One of my most memorable classes during my master’s degree study at the University of Illinois focused on a study of historic tuning systems in music. Those of us in the class often observed that we spent an entire semester learning how to “sing out of tune.” However, the truth was that we spent an entire semester learning to sing correctly in tuning systems that preceeded our modern day equal tempered tuning.

We began the semester by learning to sing in “just intonation” – the tuning that is based on the pure tuning of perfect intervals found in the harmonic overtone series. For most of us in the class we discovered why something that was common to our previous experience was true – for reasons of physics not just because our choral ensembles were less than perfect. We learned a composition that was familiar to everyone in the class – Adoramus Te by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1591) – and, as most of us had always done, we learned this famous short composition beginning with an “a minor” chord – and much to our surprise we discovered – that just like before we knew what we were doing – this famous motet ended one-half step lower than our beginning pitch even though the written last pitches are the same as the first. This was true even when we sang each and every pitch perfectly in tune using “just intonation” – or tuning based on the pure natural physics of the overtone series.

We were then taught – by our wise instructor – that prior to the invention of equal tempered tuning – the “circle of fifths” which most music students know well does not line up at the end with the pitch at the beginning – the place where the two pitches would be the same in “equal tempered tuning” are not the same in “just intonation” or other earlier tuning systems – the point of arrival at the end of the circle is, in fact, lower than the beginning. That is why all choirs who sing the Adoramus Te beginning in “a minor” conclude at a lower pitch than the one with which they started – even if their tuning is extradorinarily accurate.

Next we discovered that by beginning with a slightly higher or lower set of pitches the end of our effort matched the pitches with which we began our singing. Why? We avoided the chord progressions which lead to a lower pitch than where our groups of singers began.

I hear many of you saying: “SO WHAT?” The answer is “It’s complicated!” We will continue with this subject in coming posts – but for now – let it suffice that what we know as “in tune” in equal tempered tuning – the modern standard in which all half-steps seem to be the same distance apart so a person may play any song in any key – is actually ever so slightly out of tune according to the natural physics of sound.

Some of you are still saying: “SO WHAT?” This is also related to part of the explanation why some keys are referred to as “bright” sounding keys, while others are referred to as “darker” sounding keys. No they are not all the same.

More about this in coming posts – really, I do have a plan to get to a serious point about how music communicates with our brains. Also, in a coming post I will list a number of excellent sources that help explain all of this – some of them are actually in simple English – while others require some knowledge of physics. My goal is to find a way to explain this so that it makes some sense as we continue our journey of understanding of how music communicates with human beings.

In the mean time – keep on singing!!