Musical Temperaments (& Tuning)

Aha! What I was thinking of last night, explained through wikipedia as "equal temparment" (um, and non-equal temparment too): http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_temperament.

I think this is sort of it, but maybe close and not precisely what I was thinking of. I thought, after reaching this page, how my great-grandfather--genius, composer, musician, music professor, and piano tuner, probably knew all about things like this. I wish I had inherited his gift for music. I inherited some of it, but not to the degree he was blessed.

I think this article describes, though, how the western scale and tones are different from, for example here, the arabic scale, which might include more tones.

This is an article that looks dry but I imagine would be very interesting as a base for a number of other arts. If I learned what this means, more exactly, and put it to poetry or even a painting idea. I kind of like the idea of taking something complex and sort of science or math related and turning the basis for one art, or a very technical idea, into a spontaneous creation. Combustion!

(Sometimes nerds are hot--sometimes they're not.)

I should have "Let's pretend we're borderline schitzo" parties and have one based on all things temperament or with "tempera".

"Bring your tempera paints for a relaxed discussion of musical temperaments over tempura udon. 8 o'clock, sharp or flat."

Just looked up "72 temperament" and found there is something called "miracle temperament" which sounds interesting. I'm printing them out so I can read this. I guess there are 3 types:

equal temperament
linear temperament
well temperament
maybe something called regular temperament (?)

I think I am onto a new interest: tuning. I want to read all of the articles about tuning from wiki, which includes measurement, just intonation, temperaments, and non-octage. (category is musical temperaments).