Sound Examples for
Musical Tuning Systems

You will need a fully GM compliant synthesizer to hear the differences in tuning.
If you are using a PC with Windows or a Mac, you can download MIDIPLUG with a GM compliant software synthesizer from Yamaha USA or Yamaha Japan or Yamaha UK.

Yamaha and Roland hardware sythesizers are GM compliant also.

First of all test your midi device.
If your MIDI devicereacts to tuning messages the way we need it, you should hear distinctly different tones in the test piece.
You really should hear the following sequence of tones:

The musical examples only will work as intended if that is the case.
If what you heard sounded like the following score (some tones different)

your MIDI hardware or software is not fully GM compliant and the tuning examples will not work.

To run the following demo, you will also need Microsoft Powerpoint Animation Player. If you don't have it, you can download it now.
It will only work with Windows 95 and Windows NT.

Click here to start the demo

If you cannot play this demo, you nevertheless should try to have a look at the "muldimedia book" with cdrom. This book is an introduction to the mathematical principles of historically important tuning systems.

Erich Neuwirth
Musical Temperaments
Springer Verlag
ISBN 3-211-83040-5
Book+CDROM with some hundred sound examples

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Last Change EN 971220

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