Pure Major Temperament Help Needed

[woodsy1084]

Hello! I am in my second year of programming Korg synths for a high school marching band in Texas. We have a Korg Triton Pro and a Korg Triton LE. Most of our sounds are support sounds like strings and organ timbres that fill out the sound of the band.

Most of the playing is done in equal temperament, but we would love to be able to apply Pure Temperament to individual chords that are sustained for several measures. I am puzzled by the intonation adjustments that are made when I apply the Pure Major Temperament on these Korg synths.

I am very aware of the pitch changes that should be made from equal temperament to pure major temperament, and I have a Yamaha Harmony Director keyboard to reference both numercially (cents change in pitch) and aurally.

From what I can tell, if I apply Pure Major intonation in the key of D# to an Eb chord, the tonic and third were both raised significantly - about 20 cents - rather than the tonic staying at the equal temperament frequency and the third being lowered 15.6 cents.

Does anyone have any advice on how to fix this or get around it? Or does anyone have any technical information on Korg's tuning schematic for the different temperaments? I already tried detuning the whole keyboard with Pure Major on, and the relative pitches of the Eb scale were still not correct.

Any thoughts or experiences would really be appreciated! Thanks in advance.

-Evan

[dawkins]

I think what happens (with other synth tunings) is that they adjust the tuning to ensure that A stays at 440 Hz so if you went to C Just Major tuning the note C would be A * 5/3 = 740 Hz
Glad to see someone is trying to get away from Equal Temperment