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kazinatortoday at 12:09 AM0 repliesview on HN

Wanting to change keys freely only pushes fixed-pitch musical instruments toward equal temperament. Since many important instruments are like that, and virtually all instruments that are capable of accurate intonation not relying on ear are like that.

If an ensemble includes instruments that are equal temperament, then the non-fixed-pitched instrumentalists adjust their pitch to sound good with those.

An ensemble consisting only of instruments that can play any interval can change keys by pure intervals.

E.g. switching from the original major key to the relative dominant key can mean changing the root by a pure fifth. In equal temperament, this modulation is done by altering only a single note: sharpening the subdominant. All other notes are from the original scale. If we change key by a pure fifth, that is obviously not so; all notes are detuned off the original scale.

If we change through all the keys along the circle of fifths, perfectly purely, we arrive at the Pythagorean comma: the gap between the destination root and the original.

Another possibility is to progress the roots through the diatonic fifths of the original scale, rather than pure fifths. Like, we start with a pure, just intonated C major, and then change keys through G,D,A,E,B,F#,C#,Ab,Eb,Bb,F back to C using the notes of that pure C major scale, or sharps/flats relative to those. Then we don't run into the Pythagorean comma; but of course all the pure scales we end up using are detuned from C major, and in a different way from following pure fifths.