The guitarist in the band I’m in has a diploma in (popular) music performance and his music theory is pretty good—certainly better than mine—but he was never taught any music history and he’s only just turned twenty-one. So when, during a discussion about the scores the sax player had written1 for himself and the trumpet player yesterday evening, I made a casual remark about how individual instruments used only to sound right in a few specific keys and even now wind instruments compromise with equal temperament, he asked me what exactly I meant about “equal temperament“. It took about five minutes of pity rays bouncing off the side of my head during my fumbling explanation before I remembered that our new keyboard player is a piano tuner by trade and left it to him.
04Dec08 — 1
Have a read of this, and dazzle them with your knowledge of theory at the next rehearsal.