THE VIDEO SHELF · piano tuning mathematics
Why It's Impossible to Tune a Piano
A minutephysics video explaining why a piano cannot be perfectly tuned, comparing equal temperament with just intonation and the math of harmonics.
Why HN readers recommended it
Commenters link it as a quick, clear explanation of why twelve notes only approximate simple ratios.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- minutephysics
- Topic
- piano tuning mathematics
- Format
- explainer
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 2
- HN mentions in dataset
- 4
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2015–2026
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
A related video on the numbers behind piano music, on why it is mathematically impossible to perfectly tune a piano : [VIDEO]
ramanan on Hacker News · 2015-11
In Physics of the Piano (2012) [pdf]minutephysics had a nice video about the mathematics that go behind piano tuning too. "Why It's Impossible to Tune a Piano" [VIDEO]
ramanan on Hacker News · 2019-03
In Piano TuningI can help with a couple of these. 12 notes is a kludge, because powers of 2^(1/12) well approximate simple ratios. These simple ratios (such as 3:2) sound good. I like this video for explanation: [VIDEO] Also, the reason that the letters are in the …
voting749227383 on Hacker News · 2021-07
In A study of musical scales (2017)
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.