mmmt-tools / Learn & Train / just intonation
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Just intonation, up close

Just intonation tunes intervals as whole-number ratios — 3:2, 5:4 — so their harmonics coincide and nothing beats. The catch is geometry: stack pure intervals and they never quite close. The tiny leftovers have names — commas — and the entire history of temperament is the history of deciding where to hide them. Click around the 5-limit lattice (fifths run left–right, thirds up–down; every node plays against the 1/1), then meet the commas themselves.

The 5-limit lattice

← fourths · fifths →   |   top row: up a pure third (·5/4) · bottom row: down a pure third (·4/5). click = hear it against 1/1

The commas — where purity doesn't close

Hear the fallout elsewhere on this site: the meantone and well-temperaments are strategies for hiding the syntonic comma; every beat you count on the beating page is an interval missing purity by some fraction of a comma; and the interval microscope shows exactly how far each system lands from just.

Learn & Train · EDO explorer