I'm trying to keep my 'tempering' under control while reading comments on my blog posts.

 Evidently, we argue the existence of a Christian god with logic and it can be proven.

Then a 'grammar expert' finds bad grammar in this sentence.

"I guess it's like grammar. Though people with bad grammar look or sound stupid. Oops, it's the same!"

A 'grammar expert' who is still struggling to start a sentence with a capital letter and end it with a full stop. A guy who uses the verb 'practise' as a noun. This guy also says that playing the violin in tune is not important. Not necessary. 

Then tempering in music is mentioned. Statements like this occur, "I'm settled down in my arm chair with a coffee. Tempering?" Is he cooling the coffee or playing with his own dick?

Okay, hold your temper, what is tempering?

Here's a simple introduction to tempering.

Look at the piano keyboard.

There are 12 different notes that repeat in higher and lower octaves, but there are only 12 different sounds.

The white notes are called A  B  C  D  E  F  G. The black notes are called A# or Bb    C# or Db     D# or Eb     F# or Gb     G# or Ab.

Why do the black notes have two names? 

There is nothing in nature that makes these 12 notes fit together in perfect tune. Many cultures found that you could get five notes pretty well in tune but, after that, it got a bit tricky. Well before the Europeans, the Chinese worked out how to add 'in tune' notes to these original five, but they decided that they liked those original five, on their own, better. To this day, like many other cultures, traditional Chinese music uses the pentatonic scale - C D E G A. Blues and rock guitarists liked this sound too. You'll hear it in a lot of rock music. Blues guitarists like to add one more note.     

Sometime, in the 1700s, they were struggling with pianos because a lot of the keys (there are 12 major keys) sounded awful (read 'out of tune'). They decided to slightly shift all the notes so that the distances between them were all even. This gave all the keys the same sound. In this process A# and Bb, for example, were shifted so that they became the same note. 

Remember that there is a lot more detail to tempering and I'm just trying to tell you the basics.

The two well known tempered instruments are the keyboard and the guitar. Most other instruments, like the violin, the oboe, the clarinet and the trumpet, just 'play into this system'. For example, on the violin, there are no frets and any note is possible. Hey, but if a violinist plays outside of this system, when playing with a pianoforte, it is going to sound 'wrong'. Define wrong? Well, it'll sound weird to most ears.

A man named Johann Sebastian Bach wrote a famous work called The Well Tempered Clavier.* This consists of two sets of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys for keyboard.

This guy obviously liked tempering.

He also liked wigs.

There you go. If you leave a silly comment, I'll tell you so.

And don't play with yourself while drinking coffee. You might spill hot coffee onto it.

Ciao tutti.

* The clavier is an early form of piano.