as each other and the parent temperament. (For example, the parent of the archytas clan is 2.3.7 archy, tempering out 64/63 in the 2.3.7 subgroup, and all rank-2 temperaments which temper out 64/63 in 2.3.7 are part of the archytas clan)
A special case of clans are families, where the common subgroup is a prime limit (2.3.5 for a rank-2 temperament, for example). However, a family is usually not called a clan.
Besides families and clans, there are pages that collect temperaments of a certain comma on this wiki. These pages are for temperaments one rank lower than its corresponding family, and are used because some temperaments are more closely associated with the comma than any other or otherwise do not belong to any notable family or clan.
For example, porky and porcupinefish are both in the porcupine family, because they have a common 5-limit structure in which only the porcupine comma 250/243 is tempered out, which is equivalent to 5-limit porcupine temperament. In other words, they are both extensions of 2.3.5 porcupine (and in fact of 2.3.5.11 porkypine).
Ultrapyth and superpyth are both in the archytas clan, because they have a common 2.3.7 structure equivalent to archy, as they both temper out 64/63 in the 2.3.7 subgroup. In other words, they are both extensions of 2.3.7 archy.