On Fri, 20 Nov 1998, Carlos Noguis wrote:
> 1) What is the difference between 1/4 comma meantone and 31 TET?
> They seem to be the same (as far as I could gather from the postings),
> but Owen Daly wrote (meantone  fretting numbers, jan. 15, 1998) about
> moving the tangents of a clav. to make it QCM and the ratios mentioned
> were somewhat different from the ones I calculated for 31TET. (1.0446
> and 1.0702 for Owen's meantone vs1.0457 and 1.0694 for 31TET)
 
1/4 comma meantone is not _exactly_ the same, but close enough to a
12-tone subset of 31TET as to be aurally indistinguishable.  (To my ear,
anyway.)  However, there is a certain difference in mindset between a
closed system with 31 identical intervals such as a microtonalist would
use, and an open/irregular one with wolf intervals expressed on a 12 (or
14 or 16 or whatever) tone keyboard.
 
> 2) (Tuning again)
> What would be the matter with tuning a keyboard in just intonation
> selecting the black keys to be for example C#, Eb, F#, G#(or Ab) Bb? I
> understand this is done with 1/4 comma meantone, but why not with JI?
> Too many wolfs?
 
I think so, yes.  In meantone you usually have to modulate a at least a
little way before falling off the ends, but in strict JI you can't even
play in a _single_ key without having two different supertonics, or
wolves.
 
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    O
   /\        "'Jever take'n try to give an ironclad leave to
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