equal temperament

American  

noun

Music.

1. the division of an octave into 12 equal semitones, as in the tuning of a piano.

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Example Sentences

But it also loses in the process a richness, making me wonder what might have happened were it played in a more acoustically natural equal temperament.

From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 25, 2017

He had tuned his harpsichord not to the relatively smooth, equal temperament of modern times, he explained, but to a “severe” mean-tone temperament used in the early 17th century.

From New York Times • Jan. 13, 2017

Meanwhile there was no such thing back then as equal temperament.

From The Guardian • Dec. 29, 2016

Soon he challenged the system of equal temperament that has dominated Western music for centuries.

From New York Times • Apr. 28, 2016

In spite of this, equal temperament works fairly well, because most of the intervals it gives actually fall quite close to the pure intervals.

From "Understanding Basic Music Theory" by Catherine Schmidt-Jones and Russel Jones