Listen

The same twelve chorales — Bach's BWV 253 through 264 — rendered again and again under different tunings and different settings. 10 albums, 120 recordings.

Just intonation

Chords tuned to whole-number frequency ratios drawn from a tonality diamond, found by simulated annealing and then threaded together with Viterbi optimisation. These are successive passes at the same idea, newest first — each refines the tuning search and the orchestration over the one before it.

Werckmeister III

A well temperament from 1691, contemporary with Bach. Keys retain distinct character rather than sounding identical.

12-tone equal temperament

The modern standard: the octave split into twelve identical steps. Every key is equally usable and no chord is perfectly in tune.

Early experiments

The first renders, made before the density control existed — they use the legacy max-shift setting and much slower tempos. Kept for reference; superseded by the just-intonation passes above.