Trivial temperament

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A trivial temperament is something that fits the mathematical definition of "regular temperament", but is a unique, extreme case that people might be uncomfortable calling a "temperament". There are two kinds of trivial temperaments - JI, in which nothing is tempered, and Om temperament, in which everything is tempered.

Just intonation is a codimension-0 "temperament", which means nothing is tempered. The set of commas that are made to vanish is the set {1/1}, but that's still a set, so JI is still a regular temperament. There is an infinite family of these "temperaments", one for each subgroup of JI. The 2-limit version is the equal temperament 1edo. The 3-limit version is the rank-2 temperament pythagorean, which has all the properties of any other rank-2 temperament except that it tempers no commas. The 5-limit version is rank-3, and so on. The mapping for this temperament is an n×n identity matrix, with wedgies of 1], ⟨⟨ 1 ]], ⟨⟨⟨ 1 ]]], etc.

Om temperament is the rank-0 temperament, in which every interval is a comma. Thus all notes are represented by the same note. This is different from 1edo because not even octaves exist; it could be described as 0edo. The mapping for this is the 0-val, 0 0 ... 0]. It could also be called the unison temperament[1], as all intervals are equated to the unison. The name "Om" is a reference to that syllable's use in Hindu meditation practices; Keenan Pepper gave it this name because there's only one temperament-distinct pitch in the whole system, in the same way that "Om" in the meditation sense is the only word you need to create the whole universe.

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